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They’re a tiny hospital in a tiny town an hour away from New York City. It really shouldn’t even count as a hospital, but they’ve got an operating theater and marginally better equipment than the other county clinics, so they get the nice fancy designation and the tax cuts that piss the clinics’ head doctors off. Jenny likes working here, she really does. It’s a nice change of pace from the city hospitals she’d done her first few years of nursing in. She knows the town, knows the people, and she can really connect with her patients.
Except for this one. She’s never met Daniel Ocean in her life— apparently, he was just stopping for gas when he’d had the heart attack— and yet she’s expected to be the liason between him and his (numerous, varied) family members.
The blonde woman gets there first, right after the ambulance with Mr. Ocean arrives and he’s shuttled into a room. The lady has spiky hair and spikier boots, and if Jenny hadn’t spent the better part of seven years on the job, she wouldn’t notice how the lady keeps pushing at her cuticles. “I’m here for Daniel Ocean. I should be in his file, my last name’s Miller, he’s my brother-in-law,” she says upon arrival, rapid-fire, with the sleekness of a gun. An outsider.
When Jenny tells her that the doctor did everything she could, Miller goes quiet.
It’s protocol for Jenny to call immediate family and emergency contacts. Mr. Ocean has one living relative— a sister, who is evidently in jail— listed in his files. “Oh,” says Deborah Ocean from what Jenny assumes is a very noisy phone hall. “Are you sure?”
“Yes?” Jenny ventures. “I’m very sorry for your—”
“It’s all right. Thank you for calling.” And then the line goes dead.
Jenny shakes her head, and puts down the phone. She turns to the emergency contact list, exported from his phone, and looks at the two numbers above Deborah Ocean— Sister. One of them reads Tess Robbins, and doesn’t have a relationship label, and the last one doesn’t have a name at all.
She dials Tess Robbins’s number first. The phone rings and rings, and finally, a pleasant-sounding voice says, “Hi, you’ve reached Tess. Leave a message, and I’ll call you back.”
Jenny leaves the standard message at the beep. “Hi, this is Jenny Warren from Piping Brooks Hospital. I’m calling to inform you that I have critical information about Daniel Ocean. Please call us back.” The second number only rings three times before it goes to voicemail— the default one, with the robotic voice. She leaves the same message, and even though she can’t fault whoever’s on the other end for denying the call (after all, eight years ago she wouldn’t’ve answered a number with this area code either), she still wishes they’d given the hospital the benefit of the doubt. Finding out about a loss any later than necessary always hurts.
Jenny looks out at the waiting room— Miller is still there, seemingly settling in for a while. Jenny steps out of the office. “Is there anyone else you need me to call?” she asks, as gently as she can.
Miller shakes her head. “No, they’re already on their way. But thanks.”
Jenny nods, feeling the heaviness of borrowed grief pressing on her heart. If there’s more family coming, then this is going to be a long night.
Three people come in next— two old men, one in the most ostentatious glasses Jenny’s ever seen and the other dressed like he came straight out of an AARP ad, and a woman a few years older than Miller, with red hair pulled back into a frizzy bun. Miller rises and goes over to them, and through the Plexiglas separating the office from the other room, Jenny watches the other three get the news. The owl-glasses man sits down heavily in a chair. The pineapple-patterned-shirt man blinks once, twice, and then stares off into space like Jenny’s grandpa had started doing once he got dementia. The redhead lets out a sob that sounds like it was wrenched from her lungs, and then she claps a hand over her mouth. Jenny walks over, with a quiet gait that’s been honed to perfection over the last few years. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” she says. The redhead nods. “If you need anything—”
“You can’t bring him back, can you?” the redhead says, and it’s probably meant to sound derisive but it just comes out as pleading. Jenny’s used to it.
“Tess,” Owl-Glasses says reproachfully.
“Sorry. Sorry,” says the redhead— Tess. Tess Robbins. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Jenny tells her. “Take your time. If you need anything, I’ll be right in the office.”
Eventually all four of them migrate to chairs next to each other, in the order of Pineapple Shirt (whose name is apparently Saul), Owl Glasses (who’s named either Reuben or Rupert or something of the sort), Tess, Miller. The doctor— she’s new here, a mid-thirties woman named Dr. Charlotte Turnbull— comes out from the back rooms to walk the family through Mr. Ocean’s death. Tess and Reuben-Rupert are the only ones who say anything— an oh here, a thank you there— and then Dr. Turnbull retreats back into the maze of halls, nodding at Jenny as she goes. None of Mr. Ocean’s family says anything more, until fifteen minutes later, when another trio walks in. A blonde, preppy-looking man, a very short man dressed in what looks like a full-body leotard, and a man with an Afro wearing three different scarves (all with varying numbers of strategically placed holes and tears). Jenny supposes that’s the style, now, isn’t it? The blonde one makes a half-stop at where the group is clustered before powering on towards the office. Jenny slides back a panel in the Plexiglas divider as the blonde one steps up, and he says, blue eyes wide, “Hi, my name is Linus, uh, Pepperidge, I’m his so—” He’s cut off by Miller, laying a hand on his shoulder.
“No, Linus, it’s— he’s under Ocean,” Miller says. She turns back to Jenny. “Sorry, just— divorce, you know how it is.”
