"Didn't mean to interrupt your lunch." Oh, yes I did, I think devilishly.
His eyes are back on his cig, but he's still smiling, and quivering. "It's okay," he says so low I can hardly hear him.
Still trying to be cool and detached, I nod, "So I'll see you in there, I guess." I get about ten yards when Stacy runs up to me and grasps my arm. "He's very shy."
"Yeah."
"No, I mean it. He's very, very shy."
I smile. "Got it."
She's not smiling. "He's been through a lot, Tammy. You have to be careful with him."
I kick a few clods of dirt with my toe. "I understand, Stace."
"No, I mean it. He's been through some shit, a long time ago, before any of us ever met him. You don't know. I don't even know. I sometimes wonder if Mr. Tafford knew everything that went on."
I search her face. "I... heard things like... his folks beat him..."
"Yeah, but that wasn't all. There's more. I can feel it. I know not to ask."
I watch him stare at his cigarette. He's still smiling, lost in a tiny world of black ash and red glow.
What is he thinking about?
"He loves you, Tammy," she says softly. "He really loves you. He always has."
"I know." I've always known.
I've had his phone number for years.
Maybe I just love touching him.
"But he can turn off his feelings faster than anyone I've ever known."
"Yeah," I nod. I've seen him do it.
"Please, if you're going to... just please, be good to him. Don't hurt him."
A breeze sighs across the back of my neck. The blue sky is disappearing swiftly, giving way to grey overcast, an approaching storm. A single raindrop lands on my nose.
His protean face silently works on what's just happened.
I'd never... I shake my head silently at her. Not ever.
sixteen:
jamie
(mid-december)
What a circus it's been! I don't think anything's been right since Peggy Mattheis came here with her fractured pelvis. I mean, nobody around here can get anything right! You name it, it's been the shambles. Even at mealtimes. We give out a menu and the patients circle what they prefer, chicken, pork, fish or beef. Well, Peggy says she can't digest pork and she doesn't like fish. So what does she end up with? Pork or fish, every time.
Tammy's as glad to see me clock in as his mom is. On one of my nights off, Peg rolls over too far in her bed (some dingbat aide left the rails down) and starts sliding to the floor. She uses her call button and some flake answers, "Can I help you?" really snotty like.
"Yes," Peg moans. "I've rolled over in bed and I'm about to fall out!"
"Okay, Ma'am, someone will be right there." So Peg waits and waits. She grabs the call light again. "Can I help you?"
"Yes, please. Someone needs to come help me get back in bed. I'm weak and in pain and about to fall down on the floor!"
"Alrighty, Ma'am. We'll send someone right down."
She uses the call button five or six times, and nobody ever does come, at least nobody from the nursing staff. She finally sees a housekeeper or somebody pass by the door and she cries, "Excuse me, sir, can you help me? I know you're not supposed to touch the patients, but can you please help me get back into bed?" When I hear about it the next day, I'm fit to be tied, and Tammy's ready to take her home against medical advice.
Then, around December 15th or 16th or so, Peg develops a dry cough. They do chest x-rays and tell her it's pneumonia. I'm off that day, so what happens? Some nurse walks in with Levaquin. For some reason, the allergy sticker has vanished off the front of the chart. The nurse argues with Tammy, "It's not in her chart!"
"Trust me," Tammy says. "She's allergic to that stuff! I'm her son, I would know! Get your head out of your ass!"
After a good fifteen minutes of arguing with Tammy, the nurse finally calls the MD and gets the Levaquin changed to something else.
Some of the disasters that occur are quite entertaining. Like the Fan Episode, as we call it. Tammy's Uncle Price and Aunt Sharon come to visit, and right away, Sharon starts raving about "that good looking Dr. Mumy". I don't wonder. Her husband used to be kind of nice looking, Tammy says, but now he's old and has unruly grey hair and a long, wild beard like someone from the bible. Sharon is dressed to impress, in this really tacky bright blue sequined top and screaming fuchsia lipstick. She has me, Tammy and even Peggy chortling with hands over our mouths as she goes on and on about how cute she thinks Dr. Mumy is.
