He knew me? Did I know him? I barely knew Theresa, who lived in Laingford and came from, according to Susan, a huge family. I didn’t even know her last name. Luckily, she was wearing her store name-tag. I let my eyes flicker over it. Theresa Morton. Morton. Oh.
“Spit’s your uncle?” I said without thinking.
Theresa frowned. “I heard some people call him that,” she said. “He’s Uncle Gerald to me. He says nice things about you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s not very polite, I know. But he likes it. The nickname, I mean.”
“Not from me I bet he wouldn’t,” Theresa said. “So you’ll go see him?”
“Sure. Is he allowed to have visitors?”
“Only family members, but I’ll fix it. Just say I said hi, okay? Let me know how he is. Him and my Dad, they don’t speak, eh?”
“Your Dad would be Hunter Morton, the funeral director?”
“Yup. He hasn’t said a word to Uncle Gerald since they had that big fight about the hearse. So, like, he’d kill me if he knew I’d went there.”
“I’ll find out, Theresa,” I said. “I’ll call you.” I got in the truck and headed for Laingford Memorial.
I am not, like some folks, squeamish about hospitals. When I was in to get my tonsils out, the nurses were great and I developed a hopeless crush on my doctor and wanted to stay for ever. Aunt Susan says I screamed and cried when it was time to be discharged, although I don’t remember that part. Probably the best thing about being in hospital was that there were no chores to do and nobody was throwing sacks of grain at me.
I hadn’t set foot in Laingford Memorial since George had been there for a cataract operation three years before. Someone, in the interim, had taken away the scruffy old lobby. In its place was a vast atrium with gleaming marble tiles and swish modern sofas upholstered in mushroom polyweave. The reception area was now protected by what looked like bullet-proof glass, and there was Muzak.
I went up to the bullet-proof glass and spoke through a little speaker-thing to a woman wearing a crushed-raspberry-coloured uniform. Why is it that medical personnel don’t wear white any more? Has it gone out of fashion, or did someone make it illegal?
“Hi, I’m looking for a patient, Sp—Gerald Morton,” I said.
The woman nodded and tickered away at her computer keyboard, stared at the screen for a moment and then looked up, checking me out. I was dressed in farm gear—overalls and my very cool, Michael Jordan rubber boots—not perhaps the most appropriate hospital visiting attire.
“You’ll be a relative,” the woman said. Would I? Okay. I guess I was.
“We’re cousins,” I lied, blushing.
“Right,” the raspberry receptionist said, squinting at the screen. “Polly Deacon?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Good,” the woman said, satisfied that she had pegged me as one of the Morton clan. Theresa must have “fixed it”, as promised.
“You can go up in a few minutes, Polly. Take a seat. I’ll call you.”
I sat down in the polyweave loveseat next to the reception desk and picked up a Cosmopolitan. The cover-girl was partially clad in a scrap of gold vinyl, her breasts rising out of the garment like warm bread-dough.
“DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO KEEP HIM HOT?” the cover shouted.
Probably not, I thought, looking glumly at my black rubber boots. Magazines like that depress me. Not because I waste my time trying to make myself look like an anorexic whore, but because there are advertising executives out there who think that I might want to.
I tossed the Cosmo back and picked up a National Geographic instead, entertaining myself with pictures of decimated tropical rainforests and endangered species.
A voice came over the loudspeaker above the sofa: “Ms. Deacon to reception.” I looked up and saw the receptionist beckoning to me. She was within spitting distance and could have just rapped on the glass and I would have heard her, but I guess it was a new policy to go with the new intercom system.
I went over and peered through at her. “You can go up now,” she said. “Your cousin’s in room 402. The elevator’s on the right, there.” I could see where the elevator was. The sign was about ten feet high. I suppose they have to say that, but it struck me as awfully silly. I thanked her and walked to it, ten steps or so, straight ahead.
Spit was out of intensive care and in a semi-private room. He was hooked up to an IV drip, and his head was bandaged. Someone had given him a shave, and he looked pale and vulnerable lying there. The curtains were drawn around his room-mate’s bed, but his were open. When he saw me he smiled broadly in recognition.
“Well, if it ain’t the goat-girl,” he said, wheezing. “C'mon in. Have a drink.” He gestured to a pitcher of water next to his bed and winked. I had shared a slug or two with him one rainy Friday when I was feeling devilish. Spit drinks Rico Amato’s homemade rotgut, so it was a bonding ritual only.
He got a kick out of calling me “goat-girl”, and, seeing as I called him “Spit”, it seemed like a fair exchange.
“How are you feeling, Spit?” I said, pulling up a chair.
“Big headache, girl. Big headache. But I’m alive, which is good. Gotta get out of here, though.”
“How come?”
“Too many ghosts. Guy over there just died, eh? Heart case. He was talking to me plain as anything last night and when I wake up this morning, ain’t no beep coming from behind his curtain.”
“There’s a body in there?” One dead body a week was about all I could take. Spit started laughing, then stopped with an inward gasp of pain and put his hand to his head.
“No, no. They took him away. But his ghost is flipping around the room like a trout, and I can’t get any sleep.”
“You see ghosts, do you?”
Spit’s eyes narrowed and he studied me carefully to see if I was kidding him. I wasn’t.
“Yup,” he said. “Sometimes. Cops probably won’t believe me either, when I tell them.”
“Tell them what?”
“About Sunday night. They’re on their way over here. To interview me, doctor says.”
“The cops haven’t talked to you yet?”
“Nope. Ain’t talked to nobody but my roomie. And he’s dead.”
“When did you regain consciousness, Spit?”
“Last night, I guess. And they took away my damned tobacco.”
I reached into my pocket, where I’d slipped the tin of Red Man I’d picked up on the way over. There was an honourable tradition to be upheld: Always bring tobacco when you visit an elder.
His eyes brightened.
“You’re a good girl,” he said, prising the lid off and stuffing some under his lip. “Now I got a use for that bedpan they keep shoving at me.”
“So what about Sunday night?” I said.
“How’d you get in here, anyway? You a deputy cop or something?”
I grinned. “I’m your second cousin, twice removed. Theresa sent me to make sure you were okay.”
He grinned back, his face distended by the wad of tobacco. “Little Terry,” he said. “She’s a good girl, too. Tell her I’m fine.”
“Do you remember what happened Sunday night?”
“Sure