New Westminster General

Kate ran back up for his shoes.

She did it without being asked, the way her mother did things, handing him the box with the rabbit in it on the pavement and going back in at the street door and up the stairs, and he heard her go up, fast, round and round the square well, fifty-six steps, and the light come on and go off, and come on again, and two minutes later she came out of the street door with his shoes in one hand and his school coat over her arm and her own feet in a pair of her mother’s slippers, and gave him the shoes, and took the rabbit back, and got into the grey car beside him.

“You’re not Household,” said Frederick.

“I’m family,” said Kate. “Put your shoes on.”

He put his shoes on in the back of the grey car, on his socks, without undoing the laces, the way Theo did, while the night man drove and Kimura sat in the front with her telephone to her ear saying General, main gate, the emergency entrance, Castellanos is two minutes ahead, and the city went past outside the windows, wet and orange, the avenue and Dorsey’s dark and the lights and the bridge, and the river under the bridge, black, with the lights on it.

---

He knew the hospital.

He had come to it every day for fourteen months at four o’clock, in the dark blue car, through the main gate and round to the side and up in the lift to the sixth floor, and he knew the main gate and the side door and the lift and the corridor on the sixth floor with the window at the end over the river, and the chair by the bed on the window side, and the blue book on the shelf.

He had never been in through the emergency entrance.

It was round the back, at the bottom of a ramp, under a red sign, with ambulances in a row outside it with their back doors open and their lights going round, blue, on the wet tarmac. Three of them. A fourth coming in behind the grey car with its siren off and its lights on. And beside them, half on the kerb, where it should not have been, with its doors open and its interior light on and its engine still running, the dark blue car.

Castellanos was standing beside it in the rain.

“Inside,” he said, before Frederick had got out. “Cubicle eleven. They took him straight through. Mrs Hartigan walked in and said four words to the woman at the desk and they took him straight through.” He looked at Frederick in his pyjamas and his school coat and his shoes without laces. “You can’t go in the back, sir. It’s family.”

“Kate’s family.”

“Kate’s family,” agreed Castellanos. He looked at Kate with the box marked TEXTBOOKS. “The rabbit isn’t.”

“The rabbit,” said Kate, “has been through a great deal tonight,” and walked past him into the emergency department with the box, and nobody stopped her.

---

The waiting room was full of the Bowl.

He had not known a room could hold so much of one thing. Every chair in the long room under the white lights was full, and the floor along the wall was full, and everybody in it, nearly, was wearing green and gold or dark blue and red. A man in a cheese hat with a towel held to his nose, the towel red. Two boys of about twenty in Boston shirts, one holding the other’s arm at an angle arms did not go. A woman in a green and gold coat asleep with her head on the shoulder of another woman in a green and gold coat, who was also asleep. A boy of about eight in green and gold pyjamas, like Stavros’s, with his arm in a sling made of a scarf, and his mother beside him, white. A very old man in a dark blue and red bobble hat, on his own, very upright, with his hands on his knees, looking at nothing, who had clearly been crying and had stopped.

At the far end, a desk, behind glass, with a nurse at it, and a queue of eleven people in front of the glass.

Frederick stood in the doorway in his pyjamas and his school coat.

Nobody looked at him. They were all looking at their own blood, or their own children, or the clock on the wall over the desk, which was right, and said twelve minutes past twelve.

Kimura was behind him.

“Sir,” said Kimura. “There’s a chair. By the machine.”

There was. One chair, plastic, orange, by a vending machine that sold crisps and had a notice on it that said OUT OF ORDER, in biro, which made him think of Mr Dabrowski. He sat on it. Kimura stood beside the machine, against the wall, with her hands empty and her eyes on everything. Castellanos stood by the door.

---

The man in the cheese hat with the towel held to his nose looked at him.

He was two chairs along, in a green and gold shirt, with blood on the front of it, and a cheese hat on his head that had been knocked sideways, so that the point was over his left ear. He was about forty, and big, and had clearly been drinking since six, and was not now drinking, and was looking at Frederick over the top of the red towel with the expression of a man who has had a long night and is beginning to see things.

He lowered the towel.

His nose was very swollen and not quite in the middle of his face.

“You’re the King,” said the man in the cheese hat.

The people on either side of him looked round.

“Yes,” said Frederick.

“In your pyjamas.”

“Yes.”

“In here.” The man looked round the waiting room, at the blood and the green and gold and the dark blue and red and the very old man in the bobble hat. “On Bowl night.”

“My friend’s father is ill,” said Frederick. “He’s in the back.”

The man in the cheese hat considered this. He put the towel back to his nose, and took it away again.

