Killer Pancake

Think. I rummaged through my purse and brought out my sorry-looking fake-leather wallet with its wad of credit card receipts and expired grocery coupons.

“ID?” the receptionist repeated serenely.

Wildly, I wondered how I’d talk myself out of this one. Then I had an inspiration. Well, of course. My fingers deftly pulled out a dog-eared card. Good old Uncle Sam! I handed the nurse my old Social Security card.

“Goldy Korman,” she read, then shot me a suspicious look. “Don’t you have a driver’s license or something?”

I bristled. “If my sister dies while you’re doing the Nazi documentation routine, you’ll never work in a hospital in this state again.”

The receptionist snapped the Social Security card with my old married name onto her clipboard and said to wait, she’d be right back. Well, excuse me, after notifying the federal government of the name change to go with my social security number, I had tried to get a new card. I had called the Social Security Administration numerous times after my divorce, when I’d resumed my maiden name. Their line was always busy. Then I’d called them thirty more times this spring, five years after the divorce, when I remarried and assumed the surname Schulz. Again I’d written to them about the name change. All I wanted was a new card. The line was still busy. If people died listening to that bureaucracy’s busy signal, did their survivors still get benefits?

The red-haired receptionist swished back out. Apparently my old ID had passed muster, because she led me wordlessly through the double doors of the CCU. Curtained cubicles lined two walls, with a nurses’ station at the center. I tried desperately to summon inner fortitude. Marla would need all the positive thoughts I could send her way. I was handed over to a nurse, who motioned me forward.

On a bed at the end of the row of cubicles, Marla seemed to be asleep. Wires and tubes appeared to be attached to every extremity. Monitors clustered around her.

“Ten minutes,” said the nurse firmly. “Don’t excite her.”

I took Marla’s hand, trying not to brush the IV attached to it. She didn’t move. Her complexion was its normal peaches-and-cream color, but her frizzy brown hair, usually held in gold and silver barrettes, was matted against the pillow beneath her head. I rubbed her hand gently.

Her eyes opened in slits. It took her a moment to focus. Then, softly, she groaned. To my delight her plump hand gave mine the slightest squeeze.

“Don’t exert yourself,” I whispered. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

She moaned again, then whispered fiercely, “I am perfectly okay, if I could just convince these idiots of that fact.”

I ignored this. “You’re going to be just fine. By the way, in case anybody asks, I’m your sister.”

She appeared puzzled, then said, “I’m trying to tell you, there’s been some mistake. I had indigestion. That’s all.” Denial, I knew, is common among heart attack victims, so I said nothing. “Goldy,” she exclaimed, “don’t you believe me? This whole thing is a misunderstanding. I woke up feeling just a little under the weather, and you know how damn hot it’s been.” She twisted in the bed, trying to get comfortable. “So I went for a jog around the lake. I started to feel much better. Nice and cool. Refreshed. Of course, I wasn’t going very fast. I was even thinking you and I could go out for lunch if you weren’t busy. And then I remembered you were doing that cosmetics lunch, which I had decided to skip because I felt so fat.”

“It’s okay,” I said soothingly. “Please, don’t upset yourself.”

“Don’t act as if I’m dying, okay?” Her pretty face contorted with anger. Once more she tried to heave herself up but decided against it, and sagged back against the pillow. “It doesn’t help. You know what my worst fear was when I heard the siren bringing those damn medics? That they would check my driver’s license. They’d know the weight I put down there was a lie. All these years, whenever I hear a siren, that’s what I think. I could just imagine some cop hollering, ‘Leave your vehicle and get on these portable scales! Marla Korman, you’re under arrest!’”

“Marla—”

“So let me finish telling you what happened. Before the paramedics came. I drove home real slowly from the lake. But at home I started to feel bad again—cold sweat, you know, like the flu. So I took aspirin and Mylanta, lots of both, and then I took a shower.” Her voice collapsed into a sigh. “Finally I called Dr. Hodges and he about had a conniption fit, probably because I hadn’t called him in ages. The man is a fanatic. He jumped to the conclusion that something was wrong. Those paramedics came roaring over, and before you knew it I was in this damn helicopter!” Tears slid down her cheeks. “I kept trying to tell them, I’m just woozy. I mean, how would you feel if you had your eardrums breaking with the whump whump sound of rotary blades?” The effort of talking seemed to exhaust her, but she plowed on. “And the sight of paramedics staring down at you? ‘Excuse me, ma’am, whump whump you’ve whump whump had a heart attack’? I said, ‘Oh yeah? What’s that I hear beating?’”

“Marla. Please.”

She wagged a finger absent of her customary flashing rings. “If they don’t let me out of here, they’ve seen their last donation from me, I can tell you that. That’s what I told the ER doc when I got here. He completely ignored me. ‘Look me up on your list of benefactors!’ I shouted at him. The guy acted deaf! I said, ‘Better ask your superiors how much Marla Korman gave this hospital last year! You don’t want to be responsible when those donations dry up!’”

“Marla, for crying out loud. There must be ways they can tell whether you’ve had a heart attack. There’s your EKG—”

Her eyes closed. “It’s a mistake, Goldy. Leave it to the medical profession to screw things up. What is going to give me a heart attack is thinking about all the piles of dough I’ve given this hospital.”

“But you know it’s better to be cautious—” I started to protest, but she would have none of it and shook her head. The CCU nurse signaled my ten minutes were up. Reluctantly, I released Marla’s hand and checked her chart. Dr. Lyle Gordon, cardiologist, and I were going to have a chat. After a quick kiss on Marla’s plump cheek, I backed away from the cubicle.

When I returned to the reception desk and asked where I could find Dr. Gordon, the red-haired woman glowered, then shrugged. Very calmly, I told her I wanted to have Dr. Gordon paged. Now, please. Twenty minutes later, a chunky fellow wearing thick glasses and a white lab coat pushed through the doors of the CCU waiting room. Lyle Gordon had a high premature fluff of gray hair that did not conceal a bald spot.

“Don’t I know you?” he asked, squinting at me. “Aren’t you … or weren’t you … married to—?”

I tried to look horrified at the idea. Dr. Gordon scowled suspiciously. “I’m Marla Korman’s sister,” I told him. “Could we talk?”

He led the way and we sat in a corner grouping of uncomfortable beige sofas.

“Okay, does your mother know about this yet?” he began.

I had a quick image not of Marla’s mother, but of my own mother, Mildred Hollingwood Bear. Perhaps she would be at an Episcopal Church Women’s luncheon, or a New Jersey garden club brunch, when she was told that her daughter, the divorced-but-remarried caterer, had been arrested for impersonating the sister of her ex- husband’s other ex-wife …

“Well, no—”

“Your sister said your mother was in Europe and that finding her would be tough,” Dr. Gordon said politely, nudging his glasses up his nose with his forefinger. “Father deceased by heart attack at the age of forty-eight. Will you be able to find your mother?”

“Er, probably.” Maybe, perhaps, hopefully, I added mentally. I imagined a lie detector needle etching out mountains and valleys of truth and deception.

“Any other family history of heart disease?”

“Not that I know of.”

Dr. Gordon adjusted his glasses again and succeeded in smearing his fingerprints on their thick lenses. “Your sister’s had a mild heart attack. She’s only forty-five. And unfortunately, she’s—”

“She seems to think she hasn’t had a heart attack.”

“Excuse me. Her first EKG indicated she was having extra heartbeats, one of the warning signals. We also