Friday, February 19, 2010
Vote! you, on new blog picture
Yes, new blog picture time. Vote for one of the 4 in the blog picture box. You can continue to e-mail pictures to me and I will put them in the Box for the next vote (probably in a couple of weeks). Now, Vote You!
Thursday, February 18, 2010
The Night Nurse
The floor was shining in the hospital. The hermetically contained air was especially cold, the last visitor having opened the door to exit many hours before. The night nurse was pulling her lilac cardigan around her red shoulders. They were itching, the skin underneath raw from scratching. It was the coming down that always made it worse. The interminable itch. "Just for the nightshift," she thought every time she popped an Ephedra. How many times had she told herself this? To stay alert, observant. How she longed to sneak, even just for a few moments, to the supply closet, scratch her private places and try to scribble notes which would later become the book, which she would dedicate to Dr. Walsh. Her wan cheeks and eggplant undereyes staring solemnly from the cover. All would be forgiven. Yes.
She was staring at her hazy reflection in the dark glass window, a rash blooming on her check. Damn. She pulled a tube of hydrocortisone from the pocket of her Scooby-doo print scrubs and swiped it on. The things she had seen! True fodder. It was true that night shifts were slower, sedate, and that time almost congealed like semi-solid therapeutic paraffin around her head. But the speed kept her balanced out and the itching reminded her that she was in fact a part of sterile reality. “Not much was going on, but when something did happen, it was bad,” she traced on her coffee napkin.
Just the week before, when she was having her last cup of coffee and was beginning to finger the pills in her pocket; it was about nine o'clock; a woman came in complaining of cramps and demanding to see the doctor. "Alright, miss, please, you will have to fill out the appropriate paper work and I will need to see your insurance card." The woman moaned loudly and snatched the clipboard from her hands. Like a wild animal, she thought. The woman was unkempt, huge, tired looking. The night nurse reached back and tightened her ponytail and then thrust her hand into her pocket. The two pills were still there. She scratched a new rash that was climbing up her thigh and blamed Betty.
Betty was taking a smoke break in the parking lot and the night nurse knew that she would buy a package of white powdered doughnuts from the vending machine on her way out, hold a neon orange lipstick stained cigarette between two chubby fingers and a hard little doughnut between another two fingers and eat them one by one. Disgusting.
Of course Betty would not be there to assist her when a patient came in. Of course. She fingered a pill tentatively and looked at the clock. Too early. The night nurse handled the clip boards. She liked to make people produce the appropriate identification and insurance. It set her mind at ease, released her agitation to watch people fumble through their overstuffed purses and wallets for the correct information. Sometimes they dropped things on the floor. Money, personal items, and on occasion, food. Half wrapped Big Macs with stale fries. She looked around at her white walls and continually bleached desk. The box of instant hand sanitizer mounted on the wall. While she watched the patient search she would reach for a blob and smooth it between her hands. "Sorry, someone would say, "that burger was for my kid." Red would climb into their cheeks. They would ask for a napkin to clean up the smear of ketchup left on the linoleum. She would smile beatifically and tell them they could find paper towels in the restroom located outside the door in the hall to the right. She would page a janitor to mop up the mess as the patient exited, so when they returned with their dripping brown towel in hand, the mess was already being mopped up. In the proper fashion. She would watch them look at the janitor sheepishly and then look around for a trashcan, and not finding one, would glance at her station not making eye contact, and then shuffle once more out of the door back to the restroom where they could dispose of it.
