WAR-TORN POLAND AS PAST TENSE.

AuthorHawthorne, Fran
PositionLITERARY SCENE - Excerpt from "The Heirs" - Excerpt

"IT WAS ALMOST FUNNY, in a way," the emergency room triage nurse said. She even smiled. "In what way," Eleanor demanded--or maybe she shrieked--"is my mother falling down and calling 911 funny?"

The nurse immediately sat up straight in her padded swivel chair and grasped the edge of her steel desk with both hands. The turquoise nametag on her pale-blue uniform said: Marion Hanks. "Well, no, not that part. Oh, not at all."

"I'm sorry, Ms. Hanks," Natalie's voice slid right in. It was a calm and even-paced voice, as always--soothing, half-apologetic. It came from all those years of practice, of being a judge and getting the parties to sit down and work out a compromise, or maybe from not having to argue constantly with a 12-year-old daughter who wanted to get her nose pierced, or from living with a husband who was such a nice guy, as everyone always commented.

"I'm sorry," Natalie was saying, "but I guess my cousin and 1 aren't quite clear on all the details of my aunt's accident." Natalie smiled back at Hanks across the desk. Hanks nodded vigorously and picked out a manila folder from a set of metal dividers.

As the emergency room staff had reconstructed the event, Rose Ritter probably slipped and fell in her bedroom, because that was where the EMTs had found her, lying on the carpet next to the night table with the telephone. Alternatively, there was some disarray in the bathroom, so possibly she fell there and somehow crawled to the bedroom. "The X-ray showed an intertrochanteric hip fracture," Hanks continued, reading. She looked quickly at Natalie, then Eleanor. "That's a very common type of fracture, especially for older women."

It would be at least two hours before Rose would be out of surgery and could have visitors. The doctor would explain it all.

"Will she be able to walk?" Eleanor asked.

"How serious is the fracture?" Natalie added. "Will she be in a cast? How long will she be in the hospital?"

The doctor would explain it after surgery. It really was not an uncommon procedure. Hanks' smile was slipping.

"I can't believe she didn't call me," Natalie said to Eleanor, "or you."

"So, what's the funny part?" Eleanor interrupted.

The nurse gave a little cough and looked at her fingers. "Well, of course, I didn't really mean that it was funny--or laughable in any way. I just want to reassure you that nobody took it badly."

"Took what badly?" Eleanor's voice was heading to a shriek again.

"Well, you see. When the EMTs were lifting her onto the stretcher for the ambulance, apparently Mrs. Ritter, uh, shouted at one of them. Called her a name."

"My mother? Shouting?"

Now, instead of hesitating, Hanks would not stop talking. "As it happens, that technician, that young lady, is newly arrived from Eastern Europe, so you see she recognized the language--the words. Your mother was shouting in Polish."

"Polish?" Eleanor and Natalie said the word at the same time, or one breath apart. Natalie repeated it. Eleanor's mouth hung open. They looked at each other, then back at Hanks.

"That's incredible," said Eleanor. "She hates Poland. She hasn't spoken Polish in over 50 years. She won't even talk about when she lived in Poland."

"What," Natalie asked, "was Aunt Rose allegedly saying in Polish?"

Hanks folded her hands on the desk and gave a little titter. "Well. Yes. Well, of course, it's not exactly funny but just, well, so extraordinary, under the circumstances, that, you know, you can only laugh? She called the young lady, uh, a 'Nazi bitch.'"

This was too much. Eleanor quickly sucked in her cheeks and stared raptly into her dark green leather handbag, pretending to dig for...

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