Sympathy Between Humans Part 16

He was a very discreet person, Cicero. After our brief exchange on the phone, he hadn't asked me anything more about why I wouldn't sleep with him again. Which was good, because I wasn't sure I could explain it. I'd crossed a line, both in personal morals and professional ethics, and that couldn't just be erased. But I think my desire to go back over to the right side of that line was rooted in my unease with how easily I'd crossed it in the first place. Sometimes I wondered if there were a hidden moral flaw inside me, one that had driven me into the line of work I did, where right and wrong were so clearly delineated.

But when I'd arrived, Cicero had merely looked over the Australian wine I'd brought and asked me how I was. I'd said I was fine, and he'd said he was fine, and then a small discomfort had descended on the conversation. Cicero broke the silence by asking me if I wanted to go up on the roof.

I'd thought it was a joke, but he'd explained how it was possible. We'd parked his wheelchair and set the brake at the foot of the emergency stairwell that led to the roof. When Cicero was seated on the lowest stair, I'd taken his lower legs just under the knee, and Cicero had raised his upper body off the stairs, weight on the heels of his hands. His method wasn't, I saw, unlike the triceps exercise I sometimes did at the gym, lowering myself from a weight bench. But Cicero was ascending, going up the stairs literally on his arms. Supporting his legs and following, I was still a.s.suming less than a third of his body weight. It couldn't have been easy, and I understood then the importance of the hand weights I'd seen under his bed.

"That wasn't pretty, and it was slow," Cicero had said when we were up, "but it got the job done."

I'd poured wine into the mismatched gla.s.ses I'd carried up in advance, along with the blanket.

"You know what the most difficult part was?" he asked.

"What?" I said.

"Letting a woman help me with it," he said. "With the guys down the hall, it's different."

"You've done this before?"

"Several times," he said, accepting the wine. "I need fresh air every once in a while."

Now, standing at the rooftop's edge, cupping my wine in my hands, I thought about that. Wouldn't it simply be easier for Cicero to get in the elevator and go downstairs and outside for air? "Cicero," I began, "I know what you said the other night, but are are you agoraphobic? It's no big deal to me if you are." you agoraphobic? It's no big deal to me if you are."

He laughed. "No, I'm really not agoraphobic."

"Then why don't you ever go out?" As soon as I'd said them, I regretted the words. "I mean, you don't have to tell me-"

"No, it's okay. I have no secrets." Cicero unfolded one arm to indicate the unoccupied part of the blanket. "Come sit down. It's a story that's going to take me a little time to tell."

I walked over and sat cross-legged on the edge of the blanket.

"It has to do with how I became paralyzed," Cicero said. "I was injured in a mine collapse."

"You went down as part of a rescue crew?" I asked. It seemed odd to me that medical personnel- not EMTs or paramedics but actual doctors- would be sent into harm's way.

But Cicero shook his head. "I was working down there," he said.

"As a miner miner?" I said.

Cicero nodded. "It was after I lost my license to practice medicine."

Every time I thought I had a handle on this man's situation, I learned something new. The idea of Cicero being in a mine disaster was so unexpected that I set aside my curiosity about how he'd lost his medical license, which so far he'd only alluded to. That could wait. "Tell me," I said.

"This is going to take me a minute to explain," he said, and lifted himself up onto his elbows, to drink a little wine. "I grew up in Colorado, in a mining area. My father had worked in the mines, this five-foot-seven-inch guy, covered in coal dust, reading a paperback copy of the Iliad Iliad on his lunch break. I was getting back to my roots, you could call it." on his lunch break. I was getting back to my roots, you could call it."

"You worked with your old man?" I interrupted.

Cicero shook his head. "My parents were both gone by then. When I came back, I got hired at a small, family-owned, nonunion operation, working the very last of a played-out coal seam. I wasn't real popular for my first couple of months." Cicero seemed amused by the memory. "On my first day, the crew foreman, Silas, asked me what I'd been doing before getting hired there. I told him the truth, that I was a doctor. Looking back, I don't think he believed me. I'm pretty sure he thought I was giving him a hard time. He just said, 'Well, it's my job to keep you from killing yourself or anyone else until you get tired of banging your head on the ceiling and go looking for some other work.' "

"Nice guy," I said.

