He went in for an interview and talked his way into the job. He nodded when Elaine told him what he’d have to do, all the unglamorous business of cleaning bedpans, putting ointment on bedsores, trailing the nurses around and hopping to do whatever anyone told him. He needed a uniform, but he could hardly wear a blue dress like the other aides. “Get yourself some blue dress shirts,” Elaine told him. “Wear black pants. With a name tag, you’ll be fine.”
For the first few days, all he did was follow Elaine around. He made mental notes about where things were so he could find them again quickly. The supply closet was by the elevator, the nurse’s station was at the end of the hall. He tried to pick up the lingo. “Feeders” were the people he had to feed, the ones who couldn’t hold a spoon or fork. “Slow feeders,” he soon learned, were the worst. “Code brown” was when someone defecated in the bed and guess who had to clean it up? He mopped up pee and vomit. He changed lightbulbs and helped people walk the corridors to get back their muscle strength.
The protocol was the hardest to learn and Lewis began to carry a small notebook and pencil with him to take notes. There were nurses who wore black shoes and no cap because they didn’t have their license yet, but he still had to listen to them and do what they said. Lewis made a point of looking at everyone’s name badge because Ava had always told him that people liked it when you called them by name. But the nurses didn’t like it. “Morning, Laura,” he said and Laura frowned at him. “Miss Miller,” she said pointedly, and then she told him to go collect the bedpan from room 209. He had questions, but every time he asked one—why did they thump the chest of someone with bronchitis? why did you need to flush an IV line?—a nurse would look at him as if he had interrupted her thinking. “Why do you want to know?” she would respond, as if he couldn’t possibly understand.
The doctors, of course, totally ignored him. They were all men, who swept through the rooms in their white lab coats, and when Lewis was in their path, they glanced at him as if he were something unpleasant in their way, and then refused to make eye contact or to return his hello, which made Lewis want to thunk his own chest, just to make sure he was still there. “Don’t speak to the doctors, they’re busy,” Elaine said.
“Like we’re not?” Lewis said, and Elaine laughed. “You’re learning,” she said.
His first week at work, he watched Elaine change the dressings of an older patient named Mr. Walker, whose wife had shot him in the stomach. Elaine sat on one of the yellow plastic chairs and bent over Mr. Walker and motioned for Lewis to sit and watch. “There you go,” she said, finishing up, looking at Lewis. Mr. Walker grunted and turned his face to the wall. “Where’s my wife?” he said.
Lewis was about to say something when a doctor strode into the room. He was young, with a Band-Aid on his neck, and he cleared his throat, looking meaningfully at both of them. Elaine leaped to her feet. She nudged Lewis. “Stand,” she hissed, and Lewis did.
“Good morning, Dr. Ryan,” she said. She glared at Lewis.
“Morning, Dr. Ryan,” he said.
The doctor didn’t respond. Instead, he glanced at the chart and then at the patient. “He was coughing earlier,” Elaine said, and the doctor nodded, not taking his eyes off the chart, not writing anything down. He leaned over and looked at the dressing.
“We’ll do a CBC,” the doctor said. “What?” Mr. Walker said. “What are you going to do? A CB-what?” The doctor ignored him, gliding out and as soon as he did, Elaine sat back down again. “What’s happening?” Mr. Walker said. “What did the doctor just say?”
“He’s going to do a complete blood count,” Lewis said. “Here, I’ll write it down so you can remember. Don’t worry, it’s routine.” Lewis scribbled into the notebook, tore off the page, and handed it to Mr. Walker.
He took the piece of paper and looked at it. “Now I know,” he said.
Lewis followed Elaine out of the room. “That was good, what you did,” Elaine said quietly. “Best medicine in the world is acting like a human being to someone else.”
At the end of his shift, he was always so tired, he felt as if he were sleepwalking. When he got back to his small rented room, he would smell the hospital—antiseptic, feces, urine—and it took him a minute to realize the smell was on him. He washed out his blue shirt, one of four he had bought at the Thrift-T-Mart, so it would be ready when he needed it, smoothed his pants across his tiny table because he didn’t own an iron, and got in the shower, turning the water as hot as he could stand it. He carefully set his alarm, flopped on the bed, and fell asleep. When he awoke the next morning, he was always startled it was a new day.