“Yes, of course,” Jenny replies, even though she doesn't, really. She listens as Tess tells the rest of the group, in halting speech, about the gas station and the blockage and the d-word, and even though she doesn’t mean to keep eavesdropping, the scarf-laden man lets out a Cockney-accented, obscenity-laced explosion of questions.
“Basher,” says Linus Pepperidge, in a shocked-yet-weary voice. “I mean—”
The short man speaks a few words in what Jenny thinks is Cantonese, finishing with “Shit.”
“Well, it can’t be, can it?” Basher (are British parents really cruel enough to name their child after a dwarf? Jenny wonders, and then what the hell kind of accent is that?) says. “‘E was— well, not young, but—”
“Listen,” Tess says in a voice so low that Jenny barely catches it. “He’s gone. It’s terrible, and there’s nothing we can do, but he’s gone.”
None of them speak for a moment; then, as if some unspoken agreement has been reached, Saul says, in a voice not dissimilar to Jenny’s dying patient voice, “Of course.”
Someone’s phone chirps, and all heads turn towards Linus. “The twins and Frank and Livingston aren’t gonna make it,” he says, shoulders sagging. “Their job in DC got snowed out, and Dulles and Reagan are shut down, and they can’t get a cab to— well. They’re not gonna make it.”
The group does the whole silent conversation thing again, and then Saul speaks up. “What about Rusty?”
There’s another pause, and this time Jenny can feel the expectant air all the way from the office. “Still not picking up,” Linus says. Jenny sneaks a glance out the window— they’ve all deflated. “He’s still in Europe, right?”
“He and Isabel were slated to come back tomorrow,” Tess murmurs. “We were all going to meet this weekend.”
Nobody has anything to say to that.
Miller speaks up for the first time in a while. “D’you need any help with the arrangements, or…”
“Shit, yeah, who’s gonna—”
“I’ll do it,” Reuben says heavily. “Vegas funeral. Maybe we can build a little Bellagio on top of his casket.” He pauses. “What? Too dark?”
“I’ll help,” says Linus, in lieu of an answer.
They start discussing hotels, and only then can Jenny finally tune them out. There’s only one place in town, anyway. For now, she fills out Mr. Ocean’s paperwork, and braces herself for the inevitable stifled sobs that always come when a large group of next-of-kin start to disperse.
To her surprise, she hears nothing. Miller disappears with a round of low call me if you need anything s. The five men stagger their departures with well-oiled precision, and it’s only thanks to the bell on the door that Jenny knows they left. Then it’s just Tess Robbins left in the waiting room, the one emergency contact that had bothered to come. (At least his sister picked up, Jenny thinks.) “Thank you for staying so late,” Tess says, walking over to the divider. “The sign says you should’ve closed an hour ago, and—”
“It’s not an issue at all,” Jenny tells her. “Again, I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Tess laughs, wetness bubbling up with it. “I never thought it’d be like this, y’know? He’s not… he’s not the type to go out like that.”
“I’m sure,” Jenny says. “EMTs say he put up a real fight.”
“The one thing he doesn’t get handed to him.” Tess smiles sadly, the almost-derisive tone back in her voice. “Anyway. Have a good night, and thanks again.”
“Not at all. And again, I’m sorry.”
The next morning, there’s another blonde man in her office. He’s not the one from yesterday— this one is a decade and change older, with streaks of grey at his temples and a studded red jacket that would probably go well on the guy— Basher, she remembers— with the voluminous scarves. Not that it matters. Whoever he is and whatever he’s wearing, he’s still an intruder, and Jenny screams a little.
He jumps. “Oh, hi,” he says, perfectly nonchalantly.
“Who— how did you get—”
“You left the door unlocked,” the man says, even though Jenny most certainly did not, she remembers the key sticking on the way out, “sorry, I just— is there a Daniel Ocean here?”
The third emergency contact. Rusty, or whatever his name was. “Are you—”
“I’m on his list,” says the man, holding out his phone. One Missed Call, and then the hospital’s number listed below. “Robert Ryan.”
She remembers seeing that name on Mr. Ocean’s official file. No number listed. “I’m very sorry, but Mr. Ocean passed away last night,” Jenny says, as gently as she can.
His eyebrows go up. He nods. He nods again, and then he scrubs at his face. “Okay. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Uh, actually— do you know if there was anything, a scar, something like that— on his right hand?”
Jenny frowns, thinking back to the fax the morgue had sent. “The morgue didn’t list anything of the sort,” she tells him. “But there was a small knife scar on his left index finger.”
This time, the man’s face is inscrutable (but in the dim morning light, Jenny thinks she sees pain flicker through his hard blink). “All right. Thanks for letting me know. Have a good day.”
With that, he brushes past her and leaves.
Weird family, she thinks. She doesn’t think about it much after that— when she catches sight of a large duffel bag in Dr. Turnbull’s office, she pays it no mind; when she has lunch with some of the EMTs on the Ocean case and sees two of them pull up in new cars, she brushes it off; and when she sees a salt-and-pepper-haired man smoking behind the town’s sole motel, she merely gives him a friendly wave as she walks to the front desk.
After all, why would she care? She’d never met Daniel Ocean. Maybe if she had, she’d’ve known to think twice.