What the Family Needed

by Steven Amsterdam

  Ruth was able to tell which of the two had had the thought, but she wanted clarification: Was it motherhood itself or simply the walking partner that was getting to her? What would she rather be doing? Mopping down the sick and the dying all night? Searching pointlessly for a wandering nephew with your stolen artwork? Ruth would settle for a dull walk in the park with an infant.

  After all the kids she had swaddled, when the time came to push her own in their inferior strollers, there was no room for pleasure. Even when they were asleep she was transfixed by what they would need when they woke up. Alek and Sasha, though, they were a joy to handle. It was the one thing she could do for Natalie. Getting them to settle made Ruth feel invincible.

  The afternoon that Alek left he allowed her one desperate hug. Ruth topped it off with, “You still feel like you did as a newborn, on the day we first met.” It was indulgent, but she meant it as a last-minute bid for him to stay. “If you stay, I won’t judge.”

  “That’s why I’m out of here,” he said.

  The pawnshop wasn’t going to open for half an hour. There was a café with a direct view where she could warm up while she waited. When its door, stuck with winter wetness, opened, she fell into the middle of the room. A dozen patrons twitched in her direction before returning to their friends and newspapers and coffees.

  I’ve got three tickets and we’re going! . . . They can wait for their water . . . I’m hanging out five more minutes and then leaving without a note . . .

  Trying not to hear any casual disdain floating in the air, Ruth scanned past the counter to the kitchen. Cooking had been the thing that nearly kept Alek on a straight path. He’d said it was mindful, constant, and productive and would always be his fallback. She looked for his face behind the counter but didn’t see it.

  She set herself up at a small table next to the window like a regular woman of leisure. Her eyelids felt papery from being open so long. Each blink made a click. Still, he might pass by.

  The words around her drifted in.

  Friendly or not-so-friendly . . . The thing to remember is that she doesn’t mean it . . . I really don’t need a second coffee . . .

  If there were a cure for this, it would have to be sleep. When the waiter approached, his mind a race of table statuses, Ruth asked for a large latte, as if that was a good idea. For her main course, a raspberry and white chocolate muffin with a few mitigating grains and seeds. Alek would walk by the window, see her sitting there, come in, make fun of her order, and all would be right.

  They don’t care if I pay with change . . .

  Don’t listen. Don’t distinguish the words. Think of a clear field of color, a favorite shade of orange, an enveloping afternoon sun—the orange disk floating above the manic town in the painting inside Alek’s backpack. He must still be close. Or was he on a bus already to parts unknown? No. He would come back to her, with the painting or without it, but in his heart he must want the connection. There was no managing her thoughts anymore.

  Don’t scratch, leave it alone. The cream will fix it . . .

  And this wasn’t the place to empty her mind.

  Whenever he returned from one of his blank patches with unlikely details, she tried to accept his words as having their own kind of truth. She didn’t fully believe what he reported, but maybe he had drawn himself into another dimension for a week or a month. How else would he have returned from his internal neverland in one piece? She once put this forward to Natalie, who tightened a smile and said, “Maybe you’d like to try some antipsychotics too?”

  Ruth suddenly saw herself, sitting alone in a café window, trying to chase away voices.

  She canceled her order and left, taking the straightest route home.

  Pressing the door open without a sound in case he had returned, she saw that nothing in the apartment had changed, except that the piece of cardboard on the balcony window had blown off, chilling the room. Ruth added enough tape so that the window was good and ugly. Another broken thing to be dealt with at some unspecified later date. A pill, a shower, and she fell into bed. Closing her eyes to another field of color, she tried to focus on something plain, the shade she’d painted the apartment. Helping her choose, Alek told her that each of her selections was obvious and demeaned her individuality. She went ahead with antique white. She launched herself into its safety.

  Dah-dah, dah dah de dah-da. Her new phone had arrived already set to an I Dream of Jeannie ringtone. That also needed to be dealt with. She woke up fast, still drugged and stumbling to find the phone. It was on the table, next to the chocolate milk.