He had a whole hour before he had to be at work. Lewis spent the time tearing apart the sheets from his bed and practicing making hospital corners. He threw his laundry in the center of the mattress, bunching it up like a patient, and pretended to make the bed with a body in it. He went through all the procedures, wanting to perfect them all.
It didn’t take him long to show Elaine how responsible he was, what a quick learner, and soon he was on his own. “You’re ready,” she said.
She gave him a pager for when she needed him and told him to walk the floors, to pay attention to the call lights over the rooms. He had a list of patients he was supposed to check up on, to feed them meals, to make their beds, to get whatever it was that they wanted, and his job included cleaning. “I’ll check up on you when I can, okay?” she asked and he couldn’t help but feel a skip of joy.
All day, Lewis was in and out of patients’ rooms. Sometimes it was terrible, pain radiating from the beds, patients curled up. Once he came upon a woman sleeping, a smile on her face, and though he was trying to be quiet, he woke her. She jolted up, bursting into tears. “I was dreaming!” she cried. “And now I’m in the goddamned hospital!” She rubbed at her eyes. “Get out!” she shouted at him. “Get out!”
Patients wanted to know why he had become a nursing assistant, where was he from because his accent was so funny, and how old was he anyway? The women mothered him and fussed. They wanted to know if he had a girlfriend, but Lewis noticed they didn’t ask him if he wanted to meet their daughters or nieces. The men, though, stiffened at his touch and said little. Well, they didn’t have to love him. Most of them stayed only a week at the most, and then they were replaced by someone else. All he had to do was care for them while they were there, and that was easy enough.
Lewis had been alone for so long that he found he liked talking to the patients. Every illness seemed to have a narrative to it. A patient wasn’t just a heart attack, but a man who had been overeating because his wife had left him and now food was the only thing that gave him solace, other than his Beach Boys records. A young girl with diabetes was madly in love with her boyfriend, who came every visiting hour and held her hand, and she confided in Lewis that she was terrified about his going to war. “He wants to fight Communists,” she said bitterly, and Lewis thought of Mr. Corcoran from the old neighborhood, how he threw around words like Red Scare and Yellow Menace in even the most casual conversations.
All these lives and he got to glimpse them. He was disappointed when he came into a room and someone was sleeping, faced turned into the pillow, or worse, when someone was hooked up to tubes and machines, their eyes shut. Still, he sat by them. He spoke to patients by name, took their hands, some of them mottled and bruised from the IVs. “You’re going to be fine,” he reassured, even if he didn’t know if it was true. He loved how patients perked up when they recognized him, how they needed him. A patient wanted something—a cup of water, an explanation of a procedure—and Lewis could take care of it. It made Lewis feel as if he had a place in the world.
Every floor had its own feeling—and its own nurses. The only floor he hadn’t been on was the maternity ward, where he wasn’t allowed because he was male. “It’s inappropriate,” Elaine told him.
“There’s men on that floor,” Lewis said. “I see them get off there all the time.”
“Dads and
doctors,” Elaine said. “And the fathers stay in the waiting room with the TV, right where they belong. No one wants men messing around in the delivery room. I sure as hell didn’t.”
Sometimes, depending on the nurse on duty, he wasn’t allowed to do certain things for female patients, no matter what floor they were on. He couldn’t give a sponge bath to an elderly woman, even though she was so heavily sedated, she’d have never known he was there. He wasn’t supposed to help the teenager in room 404 to change out of her clothes into a johnny, though she had been waiting for a nurse to help her for over an hour.
He asked how it was different for male doctors, but the head nurse gave Lewis a glassy stare. “Since when did you go to medical school?” she said. “Don’t compare yourself.”
The nurses all knew about him, the only male nurse’s aide, and sometimes Lewis would see a group walking by, as if they had come deliberately to gawk. Elaine told him they had had a man three years ago working as a nurse. “But he was different,” Elaine said. “He came from the marines. Really strong, really gentle. Anytime we needed help carting a patient somewhere, he was our guy. He didn’t stay long, though. After he saw a few patients die, that was it for him. He ended up going back to school to be an engineer.” She looked pointedly at Lewis’s hands, at his bitten nails. “He was married, too,” she said.
