The Last Thing He Wanted by Joan Didion Read Free Book Online Page B

of this incident and mentioned it only, he said, as a relevant illustration of the desirability of listening to the people who were actually on the ground.
    No comment, as the people who were actually on the ground were trained to say if asked what they were doing or where they were staying or if they wanted a drink or even what time it was.
    No comment.
    Thank you.
    Goodbye.
    Elena McMahon had not been trained to say this, but was on the ground nonetheless.
    I recently sat at dinner in Washington next to a reporter who covered the ground in question during the period in question. After a few glasses of wine he turned to me, lowered his voice, and said about this experience that nothing that had happened to him since, including the birth of his children and assignment to several more overt wars in several more overt parts of the world, had made him feel so alive as waking up on that particular ground any day in that particular period.
    Until Elena McMahon woke up on that particular ground, she did not count her life as one in which anything had happened.
    No comment. Thank you. Goodbye.

13
    T he first time she met Barry Sedlow was the day her father left the hospital. You’ll be pleased to know you’ll be leaving here tomorrow, the resident had said to her father, and she had followed him out to the nurses’ station. “He’s not ready to go home,” she had said to the resident’s back.
    “Not to go home, no.” The resident had not looked up from the chart he was studying. “Which is why you should be making whatever arrangements you prefer with the discharge coordinator.”
    “But you just agreed with me. He’s not ready to be discharged. The arrangement I prefer is that he stay in the hospital.”
    “He can’t stay in the hospital,” the resident said, implacable. “So he will be discharged. And he’s not going to be able to take care of himself.”
    “Exactly. That was my point.” She tried for a reasonable tone. “As you say, he’s not going to be able to take care of himself. Which is why I think he should stay in the hospital.”
    “You have the option of making an acceptablearrangement for home care with the discharge coordinator.”
    “Acceptable to who?”
    “To the discharge coordinator.”
    “So it’s up to the discharge coordinator whether or not he stays here?”
    “No, it’s up to Dr. Mertz.”
    “I’ve never met Dr. Mertz.”
    “Dr. Mertz is the admitting physician of record. On my recommendation, Dr. Mertz has authorized discharge.”
    “Then I should talk to Dr. Mertz?”
    “Dr. Mertz is not on call this week.”
    She had tried another tack. “Look. If this has something to do with insurance, I signed papers saying I would be responsible. I’ll pay for whatever his insurance won’t cover.”
    “You will, yes. But he still won’t stay here.”
    “Why won’t he?”
    “Because unless you’ve made an acceptable alternate arrangement,” the resident said, unscrewing the top from his fountain pen and wiping the nib with a tissue, “he’ll be discharged in the morning to a convalescent facility.”
    “You can’t do that. I won’t take him there.”
    “You won’t have to. The facility sends its van.”
    “I didn’t mean that. I meant you can’t just send someone to a nursing home.”
    “Yes. We can. We do it all the time. Unless of course the family has made an acceptable alternate arrangement with the discharge coordinator.”
    There had been a silence. “How do I reach the discharge coordinator,” she said then.
    “I could ask her to come by the patient’s room,” The resident had refitted the top of his pen and placed it in the breast pocket of his polo shirt. He seemed not to know what to do with the tissue. “When she has a moment.”
    “Somebody took my goddamn shoes,” her father had said when she walked back into the room. He was sitting on the edge of the bed buckling his belt and trying to free his arm from the hospital gown. “I can’t get out