Crush (17 page)

What a circus it’s been! I don’t think anything’s been right since PeggyMattheis 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, everytime.

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 snottylike.

“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 readyto take her out A.M.A.

Then, around December fifteenth or sixteenth 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 gray hair and a long, wild beard like someone from the Bible. Sharon is dressed to impress, in this reallytackybright 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. Mumyis.

Anyway, the Fan Episode. See, Peggy’s sick of laying in bed dayafter dayand theykeep it so blasted hot in that place that she feels like she’s suffocating. So Tammygoes to K-Mart or Wal-Mart and buys a nice, small oscillating fan and brings it in. Peggyloves 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.” Tammyand 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, whydon’t you go find that Dr. Mumy?”
“You just want to see him because you’re hot for him,” Tammylaughs.
“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 reallyget 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 Peggyout of her half-sleep.
Tammyand I run out into the hallwayand just split our guts.
“Is he crazy?” I giggle.
Tammystops laughing, looks at me, frowns. “No.”
Terrified I’ve offended him, I stammer, “Oh…no…I…”
“He’s
gone
,” Tammygiggles. “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?”
“Prettysoon,” I yawn.
“You’re lonely,” he winks.
“Shut up.” I stick mytongue out at him. “I have mycats.”
“I’m getting prettytired. I’m going to go home for a while.”
I follow him out like a lost puppy, and we walk quietlytogether 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…probablyanother double.”
He reaches down and cups mychin. “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, gray-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, Tammycalls 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 myMom. 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 dirtylook.

“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 loudlyand her huge rump wags in her starchy white skirt as she leaves the room.
Tammynudges me gently. “You in trouble?”
“Naw,” I say. “I’ve been here ten years. She doesn’t bother

“She’s been that way from the first day I got here. I’ve only had to deal directlywith 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. Theydon’t promote guys like
me
, if you get mydrift.”
“Oh,” Tammyfrowns.
Paulina returns with a fan. It’s really dirty and dusty and right awaywe 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 patronizing tone without a glitch. “We’ll still be on the lookout for

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 carryit in is a two liter soda bottle. Peg has had a couple of glasses of it and is feeling better.

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 honeypouring from her mouth.
Tammyshakes 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 apologize 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.

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 IVtubes 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 theydidn’t listen! She told them that her leg’s been hurting reallybad!”
I barelykeep mytemper in check as Jamie wheels her to the elevator. “What’ll theydo about it?” I ask.
“The doctor’s ordered a CTscan, and a heparin drip if there’s a clot…to dissolve it. They’ll watch her closely. It’s veryserious.”
“Yeah, no shit,” I mutter. “Fucking
incompetents
working here!”
Jamie tells me that when he phoned Dr. Mumsy about Mom’s leg, Mumsyyelled at him and almost hung up on him. “He just mad because he’s on call todayand doesn’t want to be.”
“Not our fucking problem,” I hiss. “And Nurse Ratchet better be watching her back for a while, that’s for sure!” I’m so loud, Jamie practically shoves me with one hand while he’s steering Mom’s bed with the other.
Once she’s in ICU, theywatch 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