When the fat lady came back with her clipboard, the night nurse asked her for her driver's license and insurance card. She began digging through her purse. The night nurse held her breath a moment. Yes. She had guessed it. Numerous super size tampons fell out of the fat woman's purse and scattered all over the floor. She knew it. It would be tampons. The night nurse felt herself buzz with pleasure as the women bent over to scrape them up. Her bulbous backside pointing straight out. The woman’s chart: irregular bleeding, stomach and lower abdominal cramping. She had just gotten a handful of sanitizer when the fat lady, still doubled over, gasped loudly and ran out of the door leaving her purse and all of the tampons on the floor. Now, really, thought the night nurse. An animal! She rubbed the gel into her hands. Something like an itch began inside her chest. Should she follow the woman? She would not leave the desk. "Under any circumstances," she mouthed. There must be someone sitting at the desk at all times. Where the hell is Betty? Her fat fingers, powder on her scrubs. She would not page Dr. Walsh. No one saw him except through her. She liked being a barrier between patients and him. A gate, she thought, white and clean. Polite even. Yet immovable. Once patients passed through her, they went to Betty to be weighed and preliminarily examined. Stuck with tongue depressors, thermometers, and scopes. The night nurse let Betty do the touching. Betty enjoyed prodding the patients’ doughy bodies (often thrilling with fever); Betty never used gloves. The night nurse crossed her arms across her chest. Her cold fingers pressed into her arms. The “handling” had to be left to Betty. Such an incompetent speaker. “Uncommunicative,” Dr. Walsh had said, when he pulled the night nurse aside privately. “I really need you up front.” He had smiled breifly. The night nurse imagined Betty laid out on the examination table, her moist thighs and buttocks adhering to the tissue paper sheet. Her fingers burning holes through Betty’s hot flesh. Touching the inside. Her screaming.
The fat woman. How dare she! Ran in screaming! Running with her pants down into the waiting room. “Miss,” the night nurse had gasped through tight lips. “Calm down.” She was yelling about seeing the doctor. That someone must go to the bathroom to see. To help. For Christ’s sake! The night nurse told her that she needed to pull pants up, “for Christ’s sake.” Instead, the woman lunged through the dividing door into the nurses’ station. “You will stay on this side of the glass, madam,” the night nurse proclaimed, standing up and stretching her arms forward toward the woman. Her hands sunk into the woman’s exposed lower stomach as she pushed against her. The woman was screaming for Dr. Walsh. The night nurse wondered wildly if Dr. Walsh could hear the commotion from the center of the spiral hallway where his office was located. She could not risk it. “The doctor is with someone just now,” the night nurse grunted as the woman pushed against her. She ran backwards and deftly repositioned herself at the beginning of the narrow hall with her arms spread wide and her palms locked against the walls. Slowly, the bull of a fat woman charged forward and pushed. The nerve! The overt disrespect! Against her rubber heels the night nurse slid farther and farther back. She itched all over, was red hot, sweating, and articulating a constant stream of hushed curses against the fat woman as she pushed. Halting and sliding, the walls greased by the night nurse’s sweating palms, the slip of the fat woman’s oily thighs against the textured white walls. Every foot or so the woman would screech, and stop and then push with renewed force. Pushing, wailing, calling for Dr. Walsh. The night nurse watched her white desk disappearing slowly from her view. The screen saver bouncing softly around the frame of the computer monitor. Sanitized=Sane. It said. Sane. Sane. The fat woman’s french fried armpit, the hot, jagged breath. Taking the first turn down the spiral hall. On the sharp corner where the two walls met the night nurse lost her grip entirely and the woman charged again, the night nurse flailed and stuck to her front. Forward and turn, forward, turn, then slammed her back against Dr. Walsh’s office door. The fat woman slipped and fell backwards tipping the night nurse forward, the night nurse’s head was buffeted by the fat woman’s thighs. The sound of the heavy latch turning. The doorknob of the door of Dr. Walsh. The night nurse gasped and pulled her head up.
“What is this?” Dr. Walsh intoned softly behind her. The woman, once again, began screaming. She stood and grasped at something her hands. The night nurse rose, slipping on the wetness then spreading across the floor. Red and sagging, the woman held in her hands a burst amniotic sack. Dr. Walsh stood in the frame of his door, slowly turning green. Goddamn her, the night nurse thought as she stood up and wiped her face with the back of her hand. Her face was slick with fluid. Dr. Walsh went into his office, grabbed a paper gown and handed it to the woman and told her to change and lie down on the table. He closed her in, she, still screaming. Dr. Walsh turned to the night nurse and gripped her shoulders with both of his hands. “Go get it.” he said, quietly, firmly. He reached for the sanitizer on the wall.
