by Dale Mayer
She checked her watch and realized she was running a little bit behind. She headed back to the utility closet and switched out some of her cleansers. And then, with the mop and her bucket filled with hot water and the floor-cleaning solution, she started mopping on the main floor and then moved upward. It would take her over two hours tonight. It looked like the floors were dirtier than usual, which meant changing her bucket of water more often. But she was up for it. Every time she did this, she imagined each stroke cleaning the pain and sorrow of her own soul.
She moved steadily through the hallways, washing and scrubbing, moving the mop back and forth to a natural rhythm that seemed to ease something inside her. The routine movement and the sense of hard work, knowing that she was doing something necessary and in some way contributing to somebody else’s healing, it all helped. Maybe that was good for her own soul too. She moved in a steady rhythmic motion, absolutely loving to see the clean floors as she moved backward down each hall. By the time she came around to the final hallway, she knew she was running almost half an hour behind. She headed down with a bucket of fresh water and started working on the floor.
She heard a sound. She stopped, frowned, and then softly called out, “Are you okay?”
A ghost of a voice answered, “No.”
She immediately went to the door, knocked, and opened it slightly, poking her head around the corner into the dark room. “Do you want me to call a nurse?”
“Yes, please.”
She immediately closed the door and raced to the closest nursing station. Tina was there. Hailee told her about the patient in the far room. Tina followed her and headed inside the room that Hailee had only ever stuck her head into once. She could hear their voices on the other side in the darkness. She hadn’t actually seen the patient, but he needed somebody. Happy that she could help, Hailee picked up her mop and resumed working again.
By the time she finished, her soul was a little lighter, and she realized that, on a scale of one to ten today, she was running around an eight.
Considering she’d been working closer to the six or seven range every day for the last three weeks, this wasn’t bad. But today, well, was a little bit better. She cleaned up her mop and put away her bucket, then headed back to check that she’d collected everything. She’d left her Wet Floor sign, and she snatched that up.
The door to his room opened. Tina walked out, smiled at Hailee, and said, “Thanks for calling me.”
Hailee nodded slowly. “I didn’t know what I heard. I felt terrible even knocking.”
“In this specific case,” Tina said, “it was the right thing to do.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” she said. “I really don’t have much to do with any of the patients here, so I never really know.”
“Not to worry,” Tina said with a smile. She headed back to the nurse’s station.
Hailee followed ever-so-slowly. She returned to the utility room to put away the floor sign but returned to the main floor to once more look around and make sure she was done for the night.
Tina saw her. “Time for the end of your shift?”
“I hope so,” she said. “It’s been a bit of a long day.”
“Is this your only job?” Tina asked with a frown.
Hailee hesitated and then shrugged. “No, I have another job too.”
Tina nodded. “I figured as much. It’s probably not enough hours here, if you’ve got bills to pay.”
Hailee’s smile slipped. “Bills to pay, yes, that’s one way to look at it.” She turned away, and then she looked back at Tina and asked, “Will he be okay?”
“Who?” Tina asked, looking at her in surprise.
“The patient I called you for.”
“I hope so,” Tina said with a smile. “He’s such a handsome man with his dark Moorish looks,” she said. “You probably couldn’t see for the lighting, but he’s got dark hair, thick eyebrows, and an immaculately chiseled jaw.”
Hailee nodded and hesitantly said, “He seemed like he was in a lot of pain.”
“Well, he’s doing better now,” Tina said. “He has not been too forthcoming about asking for help, and sometimes, well, sometimes you just don’t know when people will need more care.”
“I can understand that,” Hailee said. She wasn’t even sure why she was talking to Tina. It was so opposite to what Hailee usually did. But finally feeling a little awkward, she smiled and said, “Have a good evening.”
“You too,” Tina called out.
As Hailee grabbed her purse and readied to leave, she found herself taking the long way around and going past that same door. As she walked by, she whispered, “Good night. Sleep well.”
In her mind, she wondered if he heard her but knew no way he could have, unless he had acute hearing. But, if he was lying in bed, waiting for morning to come, and could hear her footsteps, maybe he had heard her speak. Embarrassment burned through her, and she quickly rushed past. When she thought she heard his voice call out, she stopped and swore and then retraced her steps. At the door, she asked, “Are you okay?”
“Open the door, please,” the voice commanded.
She hesitated and then turned the knob and pushed it open slightly. She stuck her head around the corner into the darkened room. “Hey,” she said. “Can I do something for you?”
“I just wanted to say thank you,” he said.
She straightened and stepped in slightly. “Why?”
“Because you called a nurse for me, and, if you hadn’t done that, I’d be in a whole lot more pain right now.”
She nodded and said, “You’re welcome.”
As she went to leave, he whispered, “Stop.”
She hesitated again and looked toward him. But she couldn’t see him for shadows. “Do you need anything else?”
