Leaning, Leaning Over Water

by Frances Itani

  My job had begun on a Monday morning. I walked to the end of the block and took a streetcar to the hospital. There I joined a stream of workers as they entered the staff entrance, a side door that led to a basement hall lined with lockers. At five minutes to eight I was given a blue-and-white smock to put on and told to follow a man who was wearing grey overalls and a grey shirt, with a grey badge on his sleeve. He led me in silence through a maze of corridors and stairs, up to the main floor, beyond the swinging doors of Emergency. We crossed a bright open room that was filled with rows of wooden seats not unlike the pews in Union Station. These pews were filled, not with travellers, but with the comings and goings of the ailing population of Ottawa.

  I was trying to stay close to the man in grey. He hadn’t said one word or acknowledged me in any way. As I walked between two central pews, a man in a worn brown suit reached for me and called out, “Help me, nurse. For God’s sake, stop and help me.” I kept my head down and pretended not to hear in case blood started pouring out of him. This was a hospital, after all.

  I was suddenly brought face to face with Emmy Lusk, chief ward aide of the Outpatient Clinic. The overalled man turned on one heel and retreated around the corner.

  “Don’t mind him,” said Emmy Lusk. “He never talks to anybody. He’s one brick short of a load. So you’re my summer student.” She did not pause for breath. “You’re s’posed to follow me around. Fat chance you’d get a real orientation. They make sure we’re shorthanded, they even intend it. When we get a student, we’re s’posed to be grateful. But what they pay keeps us so broke we couldn’t buy a pair of leggings for a hummingbird. Your pay’s even less,” she said, and jabbed me in the arm with one finger.

  On two sides of the room, lab-coated men were moving from one examining area to another, each space divided from the next by beige curtains hung from a network of tracks that criss-crossed the ceiling. Because the curtains hung well above the floor, I could see knees—countless bare feet and knees. All manner of legs. On the fourth side of the room, traffic flowed towards and away from the nurses’ station. There were three examining rooms beyond that and, at the end, two elevators.

  Emmy Lusk pointed to her smock of solid blue, telling me that the aides were one level below orderlies, who wore white. She told me that the patients in the pews couldn’t tell one outfit from another. “They think we’re all nurses and doctors,” she said. “You have to get used to it.” I thought of the man in the brown suit but did not tell Emmy that he’d cried out for help when I’d passed.

  “Let’s go,” she said abruptly—everything about her was abrupt. She barged through a door and I followed her into a padded freight elevator that took us up to the fourth floor.

  “This is where we do the juice cart,” she announced, and she led me into a long kitchen. “Trud-ee,” she said, reading my name tag. “Is that how you say it?”

  “Trude,” I told her. “It rhymes with rude.”

  “Is that so?” she said. “Well, Trood, your first job is to prepare the cart. Up here is where we load and unload the tins. We make the eggnog, break six eggs, add two good dashes of vanilla.” As she spoke, her hands cracked eggs, tossed the shells, pressed buttons for whirring blades, filled stainless jugs with unnatural-looking green lemonade, and with milk from the cow. The cow was divided down its stainless steel middle into skim and whole. The milk poured out through stiff rubber tubes that hung from its bottom.

  “Elvis calls these the titties,” said Emmy, watching my face. “Elvis is the orderly up here. He does both sides, four east and west. You’ve got to watch your step, he’s twice your age. He can charm the skin off a snake. He’s got sideburns, too. Like real Elvis.”

  But Elvis did not show his face all morning.

  We jiggled the loaded cart onto the elevator and went back down to Outpatient, where the pew population had already changed. The man in the brown suit had vanished. I looked towards the beige curtains. Maybe he’d had to drop his drawers; maybe two of the bare legs I could see belonged to him. If so, I didn’t want to know.

  Emmy and I took turns wheeling the cart between pews, dispensing prune juice and lemonade, pouring water, scooping ice chips into paper cups.