Godamn fucking shitbags, cunt of the world and all that is holy, thought the night nurse. Betty. Betty. Betty. She had passed her on her way back from the toilet, where in a mound of shit, she had found a premature screaming infant lodged. The night nurse was thoroughly smeared and reeking. Itching. Sober. Betty was in Dr. Walsh’s office. She had just given the woman a sedative. Betty had gloves on her hands. Blue ones. The gloves of Dr. Walsh. He turned to Betty and told her that he was admitting the woman and the baby for the night. Betty took the baby from the night nurse, and headed for the incubator. A few on-call male nurses were called in and hoisted the woman onto a gurney and rolled her away. The woman’s eyes were dazed from the Demerol. As she was rolled down the hall, the night nurse saw her arm raise and the woman pointed a limp finger at her.
She followed the gurney through the winding hall. As they reached the opening of the hall into the waiting room, the men veered to the left and through the set of double doors that led to the main part of the hospital. The woman’s purse and all of her super size tampons were still scattered across the floor. The newly waiting patients looked up at her, snorting out of their near sleep as her white orthopedic loafer squeaked slightly on the linoleum. They all started to get up at once. To come to her desk. They eyed her face and the front of her scrubs which were still smeared with shit and amniotic fluid. Dr. Walsh’s eyes. Cold and blue. Accusatory. Out of panic she had tried to clean up the placenta with her hands, and after it slipped out, had then tried to kick it under a door where it stuck like a bloody jellyfish. Dr. Walsh had turned green once more and paged a janitor. The night nurse bent over and scooped up the woman’s tampons into her bag and dashed down the hall before the first finger could ding the waiting bell.
She could see down the last length of hall that Dr. Walsh’s door was open. She veered off to the side and got a mouthful of water from the water fountain and swallowed a pill. She instantly missed her sanitized Kleen Kanteen. The pill stuck in her throat uncomfortably. She tried to eek it down a little by rolling her tongue. There was a janitor already slapping a mop over the spot of the floor were the woman had been. He eyed her face. She hurried past him to stand in Dr. Walsh’s door frame, her head already buzzing. Ready to apologize, To cooperate in any way. Betty was still in the room. She had taken off the blue gloves and had them draped over her arm. He was smiling at her. Very slightly. He was saying that apparently the woman had been so large to begin with that she hadn’t known she was pregnant. It happened more than one might think. Betty reared back and opening her mouth, laughed too loudly. Her own fat stomach and ham arms quivering, wavering. She reached one arm forward. Dr. Walsh, did not step back but shook her hand briskly. The transfer of sweat from her pudgy hand to his. The powdered sugar still clinging to her finger tips. He saw the night nurse and turned to her and told her to take the rest of her shift off. “Dr. Walsh, (the name in her mouth) I am fine. I am sorry for the momentary inconvenience, but I am ready to reassume my post.” He told her that wouldn’t do. To go home and get clean. He looked closer at her face. “And subdue that rash.”
“Would you like to check me, Doctor?” she said and presented him her face. He turned from her and said no. Some Benadryl or Hydrocortisone cream should do it. She could get it over-the-counter at Walgreens on her way home. He backed walked back to his desk and sanitized his hands.
“That is all.”
The night nurse had burned in her bed. Her head buzzed. She leant over her night stand and scratched out a sentence. “A fat woman gave birth into the toilet; she was so fat she didn’t know she was pregnant.”
For weeks that was all she had written about the incident. Dr. Walsh put her in charge of pre-screening the patients, of making them stand on the scale. Sticking the thermometer in their ears. Betty sat at her desk. More suited to customer service, he had said. The night nurse was only able to sit at her desk when Betty was taking her smoke break. 'Betty,' the night nurse thought as she sprayed down the chair with ammonia. The cunt that swallowed the world. The night nurse removed her lilac cardigan and draped it over her chair. She sat down and spread her hands wide over the surface of her desk. She released the breath she had been holding all night. Waiting for Betty to slug off to the vending machine. She had dared speak to her this night on her way out.
“Sorry if I stink.”