“You were on the screen,” he said. “At half time. In grey.” He pointed the towel at Frederick, not steadily. “You waved at Boston.”

“I waved at everybody.”

“Did you see the kick?”

The waiting room had gone quieter. Not silent. A waiting room on Bowl night could not go silent. But the nearest twenty people had stopped talking, and the woman asleep on the other woman’s shoulder had opened her eyes, and the boy of eight in green and gold pyjamas with his arm in a scarf was looking at him, and so was his mother, and so was the very old man in the dark blue and red bobble hat, on his own, with his hands on his knees.

“I saw the kick,” said Frederick.

“Were you happy?” said the man in the cheese hat.

Frederick looked at him. At the swollen nose, and the blood on the G, and the cheese over one ear. And then past him, at the very old man in the dark blue and red bobble hat, who had been crying, and had stopped, and was looking at him too.

“I’m neutral,” said Frederick.

The man in the cheese hat looked at him for a long time over the red towel.

“That’s sad,” he said, and put the towel back.

And the very old man in the bobble hat, on his own, very upright, with his hands on his knees, made a small sound that Frederick did not understand at first and then did. He was laughing. Very quietly, with his shoulders, at the man in the cheese hat with the broken nose who had just said to the King exactly what a six-year-old had said to him on a staircase that afternoon.

The old man caught Frederick’s eye.

He nodded, once, very slightly, the nod of one neutral to another, and looked back at the clock.

---

At ten to one Theo came out of the doors at the far end of the waiting room, the doors that said STAFF AND PATIENTS ONLY, in his T-shirt and pyjama bottoms and a pair of hospital slippers, paper ones, blue, and looked round the room for him, and found him on the orange chair by the vending machine.

He came across the room and sat down on the floor beside the chair, with his back against the vending machine, and put his head back against it, and shut his eyes.

“Stone,” said Theo. “Mum was right. Mum’s always right. They did a scan. It’s five millimetres. In the…” He opened his eyes. “In the tube. Between the kidney and the…” He shut them again. “I know the word. I’ve done the endocrine system twice this weekend and it’s not even the endocrine system, it’s the other one. Urinary.”

“Is he all right?”

“They’ve given him morphine,” said Theo, with his eyes shut. “He’s a lot better. He’s a lot nicer. He told the doctor she had a lovely face.” He opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling. “Five millimetres is fine, they said. It’ll probably pass on its own. With fluids. And morphine. They’re keeping him till morning. Mum’s with him.” He was quiet for a moment. “His pulse is ninety now. I counted. Mum let me.”

“Good.”

“He keeps saying six fifteen,” said Theo. “On the morphine. He keeps saying it. To the doctor, to Mum, to the curtain. I’ve got the six fifteen. He says it like a prayer.” Theo shut his eyes. “Mum told him the depot will sort it. He said the depot doesn’t know. He said nobody’s told the depot. He said if nobody tells the depot, nobody drives the six fifteen, and there are people at the stop on Bladen Street at ten past six who go to work at the bakery and the hospital and the Home Office and they’ll be standing there in the dark.” He opened his eyes. “And then he told the doctor she had a lovely face again.”

---

Frederick took the brown wallet out of his coat pocket.

He had put it in Mrs Hartigan’s lap in the dark blue car, and she had given it back to him at the emergency entrance through the open car door without a word, before Castellanos drove away, and he had put it in his coat pocket and forgotten it.

He opened it.

A bus pass. A photograph of Kate and Theo at about seven and four, on a beach somewhere grey, in jumpers. Two ten-pound notes and a five. A library card from Milwaukee, expired in 2025. And a card, white, worn soft at the corners, with the transit authority’s crest on it and P. HARTIGAN and a number, and on the back, in biro, in a small upright hand that was not Mrs Hartigan’s, two telephone numbers. One said OFFICE (DAY). The other said NIGHT. LASKO.

He looked at it for a moment.

Then he took out his own telephone, the black one with the crack across its corner from the step on the bluff, and dialled the second number.

---

It rang for a long time.

Seven, eight, nine times. He imagined it ringing in an office at the depot, in the dark, with the buses asleep in their rows in the yard outside under the lamps, and nobody in the office, because the night foreman was out in the yard going along between the buses with his torch, climbing in at the front of each one, going along inside it with the torch moving from seat to seat, looking for what people had left.

On the twelfth ring it was answered.

“Depot. Lasko.”

A man’s voice. Old. Out of breath, as if he had come in from the yard at a run. Rough, slow, with something in it that was not American, and had been in New Westminster a long time.

“Mr Lasko,” said Frederick. “It’s about Peter Hartigan.”

There was a pause.

“What about Peter.”

