Once in a Lifetime (2 page)

"Head injury?" The other resident was quick to ask as he started an IV.

He nodded. "A bad one." The senior resident frowned as he flashed the beam of a narrow flashlight into her eyes. "Christ, she looks like someone dropped her off the top of the Empire State Building." Now that she was no longer lying on the ice, her whole face was awash with blood, and she would need stitches in at least half a dozen places on her face. "Call Garrison. We're going to need him." The house plastic surgeon had his work cut out for him too.

"What happened?"

"Hit by a car."

"Hit and run?"

"No. The guy stopped. The cops said he looks like he's about to have a stroke."

The nurses watched in silence as the residents worked over Daphne, and then wheeled her slowly into the next room for X rays. She still hadn't stirred.

The X rays showed the broken arm and pelvis, the femur had a hairline crack, and the X rays of her skull showed that there was less damage than they had feared, but there was a severe concussion, and they were watching her for convulsions. Half an hour later they had her on an operating table, to set the bones, stitch up her face, and do whatever could be done to save her life. There was evidence of some internal bleeding, but considering her size and the force with which the station wagon had hit her, she was lucky to be alive. Very lucky. And her chart showed that she wasn't out of danger yet. At four thirty in the morning she was taken from surgery to intensive care, and it was there that the night nurse in charge went over her chart in detail and then stood staring down at her quietly, with a look of amazement on her face.

"What's up, Watkins? You've seen cases like that before." The resident on the floor looked at her cynically, and she turned and whispered with annoyance in her eyes.

"Do you know who she is?"

"Yeah. A woman who was hit by a car on Madison Avenue just before midnight... broken pelvis, hairline crack in her femur ..."

"You know something, Doctor? You aren't going to be worth a damn in this business unless you learn to see more than just that." For seven months she had watched him exercise his craft with precision, and very little humanity. He had the techniques, but no heart.

"All right." He looked tired as he said it. Getting along with the nurses wasn't always his strong suit, but he had come to understand that it was essential. "So who is she?"

"Daphne Fields." She said it almost with awe.

'Terrific. But she still has all the same problems she had before I knew her name."

"Don't you ever read?"

"Yeah. Textbooks and medical journals." But with the rapid-fire smart-aleck answer, suddenly a light dawned. His mother read all of her books. For a moment the brash young doctor fell silent. "She's well known, isn't she?"

"She's probably the most famous female author in this country."

"It didn't change her luck tonight." He suddenly looked sorry as he glanced down at the small still form beneath white sheets and the oxygen mask. "Hell of a way to spend Christmas." They looked at her together for a long moment and then walked slowly back to the nurse's station, where monitors reported the vital signs of each patient in the brilliantly lit intensive care unit. There was no evidence of day or night there. Everything moved at the same steady pace twenty-four hours a day. At times there were patients who came near hysteria from the constant lights, and the hum of monitors and lifesaving equipment. It was not a peaceful place to be, but most of the patients in intensive care were too sick to notice, or care.

"Has anyone looked at her papers, to see if there's someone we should call?" The nurse liked to think that for a woman of Daphne's stature there would be a host of people anxious to be at her side, a husband, children, agent, publisher, important friends. Yet she also knew, from articles she had read in the past, how zealously Daphne guarded her privacy. Hardly anyone knew anything about her. "She didn't have anything on her except a driver's license, some cash, some charge cards, and a lipstick."

"I'll take another look." She took out the large brown manila envelope that was going to go into their safe, and she felt both important and somewhat outrageous as she went through Daphne Fields's things. She had read all of this woman's books, she had fallen in love with the men and women born in Daphne's mind, and for years she had felt as though Daphne herself were her friend. And now she was going through her handbag as though she did so every day. People waited in bookstores on autographing lines for two and three hours just to get a smile and a signature in a book, and here she was rifling through her purse like a common thief.

"You're impressed by her, aren't you?" The young resident looked intrigued.