  “Alek?”

  “No, it’s me. I’m at the bookshop. You’re still home?” When she’s on nights it’s like going out with a zombie.

  So: sleep wasn’t the cure.

  Ruth had been seeing Simon on and off for four months, but they were still mostly on good behavior. Several times she had explained why she preferred to work nights. Obviously, it hadn’t sunk in. At least this would be an enlightening phone call.

  “I’m sorry. I had to take a pill and then I forgot to set the alarm. It was a long shift. I just woke up—”

  That’s just perfect. I was all ready for the Italian. Too much to ask for a bit of attention, a lasagna, a decent bottle. “So did I hear right? Alek’s back?” She was too attached to him when he was gone and now he’s back. Perfect.

  “In a way. He came to the apartment but left before I came home. He made me a beautiful beef bourguignon, if you can come by for a quick dinner—?”

  “We had plans.” Her place would only bum me out tonight.

  He had been so tender the other day. “I know it’s a bit late, but with a little time I could come meet you.”

  Doesn’t sound like she’s dying to.

  Increasingly, she wasn’t.

  “What do you want to do?” he asked.

  “I don’t have hours and hours at this point. I’m sorry.”

  “I understand. You didn’t do it on purpose,” he said. Screw this.

  He was understandably over it.

  “Look,” she said, “is it too late for you to salvage the evening with anybody else?”

  “Yeah, no. I’ll be fine.” I could have gone to a movie. I could have gone to the gym. I could have done a trillion other things I like to do, but now I’m outside and hungry and it’s all shot.

  “What can I do to make it up?” Her eagerness to please was as unappetizing as his sulking.

  “Don’t worry about it.” How about being awake when everyone else is? How about using some salt when you cook? How about not jumping up and running off to the bathroom when we’re done screwing?

  “Simon?”

  “Yeah?” To top it all, I hear feelings coming.

  “I’m truly sorry about tonight. I think my work schedule may be crushing into each of us a bit. I have a contract so I’m going to be on nights for at least three more months. Does that put you off?”

  “No.” Why don’t you call me in three months?

  “How about this? Let’s put it all on pause for three months, so this doesn’t happen again, and see if we’re more in tune later on? That sounds like a solution, doesn’t it?”

  Wait? She’s dumping me? She stands me up and now she’s dumping me?

  Ruth said, “It would be easier for both of us. If it’s right at all, it will still be right in three months. Don’t you think?”

  I don’t believe this. I’m getting dumped, on the phone, in some bookshop, when I did not make one wrong move whatsoever.

  Ruth wanted to open her heart, wanted to let self-awareness and patience flood in. What she said was, “That’s right. You did not make one wrong move whatsoever.”

  His grammar had always pissed her off.

  Driving to work, Ruth was still riding the rush of the phone call. After months of perfectly amicable time together, with a few promising conversations, even a couple of bouts of better-than-adequate sex (when she didn’t always rush off to the bathroom, thank
you very much), she had finally been able to listen to the real him. Gaining access to the full hostility men stored up had usually taken her much longer. Getting off the ride before she felt sick was an even greater accomplishment.

  How much investment and effort had hanging up on him saved? Half of the workshops she’d ever taken had promised such self-actualization. This talent could bring her closer to now.

  The prospect of ten hours at work with her amplified sense of hearing increased her buzz. She wouldn’t waste her shift by paper chasing at the nurses’ station. She would sneak away from the gaggle and linger in the rooms with the patients who were awake. If they thought she was fat or skinny, or whatever they saw from their angle on the bed, was of no importance. They were sick and what they cared about was themselves. The chronic, living in their parallel universe. The atheists, struggling to locate some logic in their illness. And the young ones, finding out that sooner or later everybody goes to the hospital. She wanted to listen to their synapses and cells, so she would know how to help.

