Always

by Timmothy B. Mccann

  As a steady stream of tears poured down her cheek, she knew she understood much more than he could ever know.

  CHERYL

  In 1995 I started looking at Brandon more seriously. We got married in August of that year.

  I must admit, initially Brandon seemed almost like a child to me. A very fine child, I should add. But then he became kinda like a friend. Someone with whom I could hang out, go to brunch, or see a movie from time to time. But then we made love one night in his apartment, and I must say I was impressed with his maturity and flattered that at my age and with all the female attention I was sure he was getting, he would take the time to be with me.

  The day after we made love, I received flowers. He sent me a dozen imported white tulips. He knew that I was really into the hidden meaning of flowers, so he sent the only flower that said “You are the perfect lover.” I loved the way he courted me. Although he was young, he was not aggressive or presumptuous. From time to time there were other guys who asked me out and a few I even spent time with. But two hours of them bashing their ex-wives or sorry children was more than enough. One guy even had a grandchild, and that left me feeling a little too close to AARP registration. I’m a woman who will tell you her age in a heartbeat and be proud of it, but I felt twenty years older when I was with most of those men.

  I guess that was why Brandon was so refreshing. I knew very little about him. He was not secretive by any stretch of the imagination, but he was always shining the light on me. No man had ever done that. Henry had a one-track mind, and poor Darius . . . well, he didn’t have one at all.

  Two days before Thanksgiving of ’95, I was running to the elevator in Jackson Memorial Hospital, a few minutes late to work. The previous night I had gotten only two hours of sleep, and the bags under my eyes were evidence. Some time back I had I found out that Sarah was still seeing Austin before he was finally sent back to jail. I must say one thing about him, he didn’t leave her empty-handed. A month after he was sent up to the state penitentiary for a ten-year stay, she discovered he’d left her pregnant and with herpes. When I found out I was livid, but I was glad that due to his incarceration, he would be kept away from her. So on top of everything else in my life, I was now a grand mother taking care of a newborn with colic while Sarah worked nights in a factory.

  As I rode up the elevator, I was thinking about the meal I needed to start preparing for the holiday. Brandon was bringing a couple of friends from the department, and my mom wanted to bring a girlfriend of hers as well. The nice cozy dinner I’d planned for my mother, Brandon, and me had grown to a soft nine, which meant cook for twelve because there would likely be more. As the elevator door opened, I was already tired and I had yet to tend to a single patient.

  “Good morning,” said Erica, who was one of my best friends on my floor at the hospital. “Another sleepless night?”

  “Yeah,” I said, walking over to the coffeemaker and noticing it was empty.

  She continued her conversation with Stan, one of three male nurses we had in our ward. “So what was she doing when you were taking her vitals?”

  “Actually I didn’t take her vitals. I just walked in and she was knocked out. I glanced at the chart and I don’t remember what Snodgrass prescribed, but she was dead to the world. I mean I’m not into older women, but with her I’d make an exception.”

  “Yeah, I saw her on the news a few months ago jogging in a five-K for cancer or something.”

  “Girl is fine as hell. But I heard he was flirting with Vivica A. Fox. You know . . . the sister from Soul Food.”

  “I heard that too, but you know how rumors are always floating about him. At one time they even had him with one of the white chicks from Friends. But on the fo’ real, Senata is finer than I don’t know what!”

  I was about to have my time card stamped when I heard the words, and almost time-marked my forefinger.

  “I mean,” she continued, “you can tell he’s a little shy because he was on this show one time and this sister started telling him how handsome he was. He started blushing and that just made him look cuter. Fine as all outdoors with those dimples and—”

  “You all talking about Henry Davis?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Stan said as he reloaded his meds tray. “His wife’s upstairs on the ninth floor under the name Yvette Shaw. I think it’s her maiden name.”

  As he spoke, I tried to keep my thoughts from showing on my face.

  “She’s up there for exhaustion, and they kept her overnight to test for Epstein-Barr.”

  “Oh really? When did she check in?”

