by Jon Cohen
So the two of them sat on the steps looking out into the night, Arnie feeling sorry for Iris, and Iris feeling sorry for Arnie, but neither of them really wanting to talk about it, because what, after all, could you say?
Iris took off her nursing shoes and wiggled her white-stockinged toes. “Any more beers left?”
Arnie stood up, relieved to escape his thoughts. “Sure, sure. Stay there, I’ll get you one.”
“Great,” she said, rubbing her feet. “I wore the treads off these babies tonight.”
“Bad night?”
Iris opened her mouth to speak.
Arnie pushed on the screen door and hurried inside. “No details! No details!”
Duke yawned and regarded Iris. A crushed bit of firefly flickered weakly on the corner of his mouth. Iris brushed it off. “Why don’t you be useful and eat something like cockroaches or ants?” Arnie came back out with her beer and a fresh one for himself. They drank and listened to the crickets. Iris felt the alcohol ease through her. She thought about her night—the GI bleeder, wrapping bed 1 in the shroud sheet, the Tube Man, Libby and Dolores and Denise. She let the beer flow around all of it, and through it, until the edges were a little less sharp, the particulars less defined. She let herself drift, all the way back to the encounter she’d had on the way to work. Now she had time to think about it, to wonder about the man in the baseball hat and purple scarf.
She’d wondered about it all night, of course, but didn’t have enough time to really get to it. She kept meaning to ask Libby or Denise about him, they’d both grown up in Waverly, but it had been so damn busy. Something was wrong with him, obviously. As a nurse, she’d seen lots of people attempt to conceal or disguise their disfigured parts. The ladies who wore bright scarves around their necks to hide their tracheotomies, or the ones who wore gloves on their arthritic hands, even in the summer. That old Irish guy who wore his golf cap, even in bed, to cover the metal plate in his head where the skin wouldn’t graft. Sometimes the wound was in a place where clothes couldn’t do any good. Like the patient last month who’d lost part of his tongue to cancer. He couldn’t wear anything to hide his tongue; the best he could do was place his hand over his mouth when he spoke, like a shy oriental girl. What with the tongue and the hand, Iris never understood a word he’d said.
So what was wrong with the man in the hat and scarf? It must have been pretty bad, that he had to wrap and cover himself like the Invisible Man. She swallowed and looked around at the shadows of the night. Now there was a creepy thought: Maybe he was the Invisible Man. She didn’t remember seeing his hands or anything. No. His eyes. How could she have forgotten them? She’d looked right into them. The Invisible Man didn’t have eyes; he always wore sunglasses. The man in the car looked like he wanted to be invisible, though. He didn’t get out much, she was pretty sure of that. The way he scrunched down in his seat when she asked him about the funeral and that rusty, unused sound to his voice. She’d heard voices like that before, people who’d been in comas for days or weeks and then awakened. They always sounded dry and a little lost.
His voice was unused, maybe, but not his eyes. He lived through his eyes, she could tell. Like the paralyzed patients she’d worked with, those imprisoned bodies with the eyes that were everywhere. Their sight was almost a palpable thing. She could feel it on her skin when she entered the room, and when she bathed them and turned them. They were so hungry for something new to look at. They used their eyes to look, and to smell, too, and to touch and taste. It was very strange for her to be so appreciated for her physical presence. She, Iris, who had not one thing of beauty to offer, was practically devoured by the eyes of her paralyzed patients. She’d felt something like that when the man in the hat and scarf lifted his eyes to her.
Iris began to feel a little funny. She tried to blame it on the beer, but that wasn’t it. And she was very tired, but that wasn’t it either. She hadn’t eaten a proper meal since breakfast—too many Pepsis and candy bars. Maybe her blood sugar was screwy; she was certainly fat enough for it to be a problem. She shook her head to clear the dizziness, then stared into the darkness. The night surrounded her, and she forgot that Arnie and Duke were nearby. She was alone. A sound, a faint sound, and lights, too. The crickets, that’s what she heard, and the shimmering lights came from the fireflies. She lifted her hand and placed it softly on her chest, felt the rising and falling there. The sound of the crickets became the voice of the man in the hat and scarf, and in the light of the fireflies she saw his eyes.
