Some Nerve

by Jane Heller

  The nurse, who was as fat as I was going to be if I kept eating my mother’s casseroles, said, “In case they didn’t teach you anything, you don’t ask about a patient’s medical condition and I don’t tell you about it. Got that?”

  “Okay, sure.” Three things wrong.

  I pushed my cart down the hall, hoping my next patient would be Goddard. But when I came to an open door, I was careful to check it for warning signs before entering. There weren’t any, so I knocked. “May I come in?”

  “Whatever,” said a female voice that wasn’t Goddard’s but sounded just as irritable as I expected his would be.

  I waltzed in. The patient had a splint on the bridge of her nose that was held in place with a wad of adhesive tape. “I’m Ann, and I’m a volunteer at Heartland General,” I said. “How are you feeling today?”

  “How do you think?” she snapped. “I look like a monster.”

  “No, you don’t,” I said, since it was my job to cheer her up. “You look lovely considering what you’ve been through.”

  “How the hell would you know what I’ve been through?” she said, narrowing her eyes at me.

  I figured I’d better stick to the script. “I have some magazines in the hall, and I’d be happy to bring you one.”

  “I don’t need a magazine,” she said, continuing to be cranky. “What I need is a bowel movement. The doctor won’t let me out of here until I have a really good one.”

  A shit report. Well, Claire said I’d be getting them.

  I wished the woman a speedy recovery and hurried out of the room. Unfortunately, I wasn’t watching where I was going and collided with a harp. I hit it in such a way that as I fell to the floor, my leg passed over its strings, causing an actual twang.

  “Nadine! I’m so sorry!” I said, recognizing the nun from my orientation as I picked myself up and smoothed my smock. “I hope I didn’t break anything.”

  She smiled and plucked a few notes to test out the instrument. “Fit as a fiddle,” she said. “I play those too, you know.”

  We talked briefly about our respective volunteering experiences thus far, and it was comforting to hear that I wasn’t the only one who’d encountered a couple of tough cookies. The difference between Nadine and me, however, was that she welcomed the challenges brought by the patients who were out of sorts. “Those are the ones we need to help the most,” she said.

  I admired her loving, forgiving nature, and wished I could follow her example when it came to Goddard. But I wasn’t a nun. I was a killer journalist.

  With a renewed sense of purpose, I pushed my cart farther down the hall, in search of my prey.

  “May I come in?” I said after knocking on a door that was open but only just a crack. When the patient didn’t answer, I tried again. “Hello? Anybody there?”

  “Uh, yeah. I’m here,” said a man sounding a little winded, “but just give me a second to get pretty.”

  My God! I’d found him! It had to be Goddard in that room! I’d recognize that mumble voice anywhere!

  Get pretty. I rolled my eyes. Who else would be so vain? And it made sense that he’d sound winded. He was having heart problems, according to Richard.

  I took lots of deep breaths as I prepared to act charming so I could ingratiate myself with him and coax him to talk. This was my moment. My once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. More deep breaths. Inhale, exhale.

  Okay, what’s the holdup, I thought as I waited for permission to enter. “May I come in now?” I said when I couldn’t wait any longer. I was crazy with anticipation and, yes, anxiety.

  When he answered in a low moan, “Oh, yeah,” I was trembling slightly but eager. I opened his door wider and stepped brightly into the room. “Hello. I’m Ann, and I’m a—”

  I froze in my tracks when I realized my mistake—the latest of what would be many mistakes. Goddard was nowhere in sight. The patient was a middle-aged man who was lying on his back stark naked, receiving a blow job from a middle-aged woman who had purple hair.

  What will always stick with me was the fact that they didn’t stop what they were doing when I caught them going at it. Either they were too carried away to care that they had an audience, or they were exhibitionist types who enjoyed having an audience. All I can tell you is that I was deeply unnerved by the situation, wracking my brain to remember if Jeff, the leader of the orientation, had covered the subject of patient sex and, if so, how we volunteers were supposed to handle it.