  “Early this morning,” Erica replied. “Girl, you know half of Miami claims they either knew him, grew up with him, or slept with him. Wait a minute, you grew up here . . . Did you know him?”

  “No,” I said as I retrieved my supplies to make my rounds. “So who’s her attending nurse?”

  “Tina. Why? . . . Mrs. Married Lady.”

  “Please. I was just curious.” As I left the room all I could think about was a way to get Tina to switch patients with me, even though she and I rarely even spoke to each other. Switching patients was not common, but if you did have a patient you could not get along with, it was allowed. Why did I want to see Leslie? I have no earthly idea except maybe seeing her would give me the closure that I so badly wanted. Let’s face it, Brandon was the type of man most women dream of, but I was being held hostage in my mind to the memory of this eighteen-year-old man-child in shoulder pads. I think a part of my reason for holding on to the past was that it was something I knew in my heart I could never have. Marrying Brandon had closed most of the hole inside of me; now I needed the job completed. At that moment I saw Tina walking toward the lounge, and I went in after her. We talked for three minutes and it cost me two days off. I think she thought I wanted to sell pictures or something of Leslie to the tabloids, because she told me any money I got, I had to split. I just ignored the comment like I usually ignored her.

  Needless to say, the first patient I checked on was Mrs. Yvette Shaw. As I got to the door I quickly thumbed through her medical records and saw Dr. Snodgrass’s notation regarding her early menopause as well as his scribbles concerning the cysts on her ovaries which prevented her from bearing children. As a child, Henry had always talked about having children, and I wondered why they had not had any. Now I understood.

  When I walked in the door of the large private room, it was dark due to the blinds being drawn to block out the morning light. I was extremely nervous. Then I thought, What if Henry shows up to visit her, with me in here? My second biggest fear was that he would recognize me. The biggest . . . that he wouldn’t. Leslie was sleeping quietly and her hair looked like a cheap wig. As I walked over to the bed, in spite of my happiness with Brandon, I wanted to ask her if she knew just how fortunate she was. She probably didn’t. Looking at her, I thought, This is the woman who sleeps with the man I dream about, and I bet she takes him for granted. Bitch. Then she opened her eyes.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “Good morning,” I replied, methodically and reached for her meds chart to justify why I was in the room.

  Looking around to see where she was, Leslie instinctively put her hand up to her head, and said, “My God, I must look a mess. Do you have a mirror?”

  “You look fine, ma’am.”

  “Please.” She giggled. “I must look like I have not only mousse but a little bit of squirrel in my hair too. Wait a minute, is it time to check me out again? That little white girl just left not too long ago.”

  “I know . . . Mrs. Shaw. I am just following up.” I’d bet anything she sleeping around on him, I said to myself.

  She looked at me and her eyebrows lowered. “Do you know who I am?”

  “Yes,” I said, flipping the pages of the medical file. “It says ‘Yvette Shaw.’ I hope that’s correct, because if it’s not, we have a problem.” I put the file down and abruptly grabbed her wrist to take her pulse.

  “
Yeah,” she said as her eyebrows relaxed and she moved her head from side to side on her pillow searching for a comfortable spot. “That’s me, all right.”

  As I took her vitals, I noticed her squint at the closed blinds, and then she asked, “What time is it?”

  I wanted to say morning, but instead I said “A little after seven.”

  “What time does breakfast come around?” And then looking at my pin, she added, “Cheryl?”

  “They should be on this floor within the next thirty minutes. So you have an appetite? That’s good.”

  “Not really, but I could use some coffee . . . and a smoke.”

  “The coffee, we can handle,” I said with a smile, and then wondered if Henry, too, was a smoker.

  She closed her eyes and asked, “Can you open those blinds? I don’t know what they gave me last night, but I hate feeling this groggy.”

  “Seems they gave you a Valium.”

  “Umm. Well, if this is how they make you feel, I hope he doesn’t give me any more.”

  As I pulled up the blinds, I heard the door crack as if someone was just peeping in, and my heart stopped. If that was him, I had no idea what I would say. Then she said, “Marcus? Is that you?”

  “Yes. Is it okay to come in?”

  “Sure, I’m decent.”

