Page 110 - Too Much and Never Enough - Mary L. Trump

“Oh, Mary, he’s dead.” My mother started to cry. “I really did love him once,” she said.
As my mother continued to speak, I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor of the landing. I dropped the phone, let it hang on its cord, and waited.
Sometime in the afternoon of Saturday, September 26, 1981, one of my grandparents called an ambulance. I didn’t know it then, but my father had been critically ill for three weeks. It was the first time anybody had called for medical help.
My grandmother had been a regular at Jamaica Hospital and Booth Memorial Hospital and Medical Center. My dad, too, had been admitted to Jamaica a few times. All of my grandparents’ children had been born there, so the family had a long-standing relationship with the staff and administration. My grandparents had donated millions of dollars to Jamaica in particular, and in 1975 the Trump Pavilion for Nursing and Rehabilitation had been named for my grandmother. As for Booth Memorial, my grandmother was heavily involved with the Salvation Army volunteers there—and it was also where I’d spent much of my childhood because of my severe asthma. A single phone call would have guaranteed the best treatment for their son at either facility. No call was made. The ambulance took my father to the Queens Hospital Center in Jamaica. No one went with him.
After the ambulance left, my grandparents called their other four children, but only Donald and Elizabeth could be reached. By the time they arrived in the late afternoon, the information coming from the hospital made it clear that my father’s situation was grave. Still nobody went.
Donald called my mother to let her know what was going on but kept getting a busy signal. He got in touch with our superintendent and told him to buzz her on the intercom.
Mom immediately called the House.
“The doctors think Freddy probably won’t make it, Linda,” Donald told her. My mother had had no idea that Dad was even sick.
“Would it be all right if I came to the House so I can be there if there’s any news?” She didn’t want to be alone.