  “Push the eggnog,” Emmy told me. “Holler it right out. We have to get rid of it all. If the patients are old, they need the prune, that’s a fact. The ones that don’t look constipated, they get the nog. The ones that aren’t old and have a tight look, they get the prune, too.”

  I spent the next two hours searching out Ottawa’s constipated, row by row. Just before I was ready to go back upstairs, a patient stopped me near the nurses’ station and placed a jar in my hand.

  “Tapeworm,” he said. “All in one piece.” He was immensely pleased with himself. “Doc told me I should try to catch it and bring the fellar in. Would you give it to the Doc?”

  I looked at the greyness of ribboned segments in the jar and felt a long slow gag roll over the back of my tongue. Emmy swept in beside me and plucked the jar from my hand.

  “Nurses’ business,” she said, and shooed the man back to his pew. She banged the jar onto the countertop that barricaded the nurses from three sides.

  “Come on,” she said. “We only have thirty minutes and we’re on early lunch. You’ll get to meet Elvis this time, for sure.”

  “One afternoon,” Elvis said, looking directly into my face, “I had a call to bring a stretcher from the autopsy room to the lab on eleven. Research, they said. When I got there, you might say I was curious about the lumps and bumps under the sheet.” He crammed a cigarette into the side of his mouth and held the flame while he talked. “I waited till I was inside the elevator.” He stopped and dragged. “I thought, Why not, why not take a look.”

  I could tell that Emmy had heard this story before. She was glancing around the cafeteria, raising a hand to greet the other ward aides, all in their solid blues. The aides and orderlies ate in a roped-off section of their own. There was an ashtray on each table and everyone was dragging and puffing. Elvis inhaled deeply but the smoke didn’t come back out of him. I watched his lips, his nostrils, even his ears, to see where it might be released.

  “So I go to the end of the stretcher and lift a corner of the sheet,” he said. “Turn it back and find that I’m keeping company with a stretcher of human heads.”

  “Lookit that Mayberry tart,” said Emmy. “She’s been up all night again. Her eyes look like two pee-holes in the snow. You’d think she’d be ashamed.”

  “Human heads,” said Elvis, and a rush of smoke exited his body. “Do you think they were propped on their necks like mannequin heads? No. Each head was lying in a basin, staring up.”

  “He makes half of it up,” said Emmy. “Don’t pay any attention. I’ve heard this story before—the lab needed the heads to get the stuff out of the glands, the pitchootaries. I asked one of the nurses. Come on, girl, back we go. The pews will be full up again, after lunch.”

  “Come and see me on four, Trude-the-rude,” Elvis said. “I’ll show you my shortcut through the back halls.”

  “Told you,” said Emmy. “Smooth as satin on a bedpost. Doesn’t take long and you learn to ignore him.”

  I went straight to Woolworth’s after my shift. I was exhausted. I found Lyd at the far end of the store, mopping the countertop. There were four empty stools in her section so she had a few minutes to talk. She brought me a heavy pedestalled glass filled with ice chips and ginger ale and I sipped slowly through a straw.

  Lyd had to wear a cotton cap that she hated; it was the colour of apricots. And a short-sleeved blouse to match, identical to those worn by every other waitress behind the counter, and a pull-over apron, buttoned down the back. Against her height, the apron looked as if it had been hoisted up and stuck to her lap. Every time I saw her I wanted to laugh.

  “If you laugh,” she said, “I’ll kill you.”

  “You should see what I have to wear at the hospital,” I said, though I didn’t mind the smock.
At least I didn’t have to wear anything on my head.

  I began to tell Lyd about the tapeworm but she gave me a warning signal. None of her co-workers knew that I was her sister, and we didn’t let on.

  A middle-aged couple and an elderly woman had approached. The old woman was short and birdlike and had henna hair that stuck straight out of the back of her head. The man and woman hoisted her, one on each side, until she was seated safely between them. I wondered if she’d fall off the stool; its base was on a raised platform and she’d had to step high to reach that. It was hard to tell if the three were related, or if the couple were even man and wife. They seemed to be on an outing, and though I tried not to stare, I sat there and listened to every word.