  I turned around to find this chubby Asian gentleman who spoke with not a trace of an accent. Actually the only accent one could detect was a tinge of Alabama’nese in his vowels. “So how ya feeling this morning?”

  “Fine,” she replied, and then looked at me with a smile and said, “except for that little unwarranted no-smoking policy they have in this place.”

  “Well, you look better,” he said. “Had us worried last night.”

  “I felt like shit. I had a sore throat most of the day, but then I got a headache and felt like I was about to black out.”

  “I know. All I could think of was not to let anything happen to you on my watch. Henry . . . I mean Louis would have gone through the frigging roof,” he said with a smile in his tone.

  As they spoke, I busied myself by adjusting the IV and the monitors in the room to justify my eavesdropping. And then he said, “Well, I need to run to the lounge to make a few phone calls. Can I bring you something to—”

  “You could bring me—”

  “Besides cigarettes.”

  “Oh, then nothing,” she said with a smile as she stretched, apparently feeling the full effect of the medication. As Marcus left, I tucked her bed. “Cheryl?” she asked. “How do you enjoy working here?”

  “I like it. The hours are crazy . . . but that just how it is in the medical field.”

  “I’ve often wondered about that,” she said as she closed her eyes and then yawned. “Why they would have doctors working thirty-six-hour shifts when they’re making life-and-death decisions. I mean, air traffic controllers only work six-hour shifts and they get a two-hour break. I guess it’s all in the number of people you kill at once, huh?”

  “Yeah, the hours are long, but I think it’s been done that way forever, so I doubt it’ll ever change.” I picked up her medical records, preparing to leave, and said, “Okay, Mrs. Shaw, everything looks—”

  “Tell me something else,” she said, looking at me with sleep weighing heavily on her eyelids once again. “When you were in high school—”

  My heart came to a dead stop.

  “—did you want to be a nurse?”

  “Oh. I mean, umm, no, actually I didn’t. I had a sick husband and I nursed him so much I decided to make it a career.”

  “Umm,” she said. “So how long have you been married?”

  I could tell she wanted to enjoy not being Mrs. U.S. senator’s wife for a while, so I put the files down and returned to her bed. “Actually, I’m a newlywed. My first husband passed away.”

  She opened her eyes, which appeared fatigued, and looked at me as if she really did care as she said, “I’m sorry to hear that, but congratulations on your marriage. Do you have kids?”

  “I have one. Her name is Sarah.”

  “That’s wonderful,” she said, closing her eyes with a wistful smile. “That’s wonderful. It’s good to have kids, isn’t it?” And then her voice blew out like the soft light of a candle. Just as I turned to quietly walk away, her eyes reopened. “I’m sorry, this medicine has got me falling asleep. So, Cheryl, when you were a kid, what did you want to be?”

  I rubbed the linen of her bed with the tips of my fingers, and said, “Actually what I really wanted to be when I grew up was a housewife. Go figure, huh?”

  “Yeah,” she replied groggily. “But what you’re doing is good too, because you get to help people.”

  I saw her drifting off and I tried to stop myself, but I could not. I had to continue the conversation. “So . . . are you married?”

  Her eyebrows rose but her eyes remained closed. “Yep. Been married now going on thirteen years. We don’t have any kids, though. Never found the time, I guess.”

  I smiled. I wanted to ask her if she really loved him; if she thought he really loved her, but I couldn’t keep up the charade, so as her eyes closed, I turned again to walk out the room when the phone rang.

  Barely awake, she asked, “Will you get that for me, Cheryl? Please?”

  “Sure. Hello?” And it was him.

  “G’morning. Is this the room of Yvette Shaw?”

  “Yes. She’s right—”

  “Before you put her on,” Henry asked, “how is she doing?”

  As he said those words, I knew it would give me the closure I needed. His tone said he loved her and showed just how much he cared. “According to her charts . . . sir, she had a rough night, but this morning she’s doing much better.”

  “Great.” And then there was a pause as I prayed my voice had not changed that much in the past twenty years. “Listen, I’m in Texas and I’ll be flying back home this morning. Do you think she will still be there when I arrive about one o’clock?”

