In a matter of moments, thinking that another human presence had been needed as reassurance, she would be gone. Mrs. Balsam put her lips together and uttered desperately, “Man. ”
To her own ears it sounded exactly as she had meant it to, a complete and emphatic noun. The nurse glanced down at her with surprise and congratulation. “Your niece, you mean. I remember her name because I have a Siamese called Amanda. Oh, Dr. Simms is going to be very pleased with you.”
As though this small triumph were what she had been summoned to hear, she began to move toward the door, mind already elsewhere as she said automatically, “All set now?”
A new trail had been offered. Holding the round and lively eyes with her own, Mrs. Balsam got her good arm free of the covers and pointed awkwardly across herself in the direction of the telephone which, as standard hospital practice, was placed so as to be reached with ease only by healthy acrobats.
Call Amanda, she begged intensely, and the nurse, following the gesture and recognizing its urgency, said soothingly, “Yes, your niece called to ask about you, hours ago, from your house.”
She studied her patient’s expression. She said kindly, If you’re worried about all this snow, I wouldn’t. Most likely she heard the weather reports, and stayed there. Good night now.”
She was gone and Mrs. Balsam was in the semi dark again, staring at the wedge of dimly lighted corridor and a situation she had never even contemplated.
She had forgotten about the snow predicted for tonight. Was it possible that Amanda, wondering about road conditions in the morning, would sleep at the house so as to be at the source of supply when she was ready to leave for the hospital? In that case, what if the man came up out of hiding again, and Apple barked and Amanda got up to see why?
Mrs. Balsam, instantly tense all through what she could feel of her body and aware that her heart was beating uncomfortably, made a conscious effort to breathe slowly and evenly. Establishing even that faulty communication with the nurse had taken its toll: Her throat muscles quivered spasmodically, her good arm felt leaden from its abortive attempt at a message, confusion was seeping into her head like mist.
After a few minutes she flexed the fingers of her left hand experimentally. She was not as deft with it as many right-handed people, thanks to a wrist broken and badly set years ago, but still. . . Knowing the reaction it would bring, even though her volunteer work had never led her into these sober precincts, she put on her bed light again.
This time there was almost no wait. The approaching tread had the crispness of beginning exasperation, and when the blonde nurse entered she snapped the signal light off like someone dispatching a persistent mosquito. “Yes?”
In spite of this menacing promptitude, Mrs. Balsam had had time to decide that she would not even try for the police: What credence would they give to the tale of an elderly woman who had suffered a stroke? Besides, her one brush with officialdom had not been felicitous.
Three years ago, in the Heights, she had glanced out a window just after dark to see a flashlight bobbing intermittently around the back of the house next door. The owners w ere in Europe, and had asked the Balsams to keep an eye on the place now and then. With her husband away, and after some debate with herself because it was barely possible that this was some checking-up relative, Mrs. Balsam had called the police.
They had come, shone their ow n flashlights around, knocked at her door to report, and gazed significantly at the empty martini glass which had seemed to swell to the size of a brandy snifter; it was clear that as soon as they were outside they would say, “Another of those old dollies putting it away alone.” Mrs. Balsam w as vindicated by the fact that the neighbors came home three days later to find empty spaces w here their two television sets, new electric typewriter, and coin collection had been, but her faith was toppled.
Now, pinning the nurse’s regard with a watch-this intensity, she raised her left hand and made an awkward scribbling motion on the air. it looked more palsied than anything else, even to her, and the nurse’s eyebrows drew in perplexity. Mrs. Balsam then fluttered her fingers as if she were typing, giving the impression of a lunatic wave, and when the nurse began a firm and admonishing, “Mrs. Balsam, Dr. Simms is very anxious that you—” her imprisoned voice escaped briefly. “Rye,” it said.
But her beseeching tone was her undoing. “Of course it’s all right,” said the nurse at once, giving the unaffected hand a warm little shake. Infuriatingly, she tucked it under the covers and administered a further pat. “Now, Mrs. Balsam, you really must rest and let Nature help you.”
Oh, my God, thought Mrs. Balsam wearily, I never know what mimes are doing and neither does she. A kind of fury at the Nature so piously invoked poured through her. The nurse, turning away from the bed, found her skirt seized with something like ferocity, and her patient, far from being calmed and reassured, raging up at her with her eyes.
When he had been in bed for half an hour, staring blankly into the dark and wondering if the effect of the magicians’ punch were going to have a fairy-tale duration, such as a hundred years, Justin got up and drank a glass of milk, noticing that the snow had almost stopped. He then settled himself for sleep, but gradually, as if he had fueled it, his brain