“I’m only nineteen,” Lewis said and she shrugged.
“I was married at eighteen,” Elaine said. She held up her hand so he could see the ring, large and sparkling on her finger.
ALL THAT HAD been almost a year ago, and now being at the hospital had a sort of routine to it. Lewis loved his days, but when the workday was over, he didn’t looked forward to going home alone to his tiny room. Once he was there, there was really nowhere to go. His loneliness pounded like a headache. All around him were young couples from the university, holding hands, kissing, flirting. He was surrounded by opportunity, so why couldn’t he make something happen for himself? He tried. He went to double features at the Bijoux, his feet up on the chair above him. During the second, older movie, Hud, a young woman slid into his row and sat beside him. She had long, dark hair and a small, serious face, and he couldn’t concentrate on Paul Newman anymore because he wanted to talk to her. He imagined what he might say to her after the film, how they might go grab a coffee. When the lights came on, he leaned toward her, smiling. “Wasn’t that movie amazing?” he said, and she blinked at him, as if she hadn’t realized he was sitting beside her. She turned and moved out of the row, not saying a word to him, and when he left, he tripped over her popcorn box. He sat in on evening classes, but when he tried to talk to a woman, she held her finger up across her mouth for silence, her gaze turning to the lecture. He kept hoping he’d see the same people around town, so he could say hello without anyone thinking he was nuts, but he never did.
At work, the nurses and aides might not have wanted to have much to do with him, but there were other people on the hospital staff. Every morning, he and Mick, an orderly, would toss a “Hey, how you doing?” at each other when they passed on the floor. “Can’t complain,” Mick would say, swabbing the floor, and then Mick would concentrate on the spots he had missed and go silent. Lewis figured this would go on forever if he didn’t press for more. He was leaving work when he saw Mick with John, who worked in the cafeteria dishing out the food, and both of them were carrying bowling bags. “Where do you bowl?” he asked and Mick turned to him. “Pins Palace. You know it?”
Lewis had no idea where it was, but he nodded his head enthusiastically. “Great place to bowl,” he said.
Mick considered him. “A few of us get together every Friday. Bowl a few games, have a few beers, some laughs,” he said. “You want to come?”
The last time Lewis had bowled was with Jimmy and Rose, back when they were kids, candlepins at the Wal-Lex, all of them so bad that no one bothered keeping score.
“I’d love it,” Lewis said.
NONE OF THE guys were older than thirty-five, but to Lewis, they looked weathered by life. Mick already had a slight paunch he covered with a yellow bowling shirt, and John was balding, and Tom, who was new to him, had faded tattoos on both forearms. All of them were married with families, and as soon as they all got settled on their lane, John pulled out his wallet to show off his kid. “Get a load of this little one,” John said, showing Lewis a photograph of a little girl with a gap-toothed grin. “That’s my Gracie.” Mick had an eight-year-old girl who loved horses, and Tom had twin freckle-faced boys who were in kindergarten. “Bedlam at my house,” Tom said, but he was smiling when he said it.
The men talked about their wives, too. Tom rolled up his sleeve to show Lewis a big gauze pad. “That’s from making fried chicken,” he said. “And I was just an innocent bystander, watching my gal doing the frying.” They all laughed and Mick told about how his wife put all their extra change in wish jars, one for a trip to Niagara Falls, another for a new washer, as if a few extra quarters could make their dreams come true. “You have someone?” John asked Lewis.
“Not yet,” Lewis said. “But I’m open to suggestions.”
Mick laughed. “You wouldn’t like anyone my wife would fix you up with.”
“I might,” Lewis said hopefully, but Mick waved his hand. “Trust me on this one,” Mick said.
“It’ll happen when it happens,” John said.
The other guys were decent bowlers, but Lewis barely broke ninety, and he had more than a few gutter balls. None of the men seemed to care. “Straighten your arm,” Tom told him. “Keep your feet farther apart.” They cheered when Lewis did better, clapping when he got a spare. They bought him a beer and slapped him on the back. By the end of the night, Lewis’s arm was sore, he was drunk, and he couldn’t wait for the next outing.
