came too and held my arms down until I shut up.
“I know him,” I said when they finally got me quieted down. “It’s got to be him. I want to see him.” And I told them all about it, just the way I’ve been telling you, only not quite so organized. And naturally they didn’t call the police or Aladdin Blue, or even my father in New York. They just made me swallow some kind of pill that had me out like a Cubbie in ten minutes.
When I woke up there was sunshine coming in the window. I had a visitor, too, but she didn’t look at all like the one I’d had the morning before, even aside from being a woman. She was little, with a big nose and frizzy hair and bright black eyes. Like the other one she had on a uniform, but hers was the white medical kind. When she saw my eyes were open, she said, “Hello. How are you feeling?”
Which was a switch. The nurses always said, “How are
“I feel great,” I told her. “When do I get out of here?”
“This afternoon, perhaps. It will be up to your doctor, and he’ll see you then. However, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to stand on that leg.”
“Is someone coming for me?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Do you think there’s a chance no one will?”
I noticed then that she had a clipboard in her lap, and she was holding a pen. Her fingers made just a little twitch with the pen, as if she had written, maybe, half a word. I said, “I guess they’ll have to send somebody. Maybe Bill.”
“Who is Bill?”
“Who are you?” I asked. “That’s what I want to know.”
“I’m Dr. Rothschild, and I’m a psychiatric intern here. You can call me Ruth.”
“So they’re afraid I’m crazy.”
Dr. Rothschild shook her head. “We’re afraid you may be emotionally shaken. After what you went through it would hardly be surprising.”
“Aren’t I supposed to be lying on a couch?”
“Not for me. I’m not a Freudian. Do you remember last night, when you began to scream?”
By then I was smarter; I didn’t try to tell her everything. I just said, “I was watching the news, and they had a story on it about finding an unidentified man dead. It was my uncle, and I started to cry.”
“You’re sure this man was your uncle? How did you know, Holly?” (My name was on the chart thing at the foot of my bed, naturally.)
“Because of something he had in his pocket. They told about it on TV. It was my Uncle Herbert.”
“What did he have?”
“You’re not going to believe this,” I said, and I was sure she wasn’t.
“Try me.”
“A fake rose.”
“And that made you certain the man was your uncle?” The pen twitched on the clipboard again.
I tried to put it together for her in a way she’d believe. “In the first place, they didn’t find him just anywhere; he was found here, I think, near the parking lot of this hospital—one of the nurses came in last night and said a dead man had been found there; and later it was on TV, and they said it had been in Palestine, which it would be if it was here. He was coming to see me, I think. A rose was, well, a sort of secret signal between him and me.”
Dr. Rothschild smiled. She wasn’t pretty, but when she smiled that way she was beautiful. “I used to have a signal like that with my grandmother,” she said. “I’d wear a comb in my hair, and it meant that there was trouble at home, and she should stay or take me with her if she had to go. Usually it was Mother and Father fighting.” She stopped smiling. “So I understand. I’m sorry that your uncle’s dead, if it was your uncle.”
“You loved your grandmother,” I said. “I don’t want to fool you; I didn’t love my uncle.”
“Perhaps he loved you.”
“Yeah, maybe he did. I was scared of him, but you don’t want to hear about that. Would you do me a favor? It would make me feel a lot better, and that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? Call up the police, or wherever they have his body. Ask if he’s been identified, and if he hasn’t, tell them he’s Herbert Hollander. Say I can identify him when I get there, or if they’ll send a picture.”
Dr. Rothschild went out and came back in about five minutes with a white phone that plugged into a jack in the wall, and a phone book. It took some calling around before she reached the right party, then she said who she was and that she was calling for a patient who might be a member of the family. She put me on, and I said, “Hello, this is Holly Hollander.”
“Detective Corning. Wait a minute.” I could hear papers rattle. “You’re the man’s niece?” (He didn’t say
“Yes. How’d you know?”
“A guy identified him last night. He said he had a brother named George Henry Hollander, and a niece. You don’t sound like George Henry.”
“That would have been Aladdin Blue.”
“That’s the name. Listen, Miss Hollander, you wouldn’t know where he picked up a paper rose, would you?”
I said I didn’t have any idea, but that you could buy them in novelty shops.