His voice was hesitant, almost like hers, when he said, “It’s just nice to talk to somebody.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “You’re in a center full of people,” she said. “Don’t you visit with others?”
“Not really,” he said. “I haven’t been good about putting myself out there.”
She could sympathize in an instant. “I’m not very good at it myself.”
“I hear you every night,” he said.
“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t realize I made so much noise. I’m sorry.”
“No,” he said. “You don’t understand. It’s a good noise.”
She frowned. “How can it be a good noise?”
“It reminds me that I’m alive and that this is the real world. It tells me that I’m not still caught up in my nightmares. Yet sometimes I wonder if being in my nightmares is the only place that I’m comfortable anymore. But then I wake, and I hear your mop moving back and forth on the floor.”
She could sense the surprise in his own voice, as if he was shocked he was talking to her. She understood the sentiment. “As long as it’s not stopping you from sleeping,” she said slowly.
“No, not at all. It’s restful. It’s …” He seemed to reach for a word and then stopped because he didn’t know what he meant. “It’s security,” he whispered.
That just floored her. Because that was the last thing she’d expected. “The sound?” she asked. “The normalcy of it? The rhythm of it?”
“All of the above,” he said. “It means I’m safe. It means I’m not still on the roadside, staring up at the sky, wondering what happened to my world.”
Her heart softened. “I’m sorry. It seems like you’ve lived through some traumatic events. I just … I can’t imagine trying to put it behind you and moving on.”
“And yet, that’s what they tell us to do, as if it’s so easy. It’s not,” he said, his voice deepening. “It seems impossible to let go and to move on.”
“I understand,” she whispered.
“Do you?” This time there was almost a detached sarcasm to his words, as if he’d heard that many times and thought that people were just plain pathetic.
“Not just the pati
ents have been through rough times in their lives,” she said with a little more strength to her tone than she expected. As if she didn’t want him criticizing her, but, at the same time, she didn’t want to explain either.
“You’re right,” he said in surprise. “And sometimes I need to be reminded of that.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be insensitive,” she whispered.
“No.”
She could see his hand wave in the darkness.
“It’s fine. I would much prefer people talk to me and treat me as a normal human being instead of somebody to be coddled and spoken softly to, in case I erupt.”
“Is erupting something that you do?” she asked in surprise.
“I didn’t think so, but it still seems as if everybody walks around me as if I’ll explode at any moment.”
“Interesting,” she said. “Maybe they aren’t anticipating an explosion as much as a cracking.”
“What’s interesting about it?” he asked, wondering about her last words. “I would have said I was a fairly balanced personality. But since I’ve arrived here …”
“I imagine nobody wants to cause you a setback or to do anything that would in any way slow your healing.”
“And how would they know what would do that?” He was genuinely curious.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But, for me, it seemed like, as soon as disaster struck, everybody either sank out of sight and completely jumped ship or spoke as if I’d suddenly lost my hearing instead of my child.”
A gasp came from the bed.
She frowned and winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.”
“No,” he said. “I appreciate the honesty. I’m surrounded by people in similar situations, trying to recover from their own hell. I know I can’t be sympathetic to anyone else because I can’t even be sympathetic to myself. I feel incredibly vulnerable here, and yet, at the same time, I have this sense that I don’t deserve to be here.”
“Wow,” she said. “How is it you could possibly think you don’t deserve to be here?”
“Two other people died,” he said. “I should have been with them.”
“I wanted to die too,” she said, tears in her eyes and pain clogging her throat. “All I ever wanted was to be with my son.”
“But our wants don’t matter,” he said. “Because, for whatever reason, we’re forced to live with the losses of those who were with us.”
“I know.” Then, unable to handle anymore, she said, “I have to leave.” And, with that, she closed the door and left.
Heath stared at the closed door for a long moment, hating that she’d left but realized that it had been a turning point for him regardless. He just didn’t know in what way or how. He tucked himself under the blankets and pulled the pillow under his head to support his neck and then closed his eyes.
This time, he fell asleep with a smile on his face.
Chapter 5
This was a pattern they set every night. Hailee worked her same routine, cleaning everything else before the floors, all the while waiting for the moment when she came to his room. Then slowly mopping the hallway floor outside his door. Something was almost spiritual about it. Yet she knew that anybody else would think she was a fool. It was such an odd feeling, yet almost one with a sense of honor to know he was listening to her—dare she say, for her? Her mopping sounds helped him feel grounded in this reality and kept him away from his nightmares. Who’d have thought it?
On the second evening in a row, he’d called out to her.
She’d stopped and spoken with him again. And then again on the third night. And a pattern had developed, and she didn’t know if it was healthy or not, but it was an encounter she looked forward to now. This continued for seven nights in a row, and she was due to be off for the next two. She’d taken several more shifts to stay for these last two nights, and she’d slowly learned a little bit from the nurses about his condition.