  “Sir, I really think you…It’s important that…Your health should be your primary concern,” I stammered, averting my eyes as the woman’s head continued to bob up and down over the man’s remarkable hard-on. I wondered if she’d smuggled him some Viagra. “This is a hospital, and while I don’t know anything about your medical condition—not that I’m asking—I’m sure that engaging in…Well, it can’t be good for you at this time.”

  They ignored me. The woman accelerated her efforts and the man stepped up his “Oh, yeah”s.

  “You need to stop now!” I said with more authority. “You could become a code blue, and it would be my fault if anything bad—”

  “Faster, faster,” he moaned to the woman, who seemed to me to be going fast enough.

  “I’m not kidding,” I said, fearing the guy might flatline on my watch and that I would be held responsible. “Please stop.”

  Of course, I should have fled the room and flagged down Pammy or one of the other nurses, but they already thought I was a doofus, so I guess I felt compelled to take charge. But how?

  I flashed back again to the orientation and ticked off all the codes Jeff had told us about. Which code did fellatio fall under? Not red for fire. Not orange for hazardous materials. Not pink for abducted babies. Code gray for security? Close enough.

  I grabbed the phone next to the man’s bed and dialed 111. The female operator answered in a gruff voice: “State the nature of the emergency.” All I could think of to say was: “Dangerous conduct on the part of a patient.” I meant “dangerous to himself,” obviously, but I was so flustered I made it sound as if he were a threat to me.

  Before I knew it, there was a SWAT team in the room. I know, I know. I can hardly recount this anecdote without cringing.

  Suffice it to say that the security guys were furious with me for dragging them up there for what was basically just rude and lascivious behavior, not to mention hearsay. (By the time they arrived, the woman had long since swallowed the evidence, so it was her word against mine.) The nurses were furious with me for causing a scene and adding unnecessary drama to their already hectic routine. (I offered them magazines and they rebuffed me.) And the patient was furious with me for exposing him as an adulterer. (It was his mistress who’d paid him the visit, not his wife.)

  “Okay, so you overreacted,” said Shelley after she was paged to the sixth floor to witness the spectacle that one of her volunteers had created. “Try to calm down.”

  “I am trying,” I said, red-faced and sweaty, “but I screwed up and I’m so sorry.”

  “You did screw up,” she acknowledged. “But here’s the rule of thumb: Always get a nurse. Don’t take these things on by yourself.”

  “I understand,” I said sheepishly, grateful she didn’t kick me off the team.

  She patted me on the shoulder. “Now put the incident behind you and jump back on the horse.” She checked her watch. “Two more hours to go on your shift. Better get moving.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  I was tempted to bolt from the sixth floor and peddle my wares elsewhere in the hospital—anything to avoid the snarky giggles and sideways glances from the staff after what had happened. But Shelley had advised me to put the incident behind me and jump back on the horse. So I sucked it up and kept going on six. Somewhere, Goddard was lurking. It was only a matter of time before I found him.

  “Hello? May I come in?” I said after knocking on a half-open door.

  “Of course.”

  A female voice. Damn.

 
; “I’m Ann, and I’m a volunteer,” I said to a young woman with a giant turban dressing wrapped around her head. When I entered her room, she was watching television and laughing. “What’s on?” I looked up at the screen that was mounted on the wall. I doubted that I would have been laughing if I’d been swaddled in that bandage.

  “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” she said, lowering the volume. “My mother loves Paul Newman.”

  I said my mother did too, and asked her how she was feeling.

  “Great,” she said, smiling. “This was my third brain surgery, so I hope they got all the cancer this time.”

  She’d had three brain surgeries and she was smiling? I’d had zero brain surgeries and I was moping. “I hope they did too,” I said, amazed by her positive attitude.

  “I always have hope,” she went on, her eyes shining with optimism. “It’s what keeps me going.”

  My God, she probably wouldn’t live to see her next birthday, but she hadn’t given up. I have to say, I found this more than a little inspiring.

