Secret Dreams (25 page)

“I,” said Nurse Bosch with some authority, “am of the patient,”

‘‘So log it on her chart.”

Nurse Bosch frowned, clearly dissatisfied with his lack of reaction, but visions of the cafeteria and more honey tea danced in his head. He cleared his throat, croaking, “What do we know about her? Nothing! First she won't let anyone in her room — then it's all right. Next he won't have her meal plates inside — now it's okay. Then she won't let anyone remove her things — but now we take them out!”

His voice was as harsh as a magpie's, “What can I tell you, Nurse Bosch? You know as much as Î do. So last night she forgets to have a bowel movement. What should we do? Call out the fire brigade? If she doesn't go in a week, I'll start to worry.”

Through all this Nurse Bosch stared at him imperially from the head of the stairs, chamber pot in her hand. “I shall log as you instruct,” she said stoically. “I hope you feel better tomorrow, Herr Doktor.”

The next day he felt worse. At home, Emma said to him, “Here, drink some orange juice for your head and eat some prunes with cream. How many days since you went to the —”

“You too!” he snapped. “You're getting to sound like Nurse Bosch.” His wife hadn't the faintest idea what he was referring to.

“I see,” she said.

At the hospital, he met Nurse Bosch coming out of the room with the chamber pot.

She showed him its contents. “Nothing,”

The cold had gone to his throat and he could hardly whisper, “Two days, then. Sometimes my wife and Î don't go for a week.”

He shocked Nurse Bosch with that one. Proper folk never talked about themselves or their wives. The nurse bore off the pan, saying, “Consider prunes….”

And the next day he met Nurse Bosch again, exactly as before. Now he couldn't even talk, this head felt stuffed with moldy bricks.

“Where does she keep it?” the nurse asked him. A daring remark for the old sow, but he hadn't the wit or whistle to reply. Late that aternoon, he checked the patient's sink for signs she sent her bowel movements out that way, And then went outside in something of a blizzard to check the ground below her window, as he had done some months before. Of course, he found nothing. He thought he would die that night when he got home. He felt light-headed. He knew he had something of a fever but didn't want to take his temperature. He sat in bed and drank honey tea, whose waxy taste was starting to nauseate him. In the morning he had just a bad cold again.

On that day Nurse Bosch deftly swirled the chamber pot and remarked without expression, “This is not healthy.”

“Could you bring tea to my office?” he asked in a bare whisper.

Three more days passed. It had been a week — the magical “week” he had so blithely joked about. At home, Emma sat at breakfast eating prunes and cream as if to mock him. He glowered at her when she offered him some. “I'm doing just fine,” he wheezed.

The girl ate too, if you could believe that. The food on her plates disappeared every day. My God, she must be tight as a drum…. That night he dreamt that when he blew his nose he had the most magnificently formed and satisfying bowel movement out his nostril. He had woken at 6 A.M. laughing and promptly passed out again in the act of wiping a crust of mucus from his lip.

At the nurses' station in the hospital, Nurse Bosch was also feeling slightly sick. Herr Senior Physician Nekken had chosen this day to come around. And for ten minutes he gazed torpidly at Fräuleins chart from under his pale-lidded eyes. Nurse Bosch pretended to work on some forms, but as the mantis figure of Nekken remained staring at the chart, she gave up the pretense of paperwork and tried not to fidget. A troop of first-year interns passed the window of the nurses' station joking among themselves, but their mirth fell as they crossed Nekken's cold shadow in the hall. Even Orderly Zeik stopped short when he saw the elongated body of Nekken standing like a funeral monument. Zeik retreated, deciding to come back later.

Only Orderly Bolzen seemed attracted by Herr Senior Physician's lingering silhouette. The sloping shoulders of the apish orderly appeared in the window of the nurses' station and stayed there as if waiting for orders. All the hairs on Nurse Bosch's neck began to stand straight up. Nekken spoke at last, never taking his eyes off the chart:

“Where is Herr Doktor Jung?”

“He hasn't come in yet, Herr Doktor Nekken.”

Nekken kept looking at the chart, his voice silky and scaly at the same time. “Are you familiar with the patient's condition?”

“I am familiar with it.”

“So you are aware that it has been eight days since the patient has had a bowel movement.”

“I am aware of it,” Nurse Bosch said quietly, not sure she could trust her voice again.

