At the hospital, they had to turn off their cell phones. For the first time, Gregor felt lost without the thing, cut off from the entire world. The hospital was oddly quiet. He had expected noise and things, bureaucrats, something. Instead, they were taken directly into the room where old George was hooked up to tubes and monitors and were asked to sit down.
“The doctor will be with you in a moment,” the nurse said.
Then she disappeared. Gregor didn’t like modern nurse’s uniforms. He much preferred the old-fashioned white ones that were always dresses. He also preferred the caps with their little black ribbons. His brain was making absolutely no sense at all.
Bennis was standing over old George’s bed. “It’s really odd,” she said. “He doesn’t look bad. He looks better than he did this morning.”
“I didn’t even see you come into the Ararat,” Gregor said.
“I told you Donna and I were having breakfast. He looked blue in the Ararat. Now he just looks like he’s sleeping.”
“We need to get Martin and Angela here,” Gregor said. “We need to get Martin. He’s got old George’s health proxy. What does he do in that job of his? Is he going to be able to leave in the middle of the day?”
“I’ve gotten in touch with Martin and Angela,” Bennis said, “and I gave Martin’s number to the nurse. She’ll give it to the doctor. They’ll be able to get in touch with him if they need to. I’m just hoping they need to.”
“Why?” Gregor said.
“Because if they don’t,” Bennis said, “there’s no hope.”
Tibor was sitting in a small folding chair in the corner. He looked up at them and shook his head.
“It’s two weeks from Friday,” he said.
“What?” Bennis and Gregor asked, almost simultaneously.
“His birthday,” Tibor said. He looked as bad as Gregor had ever seen him look, and Gregor had seen him in the hospital, and after the church was bombed and he was left homeless. “It’s his birthday, two weeks from Friday. He’s going to be a hundred years old.”
Old George moved on the bed. They all turned to look at him. They all made jokes about how old he was, and still living by himself, in his own apartment. Everybody on the street made those jokes. For the first time, Gregor thought old George actually looked one hundred.
The curtain to the cubicle rustled and they looked up to see a doctor walk in, or somebody they assumed was a doctor. He was wearing the regulation white coat. He was carrying a clipboard.
“Is there a Mr.—Mr. Demarkian here?” he asked.
“That’s me,” Gregor said.
“Ah. Thank you. I’ve talked to Mr.—ah, Mr. Tek—”
“Tekemanian,” Bennis said.
“Yes,” the doctor said. “I’m sorry. I’m new in this area. What kind of ethnicity is that?”
“Armenian,” Tibor said.
The doctor nodded. “Well, at any rate, I’ve talked to the gentleman’s nephew? Grand nephew? Another Mr., uh, Mr. Teke—Tekemanian, who has the health proxy. He says I can talk to Mr. Demarkian. In the meantime, he’s on his way. Are you the Mr. Demarkian who’s in the papers all the time?”
“Something like that,” Gregor said.
“Well,” the doctor said. “We’re going to take the old gentleman for some tests. He’s had what I think, looking at the information I have, and looking at him the way he is now, is probably going to turn out to be a small heart attack. But even a small heart attack is serious, no matter who you are, and especially if you’re elderly.” He looked at his clipboard. “The gentleman is, uh, what? Ninety-something.”
“Ninety-nine,” Bennis said. “He’s got a birthday in a couple of weeks. He’ll be one hundred.”
“Yes,” the doctor said. “Can you tell me something about the circumstances? I mean, I assume he lives in a nursing home—”
“He lives in his own apartment,” Gregor said, “on the ground floor of a townhouse building on Cavanaugh Street. The same building where we live, Bennis and I.”
“I live at the rectory,” Tibor put in politely.
“He lives by himself, but he has somebody who comes in every day to help him out and check on him and clean. And we look in. He didn’t look well this morning, but he was well enough to walk two-and-a-half blocks to the restaurant where we all have breakfast every morning. He has breakfast there every morning.”
“Really?” the doctor said. “That’s remarkable. Even people whose minds are still sharp at that age usually have bone issues. He didn’t have any bone issues?”