"She's an amazing woman with an extraordinary mind." And then there was something more in her eyes. "She has given a lot of people a great deal of joy. There were times ..." She felt like a fool saying it, especially to him, but she had to. She owed it to this woman who was now so desperately in need of their care. "There were times when she changed my life ... when she gave me hope ... when she made me give a damn again."

As when Elizabeth Watkins had lost her husband in a plane crash and she had wanted to die herself. She had taken a leave from the hospital for a year, and she had sat home and mourned, drinking Bob's pension. But something in Daphne's books had turned things around for her again, as though she understood, as though Daphne herself had known that kind of pain. And she made Elizabeth want to hang in, to keep going, to fight back. She had come back to the hospital again, and in her heart she knew it was because of Daphne. But how could she explain that to him? "She's a wise and wonderful lady. And if I can do anything for her now, I will."

"She can use it." And then he sighed and picked up another chart, but as he did so he made a mental note to himself to tell his mother the next time he saw her that he had treated Daphne Fields. He knew that, just like Elizabeth Watkins, his mother would be impressed.

"Dr. Jacobson?" The nurse's voice was soft as he prepared to leave.

"Yeah?"

"Will she make it?"

He hesitated for a moment and then shrugged. "I don't know. It's too soon to tell. The internal injuries and the concussion are still giving us a run for our money. She got quite a blow on the head." And then he moved on. There were other patients who needed his attention. Not just Daphne Fields. He wondered, as he stood waiting for the elevator, just what made up the mystique of someone like her. Was it that she wove a good tale or was it something more? What made people like Nurse Watkins feel as though they really knew her? Was it all illusion, hype? Whatever it was, he hoped they didn't lose her. He didn't like losing any patient, but if an important, newsworthy one died, it was worse. He had enough headaches without that.

As the elevator door closed behind him Elizabeth Watkins looked down at Daphne's papers again. It was strange, there was no indication of anyone to call in case of emergency. There was nothing in her handbag of any significance at all.... Just then, tucked into a pocket, she found a photograph of a little boy. It was dog-eared and frayed but it looked fairly recent. He was a beautiful little blond child with big blue eyes and a healthy golden tan. He was sitting under a tree, grinning broadly and making a funny sign with his hands. But that was it, other than the driver's license and charge cards, there was nothing else except for a twenty-dollar bill. Her address was on Sixty-ninth Street, between Park and Lexington, a building that the nurse knew would be handsome and well guarded by a doorman, but who was waiting for her at home? It was strange to realize that despite her fascination with this woman's books, she knew nothing about her at all. There wasn't even a phone number for them to call. As Elizabeth mulled it over an irregularity turned up on one of the monitors, and she and one of the other nurses had to check on the man in 514. He had had cardiac arrest the previous morning, and when they reached him, they didn't like the way he looked. They ended up having to spend over an hour with him. And it wasn't until her shift ended at seven in the morning that she stopped to look in on Daphne again. The other nurses had been checking her every fifteen minutes, but there had been no change in the past two hours since she'd come up to the fifth floor.

"How is she?"

"No change."

"Are her vitals steady?"

"No change since last night." Nurse Watkins glanced at the chart again and then found herself staring at Daphne's face. In spite of the bandages and the pallor there was something haunting about that face. Something that made you want her to open her eyes and look at you so that you could understand more. Elizabeth Watkins stood over her quietly, barely touching her hand, and then slowly Daphne's eyelids began to flutter, and the nurse could feel her heart begin to pound.

Daphne's eyes opened slowly as in a distant haze she seemed to look around. But she still looked very sleepy and it was obvious that she didn't understand where she was.

"Jeff?" It was the merest whisper.

"Everything's all right, Mrs. Fields." Nurse Watkins assumed Daphne Fields was a Mrs. Her voice was gentle and soothing, barely audible, as she spoke near Daphne's ear. It was a practiced voice of comfort. She could have said almost anything in that tone of voice, and it would have brought a sigh of relief, and the knowledge that one was safe with her.

But Daphne looked frightened and troubled as her eyes struggled to focus on the nurse's face. "My husband ..." She remembered the familiar wail of the sirens from the night before.

"He's fine, Mrs. Fields. Everything's fine."

