CHAPTER 13

The door to room 213 in Lenity General Hospital opened, and a small dark man in a dark blue suit walked out into the corridor. He stopped and said something in a low tone to a nurse on duty and then proceeded down the hall toward the elevators. Dr. Jerry Yandall had just told Walter Selman that the day after tomorrow he would celebrate his last Christmas on earth. He also told him he could go home tomorrow morning if he wanted. And then he had told him that if he wanted to speak to a minister, priest, or rabbi of his choice, he would arrange it.

Life went on as usual outside room 213. The snow was coming in spurts, and the cars driving by were in a hurry to get where they were going before the streets turned to ice. Inside room 213, Walter Selman was doing what he had been doing for the past week. Lying in bed and thinking. To his credit, his thinking wasn’t much different this afternoon than it had been all week. He wasn’t sad. He wasn’t heartsick or destroyed. He was quiet with maybe a hint of relief. He was old enough to know that dying was not the worst thing that could happen to a man. Lingering and laboring and longing could be so much worse and he wasn’t prone to these. He sensed no change in his disposition or mood. He was enjoying the solitude and worried only that his family would worry. Maybe he didn’t still have his health, but he still had his memories and as long as a man has memories, he isn’t dead. Walter was as alive in this moment as he was before Dr. Yandall gave him the news. Where was the sting? Not here. Not now. Not yet. He still had Christmas. He still had the flowers. He still had his memories.

It was thirty minutes till showtime and young Walter was in Hansen’s Drugs and Notions down the street from the Crown. On orders from his father he was to bring steaming mugs of coffee to the principals thirty minutes before the curtain went up. Walter was about to cross the ice-slick street with a box containing three cups of black coffee when someone grabbed him by the arm, almost spilling his delivery. It was Simon Croft.

“Boy, do you have a doctor around here close?”

“Yes, sir. Just up there,” Walter motioned with his head toward a house leading up the hill on Market Street.

“You better get him. I’ll take that coffee. You go get him and bring him to my dressing room.”

“What’s wrong? What’s happened?” Simon Croft had scared him but it scared him more that something might be wrong with Adrienne.

“Mrs. Knoles got a cut on her head and somebody needs to look at it before she goes on.”

Walter quickly handed the box of coffees to the actor and asked, “What happened?”

“Are you a doctor, boy? Just go get him and tell him to get here fast. We go on in twenty-five minutes.”

Walter ran the short distance to Dr. Butler’s two-story brick house and banged on the front door with the brass doorknocker. No answer. He peered through every window from the front porch and saw no sign of light or life inside. He ran out to the front walk and yelled for the doctor five or six times but still got no response. He turned and ran back toward the theater, almost getting trampled by a horse and buggy and falling down twice on the ice. He ran to the stage door and burst through and raced down the concrete steps, stopping breathlessly at dressing room number two. He knocked frantically till Simon Croft cracked the door open and peeked out.

“You got a doctor?”

“No. He wasn’t home. What’s wrong?”

From inside he heard Adrienne’s voice say, “Let him in.”

Simon stepped back slowly and reluctantly held the door open far enough for Walter to slip through. The light was dim inside but he could see the outline of Adrienne Knoles sitting in a corner with her hand to her head. He walked over to her and saw she was holding a wet cloth to her face.

As if he were in charge, and he sort of felt he was, he took her hand and moved it away from her face and saw a bruise above her left eye. He wanted to ask a dozen questions but he didn’t. It was fifteen minutes to eight, and he knew there was no time for answers.

“The skin isn’t broken. Does it hurt?” he asked, sounding much older than his sixteen years.

“My whole head hurts. Aches all over.”

“It’s not bleeding. Can you go on?”

“I can go on but how am I going to explain this?”

“Where’s your makeup kit? We can cover it with lots of makeup and you wear a scarf most of the time, don’t you?”

“I suppose so.”

He could tell Adrienne wasn’t thinking clearly or she would already have thought of these things. And where was her husband? Did he know how badly she was hurt? Or had he just hit her and left her and didn’t care?

Walter, working under the pressure of time, doctored the wound, helped to apply the makeup, tied the scarf at an angle, and stood back and was pleased with what he had done. He was about to take her by the arm and stand her up when the stage manager knocked on the door and yelled, “Five minutes.”

Simon Croft had been no help at all. He was cowering in the corner in full costume, smelling of fear and alcohol. Walter realized that he was as weak as he was big. This man, whom he had earlier thought was the perfect protector for Adrienne, was crumbling in front of him. A friend, maybe; a protector, not a chance. He took Adrienne by the arm and said to Simon Croft, “You walk up the steps on one side of her and I’ll take the other side.”

“What if we run into Nick?” Simon said to both Adrienne and Walter. Walter could see he was afraid and wasn’t even ashamed of it.

“If he’s in his dressing room, we’re okay because he’s not in the first scene. He won’t come up for another ten minutes.” Walter didn’t really know more about the play than these two actors; he was just thinking more clearly than they were. He opened the door and looked down the hall. He took Adrienne to the steps and held her right arm while Simon held the left. Anyone watching this scene would have surmised the star was simply getting the star treatment. And in all honesty she was.

The show that must go on went on, and the audience loved it, and they loved Adrienne. The audience stood and shouted for her to take bow after bow and tossed flowers on the stage. Adrienne smiled and bowed like a professional and it wasn’t until the crowd finally began to disperse that she collapsed to her knees in the wings and had to be carried to her dressing room by two stagehands who had no idea what was going on. But then neither did Walter.