“And you checked the patient's chamber pot today?”

This time Nurse Bosch really did whisper. “I checked it.”

“And you found her condition the same?”

Nurse Bosch tried to say, Yes, the same — but no sound came. She tried to tear her eyes away from the tall man staring complacently at Fräulein Schanderein's chart. The scaly soft voice came again. “You were going to
wait
for Herr Jung before bringing this to the attention of your superiors?”

“Herr Jung always checks her chart first thing,” Nurse Bosch managed.

“Does Herr Jung often come in so late?”

“Herr Doktor Jung is suffering from a bad cold, Herr Nekken….” Her voice fell as Nekken's head creaked around on its stalk of a neck, staring at her through those pale, cavernous eyes.

“Aren't you going to do
anything?”
the scaly voice asked.

Nurse Bosch's throat closed again. She felt a touch of sweat on her forehead and the hot tears spring to her eyes. She blinked them away and wiped her moist face…. She went limp, the struggle over.

“Very well, Herr Doktor Nekken.”

Nekken barely glanced in the big orderly's direction. He dropped the chart on the desk with a soft slap.

“Help her, Bolzen,” he said as he glided away.

In the deep sleep from 6 A.M. onward, Herr Doktor had a dream: The hordes of Asia Minor were invading Switzerland. He could see the great dust cloud from their baggage trains rising from the horizon. There must be millions and millions of those brown-skinned devils ready to sweep over the mountains and crush his little country. He was afraid, terriblv afraid that he wouldn't be there in time to rebel the coming invasion. Well, he thought gaily, if they've come for chocolate, they'll have to dig it out of the ground like everybody else!

And then he woke up. Damn, late for the hospital again. He stumbled about his bedroom, searching for his clothes. Yesterday's crumpled shirt would have to do. As he tried to tie his tie in the mirror, he couldn't focus on the knot. He got Emma to help him, but he wasn't able to focus on her face either.

“I don't think you should go,” she said.

He wanted desperately to get back into bed; his bones ached, each one separately. He slogged from the house anyway. A gray rain lashed down outside, a cold, biting rain that chilled him each time a droplet flew in his face at the tram stop. But it cleared his head and got his blood moving. When he tramped down the long marble entrance hallway, he felt almost human.

He came upon the empty nurses' station — no Nurse Bosch in sight. And Orderly Zeik wasn't in the uncomfortable chair at the end of the fourth-floor hall. Panic and pain jumped on his spine. “Ah —-! Ahh —! Ahhh —!” came from the room. The door ajar. He ran, his wet shoes skidding on the marble. He tripped and fell, sprawling. His hand must have been in his jacket pocket; the pocket had torn to a flap. He staggered up and flew in at the door of 401. The shock of what he saw staggered him.

Nurse Bosch and Orderly Bolzen struggled over the patient. Fräulein Schanderein was clawing and fighting, yet managing to keep the sheets wrapped about her head. Bolzen had ripped them from around her buttocks and floundered over her flailing legs. The girl's buttocks were exposed, round and plump and very white, shaking with tremendous violence. Very
white?
He saw a sallow grayness to her skin — of course, she never washed. Nurse Bosch was trying to administer an enema with quaking hands, but each time she went to penetrate the patient's behind with the spike-nosed india-rubber bulb, the mummy wriggled so violently soapy water squirted everywhere: across Nurse Bosch's bosom, into Bolzen's face. The orderly got some in his eyes and bellowed in fury, drawing back his hand to strike the naked legs beneath him —

“Get out. Both of you.”

Nurse Bosch dropped the enema bulb, and Bolzen looked up, blinking stupidly, wiping soapy water from his face.

“Get out!”

The mummy on the bed, going “Ah —! Ahh —! Àhhh —!”, broke free of Bolzen's weight and clawed the sheets around her body, vanishing from sight.

Outside in the corridor, he told them to
wait
in such a way they would have waited all day. Then he returned to the room, banging the door. For a moment he felt the solitude of being alone with the patient, alone in her room. She was still going “Ahhh —-!” in pulsing gasps. He didn't know what to do: tear out his hair, gnash his teeth. He wanted to stop his ears to the steady, maddening momentum of her gasps, or shut her mouth — anything. A sheen of wetness glided across his nose and lips. He didn't care. He had failed. Months would pass before she returned to where they were just before the attack. Months!