“Pardon?” the night nurse said, thinking it was an auditory hallucination. Too good to be true.
“Well I’m trying this new deodorant, this natural stick made of salt crystal the doc, (Doctor Walsh, thought the night nurse) told me about and I’m not sure it’s working.”
“Is that so?” the night nurse said, pumping sanitizer into her hand.
“Yep, definitely not as strong as the prescription stuff I had before, but Doc told me to watch out, because my mom has breast cancer and I might be pre-dispossessed…”
“Pre-disposed,” the night nurse corrected.
“Yeah, pre-dispossessed to develop it. Got to watch how much aluminum I put under there. Terry’s so sweet. A real good doctor.”
“Doctor. Walsh.” the night nurse said loudly.
“Yes. . .” said Betty looking to the door. “Well, I’m just going to nip out for a quick smoke.”
“Of course you are.” Betty looked at the night nurse and then turned towards the door.
“Betty,” the night nurse said. She turned hesitantly. “Considering the size, the volume of the breasts you have, you might want to have an early mammogram. You may already a tumor the size of a grapefruit and not know it.” Betty stared.
“I mean,” continued the night nurse, “this kind of thing happens more than you might expect.” The night nurse moved the corners of her mouth up into a tight smile. Betty’s puffy face drooped.
“I’ll get Dr. Walsh to check me I guess.” The two women’s eyes met.
Betty smiled a little. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind in the least.”
The night nurse raised her eyebrows.
“You might try to get him to check out that rash too, I mean, is it contagious?”
In cahoots. In cahoots. The night nurse chanted as she glared out at the fluorescent waiting room, at the double doors, daring someone to open them and approach her. Betty and Dr. Walsh. How had she let her position slip away? The night nurse followed instructions. Was a wall between patients and Dr. Walsh. Never left the desk “under any circumstances.” Performed no private task at her station. Never checked her email or made any telephone calls. She once again longed to lock herself in the supply closet. Fuck it. She pulled a sheet of paper from the printer and wrote “that fat conspiring bitch,” with her bic pen. She waited for more words to come. None did. She folded the paper into a tiny square and placed it into her bag. She eyed the clock and felt the pills in her pocket. She could feel the Ephedra had worn off. The itch was at its peak. That night, before her shift began, she had been to the hospital pharmacy and swapped her Ephedra for something new. She presented the pharmacist the paper torn from Dr. Walsh’s prescription pad. Rubbing her raw thighs together through the thin scrub fabric, she popped two.
The night was long and yet fast. Every time the night nurse looked at the clock, she was surprised at the hours leaping by, but when she stared at the minute hand too long, it never moved. A tricky bitch, she thought roughly. Time. It was her fickle friend, though. She felt distinctly friendly. No sign of Betty. She felt reinstated. Rebuilt, as it were. The wall that Dt. Walsh needed her to be. She processed patient after patient and smiling, asked them to wait until the Doctor was ready for them. She closed them shivering and half-naked into their rooms placing the flag up to alert the doctor to their presence. All night, she thought of Dr. Walsh sitting behind his desk, appreciating her. The sun began to rise, it was nearing seven thirty am, the end of her shift and Betty still had not come. The night nurse felt luminous and itch free.
She finished out her shift, blissfully, and was greeted by the day nurse. The night nurse gathered her few belongings. She could not overcome the urge to go to Dr. Walsh’s office and thank him in person. For her restored position. How she appreciated the tough love, the lesson he had taught her. How they would exchange looks, even silently laugh at the thought of Betty running the nurse’s station. Betty. That cow. That bad joke.
The night nurse tapped tentatively on Dr. Walsh’s door and waited. She admired the brass plaque, set into the wood of the door, with the doctor’s name on it. Terry M. Walsh, MD. How it caught morning sunlight. “Dr. Walsh,” she called, and heard a muffled voice within. She grew bold (these pills! she thought) and cracked open the door. The doctor was not at his desk. She opened it the rest of the way and saw Betty lying on her back on the examination table. She had pulled her shirt up to her neck and was holding her misshapen gut in one hand and had the other clasped around her throat. Her eyes were bulging and her mouth opened wider and wider issuing no sound. “Dr Walsh!” the night nurse screamed and heard his muffled voice coming from Betty’s protruding stomach.
