The Tao of Apathy (24 page)

Mr. Seuss took his usual spot as everyone else
stared at him. “What are we meeting about?” he asked.

“
Ooh, I-I don’t k-know,” Mr.
Crapper spat out. “P-probably the r-r-r-riot yesterday.”

“
Oh, I though I hallucinated
that.”

“
No, Gregg. It was very real. The
employees that are able are coming in to work, but they are morose
and silent. It will be a long time before people get back on to
speaking terms with each other. So really, everything’s going along
swimmingly. The vote on the union did in fact fail, so we don’t
have to worry about a union for a year.”

“
What about punishment for the
riot?” Dr. Daneeka said with two black eyes and his arm in a
sling.

“
I am going to have the auditorium
remodeled and then sealed off. If they want to act like that, then
I do not need to have any more forums.”

“
But what about punishment?”
Daneeka insisted. “Pun-ish-ment.”

“
And if they don’t want to talk to
me, then they don’t have to talk to anyone. As we speak, I have
workmen sealing off the Butt Hutt. No more lighting up and
conspiring against me under my roof.”

“
What if they mill around the
entrances to smoke?” Seuss ventured as all eyes turned to
him.

“
Prohibit it. It’s bad for our
image. But if they do it, let them. It’s a free
country.”

“
Are you all right, Mr. Petty?”
Liberace asked.

“
I have a bottle full of smiles,
my friend.”

“
Yeah well,” Mr. McIntrye said,
“No one else does in this hospital. Well, except for Mr. Seuss
here. Low morale and absenteeism were problems before the riot, but
now they will run rampant. What are you going to do about that
Petty?”

“
There’s not much I can do about
that. They got themselves into this mess.”

Father Chuck stepped forward from the corner
where he had always waited to open Grumby’s meetings with a prayer.
“There is something I can do. I am going to pray for these people
and I am going to counsel the employees. I am going to open my
office back up.”

“
It wasn’t shut down,” Petty said.
“Just the chapel.”

“
I’m going to teach them about
forgiveness and to reach out to others. And I’m going to teach them
about God. This hospital was founded by religious people that
wanted to serve and sacrifice for the good of God’s people. So you
can desecrate my chapel, destroy my pamphlets, bill me out as
spiritual services, but I am going to stand on the lawn and tell
people of the joy of God’s love.” He looked around at the
directors. They look back at him. “Is anybody gonna stop
me?”

The directors shook their heads.

“
God is back, baby.”

Chapter 51

Dykes pushed his large wooden cart onto the
elevator and pushed six. Today, he stood in the middle and when the
door opened on three, he did not look down to the floor or rub his
head as if feverish. Dykes was happy. Since the riot at the
auditorium, nobody was talking to anyone about a union or anything
else. They would all ride the elevator silently, never looking up,
and never engaging Dykes in conversation.

The medical staff had gotten the first raise.
With more of the medical staff still under hospital care and unable
to vote for themselves, the vote had been a tie. The directors
broke the tie in favor of the medical staff, betting that the
support grunts (also known as Joe six-pack and Mary Vodka hidden in
the linen closet) would forget about the raise and concentrate on
the all-star wrestling that was coming to town next month. But both
the professional and the non-professional staff were angry,
vengeful, distrustful, confused, and defeated. Even the doctors
were dejected that their demands had not been met and that they had
to make good on their threat and go to the new competing hospital,
although most hadn’t. Now, no matter how crowded the elevator was,
Dykes rode in blissful silence. It made Dykes want to jump up and
click his heels together.

It was a new nurse that got on. The doors
opened and there was Dykes looking straight at her. The first thing
Dykes noticed was that she had so many light freckles along the top
of her cheeks that they almost ran together. They did not. Instead,
they brushed across her cheeks like adoring grandmothers. The
second thing he noticed was that her hair was the same color, a
warm auburn brown that created a glow that said, “I’m the girl
you’ve been waiting for.” Dykes wondered who her hair was talking
to.

Her big, honey-colored eyes said, “You,
stupid.” When the elevator door began to close on her as she tried
to negotiate around his cart that he had not bothered to move, he
grabbed the door and held it for her.

“
Ah, hello,” he said
accidentally.

“
Hi,” she replied, smiling and
biting her lower lip nervously. Dykes had got a glimpse of her
eating alone in the cafeteria as he went through the lunch line to
get his food and take it out to his car. Normally, a new person was
invited to sit with her co-workers right away so that she could be
made to feel right at home and grilled for gossip. But since the
riot, new employees were shunned because they had not gone through
what everyone else had and had not had to fight for the four-
percent raise. No one had helped her get adjusted, or made her feel
welcome or told her what food to avoid in the cafeteria. The
animosity shown to her and the other new employees for no Goddamn
good reason was almost as if the hospital was a union shop. “Looks
like it may storm,” Dykes found himself saying.

“
Actually, it’s sunny out. I’ve
seen you around. Your name is John, right? You seem to be the only
friendly person that works here.” The door shut and the elevator
began its assent. The nurse stared at her shoes with her arms
tightly crossed as if she was hugging herself. The door opened on
the fifth floor. “I’m Michelle,” she said quietly.

Irene squeezed herself onto the elevator. She
had been retired almost a year and was sick of working the
overtime. She was beat. She just wanted to climb into her new Kia,
turn on the radio and listen to Roger Hedgecock. She pushed the
lobby button, saw that the two young people were going up to six
and pushed the lobby button again.

