The Character

I’d just gotten home from work. I was chillin’ in front of my computer, before my shower, before Diane arrived back from wherever she was, and before our trip to the bookstore, Borders. Diane’s Lebanese born car salesman had convinced her to buy language tapes to improve her French (doesn’t that sound like something that would happened to me, not her?) and I needed a few more hours of radio mystery.

Let me add – this had already been one of those weeks. For both of us

Ringy dingy.

“Is this the Florence Canning household?”

“Close enough.”

“Then you are… ?”

“Her son-in-law.”

“This is Kim from Dr. Paparallo’s office. We have the report on today’s CAT scan. Florence has a fractured hip. She needs to be taken to the emergency room at Emerson.”

“Why? What will they do there? We did that last Saturday after her fall on Friday.”

“That’s what the doctor wants.”

“She has some mobility, she is in rehab… “

“But you have to take her to the emergency room.”

“I don’t mean to be argumentative, but why not call an orthopedic surgeon to see her?”

“Dr Paparallo wants you to take her to Emerson. She has a non-displaced fracture of the greater trochanter and it’s severe enough that she should be seen in the emergency room.”

“But then what? We’ve been through this before. They looked at her and sent her home. Now that they have more information, what will they do?”

“She may need surgery. I don’t know.”

Kim won. I couldn’t argue anymore. I knew that Diane, after yet another week of medical calls and today’s CAT scan on her supposed day off, might just complete her core meltdown, which would be pleasant to watch compared to how I knew Flo would react.

“Okay. We have some things to do (I had to find Diane), but we ought to be there within the hour.”

“I’ll call and tell Emerson you are coming.”

Maybe you’d like to call and tell my wife.

The emergency room bustled with business, but Flo didn’t have to wait long to see Dr. Sam Sockwell. Maybe because, in my own fit of pique, I wheeled her through the door marked “Ambulance Entrance Only,” and not the one further away, “Emergency Room Patients.” Wheeled is a misnomer. I gave her a shove and she glided through both automatic doors, and arrived without escort at the front desk, behind which all the doctors and nurses, not the admitting staff, buzzed. Even stressed out Diane, who had to whip her head around to find her mother, laughed.

Dr. Sockwell is tall and thin and his light brown hair has just a touch of gray at the temples. He is direct, very polite and though he has no accent, you know he is not native born. He told us that Flo’s fracture was similar to her right hip fracture of two months ago, and we had to decide if she would get proper care back at good old Concord Park. If Flo were at risk of falling, she would have to be admitted to Emerson, and then shipped back to Rivercrest or another rehab facility.

“Can you be careful?” Each time Dr. Sockwell turned from one of us to talk to Flo, he’d bend down and make real good eye contact. Yes, he raised his voice some, but not a lot.

“Oh yes.”Flo answered. I knew how much Flo wanted to go back to her place and I knew she was going to serve a whole platter of yes’s. I bit my tongue. We all wanted her back at “the hole.”

“Are there people at Concord Park to take care of you?”

“Oh yes.”

“The hole” had morphed into God’s gift to the elderly.

“Will you ask for help?”

“Yes. I will. They told me to pull that thing (her call chain) whenever I needed to, but I thought it was just for emergencies. They said, ‘Pull it anytime.’ I said, ‘You mean, even at 2 AM ?’ They said, ‘Yes.’ “

Diane, eager to make sure Dr. Sockwell knew who he was dealing with, interrupted Mrs. I’ll-Be-A-Perfect-Angel.

“Last night my mother used the commode, but she couldn’t stand it sitting at her beside, so she got up and emptied it.”

Dr. Sockwell, who had been laughing at Flo’s answers before this, straightened up, turned away and muttered, “She’s a character.”

Flo said, “Who’s a character?”

Dr. Sockwell looked down and said, “You are.”

Polite, respectful, raised in that generation of proper names, Flo held out her hand as though closing an important business deal, and I swear, in an octave lower than her normal voice, said, “Okay, Sam.”

They shook hands and Sam signed her discharge papers.