"He was was a good guy," Cicero corrected me. "Silas was younger than a lot of his crew, but he'd been down in the mines since he was 18, and he knew his s.h.i.t. I paid attention to him, and after a couple of months, I pretty much knew what I was doing. Silas started talking to me other than to say things like 'Don't stand there.' We'd eat lunch together and talk." Cicero paused, drank some wine. "We were both kind of nervous about the safety situation. To put it mildly, small nonunion mines tend not to be the safety leaders in the field. But when it actually happened, it surprised me, how quietly it started." a good guy," Cicero corrected me. "Silas was younger than a lot of his crew, but he'd been down in the mines since he was 18, and he knew his s.h.i.t. I paid attention to him, and after a couple of months, I pretty much knew what I was doing. Silas started talking to me other than to say things like 'Don't stand there.' We'd eat lunch together and talk." Cicero paused, drank some wine. "We were both kind of nervous about the safety situation. To put it mildly, small nonunion mines tend not to be the safety leaders in the field. But when it actually happened, it surprised me, how quietly it started."

"What started?" I asked.

"What the industry calls an ignition accident," Cicero said. "Down in a mine, you hear roof falls a lot, and blasts, so the noise I heard that day didn't bother me. It sounded like business as usual to me. The first I knew anything was wrong was when I felt the air reverse direction."

I tilted my head, signaling incomprehension.

"Mines need to breathe, just like people," he explained. "Ventilation systems ensure that excess blackdamp- that's methane- is carried away from where miners are working and fresh air is carried in. In some mines, like ours, the fans create a wind of seven or eight miles an hour. That's significant enough that you can feel it, but you're used to it. You don't notice it until it stops. It feels like the air has actually reversed direction. If you know what it means, it's not a good feeling. Silas felt it the same time I did, and we looked at each other.

"That's when we heard men yelling, and we stopped working and traveled to the scene. At the site, I saw that there were two men down, injured. There'd been a roof fall, which had caused a spark, which caused a small explosion. A fire was burning, but no one was dead. The foreman in that section saw Silas and me come out from behind a crosscut. He wanted Silas there, but when he saw me, I was still a new guy to him. 'Not you,' he said to me. 'Get out of here.' But Silas said, 'You want him here. He's a doctor.' "

Far below, a siren wailed; involuntarily I looked to the roof's edge. It was the sound of my work; I was Pavlovian that way.

"To understand what happened next," Cicero said, not noticing my moment of inattention, "you've got to understand a little about mine accidents. Often, the first ignition doesn't kill anyone. But it does start a fire, and it also compromises the ventilation system. When the ventilation system stops working, methane builds up. It's the subsequent explosions that kill people.

"There's time to evacuate, but the problem is, not everyone does. Some miners travel toward the blast, instead of away, to render aid. That's the ethic down there, to help each other. I don't know if I stayed at the scene because I thought I had really become a miner, or because I was still a doctor, but for whichever reason, I was still at the face when the second explosion happened." He stopped to reach over to the wine bottle again, poured a little more, drank.

"I was thrown, and when my vision cleared, I saw that the remaining guys were starting to evacuate," he said. "They knew the situation was out of control. They wanted to get me out, but I couldn't move my legs. The men said they'd send down rescue guys with a backboard, and if the paramedics were afraid to come down in a mine, they'd bring the backboard themselves.

"But the situation was still volatile, with a threat of more ignitions. I could hear the rescue personnel, up above where I was. Their superiors were saying they had to pull out. The rescuers radioed back that they still had a man down there to bring up, but they were overruled. I heard their noises growing fainter, and then they were gone."

Cicero's knuckles seemed a little paler as he held the gla.s.s, the only sign of emotion.

"I was okay at first. I thought, Silas will make them come back for me, Silas will make them come back for me, but then I saw Silas. He was dead. That was when it became real to me, that I could die down there." He paused. "I was okay while my lamp held out. That was about thirty hours." but then I saw Silas. He was dead. That was when it became real to me, that I could die down there." He paused. "I was okay while my lamp held out. That was about thirty hours."

"Thirty?" I said, amazed. "How long were you down there?" I said, amazed. "How long were you down there?"

"Sixty-one hours." Cicero drained the rest of the wine. "About half that was in total blackness. Around that time, my imagination ran away with me. I was completely paranoid. I was sure that the paramedics had been lying when they'd said they were coming back. It was too dangerous; the company would just seal off that part of the mine and tell my brother that I'd been one of those who'd died instantly."

