Grace stepped back to get out of their way but Gunnar said, “Here, take her handle. We don’t want her sliding out into traffic while we’re getting out the rest of our stuff.”
Feeling embarrassed she took the handle. She felt surprised again by how much the big Stade wanted to slide around. At her house, Simone’s Stade had been on carpet where it sunk in a bit and, though it was easy to move, the carpet sticking up around the edges kept it from sliding around willy-nilly. Here, on the hard concrete, it wanted to slide away down an invisible incline on the apparently level pad.
Albrecht and Gunnar lifted a couple of pieces of equipment—one with a Stade case—out of the back of the pickup, then a box filled with Mylar, then a hand truck. Gunnar put the non-Stade-covered piece of equipment on the hand truck and stacked the box of Mylar on top of it. He told his truck to go park itself, then turned to Albrecht and Grace, “You guys ready?”
“Um,” Grace said, “I’m moving Simone?”
He gave her a surprised look, then looked at Albrecht. “You stay here and wait for the rest of the team, then bring the stazer and the hand truck up to the…” He turned to Grace, “Where do they go?”
She looked at her phone, “Oncology infusion unit C.”
Gunnar turned back to Albrecht, “When they get here, you guys meet us up there with the equipment. I’m going to tow Simone.”
Embarrassed, Grace said, “I should be able to take Simone. Her Stade slides easily enough.”
“Nah,” Gunnar said. “It makes you uncomfortable and you’ve got enough to think about.” He grabbed one of Simone’s handles and started pushing her ahead of him toward the doors into the building.
The floors in the oncology center were hard, so the only difficulty sliding Simone came when they made corners and Gunnar had to lean into the corner against the inertia that wanted her to slide straight ahead. There was also a moment of difficulty at the elevator where a slight step off between the level of the floor and the car abruptly stopped Simone. Gunnar had to lift a little to get her over the bump, then they slid her inside.
Their next issues came when they arrived at the infusion unit. First was the fact that the rest of Gunnar’s team was already there, so he had to send them downstairs to help Albrecht bring up the equipment. Second, when Grace tried to check Simone in, the person at the desk wanted to talk to the patient and get her to sign forms. Grace’s attempt to explain that Simone was in the Stade met with a blank stare. Showing her health care power of attorney forms didn’t help either.
They finally had to get the clerk to contact the nurse who worked with Jonas.
It seemed like forever before they got back to the infusion chair assigned to Simone, but they’d expected problems so they’d left early and weren’t late yet.
Gunnar’s team set to work. Some of them worked on putting Simone’s Stade in the Mylar cover they’d fitted for it. One of the others shook out a sheet of the heavy Mylar that was shaped like a big sleeping bag, complete with a zipper. Or like a body bag, Grace thought morbidly. The woman draped it onto the infusion chair. Then she used the controls to lay the infusion chair all the way flat like a bed, something Grace hadn’t known the chairs would do. The woman looked at Grace, “Simone’s small, right? This stazer bag doesn’t have to be perfectly positioned for us to get her into it?”
Grace shook her head.
The woman folded up one side of the bag so that when Simone was centered on the chair-bed she’d be on the middle of one half of the bag with the other half ready to be drawn over her so it could be zipped up. Then the woman tucked the edges under the chair cushions to keep them from sliding around.
By now the team had Simone’s Stade enclosed in the Mylar cover. They hooked up cables to it and powered up the stazer.
Gunnar hooked a laptop up to the stazer and plugged in some numbers, then stood back to look at the setup. He turned to Albrecht, “As soon as we unstaze her, get the cables hooked up to the stazer bag so we can immediately restaze her if she crashes.”
Albrecht nodded.
Then they waited.
And waited.
One of the team turned to another, “Weren’t we supposed to see the doctor at three?”
The other one shrugged but Albrecht replied, “Yes. But remember they added us onto a busy session. He’s seeing a lot of very sick people. People with cancer. He has to give some of them bad news. He has to reassure others who’re anxious. Some who’re doing poorly have to be admitted to the hospital, which takes extra time. There are all kinds of things that can go wrong with his schedule. Unless you don’t expect him to spend extra time with you when you need it, don’t bitch about him being late.”
The woman stared at Albrecht, “How do you know all this?”
“My mother was an oncologist. She didn’t tell us about her day at work very often, but when she did, it was heartbreaking. It may not be as bad to have to tell people they’re going to die as it is to be told you’re dying, but it’s still a brutal thing to have to do day after day. And you can’t delegate that to someone else.”
On that somber thought, they sat silently, waiting and pondering.
Though they still frequently checked their watches.
~~~
It was 3:45 when the door opened and a young woman
