As soon as the elevator doors closed and I had had time to count to 30, I walked over to the nurses. “My name is Frank Schlachter, and this is my cousin Bill Toutant. My brother David is in 406. Our parents are flying in from Iowa and should have landed at National just about now. The doctor said it would be all right for us to wait until they get here.”
I don’t know if they believed me, but they didn’t make us leave. Maybe we looked shocked enough, strained enough, that they thought I might be telling the truth. So we began to wait.
Dennis and Mr. and Mrs. Schlachter got to the hospital about 40 minutes later. They were both shorter than Dave. Mr. Schlachter looked very tired, very old. Dave’s mother’s face was very set and determined, rigidly composed.
“Frank DeMarco and Bill Toutant,” Dennis said, introducing us.
“Hello, boys,” Mr. Schlachter said, making an effort to smile and shake hands. “It is very good of you to be here.”
“David has talked to us about you,” Mrs. Schlachter said as I shook her hand. But she didn’t seme able to say anything else. The formalities accomplished, we stood there. It was awkward. “The doctor is on the way up,” Dennis said. “Mr. Schlachter had him notified when we arrived. I have to go move the damned car again.” He left.
I was avoiding the nurses who had just heard me introduced to my “parents.” They suggested to the Schlachters that we wait in the waiting room, tastefully decorated with a few hard red molded-plastic chairs and a table and some magazines of no interest. We sat. Mr. Schlachter tried to make conversation. Mrs. Schlachter did too, glancing at us and at the corners of the room and at the ceiling, and all the while twisting a handkerchief in her hands. Every time we heard a noise that might be an elevator or the door from the stairs, we all looked up.
Mr. Schlachter roused himself. “But where did Dennis go?”
“He had to move the car,” I said. “He didn’t want to get it towed.”
“Why didn’t he just put it in a lot?” He started to reach for his wallet, I think..” It can’t be so much.” I told him Dennis would park the car behind the fraternity house and wouldn’t notice the few blocks he would have to walk back to the hospital. “Well, the next time, he can put it in the lot here. All that walking it isn’t necessary.” I realize now that he was grasping for something practical to occupy his mind. After a few minutes: “This close to exams, you shouldn’t be studying?”
“Oh, I’ve gotten through four years this way,” I said. “Too late to change now.”
“But this is important for your future. And you, Bill Toutant, the music maker. David says you are going to be our new Beethoven. You shouldn’t be studying?”
“I’m all right,” Bill said, uncharacteristically serious. “Music isn’t something you can cram for. You know it or you don’t.”
“Still, I hope you boys aren’t using up time here that you should be using to study.”
Silence again. Bill asked about their flight, and Mr. Schlachter outlined their route in detail. Neither Bill nor I nor Mrs. Schlachter nor he himself, really, absorbed a word he said.
The doctor arrived. He didn’t say Bill and I had to leave, so we stayed. He and David’s parents went off toward David’s room.
“We got up at seven in Avalon,” I said, “and here we are.” Bill nodded unhappily. Dennis arrived, and we told him that the doctor was in with Dave’s parents. Andrews arrived, all the way form their apartment on a D.C. Transit bus in the middle of the night. We filled him in on the little we knew, and we waited, and waited some more.
The doctor came out of Dave’s room with Dave’s parents, said a final few words, and disappeared into the elevator again. We introduced the Schlachters to Dale.
Nobody sat down. “Boys,” Mr. Schlachter said without preamble, “it is time you should get to bed. Dr. Tenley is planning to do exploratory surgery tomorrow morning.” Absently, almost off-handedly, he said, “He thinks there is some kind of growth pressing on David’s brain. He said the operation could not possibly be more critical.”
“He said it is life or death,” Mrs. Schlachter said, almost choking it out.
Dennis said he would go get the car, and would be sure to get them back to the hospital by eight.
“Seven thirty,” Mrs. Schlachter said.
“Tell you what,” Andrews said, thinking quickly. “I’ll stay at the fraternity house. That way, you’ll have two beds at the apartment. Dennis, just remember to bring me a change of clothes and my toothbrush, will you?”
Sure,” Dennis said softly. We were uncommonly thoughtful and kind to each other that week.