  “Well, I should leave and let you get back to your movie.” I didn’t even bother to offer her a magazine or feed her one of the sappy speeches Claire had scripted for me. I mean, what do you say to a woman who’s dying? How could I possibly help her?

  And then it came to me. A way to make conversation that wouldn’t sound too Hallmarky but would allow me to talk about what I knew best. “Before I go, I heard a funny story about Paul Newman,” I said. “Your mother will get a laugh out of it.”

  Her eyes widened. “Tell me.”

  “Well, there’s a Baskin-Robbins near his house in Connecticut,” I began. “He went in one night and there was a woman in line in front of him. She was determined not to be one of those gushing fans who embarrass themselves by fawning over movie stars, so she overcompensated and acted as if she didn’t even notice that he was standing right behind her.”

  “And?” said the patient, eager for more.

  “After she paid for her order at the counter, she started to walk out of the store, not even glancing in Newman’s direction. Then she felt someone tap her on the shoulder. She turned, and there he was. ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘you just put your ice-cream cone in your purse.’”

  It was an old story and no one at Famous could confirm if it was Newman or Redford who’d delivered the line, since both men had houses in Connecticut, but the patient thought it was hilarious and couldn’t stop giggling.

  “That is a story I’ll tell for years,” she said between laughs. “Thanks for sharing it. You made my day.”

  A story she’ll tell for years, I thought as I waved good-bye. She didn’t have years. What she had were moments, and my story had provided her with a lighthearted one. I felt oddly gratified by that.

  “May I come in?” I asked when my cart and I reached the next room that had an open, signless door.

  “Sure,” said a male voice.

  It was too high for Goddard’s, I thought, but I was on heightened alert just in case.

  “Hello,” I said after entering and finding not a movie star but a man who couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds. He was a skeleton splayed out on the bed, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid of him, of going near him. He had that look—the one my father had. The look of death. I swallowed hard and forced myself to launch into my spiel.

  “I’d love a magazine,” he replied, somehow summoning enough strength to rouse himself up on his elbow and play the gracious host. “Something Hollywoody.”

  “You got it.” I hurried out to the cart and came back into the room with the latest issue of Famous, the one with Leonardo DiCaprio on the cover.

  “People say I used to look like him,” he said. “Before AIDS turned me into a beanpole.”

  Yep, he was wasting away, just like my father, and I started to feel the same old impulse to flee, to escape the panic I was feeling. But I stuck it out. I was there to be helpful, not cowardly. Besides, he was the one who was suffering. It was up to me to distract him from his symptoms, not obsess about my own.

  “So you were Leo’s twin, huh?” I teased, focusing on the twinkle in his eyes.

  “I was,” he insisted. “I’ll show you.” With a great deal of effort, he reached into the top drawer of the little bedside dresser and pulled out his driver’s license. “That was taken four years ago.”

  I studied his picture and shook my head. “Nope. You’re much better looking than Leo. His photo in Famous was airbrushed.” I nodded at the magazine. “My friend works there. She made every one of his zits disappear.”

  “Really?”

  “I swear.”

  I reeled off another celebrity factoid, but he was so weak his eyelids started drooping. When I tried to tiptoe out, he begged me to stay, explaining that his family was in Oklahoma and couldn’t fly up to see him. “And most of my friends are gone,” he lamented. “Some dead, some not interested in watching me die.”

  What do you say to that? Oh, come on. Cheer up? I think not.

  I decided not to say anything and to simply do as he asked, which was to stay with him for a while. I watched him drift in and out of sleep, watched his bony arms tense and relax, gave myself over to his needs, and realized, after twenty minutes at his bedside, that I hadn’t thought about Goddard once. Not for a second. Was this what Shelley meant whenever she waxed poetic about how rewarding it was to be a volunteer? This sense of feeling useful, of being completely at someone else’s disposal, of having the experience be about them, not about you? I had never considered myself a selfish person—I was Ann Roth, the journalist who wasn’t cutthroat enough for Harvey—but there was something about offering a patient a tiny window of comfort that felt, well, unselfish. And satisfying.