He had the voice of a man in a coma, just roused from his sleep. His voice was the sound of crickets. And his eyes were the eyes of a paralyzed man that touched and tasted everything before him. His eyes shone with the light of fireflies.
She had never imagined such words, and she had to listen to them over and over to get their meaning. His voice was, his eyes were, over and over, until at last the words clarified themselves in a simple and unbelievable sentence, which she spoke quietly into the darkness before her.
“I’m thinking of a man.”
Arnie, just behind her on the front steps, had been watching her closely. When she spoke, the words went into his left ear, his bad one.
“What? What’s that?”
Iris hardly heard him. I’m thinking of a man. She’d never, ever thought of a man before. Of men, yes, faceless men in daydreams, men who didn’t exist and never would. But the actual eyes of a specific man, and his voice—she’d never dared. What would have been the point? Why ponder eyes that would never turn in her direction, or imagine a voice that would not speak her name? Had the man in the hat and scarf spoken her name? No. No, of course not. Or had he? When she tried to remember what they had said to each other in the cemetery parking lot, it seemed now that he might have said her name several times, as if calling to her. And he looked at her, in a way no man had ever looked at her. His eyes had called her name, too, hadn’t they? Something moved from him to her, left his eyes or mouth, and came to her.
“Iris,” said Arnie.
But the voice she heard belonged to the man in the hat and scarf. “Hello, Iris.” A coma patient coming to, the sound of crickets. I am thinking of a man.
“You okay?” said Arnie.
Iris turned to him and brought him into focus. She found her own voice, and said too loudly, as if overcoming the rasp and chirp of the crickets, “Sure I am. Of course I am.” She smiled.
The smile made Arnie nervous. He scratched his hook back and forth over the wooden porch step. “You been changing shifts too often. You look a little dazed, girl.”
She turned her face again to the dark. What if, she thought, what if there is nothing at all wrong with the man in the hat and scarf? Be careful, Iris, it can’t be true, she warned herself. Don’t go too far with this. But she couldn’t stop. Maybe, she giggled and grew warm beneath her nurse’s uniform, maybe it’s just the opposite. Maybe he’s so good looking he has to hide himself so that women won’t bother him. She imagined then the face of Peter O’Toole as Lawrence of Arabia, obscured by his turban and flowing sash. Peter O’Toole’s voice spoke her name. “Iris,” he said with a wearied relief, as if he had crossed an interminable desert to find her, to place her name on his tongue like water from an oasis. He chooses me, because of all the women in the world I expect it least. And I will be the only one who ever gets to see his face. Each night, before we get into bed, he’ll bend down and I’ll remove his hat, and then his scarf, and kiss his sweet, pale, hidden skin.
She jumped when Arnie’s hook touched her own skin, the cold metal pulling her out of an Arabian bedroom and away from sweet kisses. She looked at Arnie’s hook and thought again of the face behind the hat and scarf. Peter O’Toole’s features melted away in the wavy heat of the desert. She knew better. She knew it was really a world of hooks instead of hands, where secret injuries were protected by baseball hats and bandaged by purple scarves. She was a nurse, and she knew when she was in the presence of a wound. She had a thought then, a
s she looked out into the night. She tugged at her white uniform and chewed on her lip. Am I drawn to the man or his wound? She pictured the wedding night, saw herself dressed in a bridal veil and nursing cap. The big moment would not involve lovemaking, but a different experience of the flesh. Late into the night, and on into the morning, she’d dress and redress his face, expertly applying antibiotic salves, experiencing his wounds until they became her own.
That was about as far as she could go. “Iris,” she said out loud, “you’re a real sicko.”
Arnie still touched her lightly with his hook. “What?” He turned his good ear toward her. “What are you saying?”
She sucked down the remainder of her beer. “Nothing, Arnie. I’m not saying anything.”