"He went to find ... the baby ... I couldn't ... I don't..." She didn't have the strength to go on then, as Elizabeth slowly stroked her hand.

"You're all right... you're all right, Mrs. Fields ..." But as she said it she was thinking of Daphne's husband. He must have been frantic by then, wondering what had happened to Daphne. But why had she been alone at midnight on Madison Avenue, on Christmas Eve? She was desperately curious about this woman, about the people who populated her life. Were they like the people she wrote about in her books?

Daphne fell back into her troubled, drugged sleep then, and Nurse Watkins went to sign out. But she couldn't resist telling the nurse who took over the station. "Do you know who's here?"

"Let me guess. Santa Claus. Merry Christmas, by the way, Liz."

"Same to you." Elizabeth Watkins smiled tiredly. It had been a long night. "Daphne Fields." She knew that the other nurse had also read several of her books.

"For real?" Her colleague looked surprised. "How come?"

"She was hit by a car last night."

"Oh, Christ." The morning nurse winced. "How bad?"

"Take a look at the chart." There was a large red sticker on it, to indicate that she was still critical. "She came up from surgery around four-thirty. She didn't come to until a few minutes ago. I told Jane to put it on the chart." The other nurse nodded and then looked at Liz.

"What's she like?" And then she felt foolish as she asked it. In the condition Daphne was in, who could possibly tell? "Never mind." She smiled in embarrassment. "I've just always been intrigued by her."

Liz Watkins admitted her fascination openly. "So have I."

"Does she have a husband?"

"Apparently. She asked for him as soon as she woke up."

"Is he here?" Margaret McGowan, the nurse who had just taken over the station, looked intrigued.

"Not yet. I don't think anyone knew who to call. There was nothing in her papers. I'll let them know downstairs. He must be worried sick."

"That'll be a rotten shock for him on Christmas morning." Both women nodded soberly, and Liz Watkins signed out and left. But before leaving the hospital, she stopped at central registration and told them that Daphne Fields had a husband named Jeff.

"That's not going to help us much."

"Why not?"

"Their number's not listed. At least there's nothing under Daphne Fields. We checked last night."

'Try Jeff Fields." And out of simple curiosity, Liz Watkins decided to hang around for a few minutes to see what they came up with. The girl at the desk dialed information, but there was no listing for a Jeff Fields either. "Maybe Fields is a pen name."

"That doesn't do much for us."

"Now what?"

"We wait. By now her family will be panicked most likely. Eventually they'll call the police and the hospitals. They'll find her. It's not as though she's just any Jane Doe. And we can call her publisher on Monday." The girl at central registration had recognized the name too. She looked at Liz curiously then. "What's she look like?"

"A patient who's been hit by a car." For an instant Liz looked sad.

"Is she going to make it?"

Liz sighed. "I hope so."

"Me too. Christ, she's the only writer I can ever read. I'll stop reading If she doesn't make it." The remark was meant to be amusing, but Liz was annoyed as she left central registration. It was as though the woman upstairs wasn't really human, just a name on the front of a book.

As she walked out into the snow in the winter sunshine, she found herself thinking about the woman behind the name. It was rare that she took patients home with her. But this was Daphne Fields. The woman whom, for more than four years, she liked to think that she knew. And as she reached the Lexington Avenue subway at Seventy-seventh Street, she suddenly stopped and found herself looking downtown. The address on the charge cards was only eight blocks from where she stood. What was to stop her from going to Jeff Fields? He must have been half crazy by now, frantic about the whereabouts of his wife. It certainly wasn't normal procedure, but after all, they were all human. And he had a right to know. If she could tell him now, and save him some of the frantic searching, what was so wrong with that?

Almost as though her feet were moving without her telling them to, she walked along the salt spread out on the fresh snow, and turned right toward Park when she reached Sixty-ninth Street. A minute later she stood outside the building. It looked exactly as she had suspected it would. It was a large, handsome stone building, with a dark green canopy, and a uniformed doorman standing just inside the door. He opened the door for her with a look of determined inquisition and his only word was "Yes?"