Nurse Gertler walked away from the waiting room. Marie heard the metallic clip-clop of her heels on the linoleum-tiled floor, the echoes fading away until nothing. She knew full well the nurse hadn’t told her everything.
“Nurse Gertler,” she called out of the room, projecting her Maude Findlay-like alto into the hallway – thank goodness for the linoleum – “come back here a moment, please.”
Nurse Gertler had already gone twenty feet down the hallway. She shrugged her shoulders and turned around. She squinted her eyes at Marie.
“What is it, Mrs. Divisadero?”
“I was just thinking,” Marie said, folding her hands in front of her and walking toward the nurse, in a deliberate, thoughtful kind of way so as to be accommodating, “you said my sister was in stable condition, but if that were really the case, wouldn’t she be out of recovery by now?”
“Not necessarily, Mrs. Divisadero. You have nothing to worry about. She’s simply being observed until she’s regained full consciousness. Now please go back to the waiting room. We’ll have more information for you momentarily.”
Nurse Gertler turned away from her again.
“But Nurse Gertler,” Marie said, hoping to stop her from walking away. “Why hasn’t she regained consciousness? You haven’t told me what’s keeping her asleep all these hours. It sounds like something’s severely wrong to me.”
Nurse Gertler sighed and closed her eyes. “Mrs. Divisadero, I don’t know. All I know is that she’s stable and in recovery. You’ll have to simply wait. That’s all there is to it.”
With that, the nurse turned for the third time and walked rapidly away. Marie grunted and went back to the waiting room. Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar were interviewing Barack Obama. Marie guessed that if one of them had been in the waiting room, their nurse would’ve told them the truth.
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