He'd finished his wine, and was supine again.

"Of course, it didn't happen that way. They came back," Cicero said. "In the hospital, I told myself over and over that my spinal cord was in shock, that I'd walk again. It took a while to accept that I wouldn't. I did that in rehab, the hardest part of which was getting the bill afterward. The mine declared bankruptcy after the accident, and we all lost our medical coverage."

"Typical," I said.

"There's a lawsuit, on behalf of everyone injured, and I'm part of it. But it's being dragged out in court. Meanwhile, my medical debts can charitably be described as 'ma.s.sive,' and I now have a preexisting condition that insurers won't cover."

"But you're in good health, aren't you?" I interrupted.

"Right now, yes," Cicero said. "But being a paraplegic, even a healthy one, isn't cheap. And it makes you vulnerable to other health problems down the road. Those problems can be headed off with preventive care and physical therapy-"

"Which an insurer won't pay for, because it's part of a preexisting condition," I finished for him.

"Exactly. Right now, I have some basic medical a.s.sistance for the indigent. If I got a job, I wouldn't be eligible for it any longer, and then my noncovered health-care costs would subsume a large part of any income I'd make. I'm in that rare situation where getting employment would actually drag me down, not lift me up."

I'd expected a story along these lines, but hadn't antic.i.p.ated how completely he was trapped.

"Other than medicine, from which I am barred," Cicero said, "there's nothing I'm equipped to do that would bring home anything close to what I need to survive without adequate health insurance. And if I did find work, there is one hospital, two clinics, and a number of medical professionals with claims to my future earnings. Right now, I'm referring my creditors to the legal precedent of Blood v. Turnip Blood v. Turnip."

I said the necessary, inadequate thing. "There's got to be some way to get around the rules. Somebody's got to see that the situation's ridiculous. This isn't supposed to happen."

Cicero laughed. "No, it's not," he said. "It's the result of a daisy chain of misfortunes. If only I weren't banned from the only profession in which I can make a viable income. If only I hadn't chosen that particular mine to work at. And so on.

"Everyone does see it's ridiculous. Finding a way around it is a different story. The medical social worker at the rehab clinic in Colorado decided I should come to Minneapolis, because my brother Ulises was here. Once here, I was a.s.signed a caseworker who was 23 and stumped. She got me disability checks, and that was it. It's not her fault. The system isn't set up to handle individual circ.u.mstances. n.o.body is authorized to change the rules or interpret the subtleties. Everybody would like like to help you, but no one actually to help you, but no one actually can. can."

"That can't just be the end of it," I said, turning my palms up, fingers splayed.

Cicero surveyed me. "You don't cohere sometimes," he said. "You seem so world-weary on the surface, but under the surface you have these veins of naive faith in the system." He shrugged. "But I've told you a good deal more than I thought I would, and I still didn't answer your original question."

"What original question?" I honestly couldn't remember.

"Exactly," Cicero said. "I was telling you about the mine accident. What I might not have made clear was that I spent sixty-one hours lying in a s.p.a.ce with dimensions only slightly more generous than a grave." He paused. "Since then, I have a very hard time with enclosed s.p.a.ces. I'm not agoraphobic, I'm claustrophobic. It's why I rarely go out."

"The elevator," I said, understanding.

"That G.o.dd.a.m.ned elevator," he agreed. "I'm not afraid of a six-minute descent; it'd be hard, but I could do it. But if I got trapped, I'm not sure if I could take it." There was shame in his averted gaze. "G.o.d knows it's stupid."

"Fears are irrational," I said. "I'm living proof of that."

Cicero didn't respond, tipping his head back to observe the lights of a plane. MSP was to the south of us, and the jetliners climbed across the city's airs.p.a.ce with a.s.sembly-line regularity. In twenty hours, their pa.s.sengers could be anywhere in the world. Down here was Cicero, whose world had become so small that, for him, ascending one flight of stairs to see the night sky was a journey.

"But if you stay in all the time," I said, "how are you getting food, groceries?"

"From my patients," Cicero explained. "I'm not a strictly cash business; I trade in favors and services, too."

"What about meeting people?" I said.

