Удушье (Choke)

wearing makeup so her face just looks like skin. A pair of black-framed glasses are folded and sticking out of her chest pocket.

Is she in charge of Mrs. Mancini, I ask.

The doctor looks at the clipboard. She unfolds the glasses and slips them on and looks again, the whole time saying, 'Mrs. Mancini, Mrs. Mancini, Mrs. Mancini . . .'

She keeps clicking and unclicking a ballpoint pen in one hand.

I ask, 'Why is she still losing weight?'

The skin along the parts in her hair, the skin above and be­hind the doctor's ears, is as clear and white as the skin inside her other tan lines must look. If women knew how their ears come across, the firm fleshy edge, the little dark hood at the top, all the smooth contours coiled and channeling you to the tight darkness inside, well, more women would wear their hair down.

'Mrs. Mancini,' she says, 'needs a feeding tube. She feels hunger, but she's forgotten what the feeling means. Conse­quently, she doesn't eat.'

I say, 'How much is this tube going to cost?'

A nurse down the hall calls, 'Paige?'

This doctor looks at me in my britches and waistcoat, my powdered wig and buckle shoes, and she says, 'What are you supposed to be?'

The nurse calls, 'Miss Marshall?'

My job, it's too hard to explain here. 'I just happen to be the backbone of early colonial America.'

'Which is?' she says.

'An Irish indentured servant.'

She just looks at me, nodding her head. Then she looks down at the chart. 'It's either we put a tube into her stomach,' the doc­tor says. 'Or she'll starve to death.'

I look into the dark secret insides of her ear and ask if we could maybe explore some other options.

Down the hall, the nurse stands with her fists planted on her hips and shouts, 'Miss Marshall!'

And the doctor winces. She holds up an index finger to stop me talking, and she says, 'Listen.' She says, 'I really do have to finish rounds. Let's talk more on your next visit.'

Then she turns and walks the ten or twelve steps to where the nurse is waiting and says, 'Nurse Gilman.' She says, her voice rushed and the words crushed together, 'You can at least pay me the respect of calling me Dr. Marshall.' She says, 'Especially in front of a visitor.' She says, 'Especially if you're going to shout down the length of a hallway. It's a small courtesy, Nurse Gilman, but I think I've earned that, and I think if you start behaving like a professional yourself, you'll find everyone around you will be a great deal more cooperative. . . .'

By the time I get the newspaper from the dayroom, my mom's asleep. Her terrible yellow hands are crossed on her chest, a plastic hospital bracelet heat-sealed around one wrist.

Chapter 4

The moment Denny bends over

, his wig falls off and lands in the mud and horse poop and about two hundred Japanese tourists giggle and crowd forward to get his shaved head on videotape.

I go, 'Sorry,' and go to pick up the wig. It's not very white anymore, and it smells bad since, for sure, about a million dogs and chickens take a leak here every day.

Since he's bent over, his cravat hangs in his face, blinding him. 'Dude,' Denny says, 'tell me what's happening.'