Journals of Eleanor Druse, The (Digital Picture Book) Read Free Page A

tastes great but is also less filling, and makes the whores of Babylon mudwrestle in the streets.”
    He barked a mirthless laugh, turned, and trudged back down the hallway, his gown open in the back, the sallow cheeks of his skinny buttocks drooping and puckering as he walked away into the darkness.
    In case of fire, break glass.
    “Still no luck reaching any family,” the nurse said into the phone. Then she glanced at me, smiled, and said, “But Mrs. Druse is here. She maybe able to tell us something.”
    Bobby’s beeper sounded, just about the time Nurse Werling got off the phone. He looked down at it and grumbled about having to transport someone from the emergency room.
    “Mum, you come down to Otto’s cubicle when you’re finished, you hear? I don’t want you driving home in this, you understand?”
    “I love you, Bobby,” I said.
    “Love you, too, Mum,” he mumbled.
    Laurel Werling was a pleasant woman, but she acted even younger than she looked and seemed a trifle inexperienced, as if she was used to being second in command to someone who had the night off. She made several more phone calls to make sure she was handling Madeline Kruger’s attempted suicide according to protocols. I learned that the police had found Madeline in her kitchen, where she had extinguished the pilot light on her stove, turned on the gas, put a pillow in the oven, and laid her head on it. They’d also found an empty bottle of pain medication on the counter.
    Nurse Werling explained that Madeline was uncooperative and unable or unwilling to provide information the hospital needed to reach her family or next of kin. Madeline seemed disoriented as to time and place, and to have regressed to a childish recalcitrance. The only name that came up reliably in her conversations so far was mine.
    I agreed to help any way I could, but I confessed to Ms. Werling that although I had spent many hours sitting with the dying on the sunshine ward, I had no experience dealing with suicidal patients. I knew enough of human nature to suspect that Madeline might not exactly be thrilled to have survived her brush with death. She would wake up knowing that in the end she had failed even at failing, had botched the last thing she had to do right. Otherwise I had no idea what to expect, what to say or do.
    Ms. Werling said I should follow Madeline’s lead and let her talk about whatever she wished. She said that attempted suicides often express anger and bitterness against loved ones, which she hoped might give us an opening to obtain contact information for her son and her daughters, or at least determine what cities they were living in.
    The nurse led me out into the same hallway where that cranky old rawbones in a gown had appeared. Indeed, I could see him down at the far end of the hallway, backlit by the bluish glow of a
Happy Days
rerun, poking through an ashtray in search of butts, from the looks of it.
    Our footsteps echoed on the marble flooring, but the old one never so much as looked our way.
    The corridor was lined with more thick wooden doors, some bolted shut, some opening into darkness.
    Midway down the hall, an unshaven middle-aged man in an orderly’s uniform very like the one Bobby wears was sitting outside a room in a comfortable recliner, a can of Nozz-A-La cola on the table next to him. He had a book open in his lap and a gooseneck lamp pulled up alongside, but his chin had settled on his chest, and it was obvious he had dozed off.
    “That’s Angelo Charron,” said the nurse, raising her voice as we approached, probably because she didn’t want to discipline the orderly for sleeping on the job. “Mrs. Kruger is on suicide precautions, which means someone must keep her in plain view at all times.”
    She cleared her throat, and Mr. Charron jerked awake in his chair.
    “This is Mrs. Druse,” the nurse said. “Sally Druse. She’s a family friend.”
    “Good morning, sir,” I said, and shook his hand.
    I caught the fruity