“Matilda!” “Help me!” Matilda, the night nurse’s, eyes filled with tears.
“Terry!” she gasped and raising her fist, rammed it into Betty’s stomach. Betty retched and heaved out the stethoscope of Dr. Walsh who she had swallowed.
She was staring at her hazy reflection in the dark glass window, a rash blooming on her check. Damn. She pulled a tube of hydrocortisone from the pocket of her Scooby-doo print scrubs and swiped it on. The things she had seen! True fodder. It was true that night shifts were slower, sedate, and that time almost congealed like semi-solid therapeutic paraffin around her head. But the speed kept her balanced out and the itching reminded her that she was in fact a part of sterile reality. “Not much was going on, but when something did happen, it was bad,” she traced on her coffee napkin.
Just the week before, when she was having her last cup of coffee and was beginning to finger the pills in her pocket; it was about nine o'clock; a woman came in complaining of cramps and demanding to see the doctor. "Alright, miss, please, you will have to fill out the appropriate paper work and I will need to see your insurance card." The woman moaned loudly and snatched the clipboard from her hands. Like a wild animal, she thought. The woman was unkempt, huge, tired looking. The night nurse reached back and tightened her ponytail and then thrust her hand into her pocket. The two pills were still there. She scratched a new rash that was climbing up her thigh and blamed Betty.
Betty was taking a smoke break in the parking lot and the night nurse knew that she would buy a package of white powdered doughnuts from the vending machine on her way out, hold a neon orange lipstick stained cigarette between two chubby fingers and a hard little doughnut between another two fingers and eat them one by one. Disgusting.
Of course Betty would not be there to assist her when a patient came in. Of course. She fingered a pill tentatively and looked at the clock. Too early. The night nurse handled the clip boards. She liked to make people produce the appropriate identification and insurance. It set her mind at ease, released her agitation to watch people fumble through their overstuffed purses and wallets for the correct information. Sometimes they dropped things on the floor. Money, personal items, and on occasion, food. Half wrapped Big Macs with stale fries. She looked around at her white walls and continually bleached desk. The box of instant hand sanitizer mounted on the wall. While she watched the patient search she would reach for a blob and smooth it between her hands. "Sorry, someone would say, "that burger was for my kid." Red would climb into their cheeks. They would ask for a napkin to clean up the smear of ketchup left on the linoleum. She would smile beatifically and tell them they could find paper towels in the restroom located outside the door in the hall to the right. She would page a janitor to mop up the mess as the patient exited, so when they returned with their dripping brown towel in hand, the mess was already being mopped up. In the proper fashion. She would watch them look at the janitor sheepishly and then look around for a trashcan, and not finding one, would glance at her station not making eye contact, and then shuffle once more out of the door back to the restroom where they could dispose of it.
When the fat lady came back with her clipboard, the night nurse asked her for her driver's license and insurance card. She began digging through her purse. The night nurse held her breath a moment. Yes. She had guessed it. Numerous super size tampons fell out of the fat woman's purse and scattered all over the floor. She knew it. It would be tampons. The night nurse felt herself buzz with pleasure as the women bent over to scrape them up. Her bulbous backside pointing straight out. The woman’s chart: irregular bleeding, stomach and lower abdominal cramping. She had just gotten a handful of sanitizer when the fat lady, still doubled over, gasped loudly and ran out of the door leaving her purse and all of the tampons on the floor. Now, really, thought the night nurse. An animal! She rubbed the gel into her hands. Something like an itch began inside her chest. Should she follow the woman? She would not leave the desk. "Under any circumstances," she mouthed. There must be someone sitting at the desk at all times. Where the hell is Betty? Her fat fingers, powder on her scrubs. She would not page Dr. Walsh. No one saw him except through her. She liked being a barrier between patients and him. A gate, she thought, white and clean. Polite even. Yet immovable. Once patients passed through her, they went to Betty to be weighed and preliminarily examined. Stuck with tongue depressors, thermometers, and scopes. The night nurse let Betty do the touching. Betty enjoyed prodding the patients’ doughy bodies (often thrilling with fever); Betty never used gloves. The night nurse crossed her arms across her chest. Her cold fingers pressed into her arms. The “handling” had to be left to Betty. Such an incompetent speaker. “Uncommunicative,” Dr. Walsh had said, when he pulled the night nurse aside privately. “I really need you up front.” He had smiled breifly. The night nurse imagined Betty laid out on the examination table, her moist thighs and buttocks adhering to the tissue paper sheet. Her fingers burning holes through Betty’s hot flesh. Touching the inside. Her screaming.