Dykes wanted to make her smile or laugh, even
if he was never to cross paths with her again. Michelle, of course,
not Irene. At this moment, he wanted to push Irene down the
elevator shaft. But he began to question his motives. While he knew
why he wanted to push Irene, he also knew why he wanted to strike
up a conversation with this beautiful woman. He had been tempted to
make small talk to other pretty women and he had always chosen not
to. He had enough faults; he did not want to be shallow, too. So
John quickly made up his mind that if he were to start up a
conversation, he would be finished before he started. He knew he
would never find anything to say and he didn’t want to risk looking
like the fool he was. He told himself, if you are going to fail, if
you are one of those destined to be lonely, why even try? Yet, he
had seen her eating her lunch alone and he did not want that for
her. “Can I walk with you, Michelle?”

Dykes walked along side of her as she talked
about where she went to school and her previous job of working in a
nursing home. Dykes saw Mary Eddy coming towards them and realized
that he couldn’t duck his head into the water fountain or turn and
walk the other direction. Yet Mary came forward, looking directly
at them. He panicked while Michelle continued to talk. “I like
being home,” she said. “I grew up here.”

“
Hi, Michelle,” Mary
said.

“
Hi, Mom,” Michelle
returned.

A group of employees stopped Irene’s descent
on four. Then as the elevator crawled down to the first floor,
Dykes abandoned cart and silence filled the elevator. Irene
wondered what had happened to her friends. She knew that everyone
was holding grudges and refusing to pretend to like each other, but
she was retired and didn’t consider herself involved. But things
had taken a toll on her, too though, and she felt a great urge to
yell, “Jesus, whose breath smells like bacon and cigarettes. Ever
here of breath mints or brushing your fucking teeth?”

She got off the elevator on one after the
other four plowed ahead of her and headed toward the door in a fast
waddle. Out on the sidewalk, she ran into a cook who was trying to
light a cigarette. The match flew out of his hand and onto the
ground.

“
Watch out, Irene,” he
said.

The housekeeper walking with him took his
hand. Joe had been surprised that since he started taking breaks
with Susan, no one had made any derogatory comments about them
dating. Of course, most people lived in fear of Susan kicking their
ass since the riot. “Don’t be so grumpy, Joe,” she said.

“
I hate this place.”

Susan smiled. “But you love me,
dontcha?”

He looked at the pretty housekeeper who was
the best person he had ever met. He didn’t know how big of an
accomplishment that was and yet he felt like the luckiest man in
Michigan. He smiled back.

Fellow smokers stood around the building
trying to get enough poison in fifteen minutes. There was more
chatter around the entrances than there had been for weeks. Off to
the side, Father Chuck passed a flask back to Dan. “You can always
try again in a year.”

Bigger hurried as he scuffed his cowboy boots
on the marbled floor of the new administration wing of Saint
Jude’s. He wanted to meet Joe and Susan for break, but he kept
slowing down to marvel at the wood-carved paneling on the walls and
the chandeliers that lit the hallway. The administrators had
decided to remain working next to their staff and to just build a
new administrative wing instead of a new building. The CEO,
vice-presidents, and board members were only an underground,
guarded tunnel away from the patients and staff. This way, they
would remain close enough to watch that the employees didn’t riot
again, yet far enough away that they could safely hide if they
did.

Bigger now worked with Dykes and was the
newest team member of the Central Utility Network of Transportation
(formerly the Axial Replenishment Requisition Center (commonly
acronymed with a soft C) (Formerly Central Supply)). Bigger had
been transferred as the psychiatric staff felt it would be too
stressful for Seuss to return to work with his victim.

He had let his hair return to its natural
color, and although he was no longer required to wear a uniform, he
always wore a jean shirt with a tie, a pair of causal dress pants
and an expensive pair of cowboy boots. He hated his new job as much
as his old one and considered it temporary until he began classes
in the nursing program at Davenport College, but it was more pay so
at least his wife no longer cried on the first of the month. She
still called him a loser and told him that he wasn’t a real man
because he couldn’t properly care for his family, but she didn’t
cry. Bigger’s mom was also proud of his new job and enrollment in
college, although she did not approve of his new boss, Mr. Crapper,
because she had found out the he was not gay, but dating Rebel
Wilson.

Now that Bigger no longer worked in the
kitchen, people were rude to him and complained that he was too
late or too early or too right on time (I don’t suggest asking
Bigger what happened to the invisibility rays when Joe is around).
Bigger looked on the bright side and was thankful for the
conversation.

Bigger walked with a case of caviar for the
executive break room under his arm, enjoying the clicking thud his
boots made on the floor. He passed where the armed guard always
stood on duty. No one was there so he knew Tim was working. Slowly,
quick taps of high-heeled shoes echoing down the hallway drowned
out his thuds. Then a woman wearing a blazer and holding a
microphone came around the corner. Behind her was a guy with a
video camera that he kept ready to prop up onto his shoulder. It
was then that Bigger remembered the dedication for the new wing was
set for this afternoon. “Hmm,” Bigger said aloud. “Maybe I could
become a TV reporter?”

The woman’s ears were red from hurrying and
anxiety, but her excessive makeup remained perfect and as she ran
her hair did not move out of place. “Excuse me,” she called out.
“Are you somebody?”

“
Nah.” Bigger continued on his
way.