Part Three: His Nurse & Her Secret

 

 

“How you holding on?” 

 

“Tip top,” he said, “couldn’t be better, top of the mark, happy as a clam, in the pink of health, mind never clearer.”

 

“That bad?”

 

“It’s killing me. If I could tunnel my way out like in those old WWII movies …”

 

“Maybe a rescue is in order.”

 

“Don’t tease.”

 

“It’s all set.”

 

“A rescue?”

 

“The phone call. He’s expecting it. Tomorrow afternoon.”

 

“Thanks, kiddo.”

 

“Bob?”

 

She’d never called him that before. “Yeah?”

 

Her voice was laden with uncertainty. “Is there a chance …? I mean, will there be a position if …? I shouldn’t ask. Sorry.”

 

“When I return—you hear that, Pam? Not if, but when—you’re my right hand.”

 

“Thanks. Boss.”

 

 

That sounded more familiar. He wanted to hear it more often. For the first time since electricity had been shot through his brain, he yearned to return to the outside world, to take up the reins again and ride that Bulldozer as far as it would take him.

 

Reins on a bulldozer? He chuckled. Maybe he would change the team name, shorten it, to Bulls. He thought about it. In due time, all in due time. “The Yuma Bulls,” he said aloud, just to try it out. 

 

Nah, he hated it! The Bulls were a basketball team and he hated basketball. Dozers was a baseball name. Just cut the bull, he told himself. Leave the Dozers alone.

 

He wandered, as casually as he could manage, into the Social Activities Room, like he had nothing better to do than hang out with the other patients. But he was looking for his day nurse, the one who’d given him the phone. Stolen it for him. Head Nurse Peters’ phone, no less! He wanted to get it back to his day nurse, so she could put it back wherever she stole it from, before she got in trouble.

 

But she was nowhere to be seen.

 

He approached the Nurses’ Station and asked the young woman, some sort of ice cream vendor he guessed from her silly red-and-white outfit, if she’d seen the Day Nurse.

 

“She’s taking a powder,” she said.

 

“What for?”

 

“You know,” the youngster said, lowering her voice as if this were a huge secret, “a powder.” 

 

So he whispered back at her, though he had no idea why they were whispering, “What kind of powder?”

 

The young girl tittered. Or did she twitter? Young people twitter nowadays, don’t they? He thought he’d heard someone say that, but he wasn’t sure, and before he could ask, the ice cream girl pointed across the Activities Room toward the door to the Women’s Wing.

 

“She went thataway?” he asked.

 

Little Ice Cream Annie nodded, so he strolled into the Women’s Wing. Male patients were discouraged from wandering the halls of the Women’s Wing, unless a nurse directed them to one of the therapy rooms or an orderly accompanied them to the far end of the wing where the Hospital Administration Office was located. But he’d never just walked by himself into the wing.

 

The first thing that struck him was how different it seemed from the Men’s Wing. And yet how similar. The hallway was the same sloping plane of cement, the doors and windows and occasional chairs for resting during a slow perambulation down the long hallway were identical as well. Yet everything was different. How was that possible?

 

It smelled different!

 

The air had a citrus smell to it—no, wait, not citrus but flowery, like … lavender! That was it. The air smelled of lavender. Wow, did that make a difference. The whole hallway looked different because it smelled different.

 

Then he saw the difference as well. Paint! The hallway was painted a different color of white, a softer, yellower white, almost … almost …

 

He had a name for that particular white—or he used to have a name for it, used to be able to name it to distinguish it from other whites. It was one of the first things he remembered learning from his mother, all the shades of white. But he couldn’t recall this one. 

 

Wait a minute, they were coming back to him: bright white, snowy white, china white, cotton white, lily white, paper white, primer white, off white, old gold—was that a white? And this one—what in pigmentation’s name was it?

 

“Jesus, Matty and Felipe!” he swore aloud. 

 

“Don’t swear,” she said, and just like that his Day Nurse had found him. “What’re you doing in this wing?”

 

“Looking for you.”

 

She smiled. “What do you need now?”

 

He showed her the phone. She put her hand over his, hiding the phone.

 

“Keep it,” she said. “No one knows.”

 

“It’s Peters’ phone!” he whispered to her. “She’ll have our heads.”

 

“She’s already filed a Stolen Property Report. She assumes one of the orderlies took it.” 

 

“Why?”

 

She pushed the phone back towards him. He put it in the pocket of his bathrobe.

 

“Lots of things have gone missing,” she explained. “Money and phones and computers. Has to be one of the employees. Peters doesn’t trust the orderlies anyway, so she figures it’s one of them.” She laughed, then added, “She’s got spies out watching all the orderlies. It’s funny to watch.”

 

She touched the back of his hand. “That one’s yours now,” she said, then turned and headed toward the Activities Room. “Don’t let anyone find you down here,” she called back over her shoulder.

 

He put his hand in the pocket, felt the smooth metal and glass of the phone. His phone.  

 

He owned a phone! That was, well … he whistled in disbelief. 

 

Holy Hoosier Hammerer! I could make real money selling phone time to the other patients. Then he reconsidered. Probably better to keep it a secret.

 

He checked to make sure no one was coming, then pulled his phone out of his pocket. He looked at it with pride. Pressed the power button and the screen lit up. Then he laughed out loud.

 

He had a phone with Nurse Peters’ smiling face on it! Who’da thunk it?