Trauma Room Two by Green Philip Allen

Author:Green, Philip Allen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-09-10T04:00:00+00:00

Jeopardy

It’s Alex Trebek.

The host of the TV show, Jeopardy!

I hear his voice coming from the TV before I step into the room. “He occupied a chair over which the sword ‘of him’ was suspended by a single thread.”

I pull back the curtain to the room.

“Hello, I’m…” I start.

A woman holds up her hand, signaling for me to wait.

“Who was Damocles?” the woman says without looking away from the TV.

I stand in the doorway, holding the curtain to the side, still waiting.

A contestant on the TV answers. “Who was Damocles?

“Correct.” I hear Alex on the TV say, repeating the contestant’s answer.

The woman in the room turns away from the TV with a big smile on her face. She gives me a wave, inviting me in. She appears to be in her fifties. She has gray hair, a kind face, scuffed but nice shoes, a cheap green ring on her right index finger, a frayed, gray, full-neck wool sweater with little blue threads hanging at the cuffs, painted nails, and tired eyes.

She rubs her mother’s back.

A tiny woman sits on the gurney next to her. Her back is arched and kyphotic with age. A few strands of thin, white hair are spun across a balding scalp. Her left eye is a solid milky white. I watch as she wipes a few hairs out of her face, tucking them behind her ear with her index finger. The finger is bent back almost ninety degrees, gnarled by severe rheumatoid arthritis. In fact, all her fingers bend in all directions, the joints swollen and deformed from the disease. For a moment I wonder how she picks up food with fingers that flare out so wildly. She senses me staring. Her one good eye turns toward me briefly before returning to Alex Trebek.

According to her chart, she is ninety-seven years old.

“Mom, the doctor’s here now.” The daughter gives the elderly woman a little squeeze on the shoulder before folding her hands just so in her lap. Her ringed index finger taps. She straightens her back and clears her throat, ready to talk to me.

Introductions are made.

Her mom has been experiencing chest pain for three days, the daughter tells me. It comes and it goes. One moment she is fine, sitting in her La-Z-Boy chair, watching old Jeopardy! reruns, and the next she is clutching her chest, with her favorite pink nightie clinging to her skin from sweat. She sweats so bad it leaves a little pool in the chair, the daughter says. The sweating episodes last maybe ten minutes, usually just until the next commercial break.

The daughter laughs and looks away from me, toward her mother. “I’m going to Disneyland—right, Mom? Wasn’t that the Daily Double earlier when you started having the pain again?” The daughter reaches up and gently rubs her mother’s back in a small circle between her shoulder blades. The old woman just keeps her one eye fixed on Alex, ignoring both of us.

I step over to the bed. “Does your chest hurt right now?”

The woman ignores me.

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