“You were. Don’t say you weren’t. Whispering all the time so I can’t hear you. I might as well be conversing with Duke here. Least when he barks I can understand what the hell he’s saying.”
Iris closed her eyes in fatigue and took comfort in her father’s exasperating talk. His words were welcome after listening to her own crazy thoughts. “You ever consider a hearing aid?”
“A what?”
Iris smiled. “A hearing—”
“Aid,” he said triumphantly, and loud enough to cause Duke to hop up out of his sleep. “See? I heard you. You health people are always trying to push some goddamn device. Bifocals, and pacemakers, and super wee-wee pads for dribblers.” He waved his hook at her, to no great effect since her eyes were still closed. “Well, I got my device. This is it. This is all I’m getting, and I’m never getting a hearing aid even if you have to shout at me through a bullhorn.”
“The neighbors should enjoy that,” said Iris.
“Ah, the hell with the neighbors. We ought to move out of this town, you know,” said Arnie. “I’m getting the old itch again,” he said sleepily.
Iris stiffened. “No,” she said suddenly.
But Arnie didn’t hear her. He was nodding off against the porch column. “No,” she said again to the still figure, as if trying to plant the word in his subconscious. She didn’t want to leave Waverly. I’m thinking of a man, and he lives in Waverly.
“Oh my God, Iris,” she whispered. “It’s time to get your fat ass into bed.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
A WEEK later the Tube Man died. He died on night shift, when Iris wasn’t there. She came in for day shift, chewing her morning Three Musketeers bar, and walked past his room on her way to the staff refrigerator to store her two Pepsis. She walked by his room again on her way to her locker, and it wasn’t until she hung up her jacket that the Tube Man’s absence registered in her sleepy brain. She poked her head around the corner and stared at his room. When the Tube Man had been alive, the curtains were always half-drawn and the lighting was dim. Now the curtains were open wide, the lights glared, and Lionel from Housekeeping was swabbing the walls with green antiseptic. They did total room cleanings after the death or departure of an infectious patient or a patient who’d occupied the room for more than a month. The Tube Man had made it to six months.
Lionel, his disposable protective cap cocked jauntily on his head, saw Iris looking in and waved to her through the window. Then he mouthed the words, “Two A.M.” in anticipation of her question. Iris felt weak. When she’d taken care of the Tube Man yesterday, he’d seemed stronger, or at least less moribund. She should have known. They always did that, veered in the opposite direction to throw you off the scent, and then tricked you and died hours later. She’d taken care of him every day for the last week, bathing and turning him, performing all the rituals, and each time, at the end, she’d speak to him. “Tell me,” she’d whisper, keeping an eye on the door to make sure no one would walk in on her. “Is. Tell me who the man in the window is. Is who? Is who?” she’d repeat, the rhythm of her urgent words falling into the rhythm of all the Tube Man’s machines, the beeps and blips, the hisses and sighs that filled his interminable hours. But her words seemed to penetrate no deeper than the sounds of his machines and mean no more to him. Nothing arose from his breathing tube other than the mechanical exhalations that were a response to the breaths he received from the ventilator, 12 a minute, 720 an hour, 17,280 a day. If she’d had time, she’d have listened between each of those breaths for the word that would complete the Tube Man’s sentence.
“Yeah, last night. How about that?” came a familiar voice from behind her.
Iris turned away from the window and looked at Shelley, the big charge nurse on night shift. “He’s dead,” Iris said.
“Yeah, hard to believe. I look at the room and still see him lying there. A permanent fixture, you know? But they finally beamed him up.”
“Did you have him?” Iris could hardly stand the pounding in her chest.
Shelley gave her a look. “No. Paula had him.” Shelley’s eyes suddenly moved past Iris to another room. “Oh shit.” She rushed past Iris. “Get back! Hold on there, Mr. Petrie, you get back in that bed.” Mr. Petrie, the patient in bed 5, was half out of bed, having wiggled free from his wrist restraints. He had a grip on the rubber Foley tube inserted in his penis, stretching it a foot or two and tighter than a bowstring. Iris winced. Shelley slapped his hand away and the Foley twanged back into place. Then she lifted him off the floor and plunked him in bed. You didn’t mess with Shelley, who, like most night nurses, was built big for trouble.