  Lyd brought their orders—hot beef sandwiches with peas and gravy and chips for the couple, and mashed potatoes with crinkly skinned chicken for the old woman. After only one spoonful of potatoes, the old woman cried out, “I’m FULL, I’m FULL!” Her words were slurred, as if her teeth had clamped over them. Lyd was taken by surprise and turned quickly, her wrist knocking a breadboard to the floor. I tried not to look at her. The old woman shouted again, “I’m FULL,” as if the others were forcibly stuffing her.

  The man kept on eating, not giving her a sideways glance.

  “You poured honey in my shoes,” the old woman accused, pointing at him. “You know that perfectly well.”

  Lyd had bolted to the end of the counter. I slid off the stool and followed, on the opposite side. She was exhausted, too, I could tell, but she held down her laughter. I wanted to tell her about the hospital but there wasn’t time.

  “They didn’t tell us about this,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Mother and Father,” she said. “They never told us what was out here, in the world.”

  One morning after I’d handed out the juices, Emmy swooped to my side. “You’re wanted on four,” she said. “They’re short up there and going out flat. They need a student to sit with a patient. Don’t worry, you’ll be back in an hour or so. Sometimes the wards call for extra help, they’ve done it before.”

  On the fourth floor the patients were wearing white johnny shirts instead of their own street clothes as they did in Outpatient. A nurse was waiting for me at the desk and took me down the hall and into a single room. I did not know how to tell her that I’d never been in a patient’s room. I didn’t know what to say.

  “Sit there, on the chair,” she said. “We’re short-handed till we get everyone through their lunch breaks. Every time Mr. Leeson tries to get out of bed you stand at the rails and tell him you mean business. We mean business, don’t we, Mr. Leeson! You’re not going to climb over that bar again, are you! You’re not going to hurt yourself. Remember when you fell on the floor, Mr. Leeson?”

  He would not acknowledge her, and she turned and left the room. He had thick soft-looking white hair and looked as ordinary as anyone could look. He was propped against three pillows. A voice from the end of the hall shouted, “Get the baby, damn you,” and a few seconds later, “Get the baby!”

  Mr. Leeson eyed me from afar.

  “You see how impossible it is,” he said. He spoke as if this were a continuing conversation between us. “It’s impossible to get any rest when the old and the dying shout obscenities all day and all night long. Obscenities pool in our brains.” He spoke kindly, as if he might be someone’s grandfather. “Obscenities dribble out of us in our old age. Also other bodily fluids—an unstoppable flow.” He closed his eyes and seemed to fall asleep, although one eyelid was partly open.

  I was sorry for him, for the way the nurse had spoken. I thought of Grampa King in his navy suit in the coffin, how unnatural he’d looked when he was not in overalls. I relaxed, for a second.

  Mr. Leeson was up and over the end of the bed, sliding backwards, headfirst and down. I caught him before he hit the floor but his head was resting on my shoes. He was too heavy to hoist and the bell was too far to reach, so I had to shout. He was hanging by his feet, which were caught in a tangle of blankets and the end rail. His knees were bent and he was upside down, pyjama bottoms askew, johnny shirt dragging, mouth open, his white hair electrified and brushing the floor. Elvis and the nurse came running in.

  “We’ll have to tie him again,” the nurse said to Elvis. She spoke as if I were not present. “Go and get the straitjacket from the linen cart.”

  They hauled Mr. Leeson to an upright position and leaned him back into the pillows. He glared at me as if I’d betrayed him. When the straitjacket was brought he slipped into it passively. He did not object when it was laced up the back or when his arms were inserted into absurdly long sleeves. He did not object when the sleeves were crossed and tied to opposite bed rails. He looked like an ancient and bony bird, its wings folded recklessly. I thought of Granny Tracks, who often said, “Much flapping breaks wings.”

  “You have to learn, Trude-the-rude,” said Elvis. “You have to learn that when you’re with a patient, you’re in charge.”

