'Yes.'
'Why?'
'For one thing, it's a hell of a thing to lie about it.'
'But Emily is good at lying, Myron. She's always lied to you. She lied to you in college. She lied to you when Greg disappeared. She lied in court about Greg's behavior with the children. She betrayed Greg the night before their wedding by sleeping with you. And, if you will, if she is telling the truth now, she lied to you for the better part of thirteen years.'
Myron thought about it. 'I think she's telling the truth about this.'
'You
'I'm going to take a blood test.'
Win shrugged. 'If you must.'
'What does that mean?'
'I'll let the statement speak for itself.'
Myron made a face. 'Didn't you just say I should find out for sure?'
'Not at all,' Win said. 'I was merely pointing out the obvious. I didn't say it made a difference.'
Myron thought about it. 'You're confusing me.'
'Simply put,' Win said, 'so what if you are the boy's biological father? What difference does it make?'
'Come on, Win. Not even you can be that cold.'
'Quite the opposite. As strange as this might sound, I am using my heart on this one.'
'How do you figure?'
Win swirled the liquid again, studied the amber, took a sip. It colored his cheeks a bit. 'Again I'll put it simply: No matter what a blood test might indicate, you are not Jeremy Downing's father. Greg is. You may be a sperm donor. You may be an accident of lust and biology. You may have provided a simple microscopic cell structure that combined with one slightly more complex. But you are not this boy's father.'
'It's not that simple, Win.'
'It is that simple, my friend. The fact that you insipidly choose to confuse the issue does not change the fact. I'll demonstrate, if you'd like.'
'I'm listening.'
'You love your father, correct?'
'You know the answer to that.'
'I do,' Win said. 'But what makes him your father? The fact that he once grunted on top of Mommy after a few drinks — or the way he has cared for you and loved you for the past thirty-five years?'
Myron looked down at the can of Yoo-Hoo.
'You owe this boy nothing,' Win continued, 'and equally important, he owes you nothing. We will try to save his life, if that is what you wish, but that should be where it ends.'
Myron thought about it. The only thing scarier than Win irrational was when Win made sense. 'Maybe you're right.'
'But you still don't think it's that simple.'
'I don't know.'
On the television, Archie approached the pulpit, a yarmulke on his head. 'It's a start,' Win said.
Chapter 6
Myron mixed childlike Froot Loops and very adult All-Bran into a bowl and poured on skim milk. For those not reading the Cliffs Notes, this act denotes that there is still a great deal of boy in the man. Heavy symbolism. How poignant.
The Number 1 train took Myron to a platform on 168th Street so far below ground that commuters had to take a urine-encapsulated elevator to reach the surface. The elevator was big and dark and shaky and brought on images of a PBS documentary on coal mining.
Located in Washington Heights, a quick stone's toss from Harlem and directly across Broadway from the Audubon Ballroom where Malcolm X was gunned down, Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center's famed pediatric building was called Babies and Children's Hospital. It used to be called just Babies Hospital, but a committee of learned medical experts was formed and after hours of intense study, they decided to change the name from Babies Hospital to Babies and Children's Hospital. Moral of the story: Committees are really, really important.
But the name, while not exactly Madison Avenue, does adequately reflect the reality of the situation — the hospital is strictly pediatric and deliveries, a well-worn twelve-floor edifice with eleven of them devoted to sick children. There was something very wrong with that, but probably nothing beyond the theologically obvious.
Myron stopped before the entranceway and looked up at the pollution-brown brick. Lots of misery in the city and much of it ended up here. He ducked inside and checked in at the security desk. He gave his name to a guard. The guard tossed him a pass, almost glancing up from his TV Guide in the process. Myron waited a long time for the elevator, reading the Patient's Bill of Rights, which was printed in both English and Spanish. There was a sign for the Sol Goldman Heart Center right next to a sign for the hospital's Burger King. Mixed messages or assuring future business — Myron wasn't sure which.
The elevator opened on the tenth floor. Directly in front of him, there was a rainbow-hued 'Save the Rain Forest' mural, painted, according to the sign, by the 'pediatric patients' of the hospital. Save the Rain Forest. Oh, like these kids didn't have enough on their plate, right?
Myron asked a nurse where he might find Dr. Singh. The nurse pointed to a woman leading a dozen interns through the corridor. Myron was a little surprised to see that Dr. Singh was of the female persuasion, mostly because he had somehow imagined her being a man. Terribly sexist, but there you go.
Dr. Singh was, as her name strongly implied, Indian, from-India Indian as opposed to Native American Indian. Mid-thirties, he figured, her hair a lighter brown than what he was used to seeing on India Indians. She wore a white doctor coat, of course. So did all the interns, most of them appearing to be about fourteen years of age, their white coats more like smocks, like they were about to finger-paint or maybe dissect a frog in a junior high biology class. Some wore grave expressions that were almost laughable on their cherubic faces, but most emanated that medical-intern exhaustion from too many nights on call.
Only two of the interns were men — boys really— both sporting blue jeans, colorful ties, and white sneakers like waiters at Bennigan's. The women — to call them girls would use up Myron's anti-PC quota for the week — favored hospital scrubs. So young. Babies taking care of babies.
Myron followed the group at a semi-discreet distance. Every once in a while he glanced in a room and immediately regretted it. The corridor walls were festive and brightly painted, jammed with Disney/Nick Junior/PBS kiddie images and collages and mobiles, but Myron only saw black. A floor filled with dying children. Bald little boys and girls in pain, their veins blackened by toxins and poisons. Most of the children looked so calm and unafraid and unnaturally brave. If you wanted to see the stark terror, you had to look in the eyes of the parents, as though Mom and Dad were sucking the horror toward them, taking it on so that their child wouldn't have to.
'Mr. Bolitar?'
Dr. Singh met his eye and held out her hand. 'I'm Karen Singh.'
Myron almost asked her how she did this, how she stayed on this floor day in and day out, watching children die. But he didn't. They exchanged the usual pleasantries. Myron had expected an Indian accent, but the only thing he picked up was a little Bronx.
'We can talk in here,' she said.
She pushed open one of the superheavy, superwide doors endemic to hospitals and nursing homes, and they stepped into an empty room with stripped beds. The barrenness ignited Myron's imagination. He could almost see a loved one rushing into the hospital, repeatedly pushing the elevator call button, diving inside, pushing more buttons, sprinting down the corridor into this silent room, the bed being stripped by a nurse, then the sudden cry of anguish….
Myron shook his head. He watched too much TV.
Karen Singh sat on the corner of the mattress, and Myron studied her face for a moment. She had long sharp