Anyway, the Fan Episode. See, Peggy's sick of laying in bed day after day and they keep it so blasted hot in that place that she feels like she's suffocating. So Tammy goes to K-Mart or Wal-Mart and buys a nice, small oscillating fan and brings it in. Peggy loves that cool air blowing right into her face. We're all standing around feeling cold and she's feeling great.
I come in to check on Peggy. She's dozing. Tammy's sitting in his usual chair. Aunt Sharon sits on the other side of the bed, and she starts rattling off about, "Well, I think if Sis would get out of this bed and get walking, she'd feel a lot better."
"Uh, no," Tammy says, rolling his eyes. "Her pelvis is fractured, which means she can't walk anywhere until it's healed completely."
She snaps, "Well, who are you? You don't have no credentials!"
Tammy shrugs and fixes his eyes on the TV. Meanwhile, Uncle Price is just leaning up against the wall, staring at nothing in particular. Sharon starts in again, "Yep, I'll bet if Sis got up and got moving around, she'd feel better."
"That's not what the nurses say," sighs Tammy. "They say that with a fractured pelvis, it's best not to move."
He might as well be talking to the TV. "Don't you think so, Price?" asks Sharon.
Uncle Price says slowly, thoughtfully, "That's... a nice... fan."
Tammy and I snort.
"Maybe someone should ask Dr. Mumy," Sharon says forcefully.
"Dr. Mumsy?! He's a quack!" Tammy sneers. "Jamie's the one who had to convince him to take more x-rays so they'd see how bad her pelvis is!"
"Hmph!" Aunt Sharon regards me through narrowed eyes. How could anyone badmouth or challenge Dr. Mumy? "I think maybe Price should go talk to him. I'm sure he'd know better than a nurse. Price, why don't you go find that Dr. Mumy?"
"You just want to see him because you're hot for him," Tammy laughs.
"And you're a smart ass!" blusters Sharon. "You should've had your ass paddled a lot more growing up."
"What... kinda... fan... is that?" Uncle Price says. He hasn't heard one word of this discussion. He's not interested in anything but Peggy's fan. We watch him as he shuffles over to the fan, and he starts touching it, rubbing it. Meanwhile, Peggy's out of it, just drifting in and out of sleep, and the whole time, Sharon's just rattling, "Well, I think if Sis would just get up and get moving, she'd really get to feeling better..."
Price moseys out of the room, to go to the restroom of something, and in twenty minutes, he's back with a bunch of nurses and orderlies and housekeepers. "And I want you all to see this fan!" he bellows, jolting Peggy out of her half-sleep.
Tammy and I run out into the hallway and just split our guts.
"Is he crazy?" I giggle.
Tammy stops laughing, looks at me, frowns. "No."
Terrified I've offended him, I stammer, "Oh... no... I..."
"He's gone," Tammy giggles. "Hasta-fucking-luego!"
As we crack up, Tammy leans into me and grasps both my wrists. His head bumps into my chest as he laughs. I smell his sweat and shampoo. I inhale deeply.
He steps back. "Sorry."
I look down at my shoelaces. "Well, I have to go do some rounds."
"Alright," he whispers. "Come back when you're done."
Unless I'm doing rounds or answering call lights, I'm sitting with them during my shift. I even take my charts into their room. I can't concentrate very well though. Every so often, I look up and find him looking at me. We watch TV late into the
night while Peg sleeps. When she's awake, the three of us talk quietly, and I feel like I've always known them. I dare to feel like I have a new family. So much for deciding to be a loner. It's almost as if Tammy never left town, as if sixteen years was no more than a moment... almost...
Even after my shift ends, I linger, wanting to spend every possible moment close to them. Tammy laughs at me. "Are you ever going home?"
"Pretty soon," I yawn.
"You're lonely," he winks.
"Shut up." I stick my tongue out at him. "I have my cats."
"I'm getting pretty tired. I'm going to go home for a while."
I follow him out like a lost puppy, and we walk quietly together until I reach Lloyd's car.
"How come you haven't called me?"
He stumbles over his answer. "Oh. I'm never sure if you're asleep. I don't want to wake you... you work hard, you know? When do you work again?"