The fat woman. How dare she! Ran in screaming! Running with her pants down into the waiting room. “Miss,” the night nurse had gasped through tight lips. “Calm down.” She was yelling about seeing the doctor. That someone must go to the bathroom to see. To help. For Christ’s sake! The night nurse told her that she needed to pull pants up, “for Christ’s sake.” Instead, the woman lunged through the dividing door into the nurses’ station. “You will stay on this side of the glass, madam,” the night nurse proclaimed, standing up and stretching her arms forward toward the woman. Her hands sunk into the woman’s exposed lower stomach as she pushed against her. The woman was screaming for Dr. Walsh. The night nurse wondered wildly if Dr. Walsh could hear the commotion from the center of the spiral hallway where his office was located. She could not risk it. “The doctor is with someone just now,” the night nurse grunted as the woman pushed against her. She ran backwards and deftly repositioned herself at the beginning of the narrow hall with her arms spread wide and her palms locked against the walls. Slowly, the bull of a fat woman charged forward and pushed. The nerve! The overt disrespect! Against her rubber heels the night nurse slid farther and farther back. She itched all over, was red hot, sweating, and articulating a constant stream of hushed curses against the fat woman as she pushed. Halting and sliding, the walls greased by the night nurse’s sweating palms, the slip of the fat woman’s oily thighs against the textured white walls. Every foot or so the woman would screech, and stop and then push with renewed force. Pushing, wailing, calling for Dr. Walsh. The night nurse watched her white desk disappearing slowly from her view. The screen saver bouncing softly around the frame of the computer monitor. Sanitized=Sane. It said. Sane. Sane. The fat woman’s french fried armpit, the hot, jagged breath. Taking the first turn down the spiral hall. On the sharp corner where the two walls met the night nurse lost her grip entirely and the woman charged again, the night nurse flailed and stuck to her front. Forward and turn, forward, turn, then slammed her back against Dr. Walsh’s office door. The fat woman slipped and fell backwards tipping the night nurse forward, the night nurse’s head was buffeted by the fat woman’s thighs. The sound of the heavy latch turning. The doorknob of the door of Dr. Walsh. The night nurse gasped and pulled her head up.
“What is this?” Dr. Walsh intoned softly behind her. The woman, once again, began screaming. She stood and grasped at something her hands. The night nurse rose, slipping on the wetness then spreading across the floor. Red and sagging, the woman held in her hands a burst amniotic sack. Dr. Walsh stood in the frame of his door, slowly turning green. Goddamn her, the night nurse thought as she stood up and wiped her face with the back of her hand. Her face was slick with fluid. Dr. Walsh went into his office, grabbed a paper gown and handed it to the woman and told her to change and lie down on the table. He closed her in, she, still screaming. Dr. Walsh turned to the night nurse and gripped her shoulders with both of his hands. “Go get it.” he said, quietly, firmly. He reached for the sanitizer on the wall.
Godamn fucking shitbags, cunt of the world and all that is holy, thought the night nurse. Betty. Betty. Betty. She had passed her on her way back from the toilet, where in a mound of shit, she had found a premature screaming infant lodged. The night nurse was thoroughly smeared and reeking. Itching. Sober. Betty was in Dr. Walsh’s office. She had just given the woman a sedative. Betty had gloves on her hands. Blue ones. The gloves of Dr. Walsh. He turned to Betty and told her that he was admitting the woman and the baby for the night. Betty took the baby from the night nurse, and headed for the incubator. A few on-call male nurses were called in and hoisted the woman onto a gurney and rolled her away. The woman’s eyes were dazed from the Demerol. As she was rolled down the hall, the night nurse saw her arm raise and the woman pointed a limp finger at her.
