Chapter 8: The Waiting Room

The ambulance took him to the county hospital on the Near West Side.

I rode in the back holding his good hand.

He kept trying to make jokes through his split lip.

"Couch had it coming," he said. "Ugliest couch in Illinois."

"Stop talking, Dad."

"They didn't find the cookies. I hid the cookies in the oven."

The paramedic laughed. I didn't.

In the ER they put him behind a curtain and sent me out to the waiting room.

Two bruised ribs. A bruised kidney. Stitches in his lip.

Nothing broken that wouldn't heal, the doctor said.

She asked if I felt safe at home.

I said yes.

The waiting room was full. A man with a towel around his hand. A mother with a feverish toddler asleep on her chest.

A TV in the corner was playing a cooking show with the sound off.

I sat in a plastic chair and did the math I always do.

The ambulance. The ER. The new cane. A new lock.

Six hundred thousand dollars.

Five years ago Dad borrowed three hundred and fifty thousand from Vito Lazzaro, and we'd been hiding in Milwaukee ever since.

Five weeks ago we came back for his stroke clinic, with the lease in my mother's maiden name.

I'd been careful right up until this morning, when I knelt at Serena Lazzaro's feet.

The automatic doors slid open.

Cold air rolled across the floor.

Everybody looked up.

He came in wearing a camel coat with the collar turned up, and two men walked in behind him.

He was heavier than I remembered from the newspaper photos. His silver hair was combed straight back.

He had gold rings on both hands.

Vito Lazzaro looked around the waiting room.

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