He nearly says something along those lines to Angel, but a parrot-faced guy with the wavy hair of a rock star hustles past him to check his daughter’s blood pressure.
Amadeo dawdles at the end of Angel’s bed, watching the nurse pump the blood pressure cuff. Despite his profession, he’s still a man, the guy’s demeanor seems to convey. There’s something delicate and efficient and assured in the way he pumps the bulb. He juts his chin and stares thoughtfully into the middle distance, as though posing, listening through his stethoscope. As Angel gazes through tears at the ceiling, waiting for her arm to be released, Amadeo thinks about blood pressure, about the actual pressure of blood—thick blood, red blood—pulsing through his own veins, and he thinks about needles. He eyes the biohazard bin grimly.
“Would you just relax?” snaps Angel. “Sit down.”
“Sure.” His voice sounds faint in his ears. “I’m relaxed.” He doesn’t want to blame Angel while she’s lying here frightened and in pain, but no one can deny that it’s because of her that he’s in this hospital teeming with hordes of pathogens. Why none of this occurred to him when he was sitting in the ER on Good Friday is beyond him.
“Looking good,” the guy tells Angel, marking the number on the clipboard.
“Hey,” says Amadeo. He tugs the nurse’s sleeve, hampering his rush from the room. “Do you think everything’s been sanitized? I mean, what about MRSA?”
The nurse shakes his head warningly. “We have very few cases here, sir.”
“What the hell is mersa?” Angel looks from the nurse to Amadeo and back, her face alight with terror.
Amadeo turns to his daughter regretfully. “It’s this infection that’s totally drug-proof. Hospitals are full of it. You can get it from, like, a hangnail, and they usually have to amputate. Don’t you even watch the news? They’re always talking about it.”
“Dad!”
“You don’t need to worry,” says the nurse. “It doesn’t help to worry.”
Amadeo’s knees liquefy and his vision wobbles. Come on, he tells himself. Get a grip. He must be strong. “Don’t worry,” Amadeo tells Angel, and then he leans over and vomits.
The vomit slaps the linoleum and achieves an impressive range, splattering the far wall, Angel’s sheets, even the biohazard bin.
Angel wails.
“Okay, sir,” says the male nurse firmly, leading him away by the elbow from the awful intimate sight of fully formed corn kernels and diced tomato. He deposits Amadeo in the hall before calling for backup, as if they have to get rid of Amadeo before they can begin to get rid of his mess.
TWO MORE HOURS PASS. Amadeo sits in the corridor on a plastic chair in his smock. He slouches like a disgraced child, cast out of the classroom. Throwing up had a salutary effect; he feels strong now, actually, and clearheaded, despite the scourging taste in his mouth. But it doesn’t matter, because he is not allowed back in the delivery room. Of course, of course, he puked in front of the one male nurse.
His mother returned, summoned on her cell phone by both Amadeo and Angel, and is in there now, in her rightful place. Amadeo expected to be reprimanded—I can’t leave you for a minute—but she just patted Amadeo as she passed. “It’s okay, hijito. Your dad almost fainted when Valerie was born, and he wasn’t even in the room.” Then the door clapped shut behind her, leaving Amadeo with this comparison to his father. He knows they will hold this fuckup against him forever, his mom and daughter. In the decades to come, they’ll laugh at him, shake their heads, but deep down they’ll see it as the deeper failing it is.
He jabs his hand. The crucifixion feels very far away, not at all like something that happened to him in his own life. Angel is right—there’s enough pain in the world, lurking darkly at the edges and poised to spring. Shame floods him; his limbs are engorged with it.