Deadlock

She left to spread the good news that the patient was alive and disagreeable. I shut my eyes and fumed. My body was still weak. I went back to sleep.

When I woke up the third time my mind had cleared. I sat up in bed, slowly and still painfully, and surveyed my body. One problem shoulder. Knees covered with gauze-doubtless badly scraped. Bruises on the right arm. There was a table at the bedside with a mirror on it. Also a telephone. If I’d been thinking instead of yapping earlier I would have realized that. I looked at my face in the mirror. An impressive bandage covered my hair. Scalp wound: that accounted for the headache, though I didn’t remember hitting my head. My eyes were bloodshot but my face wasn’t damaged, thank the Lord-I’d still be beautiful at forty.

I picked up the telephone and stuck it under my chin. I had to raise the bed to use it, since I couldn’t prop the phone against my right shoulder while lying down as long as the left one was attached to the ceiling. Pain shot through my left shoulder as I moved but I ignored it. I dialed Mallory’s office number. I had no idea what time it was, but my luck was in: the lieutenant was there.

“Vicki, you’d better not be calling to sweet-talk me. McGonnigal told me about you horning in on the Kelvin investigation. I want you out. O-U-T. It’s just my bad luck it happened in Boom Boom’s apartment.”

Ah, Bobby. It did me good to hear him ranting. “Bobby, you’ll never believe this, but I’m in the hospital.”

There was silence on the other end as Mallory collected his thoughts.

“Yup. Down at Billings… Someone else wanted me out of this case, too, and they took out my brakes and steering while I was at the Port yesterday. If it was yesterday. What day is today?”

Bobby ignored the question. “Come on, Vicki-don’t fool around with me. What happened?”

“That’s why I’m calling you-I hope you can find out. I was coming home around ten-thirty, eleven, when the steering went and then the brakes, and I ended up running into a sedan. I think a Mack truck had hit it and knocked it into my lane.”

“Oh, nuts, Vicki. Why can’t you stay home and raise a family and just stay the heck out of this kind of mess?” Bobby doesn’t believe in using bad language in front of women and children. And even though I refuse to do woman’s work I count as a woman with him.

“I can’t help it, Bobby; trouble follows me.”

There was a snort at the other end.

“I’m lying here with a dislocated shoulder and a concussion,” I said plaintively. “I can’t do anything-get involved in a mess or raise a family-for a while, anyway. But I would like to know what happened to my car. Can you find out who scooped me off the Dan Ryan and see if they examined my car?”

Bobby breathed heavily for a few minutes. “Yeah, I guess I could do that. Billings, you say? What’s the number?”

I looked at the phone and read him the number. I asked him again for the day. It was Friday, 6:00 P.M.

Lotty must have gone back to her clinic on the North side. She’s the person I list to call in case of emergencies and I guess she’s my doctor, too. I wondered if I could persuade her to release me-I needed to get going.

A middle-aged nurse popped her head through the door. “How are we doing?”

“Some of us are doing better than others. Do you know when Dr. Herschel is coming back?”

“Probably around seven.” The nurse came in to feel my pulse. If there isn’t anything else to do, make sure the patient’s heart is still beating. Gray eyes twinkled with meaningless jollity in her red face. “Well, we’re certainly a lot stronger than we were a few hours ago. Is the shoulder giving us any pain?”

I looked at her sourly. “Well, it isn’t giving me any-I don’t know about you.” I didn’t want anyone throwing codeine or Darvon at me. Actually it was throbbing rather badly.

When she left I used the phone again to call Pole Star and ask for Bledsoe. The helpful woman in his office told me he was over at the Lucella, which had a ship-to-shore line. She gave me the number and told me how to get an operator to connect me. This was going to be complicated-I’d have to bill it to my office phone.

I was in the middle of giving the operator the dialing and billing instructions when my middle-aged nurse came back. “Now, we’re not to do anything like this until Doctor says we’re up to it.”

I ignored her.

“I’m sorry, Miss Warshawski: we can’t have you doing anything to excite yourself.” She pulled the phone from my outraged grasp. “Hello? This is Billings Hospital. Your party is not going to be able to complete the call at this time.”

“How dare you? How dare you decide for me whether I can talk on the phone or not? I’m a person, not a sack of hospital clothes lying here.”

She looked at me sternly. “The hospital has certain rules. One of them is to keep concussion and accident victims quiet. Dr. Herschel will let us know if you’re ready to start phoning people yet.”

I was wild with rage. I started to get out of bed to wrestle the phone from her, but the damned pulley kept me attached. “Quiet!” I shouted. “Who’s getting me excited? You are, pulling that phone away!”

She unplugged it from the wall and walked away with it. I lay in bed panting with exhaustion and fury. One thing was clear-I couldn’t wait for Lotty. After my breathing returned to normal I raised myself up again and inspected the pulley. It was holding my shoulder steady. Again I explored it with my right fingers, this time gingerly. The plaster was hard. Even if my shoulder was broken, the cast would keep it in place without traction. No reason I couldn’t go home as long as I was careful.

I undid the wires with my right hand. My left shoulder relaxed against the bed with a spasm of pain so strong tears ran down my cheeks. After much ungainly fumbling with the bedclothes I managed to pull the left arm forward again. But helplessness compounded my frustration and I felt momentarily like abandoning the struggle. I shut my eyes and rested for ten minutes. A sling would solve my problems. I looked around doubtfully and finally found a white cloth on the bottom shelf of the bedside table. It took a lot of effort to move around and I was panting and red in the face by the time I managed to turn on my side, reach the cloth, and pull it up to bed level.

After a short rest I put one corner of the cloth in my mouth and slung it around my neck. Using teeth and my right hand, I rigged up a decent sling.

I staggered out of bed, trying not to move the left shoulder more than I had to, and opened the narrow lockers by the entrance. My clothes were in the second. The black pants were torn at the knees and the jacket was stiff with dried blood. Nuts. One of my favorite outfits. I pulled the pants on with one hand, ignoring underwear, and was tying to figure out what to do about the top when Lotty came in.

“Glad to see you’re feeling better, my dear,” she said dryly.

“The nurse said I shouldn’t be excited. Since she was agitating me so much I thought I’d better get home where I can rest.”

Lotty’s mouth twisted in an ironic smile. She took my right elbow and shepherded me back to the bed. “Vic, you must stay here another day or two. You dislocated your shoulder. You must keep it still to minimize the tear on the muscles. That’s the point of traction. And you hit your head against the door as your car turned over. It’s badly cut and you were unconscious for six hours. I’m not letting you take chances with your health.”

I sat on the bed. “But, Lotty, I’ve got so many people to talk to. And the Lucella sails at seven-I’ll miss them if I don’t get through soon.”

“I’m afraid it’s after seven now… I’ll get the phone back in and you can make your calls. But really, Vic, even with your constitution, you must keep this shoulder in a stationary position for two more days. Come.”

Tears of frustration pricked my eyes. My head was throbbing. I lay back on the bed and let Lotty undress me and reattach my arm to the pulley. I hated to admit it, but I was glad to be lying down.

She went to the nurses’ station and returned with the phone. When she saw me fumbling with the receiver she took it from me and placed the call herself. But the Lucella had already sailed.

12 Bedside Stories

The next day I entertained a stream of visitors. Charles McCormick, a sergeant from the Traffic Division, came to report to me on the accident and to find out my version of what had happened. I told him as much as I could remember. As I suspected, the semi that was bearing down on me had hit a car when it moved into the left lane.