She followed the gurney through the winding hall. As they reached the opening of the hall into the waiting room, the men veered to the left and through the set of double doors that led to the main part of the hospital. The woman’s purse and all of her super size tampons were still scattered across the floor. The newly waiting patients looked up at her, snorting out of their near sleep as her white orthopedic loafer squeaked slightly on the linoleum. They all started to get up at once. To come to her desk. They eyed her face and the front of her scrubs which were still smeared with shit and amniotic fluid. Dr. Walsh’s eyes. Cold and blue. Accusatory. Out of panic she had tried to clean up the placenta with her hands, and after it slipped out, had then tried to kick it under a door where it stuck like a bloody jellyfish. Dr. Walsh had turned green once more and paged a janitor. The night nurse bent over and scooped up the woman’s tampons into her bag and dashed down the hall before the first finger could ding the waiting bell.
She could see down the last length of hall that Dr. Walsh’s door was open. She veered off to the side and got a mouthful of water from the water fountain and swallowed a pill. She instantly missed her sanitized Kleen Kanteen. The pill stuck in her throat uncomfortably. She tried to eek it down a little by rolling her tongue. There was a janitor already slapping a mop over the spot of the floor were the woman had been. He eyed her face. She hurried past him to stand in Dr. Walsh’s door frame, her head already buzzing. Ready to apologize, To cooperate in any way. Betty was still in the room. She had taken off the blue gloves and had them draped over her arm. He was smiling at her. Very slightly. He was saying that apparently the woman had been so large to begin with that she hadn’t known she was pregnant. It happened more than one might think. Betty reared back and opening her mouth, laughed too loudly. Her own fat stomach and ham arms quivering, wavering. She reached one arm forward. Dr. Walsh, did not step back but shook her hand briskly. The transfer of sweat from her pudgy hand to his. The powdered sugar still clinging to her finger tips. He saw the night nurse and turned to her and told her to take the rest of her shift off. “Dr. Walsh, (the name in her mouth) I am fine. I am sorry for the momentary inconvenience, but I am ready to reassume my post.” He told her that wouldn’t do. To go home and get clean. He looked closer at her face. “And subdue that rash.”
“Would you like to check me, Doctor?” she said and presented him her face. He turned from her and said no. Some Benadryl or Hydrocortisone cream should do it. She could get it over-the-counter at Walgreens on her way home. He backed walked back to his desk and sanitized his hands.
“That is all.”
The night nurse had burned in her bed. Her head buzzed. She leant over her night stand and scratched out a sentence. “A fat woman gave birth into the toilet; she was so fat she didn’t know she was pregnant.”
For weeks that was all she had written about the incident. Dr. Walsh put her in charge of pre-screening the patients, of making them stand on the scale. Sticking the thermometer in their ears. Betty sat at her desk. More suited to customer service, he had said. The night nurse was only able to sit at her desk when Betty was taking her smoke break. 'Betty,' the night nurse thought as she sprayed down the chair with ammonia. The cunt that swallowed the world. The night nurse removed her lilac cardigan and draped it over her chair. She sat down and spread her hands wide over the surface of her desk. She released the breath she had been holding all night. Waiting for Betty to slug off to the vending machine. She had dared speak to her this night on her way out.
“Sorry if I stink.”
“Pardon?” the night nurse said, thinking it was an auditory hallucination. Too good to be true.
“Well I’m trying this new deodorant, this natural stick made of salt crystal the doc, (Doctor Walsh, thought the night nurse) told me about and I’m not sure it’s working.”
“Is that so?” the night nurse said, pumping sanitizer into her hand.
“Yep, definitely not as strong as the prescription stuff I had before, but Doc told me to watch out, because my mom has breast cancer and I might be pre-dispossessed…”
“Pre-disposed,” the night nurse corrected.