  When I finally started to leave, he pointed to the cover of Famous and said with a mischievous smile, “Airbrushed.”

  I laughed. “That’s right, and yours was the real thing.”

  “See you again?” he asked.

  “Count on it,” I said, knowing that someone with his disease couldn’t count on much.

  I was almost buoyant as I continued down the hall on six. When I spotted one of the nurses on the floor, I didn’t shrink away because of the code gray incident; I waved to her. And, miracle of miracles, she waved back.

  “I’m Rolanda,” she said as I approached with my cart. She was a pretty black woman with intricately woven dreadlocks. “I’d stop and talk but we’re really busy today.” She shrugged. “Same as every other day.”

  “Then I can be an extra pair of hands,” I said, parroting a phrase Richard had used when describing volunteers.

  She sighed wearily. “Extra hands would be great.”

  “Any room in particular?” I said, thrilled that a nurse was actually talking to me instead of snickering about me. I felt like one of the gang instead of an outcast.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “The guy in 613 is a new admission, and he’s a handful already. He’s complaining that his room has a draft. I’ve gotta call engineering.”

  A new admission. A handful already. Complaining.

  Here we go, I thought, feeling my newfound self-confidence evaporate in an instant, only to have it replaced by a case of performance anxiety. Yes, this was showtime, I just knew it. Goddard had finally been admitted to the hospital and he was giving everybody some don’t-mess-with-my-vessel attitude and I was about to begin my campaign to win back my job. Excitement and dread. The twin demons. They were both lodged in my throat at that moment.

  “You okay?” asked Rolanda. She looked up at me after scribbling on a patient’s chart.

  “You bet,” I said. “See you later.”

  When I reached room 613, I peeked inside and saw that a couple of doctors were hovering over the patient. As per Claire’s don’ts, I remained in the hall, waited for them to leave, and knocked only after the coast was clear.

  “May I come in?” I called out.

  “Jesus. Now what?” was the respons
e. “I just got here and everybody’s harassing me.”

  Okay, I thought, wiping my now sweaty palms on my smock. He’s here. No mistaking that mumble or the grouchy tone. This is it, Ann. Your big chance. Don’t screw it up.

  “I’m a volunteer,” I said brightly, still standing in his doorway since he hadn’t given me permission to enter. “I’d like to see how you’re doing, find out if you have any questions, offer you something to read.”

  “Who can read with people barging in here every two seconds?” he barked.

  I was determined to remain pleasant and courteous. I hated the guy, sure, but I would have to be just as good an actor as he was if I had a prayer of getting him to open up. “You sure you wouldn’t like a magazine?” I said with a perky lilt. “I’ve got the latest issue of Field and Stream.” Well, it was a favorite with male patients, according to Claire.

  He laughed derisively. “A big no.”

  “Well, then how about a visit from a harmless volunteer who won’t stick you with a needle or take your blood pressure?” I tried again, hoping some medical humor might do the trick. “It can be pretty disorienting when you first land in a hospital. Maybe I can ease the transition for you.”

  “What I want is an extra blanket. This place is a meat locker.”

  There it was, all right. The low growl, the whispery mumble, the arrogant tone. Apparently, our tough guy wasn’t taking to Missouri weather, poor dear. “I’ll track one down and be right back,” I said.

  I went to the nearby supplies closet, got him his blankie, and stepped inside the room, trying not to let the enormity of the situation overwhelm me. “Hello,” I said as I approached the bed and, careful not to disturb any of the electrodes attached to his chest, spread the white polyester number across his body. “I’m Ann and I—”

  I stopped. No, not because I was awestruck, like the first time I’d met him at Spago. This time, it was because the man in that bed, as handsome as he was, looked different to me, like Goddard only not quite. It wasn’t because he was wearing a hospital gown instead of his customary black leather or because he was hooked up to a heart monitor instead of a posse of hangers-on. There was something else that was off, something—