  “I don’t know, Hen . . . I mean sir. But I can have her doctor call you.” I hoped against hope that he’d not caught my slipup with his name.

  And then he said, “Thanks. Put her on the phone. Oh, wait,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  I looked at Leslie, who knew he was on the phone, so I could not lie to him and said, “Cheryl.”

  “Thanks.” Pause. “Cheryl.”

  I handed her the phone and saw her face light up as if his voice were the only medication she’d needed. As I left the room, I heard her call him Teddy and hoped the same medication would bring me the relief I needed as well.

  A week before Christmas, Brandon, who had been promoted within the Sheriff’s Department, was invited to a holiday fund-raiser. We rode in his Honda Accord through this exclusive neighborhood in South Beach named Harris Hills looking for the right address. As we drove around this corner there was no need to look at the house numbers, because the split-level home was identified by a row of just about every luxury car on the market. Dr. Kenneth Jarvis was a prosperous OB-GYN and held fund-raisers for African-American causes in his home twice a year. Every black person who was anyone in south Florida was present, and I immediately looked for—who else?—Henry. This was the type of function I was sure he would be a part of. But when I saw Leslie, my heart beat faster. As medicated as she had been in the hospital, and with me here in civilian clothes, I doubted she would make the connection, but I wasn’t positive. She was having a drink with Susan Taylor, Diane Atkinson, and several silver-haired rich-looking black women, and in my gut I had a feeling Henry was somewhere near.

  I left Brandon, who was talking to a couple of individuals from his job, and found a bathroom. I looked at my makeup in the mirror, and it seemed tired. I scrambled through my purse for a makeup brush to freshen it up and remembered I’d left it home. “Damn.” I started to search through the cabinet and found one with the double-G emblem on it under the basin. As I reapplied my makeup and repinned my hair, I thought,
This is the first time I’m going to see him face-to-face in over twenty years. Unlike at the Donahue show, I was prepared for whatever might happen. A part of me feared that Brandon would not understand why I’d been less than honest with him, but I would explain and hoped he’d not get too upset. As I pinned back the last remaining loose strands of hair, I looked at myself in the mirror. What was wrong with me? Here I was acting like I was in high school and I wanted Henry to take me to the prom. This man was married, very married, and very much in love with his wife. I smiled at myself in the mirror, patted my do, returned the expensive makeup brush, and walked out of the bathroom.

  “You look beautiful.” I was shocked to hear his voice behind me.

  “Hello, Herbert, how are you?”

  “God, it’s been a long time. What, ten, fifteen years now?”

  “Try twenty,” I said, wanting to ask him the obvious question.

  “Man oh man, is Henry going to be pissed that he missed this event.” Damn, I thought. He missed it? Wait a minute . . . He will be pissed? “Yeah, I can’t wait to rub it in that you were here. He’s in Chicago, or is it New Hampshire? I don’t even know anymore,” Herbert said, as he took a sip of his drink. “I just know it’s someplace cold as hell.”

  I gave him a “that’s nice” smile and saw him patting his pockets.

  “Listen,” he continued, “if you don’t mind, can I get your phone number for Henry? I know he will be happy to hear from you.”

  Happy to hear . . . from me? “Sure, why not?” I replied with insouciance, praying he wrote down every digit correctly and that Brandon would not walk around the corner looking for me.

  Our brief chat was cut short when Mrs. Henry Louis Davis called Herbert over to meet a few seemingly important people. Shuffling his hors d’oeuvres to one hand and shaking mine with two fingers of the other, he said, “Duty calls. I’ll make sure Henry gets your number. We both thought you were still in Arkansas for some reason.”

  As he walked away, I thought, Did he say both? That means my name has come up? So much for closure.

  After Herbert left, I walked into the living room and saw a trail of people headed toward the opposite wing of the house where jazz flowed like liquid velvet. As I entered the den I noticed a four-piece combo performing and a small crowd starting to gather around them. A poet from my old neighborhood of Liberty City who was called Skillet was in the midst of the combo, displaying his words.