“He’s in the General. In the emergency department. He’s got a kidney stone. He’s all right. They’re keeping him till the morning.” He looked at the card. “He can’t do the six fifteen.”

The pause was longer.

“Who’s this?”

He looked at the waiting room. At the man in the cheese hat with the towel, and the very old man in the bobble hat, and the boy with his arm in a scarf, and Kimura against the wall by the vending machine, and Castellanos by the door, and Theo on the floor beside him with his head against the machine and his eyes shut.

“A friend of the family,” said Frederick.

On the other end of the line, in an office at the depot four floors below the Hartigans’ landing window, there was a silence of a kind he had not heard before, a silence that seemed to be doing arithmetic.

“You’re the one on the fourth floor,” said Mr Lasko slowly. “With the toilet paper.”

“Yes.”

“Peter told me. Friday. In the yard. At one, when he came off. He said you’d be on the sofa. He said there was a spring.” A pause. “On the left.”

“Yes.”

“How’s the spring?”

“Still there.”

Another silence. Then something on the other end of the line that might, in a younger man, have been a laugh.

“Six fifteen,” said Mr Lasko. “Twenty-two. Sunday service is over. Monday service. Six fifteen from the depot. Bladen Street at six ten for the bakery.” A breath. “I’ll find somebody. I’ll find somebody if I have to drive it myself. I’ve still got the licence. I’ll find somebody.” A pause. “You tell Peter.”

“What shall I tell him?”

“Tell him Lasko says lie still,” said Mr Lasko, “and that the people at Bladen Street will have a bus,” and put the telephone down.

---

Theo had opened his eyes. He was looking up at Frederick from the floor by the vending machine.

“You rang the depot,” said Theo.

“Your father said nobody had told the depot.”

Theo looked at him for a long time.

“Mum’s going to make you go home,” he said at last. “Me and Kate and you. She’s going to come out in about five minutes and say bed, school tomorrow, and we’re going to go home in the grey car and you’re going to go back to the sofa.” He shut his eyes again. “And then in the morning I’m going to have to decide about the bet.”

“You don’t have to decide anything. I lost.”

“You sent for them,” said Theo, with his eyes shut. “I know. I was there. I said the bet and you said shut up, Theo. I’m going to remember that when I’m a very old man.” He was quiet for a moment. “I’m going to have to ask Mum.”

“Mum ratified it.”

“Mum ratified it,” agreed Theo. “Mum rules on what it means.”

---

His telephone buzzed in his hand.

It was his mother. Twelve fifty-eight. The Palace. Castellanos, he supposed, had rung the Palace from the car, because Castellanos rang the Palace about everything that was not a secret, and this was not a secret.

Castellanos says Peter. Tell Anneliese I’m thinking of her, and that I’m awake if she wants anything at all, and that I mean anything. Tell her I’ve sat in that hospital. Tell her I know.

He read it twice.

Then the doors at the far end of the room that said STAFF AND PATIENTS ONLY opened, and Mrs Hartigan came through them, in her blue dressing gown, with her hair loose and a hospital badge clipped to the pocket of the dressing gown that she must have borrowed from somebody at the desk, and looked round the waiting room on Bowl night, at the green and gold and the blood, and found them by the vending machine.

She came across.

“He’s asleep,” she said. “He’s fine. He told the registrar she had a lovely face. She’s fifty-eight and she’s been my friend for eleven years and she said nobody’s told her that since 1994.” She looked at the three of them. At Theo on the floor. At Kate on the chair beside Frederick with the box marked TEXTBOOKS on her knee. At Frederick, in his pyjamas and his school coat and his shoes with the laces undone. “Bed,” said Mrs Hartigan. “All of you. School tomorrow.”

“Mum,” said Theo. “The bet.”

Mrs Hartigan looked at her son. Then at Frederick.

“Not here,” she said. “Not tonight. Not in the General on Bowl night with a man in a cheese hat bleeding on the next chair.” She held out her hand for the box with the rabbit in it, and Kate gave it to her, and she looked into it, at Professor, who looked back. “At home,” she said. “At the table. In the morning.” She gave the box back. “Go.”

Frederick held out his telephone.

“My mother,” he said. “She said to tell you.”

Mrs Hartigan took the telephone and read it, standing in the waiting room in her dressing gown and her borrowed badge, under the white lights, with her reading glasses on, upside down from habit, and then the right way up. She read it twice.

She gave it back to him.

“Tell her thank you,” said Mrs Hartigan. “Tell her I know she does.” And then, after a moment, in Wisconsindeutsch, very low, to nobody, the way she had said der wird schon at the fridge on Saturday: “Die weiss es.”

She knows.