“I’m glad to meet you too.” Dr. Alvarez looked around. “I’m afraid Mrs. Morrissey is correct. This many people, on an ICU ward…”
“That’s quite all right,” Julianne said. “We can leave most of them down here. I do have to take Ms. Shattuck though.”
“Which one is Miss Shattuck?”
Tiffany stepped forward. “That’s me,” she said. “I’m Tiffany Shattuck.”
“All right.” Teresa Alvarez inclined her head. “We’ll be going up to the fifth floor, to a ward called Five West. You understand that Miss Parrish will not be able to speak to you?”
“I understand that she’s totally unconscious,” Julianne Corbett said.
Teresa Alvarez shook her head emphatically. “Coma is not that simple. It’s true that Miss Parrish does not at this point respond to stimuli. She makes no indication that she can hear or see us at any time. That does not necessarily mean that she cannot do either. Her brain wave patterns are good. She is not in a vegetative state. As far as we can determine, her mind is in good working order.”
“But if her mind is in good working order, why isn’t she awake?” Tiffany Shattuck asked. “If everything is okay, why isn’t she sitting up drinking Coca-Cola?”
“I didn’t say everything was okay,” Teresa Alvarez said. “I said her mind was in good working order. And we have no way of knowing at this point whether or not she is awake, as you put it. We know only that she is making no visible response to stimuli.”
“I don’t think this makes any sense,” Tiffany Shattuck said.
“It makes sense,” Julianne said. “What I think I’m getting here, Doctor, is that as far as you know, it’s perfectly possible that Karla sees and registers the existence of where she is and what’s around her and that she can hear when people talk about her.”
“It’s possible. It’s also possible that she knows when she has visitors. Which is why our visit has to be limited. If Miss Parrish is aware of the people in her room, then too many visitors over too long a period of time could tire her, and we don’t want that. No matter what is or is not going on here, Miss Parrish is still a very sick woman.”
“I understand that,” Julianne Corbett said.
Teresa Alvarez turned her back to them and walked rapidly away. “Come with me,” she said, heading toward the elevators. “After we look in on Miss Parrish, I have to do rounds. There isn’t very much time. I have to thank you for being prompt.”
“I am always prompt,” Julianne said. They got to the elevators and stopped. The elevator doors bounced open and let out what seemed to be a hundred people in various states of cheap dress, old brown nubby coats raveling at the hems, stocking caps and knitted gloves grimy around the seams, heavy lace-up shoes and battered socks. Teresa Alvarez waited until the elevator car was entirely empty and then led the way inside.
“Of course,” she said as the elevator doors closed, “Miss Parrish has a constant visitor. She has a twenty-four-hour duty nurse and that young man friend of hers, Evan Walsh.”
“A twenty-four-hour duty nurse?” Julianne asked. “Is that normal for ICU?”
“Mr. Walsh hired her. The hospital certainly doesn’t mind, as long as she’s a trained ICU nurse, which this one is. The way things are, we aren’t in the business of turning down competent extra help when we can get it, especially for free. Actually, I think Mr. Walsh hired three nurses on three shifts. They seem to be working out.”
The fifth floor was cleaner than the lobby. There was a polished metal hospitality cart parked in the foyer when they got out of the elevator with a stack of Modern Bride magazines weighing down one end of it. The aide who was supposed to be pushing the cart was reading one of the magazines instead, flipping through a full-color fashion section on miniskirted wedding gowns. Julianne had always looked awful in mini-skirts and had no interest in wearing a wedding gown at all. She made a face at the aide and tried to keep up with Teresa Alvarez.
Teresa Alvarez took them through a set of fire doors, down a corridor, through another set of fire doors. In these corridors the hospital seemed quiet and empty, inhabited only by nurses huddled around nursing stations. Most of the rooms had their doors closed. The rooms that didn’t had no people in them. Julianne saw charts and carts and trays and wheelchairs folded up. It wasn’t even all that late in the day. Where had all the people gone? On the coffee table in a waiting room just outside the fire doors marked FIVE WEST, Julianne saw another copy of Modern Bride magazine, wrinkled and used this time, out of date.