The enema bulb rolled by his foot. Soapy water leaked from the nozzle. He stamped on it, and stamped again. The ugly thing split like an overripe pear. And in the rattling pause between the girl's gasps, each time she gulped for air, he said, Tm sorry. I'm sorry. So
sorry
…”

Back in the hall, Bolzen had shuffled to the wall, cowed. “I don't ever want to see you on this floor again,” Herr Doktor told him. The orderly nodded humbly, his eyes locked to the tops of his shoes.

To Nurse Bosch he said, “Tell me this, and tell me the truth. Why did you do this? Why … ?”

The nurse opened her mouth to speak, her eyelids spread wide open, exposing the whites all around the iris. Her mouth kept opening and closing in time with the patient's gasps coming faintly through the door. He wondered if Nurse Bosch was even aware of what she was doing. Finally her mouth formed a word — not even a word — a sound, like a child choking on a bone. The sound a cracked whisper: “Nek —”

Her soft face crumbled in running tears and sniffles. Pathetically, she clutched Herr Doktors sleeve and then began to pet his hand. He let her pet it for a while, until her sniffles finally ceased.

Then off in a rage to find Nekken. He pictured the senior physician begging for his life, squirming on his knees. Herr Doktor walked faster. That's what he wanted — Nekken down, down on his knees. Herr Doktor reached the stairs. He felt dizzy, and a waxy film drifted before his eyes. He must go calmly, so as not to break his neck. Nekken would wait for him, wait beside that grand bronze statue sitting on his desk. Bologna's Mercury, perfect for the bastard. A slim lad leaping off into Renaissance flight, forefinger raised to the sky, his staff of Caduceus crooked in his arm as though taken aloft on a last-minute whim … Herr Doktors feet slipped out from under him, but he caught the stair rail, clinging precariously for a moment. He lowered himself to a step, pausing to catch his breath. Why did Mercury point to heaven? he wondered. He really should know a simple thing like that.

Oh, ja, ja, ja…

That pointing finger was the finger of augury, of foretelling the future and hidden signs. Weep! O marble Romans, wagging your fingers in the air. For behold His Majesty Nekken! The Infallible. The Seer, probing a mad girl's rectum with an enema nozzle of Divine Sight.

But beware, O Nekken. Beware the ides of Jung!

Herr Doktor dragged himself to his feet. Down he went, a fog opening up before his eyes and closing in hazily behind. On the second floor he clasped a doorpost, panting through his teeth. His legs felt wet and raw inside his trousers, rasping his thighs at every step. From the rain, or had he wet himself? But what about that winged-footed nancy-boy's staff, Nekken? The Hippocratic staff of Caduceus, Karyx the Herald!

He Who Brings Tidings.

Do you know these tidings,
Signor Il Magnifico?

Do
you?

His legs were shaking. Shaking like snakes. Yes, there were snakes entwined about the herald's staff. Mother Earth's serpents, her children of the moon. Offspring born of nothingness. He-snake and she-snake coupling about the herald's staff, bringing order out of chaos — and All-Life from the great world Egg.

Those were the herald's tidings, Nekken! That a truce had been declared between man and woman, so that love be made in the thighs of the Earth. For She had decreed —

That the world shall be born!

Steady Don't slip again, don't lose your balance. Herr Doktor took a babv step awav from the doorpost. He touched the wall for guidance and support. À face swam lazily out of the mist, staring at him as he slid along the wall. The voice familiar, ja, a friendly person. He mumbled, “Yes, I'm fine, thank you. I've an appointment with Doktor Nekken. We must consult…” He tried to rub the mist from his eyes. There — Orderly Zeik, asking him if he was all right. Ah, good old Zeik, good old fellow! To show he was all right, he left the safety of the wall and walked stiffly down the middle of the corridor. Zeik must think him drunk. He really must try and get a grip on himself.

Herr Doktor stopped for a moment, resting his head against the cool marble of the wall The smooth coolness cleared his head. Soon he would reach Nekken's office and come face-to-face with the man. He felt light and transparent, but all the crazy thinking had wiped his mind clean. He knew what to say, what to do. Ready for Nekken, ready to see him sitting beside his pretty-boy Mercury. His catamite god leaping off on an urgent errand, a forced purge for the girl in 401.