"Tonight. Probably another double."
He reaches down and cups my chin. "See what I mean? You work too hard." He smiles, then continues across the lot to his car.
I never thought it possible to be more in love with him than I was in high school, more in love than I was just a few days ago. With every passing moment, I tumble deeper. He's a master. A spider. And I'm a fly. Everything he does magically pulls me in to where he's waiting.
That evening, the fan is gone. We search the entire floor, but it's disappeared. Tammy's pissed and so am I. Who on earth would steal a fan from some poor bedbound lady?
We report it to the big old nurse manager I've worked with for the past two years. She's a big-boned, sour-pussed, grey-haired old biddy who was a day shift charge nurse over in the OB wing before being promoted to a night super. Her name is Paulina Holstein. I call her The Heifer, Tammy calls her Nurse Ratchet. He can't stomach her. (She's the one who called Peggy "lazy" when she couldn't get out of bed.)
She comes in and drawls, "What fan?"
"It's a fan I bought for my mom. I brought it in few days ago."
"Hmmm," says Paulina Holstein. "You shouldn't have been allowed to bring it in. We have a policy. No outside electrical appliances. Jamie should have told you about it." She gives me a dirty look.
"I didn't think a brand new fan was that big a deal," I reply. "His mom was feeling smothered. She needed it."
"Humph!" Paulina scowls. "Don't you think maybe a fan would make her pneumonia worse? Since she can't get up and walk herself to the bathroom? I'd think a fan would be the last thing she'd need."
Tammy has a great retort. "She wanted the fan, I got her the fan. You people keep this place too hot! I think that's what would make her worse!"
I can see the smoke billowing from Paulina's ears. "Well, I'm really sorry about your fan, but we can't take any responsibility if someone came in and stole it." Her white oxfords (she prides herself on being a nurse from the "old school") squeak loudly and her huge rump wags in her starchy white skirt as she leaves the room.
Tammy nudges me gently. "You in trouble?"
"Naw," I say. "I've been here ten years. She doesn't bother me."
"Kind of a bitch though, huh?"
"She's been that way from the first day I got here. I've only had to deal directly with her for a couple of years, praise God."
"Ten years? How come you're not the manager?"
"Ugh! No thanks. Don't want the headaches. Being a charge nurse is stressful enough. Besides, this is a Catholic hospital. They don't promote guys like me, if you get my drift."
"Oh," Tammy frowns.
Paulina returns with a fan. It's really dirty and dusty and right away we both say, "That's not her fan."
"Well, I know it's not her fan. It's the fan from our prayer room. She can borrow it for tonight, but we'll want it back."
"Well, thank you most kind," Tammy says, emulating her patronising tone without a glitch. "We'll still be on the lookout for ours."
The Heifer flashes him a phony smile and goes her way.
For a while we wonder if Uncle Price took it, since he found it so irresistibly fascinating. Tammy's about to question him when the fan reappears out of the blue, right back at Peg's bedside. Later, a housekeeper tells Tammy, "Oh, I'm sorry. I thought it belonged to the hospital and I took it. Someone needed it in the prayer room for a death or something."
The Cool-Aid Episode occurs a couple of days after the Fan Episode. Peg has been feeling really dehydrated. The nurses encourage her to drink water, but the water at our hospital is heavily chlorinated, terrible. Anyway, Tammy says Peg's never been one to drink plain water, glass after glass, so he mixes up some orange Cool-Aid and what he has available to carry it in is a two litre soda bottle. Peg has had a couple of glasses of it and is feeling better.
A few hours later, the Cool-Aid's gone.
The Heifer comes waddling in. "I see you found your fan," she says snidely.
"Yes, well, there's another little problem," I inform her. "The Cool-Aid's missing."
"The Kewl-Aid?" she cries.
"Yes!" and Tammy describes how he mixed up the orange drink and brought it in. He also adds a tidbit about the hospital water's chlorine content.
Uh oh! That's a no-no. Paulina turns on her heels and marches out the door without another word. Less than five minutes later, she returns with the Head Sister and some other nunny nurses. "Don't you think someone just carried it out on the tray?" asks Head Sister, sickening honey pouring from her mouth.