  All the patients she had nursed over the years who had lost speech, all the times she had wished she could comprehend. With a job on a neuro ward or in a nursing home, she could be nurse of the year, pulling sense from all the mangled mouths and minds. They would tell her where it hurt and when they were hungry. She would see that they received what they needed. And all their desperate visitors with their secrets. She’d become the expert on servicing all of them, the patients, their families. She’d be run off her feet, but she would be their medium. She’d get her own TV show. Her foot rested heavily on the accelerator for most of the drive to work.

  As promising as the evening ahead looked, she was even more eager for the next morning. She had left the front and back doors of her apartment unlocked. After the shift, Alek would be sprawled on the sofa with a container of chocolate milk. She would listen to him, follow the maze of his brain, wherever it led. He would feel better for it, loved. She would bring him back to Natalie, like a maternity nurse with a newborn, and they could start from scratch.

  As she pulled into the lot, the surgeons and scrubs and cleaners were all on their way home. This she hated, the absence of the warmth of a simple evening. It was a trade she had to make after the marriage, when the extra pay couldn’t be ignored. Before and after work, she would sit with the kids for dinner and breakfast so they could pretend to be a family, and that was enough. Natalie had been her mainstay in those years. No telepathy, but at least enough contact to keep Ruth from flying apart. By the time the kids found their way out, Ruth’s body had adapted to the reversal of nights. The fact remained that she enjoyed the ward at its quietest hours. No doctors, no procedures, and no visitors. The patients were usually as stable as they were going to be. If they weren’t, she was there for them. Nights were the purest form of the art.

  Ruth found a parking spot near the central stairwell. She draped her uniform over her wrist, gripped her swipe card in one hand and a big bag of low-fat mixed-grain chips in the other.

  Ruth girded herself for handover. The patient lounge had been painted breast cancer pink, which only accentuated the lifeless pallor and internal grumblings of the night staff.

  When she’s in charge, nothing gets done . . . I hope I get the cute guy in seven . . . If I get all of mine to sleep by nine, I can sneak out to call about the car . . .

  She didn’t want to know any of it. Her mission was to bring her full attention to the nurse in charge. With effort, she focused.

  As the status of each patient was recounted, the stray thoughts became softer, like she’d turned a dimmer switch. With more concentration, subterranean voices reduced to a hum. Sweet peace! This was the protective filter she needed. It meant she could listen to one person at a time.

  Allocation gave her the far end of the corridor. Most of the patients down there were stable and would sleep for the next few hours. Come two to four in the morning, though—the witching hour—any one of them would be as honest, as vulnerable, and as angry as a patient could be. She would be their confessor and servant.

  Once she had eyeballed all her beds, hearing nothing but weary snores and the occasional trill of a monitor, Ruth gathered her files and headed for a desk at the south station. At least she would get notes done and keep a safe distance from the caramel corn someone was making in the kitchen.

  No buzzers rang. No one fell. No one woke up. She felt almost cheated.

  At five-thirty in the morning the linoleum silence was broken by a ding. The elevator doors parted, right across from Ruth. A suited, silver-haired man stepped out, looking both ways.

  This is four, isn’t it? “Pardon me, miss, is this east?”

  “Yes, it is, but visiting hours don’t begin until eight.”

  He looked at his watch. “This is close enough for me. I’m after my son. His name is Vince Moriarty. A skinny kid,” he said. He held up his index finger to jog Ruth’s memory. Too skinny. Like this.

  Vince Moriarty, who was seventy-two, had been in for a week, waiting for a bed in Oncology.

  “I’m certain he’s sleeping. Can you come back in a few hours?”

  Who cares if he’s sleeping? “I only want to sit with him till he wakes up. I took two buses just so I could be here before the workday starts up.”

  “I shouldn’t let you—”

  Ah, yes, but you will. He went past her as if he hadn’t heard, looking for a sign that would show room numbers.

  He was the father; this wasn’t worth the argument. She directed him to Vince’s room, following at a respectful distance.