  I looked at him and was almost grateful. But I was Mr. Leeson’s betrayer. I had not kept him safe. I was sent back to Outpatient and spent the afternoon helping Emmy in the examining rooms, replenishing supplies.

  Every night, in our new home, Father asked how we liked our jobs, and Lyd and I said, “Fine.” We didn’t tell him the details, though we told each other—every one. I had begun to understand that the hospital was a place like no other. It was like a city within many walls. It had a population, contained. Every day held the adventures of intimate lives and, every day, there was a tallying of stories. Stories were told around the nurses’ desk and at coffee break and in the lunchroom and beside the basement lockers. Doctors, nurses, lab technicians, orderlies, ward aides, clerks and housekeeping staff all exchanged stories. Patients told them to one another while they waited in the pews, and they told them to the cleaning staff who were sympathetic, and they told them to me. Elvis continued to tell his stories and Emmy kept up a running account by my side. There was never a morning or an afternoon when a story was not told. I listened to them all. It was as if each person were recounting a life up to the point of the telling. Bringing the self forward to each new day. I had never heard so many stories.

  While these stories were multiplying, our own stories at home had slowed down. The Hilroy scribbler had disappeared with the move. Father had gone back to work for the car dealer, in his cast, and did not seem to be doing strange things. Nor did he ever speak of or brag about shooting the rapids, though, when I considered the act, I thought it amazing. The second stage of his knee surgery was coming up and I was watching for the right moment to tell him I was leaving. He thought I’d be going back to school in September. I wasn’t making much money at the hospital but it was enough for my trainfare west and to get started.

  Throughout the summer, Elvis kept up his banter, trying to shock, always trying to make me react. One day in the cafeteria he told me that a friend of his had taken a girlfriend swimming in the Ottawa River and they had “done it” underwater.

  “After they finished, they couldn’t separate,” he said. “They had to be pried apart.”

  “My God,” said Emmy. “Are you ever going to let up?”

  I wasn’t worried about Elvis. I could see through him and, anyway, Emmy was there as a buffer. I never knew what she was going to say, but I’d learned that she had taken it upon herself to look after me.

  I told Lyd about the swimmers when I was leaning into the counter at Woolworth’s.

  “Nobody around here tells stories like that,” she said. “It’s a joke. Surely it can’t be true.”

  She and I went to the “Y” dances on Metcalfe Street every Saturday night, now that we lived in the city. Lyd was going out with a student at the university. I had met a boy named Ross at a “Y” dance and twice we’d been to the movies. I couldn’t imagine telling him any of the Elvis stories. I couldn’t imagine telling them to anyone, except to Lyd.

  Father’s knee
repair was scheduled for a Thursday afternoon. He was admitted to the ninth floor on Wednesday night to be prepared for surgery and I had driven his car to the hospital Thursday morning so I could pick up Lyd and bring her to the ward. We planned to be in his room when he was brought back upstairs from the Recovery Room.

  Thursday was also gynecology day at the clinic.

  “G-Y-N day,” Emmy said in the morning, spelling out the word as everyone did.

  “G-Y-N day today,” said a nurse. “All women.” She made a face. The pews were filled with women of all ages, from girls in their teens to the very old.

  Occasionally, because the Outpatient Clinic was next to Emergency, a patient was wheeled in on a stretcher when the Emergency Room was full. I was sometimes asked to stand beside someone while the nurses and doctors caught up on the backload of priority cases.

  “Just press the wall buzzer if there’s a problem,” the head nurse told me. “Someone will come running.”

  Two of our three examining rooms were full when I was asked to go into the middle room and stay with a forty-yearold woman who had been spotting in the middle of a late pregnancy. Emmy rolled her eyes. We were giving out the afternoon juices and the pews were full. We’d been running since early morning.

  I was worried about the responsibility but I also knew that there were so many people in our clinic I could open the door and yell if I needed someone. Because it was G-Y-N day, the woman’s doctor was in the clinic anyway; he was with another patient.