“Yeah, pre-dispossessed to develop it. Got to watch how much aluminum I put under there. Terry’s so sweet. A real good doctor.”
“Doctor. Walsh.” the night nurse said loudly.
“Yes. . .” said Betty looking to the door. “Well, I’m just going to nip out for a quick smoke.”
“Of course you are.” Betty looked at the night nurse and then turned towards the door.
“Betty,” the night nurse said. She turned hesitantly. “Considering the size, the volume of the breasts you have, you might want to have an early mammogram. You may already a tumor the size of a grapefruit and not know it.” Betty stared.
“I mean,” continued the night nurse, “this kind of thing happens more than you might expect.” The night nurse moved the corners of her mouth up into a tight smile. Betty’s puffy face drooped.
“I’ll get Dr. Walsh to check me I guess.” The two women’s eyes met.
Betty smiled a little. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind in the least.”
The night nurse raised her eyebrows.
“You might try to get him to check out that rash too, I mean, is it contagious?”
In cahoots. In cahoots. The night nurse chanted as she glared out at the fluorescent waiting room, at the double doors, daring someone to open them and approach her. Betty and Dr. Walsh. How had she let her position slip away? The night nurse followed instructions. Was a wall between patients and Dr. Walsh. Never left the desk “under any circumstances.” Performed no private task at her station. Never checked her email or made any telephone calls. She once again longed to lock herself in the supply closet. Fuck it. She pulled a sheet of paper from the printer and wrote “that fat conspiring bitch,” with her bic pen. She waited for more words to come. None did. She folded the paper into a tiny square and placed it into her bag. She eyed the clock and felt the pills in her pocket. She could feel the Ephedra had worn off. The itch was at its peak. That night, before her shift began, she had been to the hospital pharmacy and swapped her Ephedra for something new. She presented the pharmacist the paper torn from Dr. Walsh’s prescription pad. Rubbing her raw thighs together through the thin scrub fabric, she popped two.
The night was long and yet fast. Every time the night nurse looked at the clock, she was surprised at the hours leaping by, but when she stared at the minute hand too long, it never moved. A tricky bitch, she thought roughly. Time. It was her fickle friend, though. She felt distinctly friendly. No sign of Betty. She felt reinstated. Rebuilt, as it were. The wall that Dt. Walsh needed her to be. She processed patient after patient and smiling, asked them to wait until the Doctor was ready for them. She closed them shivering and half-naked into their rooms placing the flag up to alert the doctor to their presence. All night, she thought of Dr. Walsh sitting behind his desk, appreciating her. The sun began to rise, it was nearing seven thirty am, the end of her shift and Betty still had not come. The night nurse felt luminous and itch free.
She finished out her shift, blissfully, and was greeted by the day nurse. The night nurse gathered her few belongings. She could not overcome the urge to go to Dr. Walsh’s office and thank him in person. For her restored position. How she appreciated the tough love, the lesson he had taught her. How they would exchange looks, even silently laugh at the thought of Betty running the nurse’s station. Betty. That cow. That bad joke.
The night nurse tapped tentatively on Dr. Walsh’s door and waited. She admired the brass plaque, set into the wood of the door, with the doctor’s name on it. Terry M. Walsh, MD. How it caught morning sunlight. “Dr. Walsh,” she called, and heard a muffled voice within. She grew bold (these pills! she thought) and cracked open the door. The doctor was not at his desk. She opened it the rest of the way and saw Betty lying on her back on the examination table. She had pulled her shirt up to her neck and was holding her misshapen gut in one hand and had the other clasped around her throat. Her eyes were bulging and her mouth opened wider and wider issuing no sound. “Dr Walsh!” the night nurse screamed and heard his muffled voice coming from Betty’s protruding stomach.
“Matilda!” “Help me!” Matilda, the night nurse’s, eyes filled with tears.
“Terry!” she gasped and raising her fist, rammed it into Betty’s stomach. Betty retched and heaved out the stethoscope of Dr. Walsh who she had swallowed.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Blog Picture
Would everyone e-mail me their pictures for the blog so I can post them onto the Picture Box?
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)