One Friday night, Tom didn’t show up. “Where’s Tom?” Lewis said, and Mick and John exchanged glances. “What?” Lewis said. John took him aside. “His wife left him,” he said, his voice low. “He moved to Detroit.”
“What?” Lewis remembered the way Tom talked about how beautiful his wife was, how lucky he was. Tom had never shown up at bowling looking morose; his game had never changed. “When? Why?”
“It’s been going on a long time,” John said.
“I don’t get it,” Lewis said. “How did I not know this?”
John picked up a bowling bowl and put it in Lewis’s hands. “C’mon, we’re here to bowl, not jaw like dames,” he said.
All that weekend, Lewis thought about Tom. Lewis had thought he had known him, or at least was getting to know him, but look how wrong you could be. It made him wonder how well he really knew John or Mick, or when you thought about it, how well they knew him. When he talked, he shot the breeze about the hospital or Madison. It was all casual, loose as pocket change that never added up to anything.
He didn’t want to stay in his apartment so he grabbed his map of Madison and struck out on a walk, looking for new pockets of the city.
IT WAS SATURDAY night, at work, and Lewis rounded the corner, nearly bumping into an old woman. She had on a pink floral bathrobe and she was hanging on to an IV, but when she saw him, she stopped short, staring at him. Her white hair flew about her face like dust motes. “Do you need help?” Lewis always asked, because sometimes people didn’t want to feel like they did, and if you asked, at least they felt that they had some control over the situation. Her hands began to tremble and she walked toward him, dragging her IV. She touched the pads of her fingertips to his chest. Her fingers were so cold, Lewis immediately began piecing together a diagnosis from what he had read in the nursing manuals. Circulation disorder. Thyroid. “Are you okay?” Lewis asked.
“You’re real,” she said, in amazement. Her finger sped across his forehead. They felt like mice feet to him. Then her fingers flew through his hair. “It’s you,” she whispered.
“Who?”
“You’re Jesus,” the woman said. “I’ve waited all my life to see you and here you are.
Have you come for me? Is it finally my time?” Lewis let her take his hands. He folded his fingers around hers, while her eyes searched his face. “I’m not Jesus,” he said. “I’m a nurse’s aide. And I’m Jewish,” he added with a smile.
“Jesus started as a Jew.” Her mouth wavered, and for a moment, he wondered if he should have let her think what she wanted. She coughed and then she suddenly laughed. “Don’t you think I know that the Lord works in mysterious ways?” she said.
“Let’s get you back to bed.” He took her arm, like an escort to the prom, guiding her back toward her room. The whole time they were walking, she kept looking around at all the other people, holding her head up like a show pony. “I’m walking with Jesus!” she crowed.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Don’t you know it? Don’t you know everything?” She winked at him.
He smoothed her around the corner and into her room. Her bed had the covers thrown back as if she had been in a hurry. There was a glossy magazine on the bed, the pages spread open.
“Doris,” Lewis guessed. “Mary.” He glanced at the cover of the magazine. Top Ten Tips to Keep Your Man. He pressed his lips together so he wouldn’t laugh. “Adele.”
“Wrong, wrong, wrong.” She shook her head.
“Lisa,” he said. “Mary Ellen. Betsy.”
“Sheila,” she said triumphantly.
Lewis held her as if she might break. “Careful now,” he said, as he lowered her onto her bed. She sunk against the pillows, and she took his hand. “Talk to me,” she said. “Nobody ever talks to me.”
He sat down next to her bed. “I grew up right here in Madison,” she said, yawning. “What about you?”
He told her about growing up in Waltham, about Rose and Jimmy and his mother, but he left out what had really happened. Sheila was supposed to be talking, too, but every time he slowed down or grew silent, she would wave her hands. “Tell me more,” she urged, and she was so interested, so focused on him, that he spilled out more of his story. The more he talked, the more he felt as if he were unbottling himself. His hands relaxed on his knees. He breathed more deeply.
Is This Tomorrow Page 17