by Ashley Herzig
At exactly nine o’clock, I push open the double doors to the ICU and take a deep inhale. Ah, that smell. Disinfectant, ammonia, just a hint of an iron tang, each breath fills me with power. I put a smile on my face and a bounce in my step, waving to each patient as I cross the sea of linoleum between their rooms and the nurses’ station.
There’s Jim, lying sphinxlike on his bed while Jeopardy blares in the background. He’s such a bore–hasn’t spoken since the tracheotomy. On the right is Susan, staring at the wall as usual while her mother prays a rosary. A foul odor wafts from her room. She’s torn her colostomy bag again. I pretend not to notice as I head to visit my favorite patient, Al. There’s an unfamiliar resident in his room. Dumb cunt is fumbling the IV.
I rush in and tap the bimbo on one shoulder.
“Hi there sweetheart, you must be new! I’m Jane, one of the night nurses, and I can tell we are just gonna love working together.”
“Hi I’m—” she says, but I cut her off.
“I think introductions better wait for tomorrow. Dr. Keller called a residents’ meeting in the H Wing for nine. You know how he feels about punctuality!”
She turns pale as a corpse and sprints out the door, knocking my shoulder as she goes without so much as a pardon. Wonder how long it’ll take for her to realize there’s no H Wing.
I let my voice go thick and sweet as I turn my gaze to Al.
“Honey, I swear you look younger every day!”
I’m lying, of course, but in these final stages of illness he’s gained a strange and saintly beauty. His flesh seems to melt away a little more every hour, as if he’s getting a head start on decomposition, revealing the elegant lines of his ribs and pelvis. The skin of his face is pulled taut over the underlying bones, yellow and translucent like a length of ancient parchment. I tilt my head to observe the hypnotic movement of his limbs as he twitches and shivers.
“Janey you flirt. Get over here and give a dying man his medicine.”
His voice is surprisingly steady and he attempts a wink.
I lean in to kiss his balding head, close enough to count the hairs on each mole. He smells like soup and harsh hospital soap with an undercurrent of rot. I smile at him as I lift his shaking arm and plunge the needle home, fast as a butcher skins a stag.
I love the night shift. The ward is quiet, no intrusive family members or crying children, just the slick mechanical whir of life support machines and the steady beep of the monitors. Occasionally a patient moans or cries out for a nurse, but such disturbances are swiftly handled. I keep an eye on the breathing corpses in my charge as I fill out charts, getting up every now and then to distribute pills or to sponge the pus from Jim’s bedsore-ridden flab.
When it’s time for my break, I stop by Sandra’s seat at the nurses station. Her peroxide hair forms a halo of poodle-permed curls in the fluorescent light, framing her caked-on bronzer and sagging jowls. As usual, her scrubs are a size too small, showing off her swollen belly and cottage-cheese hips. She gives me a scowl, but I don’t take it personally. Sandra doesn’t like anybody.
“Sandy, honey, am I glad to see you–have you heard about Chief Jenkins’ new boy toy? I swear she goes through residents faster than you can shovel stale donuts down your throat.”
Sandra glares at me but leans in anyway, eager for gossip.
“I don’t know how that woman can call herself a Christian the way she carries on. I swear last week I saw her coming out of the on-call room with two X-Ray techs, all of them adjusting their clothes,” she whispers gleefully.
“Again? That woman! The surgical staff must be an absolute cesspool of venereal disease!”
“Amen. I just pray their poor patients get their vaccinations updated before those knife-happy harpies stick their filthy claws in ‘em. Irene from orthopedics told me about one unfortunate woman diagnosed with hepatitis right after Jenkins closed her up.”
“No,” I gasp in affected astonishment. “I suppose it was bound to happen eventually.” Not likely. Jenkins might be let loose with some of her better-looking residents, but she was a real tight ass in the OR. Sandra’s a jealous old hag with a knack for thinking the worst of everyone. I think that’s why she’s my favorite colleague.
“I’m going downstairs for a coffee. Get you something?”
Sandy wants a Venti No-Whip Skim Triple-Mocha-Chocolate-Chunk Frappuccino with two shots of caramel syrup and half a cake pop sprinkled on top. She’s a hateful woman.
I stalk the labyrinthine halls of St. Dymphna’s Mercy on the hunt for caffeine. The hospital acquired its current environs after the foreclosure of a state asylum in the late sixties. I like to imagine the tormented ghosts of the electro-shocked and ice-pick prodded lingering in the building’s dingy corners and dusty attics. Some early twentieth century architect decided that the crenellated arches and looming towers of gothic architecture would be a soothing tonic for the disordered minds of the insane. Idiot.
At this hour the floor is nearly empty, with only a short wait for the elevator. I share my ride to the lobby with a couple of bored orderlies and a twitching patient on a gurney. The orderlies dump the twitcher in a corner of the empty waiting area and follow me to our final destination, that holy temple of caffeine and capitalism – the twenty-four hour hospital Starbucks.
I order Sandra’s abomination, my black coffee, and Al’s favorite – a bulbous muffin encrusted with sugar sores and blueberries. I like the old man – as much as I like anyone. He’s funny in a mean kind of way and sinewy tough. Maybe I’ll give him another gift in addition to the muffin. A particular sort of calm takes over me, boredom falling away as I consider how I’ll do it.
I return to the ICU just as a patient on the other end of the ward begins to seize. Perfect. Sandra doesn’t so much as twitch at the fracas, flipping through an old Cosmopolitan at her desk. I cough and ask, “Aren’t you going to help?”
“If you care so much, you do it,” she replies, bored.
I flip her off and slip a vial from an unattended cart, surreptitiously making my way to Al’s room. He’s asleep, emanating painful, arrhythmic gasps. I decide not to waste the fentanyl. Instead, I grab an extra pillow from one of the cupboards and silence his vital monitors.
Smothering a sick old man isn’t as easy as you’d think. Al struggles in my grasp, hands flailing, his skinny calves kicking frantically under the covers. I curse my decision to save the drugs as I scramble to keep his IV stand from falling over. At least he’s not a screamer. Finally he stills, his bowels emptying in a final stinking rush over the sheets. God I hope I don’t have to deal with the mess.
I’m sitting on the floor of Al’s room adding a little something special to Sandra’s drink when I remember Al’s muffin. Fuck, knew I was forgetting something. I abhor waste only slightly more than I hate blueberry muffins, so I decide to choke this one down in the old geezer’s honor. It tastes stale and mushy, sickly sweet as it travels down my gullet, weighing in my gut. Is this grief?
Ashley Herzig is a reader, writer, and chocolate eater from Long Island, NY. She is currently a student at SPS studying literature and creative writing. Her work has been published in the Same, Five:2:One, and Right Hand Pointing. During the quarantine, she is learning to bake bread and cross stitch.