Where the God of Love Hangs Out: Fiction by Amy Bloom Page A

grandiosity with excellent fine-motor skills, and thinking that made her smile warmly whenever she ran into him.
    Dr. Silverman smiled back, yellow pieces of cruller flying everywhere, and Frances said, “Hey, Dr. Silverman,” and put her hand on her second choice, a chocolate doughnut. Her fingers sank deep into the chocolate icing. Dr. Silverman brushed the crumbs from his tie and stretched his arms over his head. Finally, he said, “Is Maria Lopez around?”
    Frances said, “I’m not sure. Maybe it’s her break,” and she picked up a napkin with her free hand.
    She didn’t say, If you get a move on, you can probably catch up with Maria Lopez when she comes out of Exam Room #2, right after Mr. Shenker.
    “I just thought Maria might be chatting with Beth,” Dr. Silver-man said. “You know, cheering her up.”
    “Could be,” Frances said.
    Maria Lopez was the pinup girl of the adolescent-medicine unit. She liked to slip off her white clogs and massage her lovely calves at the end of her shift and give everyone a good look at her rhinestone-studded toe ring.
    What kind of grown woman wears a toe ring? Frances thought.
    Dr. Silverman said only, “Let’s get Beth thinking about recovery. She’s just a kid, Frances.”
    Frances thought about Beth’s recovery all the time. Beth was thirteen, and although she could wear long sleeves to hide the river of scars that would always run up her right forearm and she could wear turtlenecks to hide the thick red web spread across her collarbone, she would always have a stump at the end of her left leg, and if Frances Cairn had had to contemplate all that at thirteen, she’s pretty sure she would have flipped open her laptop as soon as she was conscious and Googled the most effective form of suicide.
    S.S. ENDURANCE
    Dear Beth ,
    I hope your recovery is continuing to progress. As I hope you know, everyone at the hospital was impressed with your fortitude .
        Frances crossed out “fortitude” and wrote “strength of character” and went back to “fortitude,” which sounded sort of magnificent, even if Beth was unlikely to know what fortitude meant. Frances had never seen Beth read anything. Frances was with her every day for almost a month, holding her hands while Beth screamed as her arms and legs were debrided and bringing endless cups of juice and endless bags of ice chips. Frances watched Beth come out of two comas, and each time, she was the person who comforted Beth after Mrs. Shenker and Dr. Silverman had to tell Beth what day it was and how long her coma had lasted and then finally told Beth that she had only one foot. Frances did everything she could to bond with Beth and the Shenker family; at Beth’s discharge, she walked the Shenkers to the lobby, she gave Beth a care package from the staff (lip balm and Lifesavers, a photo of Beth and the floor staff, a pink T-shirt that said NO LIMITS!, and a little stuffed penguin with a red-and-white Red Cross scarf around its neck). Between the multiple surgeries and the painkillers and the life ahead, Beth was hardly speaking when she left, and when Frances promised to visit Beth at home, Beth nodded, with her eyes closed, and the Shenkers drove off.
    Dear Beth ,
    I’ve been meaning to visit for the past three weeks but things have been really hectic at the hospital. Remember your old room 13a, the nicest private room? A new patient is in there. T—— has two broken legs—nothing compared to you, I know—and sadly, his father is facing charges for having thrown him off the roof of their apartment building. T——s mother doesn’t speak English and we have not yet found an Eritrean interpreter but Dr. Silverman—I know you remember him—seems to think that if I act out each of his phrases carefully, T——s mother will understand what’s going on… .
        Frances’s handwriting hadn’t changed since the sixth grade. It was the round, hopeful handwriting of girls who wrote things like: So glad