She understood that he’d been driving a vehicle which blew up and that he blamed himself for the loss of his friends. Her grief and his held such similarities that she felt a kinship to him. Yet, at the same time, she knew that he wouldn’t appreciate the sympathy.
He was so wrapped up in his guilt that he didn’t know he could turn and walk through a doorway and leave some of that guilt behind. And how did she know that? Because she hadn’t been ready to see it either. She’d done everything she thought she could do, but it hadn’t been enough. So her guilt had continued to destroy her. Her child hadn’t been meant to live in this world for very long, and the six months that Jacob had been in her arms were the most blessed that she’d ever experienced. But he’d been born with a severe heart condition, and multiple surgeries had just made his life one of pain and agony—and her own just as bad.
For any loving mother would have gladly borne all those surgeries and all that pain and agony for the sake of her child. A mother’s greatest anguish is to watch her child suffering from anything, whether physically or emotionally.
When five-months pregnant, she’d found out in her doctor’s checkup that there were problems with her pregnancy, and her ob-gyn had suggested she let go of her unborn child. But she couldn’t do it, couldn’t even begin to contemplate such a thing. He was her son. He lived and breathed within her already, regardless if she had yet to give birth to him. He deserved to have every breath he took and deserved to fight for the next one.
But her husband hadn’t agreed. They’d fought bitterly. He’d turned and walked.
And the person she needed most at that moment had abandoned her and their unborn child. That had been one of many very long and very hard lessons for her from there on out.
Her son had been gone from her life for one year now. Twelve lonely months of trying to pay off medical bills so large that everything she threw at them just bounced off the total due, not even making a dent. She had no reprieve.
She wasn’t even sure she could ever get clear of this massive debt. Her husband had divorced her, and she was free and clear of him, but he refused to pay any medical bills, citing that he had agreed with the doctor for her to have the recommended abortion. So it was her fault that she was suffocating under the mountain of bills—not his fault. The lawyers had been grim-faced over it all, and there’d been no happy resolution.
She’d gotten up and walked away from him and the attorneys and the paperwork that she had signed, knowing that it would be a long time before she could ever trust or believe in anybody like that again. But, at the same time, she had been bravely taking one step in front of the other. When she thought about Jacob now, she still fought tears but also wore a smile every second.
Hot tears burned the back of her eyes even now, but they weren’t pouring down her cheeks. And what she did every day honored Jacob’s presence in her life by honoring those debts she had to pay and honoring her commitments to relinquish her guilt, possibly to forgive her ex-husband at some future date. After that, maybe she’d finally take a step forward. She planned to never have another child. The pain and loss were too incredibly debilitating to go through again.
And, like these military men feeling survivor’s guilt, all she could think about for the longest time was that it shouldn’t have been Jacob who died. It should have been her …
Even though she hadn’t done anything to contribute to Jacob’s death, she’d brought him into this world, knowing he could have a hard and painful life.
It also felt like she hadn’t done anything to add to his life, and yet she’d been there as much as she could every day. Jacob never really made it out of the ICU. The hospital had done what they could to reduce the bills initially too. But still, some of them had to be paid. And she didn’t have a support system or a network of family and friends to help pitch in, not monetarily, not emotionally, not physically.
It’d been all she could do to make a minimum payment. But she was doing what she needed to do, and that was working two jobs to keep some of the bills at bay. S
he paid a bunch of them down, but it would be a couple more years before she could even begin to see her way clear, and that’s only if the hospital agreed to the latest proposal made by her attorney.
She had a friend who was a lawyer, and he’d submitted proposals that seemed like pennies on the dollar, so she could climb out of this hole. They were still waiting to see if the hospital would agree to this amount or would come back with a counteroffer, but even that reduced figure would be way more than she could get clear of anytime soon.
As she worked the mop back and forth along the hallway, she knew that he would be without her for the next two nights, and she worried that he would not get back to sleep if he woke up in the night. Could she tell the other cleaning lady to come and do this piece last? Or would that just seem so bizarre and cause an investigation into her relationship with a patient? A relationship based entirely on healing.
And yet, how could she begin to explain it? It was obscure. But the connection was there, a little bit at least. In fact, that connection and that sense of doing something for another human being was helping her too. How odd. So she didn’t want to lose whatever it was, and she didn’t want to slow down his healing. If her mopping the floor helped him return to sleep, then she was all for it, no matter how bizarre it may seem.
As for her looming hospital bills, she couldn’t just spend her life comparing the numbers to see how far apart the hospital bills were from what she earned. The fact of the matter was, she was doing the best she could, and she would keep doing that. She would keep putting one foot in front of the other for as long as she could. Until she dropped from exhaustion. And, when she came to such a stopping point, if it wasn’t enough, then it wasn’t enough, and she’d find another way.
As she got to his door, she smiled as he called out. She stopped, placed her mop against the wall, walked to the door, then stuck her head around the corner, and said, “You should be sleeping.”