Excerpt - from Sister Troubadours, a novel in progress - February 2009

The admitting desk at the hospital has one woman behind it. She excuses herself for a minute to make a call. I can’t sit, can’t focus. Now what?

The woman sets the phone down. “A nurse will be out to talk with you in just a few minutes. Can you wait?”

What the hell choice do I have? I pace in the lobby, in the waiting room, passing doors marked as chapel and for grieving. The grieving room is sparse, morosely painted, claustrophobic. I’d rather grieve on a mountaintop, where you can see to the edge of the universe. Nobody else is around except for a couple, man and woman, in a corner of the waiting area, heads close together, engrossed in their own tragedy. Another few minutes stretch to eternity, then a woman in hospital gown strides briskly up. She smells like a hospital, like the long view of death and one last shot at resurrection. “Ms. Patricola? Can we sit over here?”

She tells me Connie had been beaten severely. Blood rushes to my head, or drains out of it. It doesn’t matter. I feel sick, woozy. I want out of this madness. She has the wrong girl.

The nurse eases my head down close to my knees. She’s telling me to breathe, just breathe. I feel a throbbing in the part of my scalp that’s missing. After another interminable minute, she says Connie is still in surgery. She has broken bones in her face, a broken arm, maybe some internal injuries. Her brain is swollen. I hear the word hemorrhage, but it doesn’t register. They’re too busy trying to fix her, so I can’t see her now. “She’s pretty tough,” the stranger says. “We almost lost her once, but she’s fighting hard.”

The nurse leaves, but I don’t realize it until I look beside me and see an empty chair. Beaten. She’s been beaten. By who? I’m almost glad to have something to concentrate on. Should be “by whom,” I think, a stupid thing to think, even if it’s just for a second. Never know how your brain is going to fire and misfire in times like this. I’m going to need a towel to catch all the tears. Wrap it around the back of my neck like I’m working out on a treadmill. Oh, if I could only do something ordinary, like heat water for tea, wake up slowly on a weekend morning, chide a student to do better work.