Tammy shakes his head, "No, I doubt it. It was a bottle about this big..." He explains it to them that he brought it in from home for Peg to drink because she was dehydrated, and there's no reason a nurse or anyone else should have taken it. The nurses look at him like he's crazy.
A short time after, in come Sharon and Ol' Price. The old buzzard says he poured the Cool-Aid out and threw the bottle away. It was in his way, he says.
After that, the nurses have Tammy's number. They're so mean to him. Both he and I try to apologise but it does no good. "You don't bother me," Paulina Holstein says with her phony grin. "I've been here for twenty years. You don't get to me." She must have heard me talking about my ten years here the other day. She's a real hateful thing.
Disaster drops in on Peggy every time I have a day or so off. The latest snafu has me praying furtively that they'll release her ASAP. I'm with Tammy. She'd be safer at home. I mean it.
seventeen:
tammy
(approaching christmas)
Mom is no sooner over the worst of her pneumonia when something scary happens on Christmas Eve eve. When I come into her room a few days after the Cool-Aid incident, I'm met with Jamie, returning after two days off, running worriedly around the room, unplugging Mom's machines, tucking her IV tubes carefully around her. Mom smiles at me, but she looks scared too. "What's wrong?" I demand, knowing it's not something stupid, like with the fan or the Cool-Aid.
"I just came on. I'm sending your mom upstairs," he says anxiously.
"Why?"
He whispers, "Don't worry, Tammy. It might be nothing. I just want to be sure."
I can tell he's lying. "Uh-uh, tell me what's wrong," I say harshly.
He murmurs, "She might have a blood clot in her leg." He pulls her blankets back. Her left leg is swollen huge, red and tight. It's hot to the touch. "I can't feel a pedal pulse in that foot. I told them to watch for this, but she's been like this all day, she says! She's been telling the nurses, but they didn't listen! She told them that her leg's been hurting really bad!"
I barely keep my temper in check as Jamie wheels her to the elevator. "What'll they do about it?" I ask.
"The doctor's ordered a CT scan, and a heparin drip if there's a clot, to dissolve it. They'll watch her closely. It's very serious."
"Yeah, no shit," I mutter. "Fucking incompetents working here!"
Jamie tells me that when he phoned Dr. Mumsy about Mom's leg, Mumsy yelled at him and almost hung up on him. "He just mad because he's on call today and doesn't want to be."
Once she's in ICU, they watch her like a hawk, but that's only because each nurse has a maximum of two patients each. They do a CAT scan on her leg, and sure enough, there is a clot. If Jamie hadn't caught it when he did, it might have broken loose and gone into her heart and killed her.
When I cool off, I go looking for him. He's on his break, outside smoking. And crying. I've never been good with Jamie crying. He looks so thin I want to drag him to the cafeteria and make him eat something fattening. "You okay?" I ask softly. It's cold, a low fog clings to the earth, that humid cold that seeps into your bones and makes them hurt.
"Yeah... just worried about your mom." His breath makes a mist.
I kneel close to him. His body contracts into a little knot of tension. "She'll be okay," I say, trying to smile.
"I'm so sorry, Tammy," he sniffles.
I don't understand why he's apologising. He's the one who helped her. He's the one who saved her. "You don't think I'm mad at you, do you?"
"No."
But I'm not convinced "Don't worry about Mom," I say, and he flinches when I touch him. "They'll keep an eye on her." My voice shakes. How can he think I'm going to hit him?! I recall that long ago day when I yelled at him about the ball. I still haven't gotten over it. What the hell was wrong with me? I'm such a fucking prick.
"Hey," I say softly. "What is it?"
He shrugs.
"Why'd you flinch from me? Did I hurt you?"
"No. I just have funny reflexes."
"You have that... what's it called... fibromyalgia?"
He laughs, sadly. "No."
"Jamie."
"Hmmm?"
"I'd never hit you. You know that, right?"
"I know. I flinch all the time. It's a reflex thing..."
"I just lost my temper up there," I explain guiltily. "I'm feeling better now. And I'm sure they'll take care of her in ICU."
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