Iris found Paula in bed 8 setting up a nitroglycerin IV drip. The patient was stretched out, still as death, squinting in pain.
“Hey, Paula,” said Iris.
“Hey, Iris.” Paula shook her head. “Can you believe it? This guy’s been having chest pain since five A.M., and I told the docs the sublingual nitro wasn’t working. I told them then the morphine wasn’t working. I must have called them six different times for orders, and it wasn’t until just now they let me hang a drip. I mean, Jesus, this guy could have died before they got their asses in gear.”
The patient squinted even more and let out a frightened groan. Paula had a habit of talking too much in front of the patients. Iris patted his arm, and he grabbed her hand in relief.
“What a night, I’m telling you,” said Paula. A monitor beeped. “Mr. Bleary, lie still. You’re setting the alarms off when you jiggle like that.”
Mr. Bleary wasn’t jiggling, he was trembling. Chest pain scared the shit out of patients. Nothing taught the mortality lesson like heart trouble.
“You feeling any better, Mr. Bleary?” said Iris. “The nitroglycerin should be kicking in.”
“A little,” he whispered. “Maybe just a little.”
“You’ll be fine,” said Paula. “We’ll be back in a few minutes to check on you, okay?”
They left the room. Paula said to Iris, “You’ll be back to check on him. I’m going the fuck home to bed.”
Iris stopped her. “You had the Tube Man last night?”
“Yeah, how about that? The Tube Man’s finally gone up to the fifth floor.” There were only four floors in Barnum Memorial, and the fifth floor was the nurses’ slang for heaven.
“Were you there?” said Iris, trying to control the shakiness in her voice. “I mean, how did he go?”
“You getting a cold?” Paula said, stepping back. “You sound a little hoarse.” Paula had been handling patients with hepatitis, rampant bacterial infections, and even an old guy with active TB. But a cold, now that was something else. “I don’t need a cold, let me tell you. Not this weekend. Larry and I are going away. Poconos,” she whispered confidentially.
“The Tube Man…”
“Oh, yeah, well. You know, nothing much to it. Cardiac, like we all knew it would be. He went from a brady into a complete heart block. Then from there basically into a flatline. It didn’t take long after he started blocking down.”
Iris stared at her, obviously wanting more.
Paula paused. “And then we wrapped him up, after we took all his tubes out. He was a mess. Leaked from about ten different places. And then we called the
orderly, and—”
“Did he speak?” Iris said suddenly. “Did he say anything?”
Paula brightened. “Yeah, you mean like he’d been doing? I never believed any of that, you know. Shelley said she heard him once, and a couple of the others, but I never did, so I wasn’t paying that much attention and all. And I was busy all shift, so it wasn’t like I could stand around waiting for him to speak. But…”
“But?”
“Jeez, Iris, I didn’t know you were so into it.” Paula stepped back again, because Iris had moved too close. “But anyway, maybe he said something, but I think I’m stretching it. It was probably just a sound he made, not a word, but you guys said he was speaking, so I listened for a word, too. But I’m not sure it was. Probably just air leaking around his tube.” Paula tilted her head like she was listening again for the sound. Then she spoke. “It was just before he went flatline. I went in there to check on him, like you do, and I was leaning over him fiddling with one of his monitor leads…” She hesitated, then went on. “Now this is weird, but I was leaning over him and the room went real quiet. There was this moment between all the little noises the machines make, the beeps and the ventilator breaths and stuff, like everything in the room paused for a second… and that’s when I heard him.”
Iris held her breath and squeezed hard on the Three Musketeers bar she’d been holding in the palm of her hand.
“It’s kind of disappointing, really,” said Paula, “if it really was a word. But this is what the Tube Man said: ‘Loose.’”
