Chump Change Read Online Free PDF

other time.”

4
    I HAD NEVER BEEN TO C EDARS M EDICAL C ENTER. I T WAS enormous, with levels and levels of parking. Montifiore in New York was small by comparison. This was a sickness mall. A gleaming cash register of a hospital.
    Inside, through two sets of double-doors and long linoleum halls, the hospital was like every other hospital. The smell was the same. Fab was a quick, impatient walker, always staying busy, always running some compulsive mental contest. I kept up with him until the idea of seeing the old man and the odor of the place made my stomach ripple again.
    When we passed a men’s room, I stopped and called to Fabrizio to go ahead without me. He paused, shot me a backward glance, making a face that seemed to say that he didn’t care what I did. He was satisfied that he’d gotten me there. Before he went on, he called out our father’s room number over his shoulder.
    Inside the first bathroom stall, I bolted myself in and sat down to take a piss. But I did not piss. I clenched my eyes closed as long as I could, breathing in and out.
    I felt my heart slowing, so I blew my nose and lit a cigarette, then flushed the crapper.
    The bathroom was not a main hospital crapper. It was a kind of employee john, so I hoped that I would have a few minutes of privacy.
    I sat there for a while. Thinking. Letting myself relax. From time to time, I sipped at the pint bottle in my coat pocket. I lit more cigarettes.
    There was no graffiti or writing on the blue walls of the stall and everything was clean and new-looking. When the bottle was gone, I counted the smoked butts floating in the toilet. There were four. Three of them had little brown streams drifting downward in the toilet water. They were grouped together and were about the same length, smoked the way I always smoked, to just above the filter.
    The fourth was a nonconformist. Longer. I watched it bobbing alone. Then I stood up and directed my stream of piss on it. It failed to break. My stream wasn’t strong enough. I was getting old.
    The main door to the bathroom clicked open and I heard my brother’s voice. “Bruno?” he whispered.
    “What?” I said back.
    “You okay?”
    “Yeah, okay.”
    “What are you doing?”
    “Go away, Fabrizio.”
    “Are you coming?”
    “In a few minutes.”
    “But you’re okay?”
    “I’m preparing. I’m okay.”
    “You’ve been smoking in here. In a hospital. There are rules about not smoking.”
    “Fuck you, nurse.”
    “Rules. That’s all I’m saying.”
    “How’s the old man?”
    “Still alive. His lungs are filled with fluid. He’s not good.”
    “You go on back. I’ll be along.”
    “When?…Mom wants to know. She wants to see you. We’re all in the waiting room. What do I say?”
    “I don’t care what you say.”
    “How soon are you coming?”
    “When I’m done here.”
    “What are you doing?”
    “Go away.”
    My sister Margaret was the first person I saw when I got to the waiting room. Maggie. Then my mother. Then Benny Roth, Maggie’s husband.
    Maggie jumped up and hugged me. My little sister. She was five years older than Fabrizio (Tommy) and seven years younger than me. She had new tits, done since I had seen her last. She hugged and kissed me, then made a face like I had an odor.
    I hugged Mom. She smiled too. She seemed glad to see me. Benny Roth shook my hand.
    I sat down and Mom told me in greater detail what I knew already. She had gone in to wake up the old man in themorning four days before and had been unable to get him to open his eyes. He was groggy and not making sense, so she called old Dr. Macklin, who had had my father immediately transported to the hospital by ambulance.
    Macklin, my father’s doctor for twenty-five years, to be sure about his diagnosis, had called in Dr. Helmut. Helmut was not really a complete expert and not 100% sure in these cases, so he had called in Dr. Stein. Stein was the final authority.
    After two days of needles and fluid samples, monitors