  “Thank you. I’m Con. I’ll be so well behaved, it will knock your socks off.” Nice lady. Not bad.

  That would have been the perfect time to press the mental mute button, but she had been waiting all night to see what she could do.

  Con didn’t falter or pause, as most parents do when they see their child in a hospital bed. Instead, he marched over and inspected his son’s sleeping form like it was merchandise.

  Not looking too strong today, buddy boy.

  Ruth lingered at the doorway.

  With the same scraggly index finger that he’d held up as evidence of Vince’s shape, he poked his son in the chest.

  Vince stopped snoring and opened his eyes. “Pop?” Unbelievable.

  Con hovered his face over his son’s and grinned. “Aren’t you pleased?”

  Vince focused, then laughed in Con’s face. “Who made you finally make the twenty-minute trip?”

  “Nobody made me.”

  I doubt it. Vince laughed again. “And who let you in?”

  Con smiled, gestured back toward Ruth. “This lawbreaking nurse over here had me come see you. Specific instructions to wake you up. She wanted me to use a scalpel, but I said I didn’t have the heart.” Con performed more for Ruth than for Vince. “It’s been our busiest week, one of the new stores wasn’t happy with a shipment—wrong colors. Some idiot doubled their order in aqua. Every day was a shell game. You’re lucky to be laying low.”

  Con took the visitor’s chair right next to the bed. Vince smiled at his father. How do I tell the big man I’m dying?

  His family didn’t know yet.

  Con gleefully chattered on while Ruth listened to Vince. Pop’s been one perfect bastard for his whole life, but that doesn’t mean he deserves to watch everyone else go first.

  Con went on. “What are the odds of us getting some Scotch in here? While we’re at it, how about a cigar?” He turned to Ruth. “Mr. Health Nut, the one in the hospital bed, quit years ago, but I didn’t. I’m no quitter—and look at me. Still fighting fit and ninety-four. And a half.”

  Con finally noticed he was the only one talking. Why’s everybody so quiet? “So what’s the plan here? Don’t you need your bed for somebody sicker?”

  “Pop, I need the rest. They’re building me up.” For chemo. Vince looked at her. Please, let’s tell him the truth and get it over with.

  “No fooling? Like a truck. I can see
that. They’re whittling you away to more of a pencil than you already are.” He looked around, shaky. Somebody, talk to me. What’s the girl here for, decoration?

  Vince said, “It’s the hospital food, I swear. As soon as I’m home—” Once the stairs become too hard, I can sleep in the living room.

  Ruth finally had to step in. “How about if I try to arrange a meeting with the doctor for later on today?”

  “What for?” Con asked.

  “To discuss Vince’s current situation,” she said. Her gravity would get them past all of their posturing.

  Con put his dry knuckles against his dry lips. “His situation?” They said it looked like an infection. “Vince, what situation?” His tone shifted from friendly to not.

  What did she do? Vince struggled to get back to where they had been. “They’re trying to find the right antibiotics, Pop, that’s all. I’ll be better—”

  Con turned on his son with rage, “That’s not what she meant, Vince. Tell me what she means. Cancer?” He looked at both of them. Tell me what’s goddamned real here!

  Vince was watching his sand slip away. “Yeah. Same as Uncle Nick.”

  “Bad?”

  Vince covered his eyes. “A few months, a year maybe.” There.

  “And how’s that next few months, year maybe, going to go?” He turned on Ruth. “My brother-in-law, we had a year of suffering. My wife, two years. So what have you experts done—cut the dying time? That’s progress?”

  She kept his gaze while she listened.

  Con shook his head. Should never have bothered coming. He’s already dead.

  This was a hard one, but it would lead to a better understanding. “A sit-down with the doctors can be very useful. One thing I can tell you without doubt is that the kind of suffering your wife or your brother may have gone through isn’t necessary anymore.”

  “It was three years ago and it was in this same lousy hospital,” Con said. It’s over. My boy is over.