"They come to me," Cicero said. "Dripping blood or coughing, but I take them as they come."

"Women, I mean."

"Ah, yes, women," Cicero said. "Who wouldn't want to date an insolvent paraplegic?"

"Cicero," I reproved him.

"Sarah," he said, "don't make a project out of me." His tone said the subject was off-limits. I dropped my gaze, accepting his rebuke.

"Things were better when I first came to Minneapolis," he said. "Ulises had a ground-floor apartment- no elevator needed- and I had a van. Nothing great, but it had hand controls, and it ran." He paused. "I've still got the van, downstairs, but I might as well sell it. It's not doing me any good now, and one of the kids down the hall has to go down once a week and start it, so it doesn't just die of neglect."

This part of his story raised an obvious question. "Cicero," I said, "where's your brother now? You said they sent you here to live with him."

Cicero's dark eyes seemed more sober than they had been only a moment ago. "I did live with him," he confirmed. "That's a story for another time."

"I thought you had no secrets," I reminded him.

"I don't," Cicero said. "But it's probably not a story you want to hear on top of the one I just told."

"Is he dead?" I persisted.

"Yes," Cicero said. "He's dead."

I shook my head, eyes lowered. "Jesus," I said.

"Don't look like that," he said.

"Jesus, Cicero."

"Don't feel sorry for me, Sarah," Cicero said.

"I don't," I said. I'm not sure if I was lying.

There were three of us in Judge Henderson's chambers: the judge himself, a graying-haired black man who said little; Lorraine, a social worker; and me. in Judge Henderson's chambers: the judge himself, a graying-haired black man who said little; Lorraine, a social worker; and me.

"It's not a typical situation," Lorraine was saying. "I was at the house, and it's all as Detective Pribek described it. The home is clean, the children are attending school. There are no small children in the home. The youngest is 11, with the others at 14, 16, and 17. The daughter was very forthcoming and cooperative when I made the visit."

"And the father?" Judge Henderson asked. His voice was low and pleasant, like the rumble of thunder on a distant horizon.

Lorraine leaned forward. "He's recuperating slowly. He was moved from acute care at HCMC to a convalescent home, and he's expected to make a fairly good recovery, with the most serious problem being a lingering speech disorder. The daughter is seeking conservatorship."

The judge nodded. "Through a lawyer, I trust."

"Certainly," Lorraine said.

I glanced up at the Roman numerals on the face of the judge's clock. It was three-thirty in the afternoon. So far, I wasn't sure why I was there. I'd thought that they needed me to talk about what I knew of the Hennessy family situation, since I was the one who'd made the child-at-risk report. But thus far I hadn't been asked a single question.

"Well, it seems you've been thorough, as always." Judge Henderson leaned back in his chair, so far that the top of his balding head nearly disappeared into a glossy green plant on his bookcase. "Detective Pribek, this is where you come in."

Lorraine turned to me also. "We have a pilot program, for situations in which minors seeking emanc.i.p.ation are paired up with suitable adults to supervise them for a probationary period. It's only being done, of course, in cases where the minor is considered a good candidate and they have no adult relatives who can fill such a role."

"You want me to be a guardian to the Hennessy children?" I said.

"Not quite a guardian, more like a watchful eye," Lorraine said.

"I have no background in social work," I reminded her.

"But you are a responsible law-enforcement professional, and you seem to have had more contact with these kids than anyone else." She paused. "Marlinchen Hennessy is an extraordinarily good candidate for guardianship, and she's only weeks away from her eighteenth birthday. We're not comfortable leaving the children on their own for that amount of time, but sending the children into foster care seems, well, ludicrous."

Hedging, I said, "I'm not sure Marlinchen would agree to it." I was thinking of how we'd left things between us.

"In fact, when I made my home visit, the oldest daughter spoke highly of you," Lorraine said.

"Only daughter," I corrected her. Marlinchen Hennessy had no sisters.

Lorraine smiled, and I realized I'd stepped into a trap, revealing myself as someone who'd invested time and energy into knowing this young family. I sighed.

"I'm not totally opposed to stepping in," I said, "but I think there's a larger problem here. Marlinchen is pursuing guardianship of her younger siblings and and conservatorship of her father, at the same time. Don't you think that's a bit much?" conservatorship of her father, at the same time. Don't you think that's a bit much?"