Bitter Business

said.
    “Thanks.”
    “Did she do drugs, do you know?”
    “I have no idea. I’ve never seen her before.”
    “So you don’t work with her or nothin’.”
    “No. I just had an appointment with her boss.”
    “What kind of place is that back there where she works? It’s some sort of factory, isn’t it?”
    “They do metal plating.”
    “So you don’t work there?”
    “I have an office downtown.”
    “Whadya do?”
    “I’m an attorney,” I replied uncomfortably. The circumstances, I felt, were not ideal for small talk.
    “You’re kidding. I would never’ve taken you for a lawyer, on account of you being so young and good-looking and all.”
    We hit the bump of the curb and made a sharp turn into what I prayed was the entrance to the emergency room.
    “Save it, Frank,” snapped the black paramedic. “It’s show time.”
     
    I hate everything about hospitals—the smell of suffering mingled with disinfectant, the constant drone of unwatched TVs and babies crying, the way that tiny acts of compassion are overshadowed by the monumental cruelty of bureaucratic indifference. It is the same in every hospital I have ever been in. And I have been in my share.
    My husband died of brain cancer the year we both graduated from law school. The months that preceded his death were filled with painful tests and poisonous medications. They were months of bitterness, stoicism, and despair. By the time I came through them, I had used up a lifetime’s allotment of patience with hospitals.
    The paramedics wheeled Cecilia into the emergency room at a dead run and disappeared behind double doors marked NO ADMITTANCE, leaving me to battle a wearily indifferent admitting clerk through two inches of Plexiglas. I looked through the purse in my hands, not my own, but the one I’d been numbly clutching since we left Superior Plating. I turned it upside down on the Formica counter in front of me and scrabbled through the mess: bus transfers and used tissues, two condoms still sealed in their foil packets, a hairbrush grotesquely clotted with blond hairs, and a half-eaten candy bar.
    From the front of a tattered romance novel a barechested man stared up at me with unbridled lust. Thrust between its pages I found what I was looking for. Attached to an Illinois driver’s license with a paper clip Were four soiled dollar bills, a disconnection notice for an apartment in Uptown, and finally, a dog-eared insurance card, all in the name of Cecilia Dobson.
    Relieved, I passed the identification to the clerk, who disappeared to make copies. Behind me a toddler with a runny nose played with the knobs of the candy machine while an old woman in bedroom slippers and a greasy raincoat sat in a chair by the door and sobbed.
    After the clerk returned I set out in search of the pay phones. I found them cleverly positioned between a blaring television set and the speaker of the public address system. Three of the four were not working and a girl who looked as though she was about fourteen was using the fourth. In one hand she cradled a very new baby and in the other the receiver.
    “But I don’t have no money for no bus,” she was insisting to whoever was on the other end.
    Back in the cramped waiting room I found a row of vinyl chairs that were bolted to the floor and sat down to wait. I tried hard to worry about Cecilia Dobson, but felt instead an unreasonable pang of longing for the quiet order of Callahan Ross, where clients wait among the brass lamps and the Chippendale. After a while my beefy paramedic returned, emerging from behind the steel doors of the emergency room with a Styrofoam cup of coffee in each hand. On his face was a broad smile that I suspected of having been practiced in the bathroom mirror. My heart sank.
    “I’ve got cream and sugar in my pocket if you want,” he said, sitting down beside me and nodding in the direction of his chest. It was obvious that he spent his off-hours lifting weights. He wanted to be sure that I noticed.
    “Black is fine, thank you,” I replied. “Do you know if she’s going to be okay?”
    “They’re still working on her. They’ll come out and get you when they know anything. I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”
    “Fine,” I replied primly.
    “You did a great job back there.” He moved a little closer. “Not many people woulda kept their heads the way you did.”
    “Thank you,” I said, pressing my knees together and wishing he’d go away.
    “I know how