The Tides

by Melanie Tem

  Larry came out of a nearby room, and Rebecca put one hand under her father's forearm and the other arm around his waist. Together, she and Larry managed to get him into the wheelchair Shirley brought, and as soon as she could Rebecca stepped back from the slumped, frail, semiconscious old man. 'Thanks, guys,' she panted.

  'Is he all right?' asked Shirley.

  'I'll get him to his room and we'll check him out,' Larry said briskly.

  Rebecca watched. There was no cloud. Larry's strong, squat figure shimmered a little at the edges as he passed from one fluorescent pool to the next, especially at the intersection with another hall where light came from the sides as well as from above and, blurrily reflected, from below. That must be what she'd seen; no wonder her father, already confused, had been so badly disoriented. Maybe grants were available to experiment with the architecture of nursing homes, or maybe a design firm could be interested in using The Tides as a demonstration project.

  It was far more gratifying to think about grants and research projects and publishable papers than about Bob Morley dying from oven cleaner on his pancakes or about her father's hallucinations. Or, for that matter, about Naomi Murphy's alleged need for a job. Rebecca forced herself to go to her mother. 'He's not the only one to get confused by light and shadow and reflection,' she began, meaning to comfort and explain.

  But her mother would have none of it. Grim-faced, arms folded protectively across her ample middle, she turned on Rebecca a look of such piteous terror that Rebecca stepped back. 'What am I going to do, Becky? What am I going to do?'

  Rebecca steeled herself and put her arms around her mother. She did not remember the last time she'd done that; it might, in fact, have been when she was a small child. The older, larger woman was rigid, and the embrace didn't last long, but Rebecca did say, 'You're not alone, Mom. We're in this together.' When her mother didn't say anything, Rebecca dropped her arms, eased away, and asked, 'Did you—see anything?'

  'What are you talking about?' Billie snapped, swiping at her cheeks although there were no tears.

  'I thought I saw—something in the air around him.'

  'I didn't see anything except my senile husband,' her mother fairly spat.

  'I'll get Dave to check out the furnace, and call Public Service to make sure we don't have any toxic chemicals in the air.' That's all I need, she thought ignobly, but it did make her feel better to list things she could do to address a problem, even if it wasn't the real problem. Her mother gestured vaguely, turned, and walked away, leaving the facility by the side door that visitors weren't supposed to use.

  Rebecca let her breath out and reached past Naomi to inspect the loose handrail she'd thought Dave had fixed last week. Naomi was quite still. When Rebecca glanced up at her, her face, in place of its customary careful neutrality, had acquired a peculiar brittle animation that seemed to bespeak anger, then horror, then inspiration. Her body, too, assumed one stance, one attitude rapidly after another, its characteristic unprepossessing contours and bearing now sharp and tense, now bowed as in a free-form dance. All this took only a second or two, and then Naomi shivered, looked down again, folded her hands in front of her again, and was again still.

  Chapter 8

  Usually Larry didn't mind working graveyard. In fact, he preferred it, which wasn't the same as saying he liked it. He didn't like this line of work. Who would? But he didn't have any better ideas at the moment, and working eleven to seven helped. For one thing, you almost never actually had to deal with the patients.

  Other than bedcheck, which nobody knew whether you did or not, there wasn't a lot to do. You could sleep. This new administrator acted all high and mighty when she caught them napping, but every place Larry had ever worked, which was a lot of nursing homes, that was one of the perks of working nights that nobody talked about but practically everybody did, so he didn't know what her problem was. She wouldn't last long anyhow. They never did, and she was young and a woman.

  Sometimes there'd only be him and the nurse for an eight-hour shift, at least till the housekeepers and the kitchen crew came on. You could do just about anything you felt like. He'd done just about everything. He'd had girls meet him at the back door; there were plenty of empty beds. He'd taken stuff out of patients' rooms, only the ones who were bedfast and out of it, stuff they'd never miss and their families just brought it to make themselves feel better about dumping them in a place like this. A couple of times he'd even seen his chance when the nurse left the med cart unlocked and he'd scored some Percodan, which gave a nice little buzz. Larry wasn't exactly proud of all the shit he'd pulled, but it was probably what kept him from quitting, and he was a good orderly so bottom line was he was helping out everybody.

  You could study. Every time Larry was in college, he'd studied on his shift, not that it had done him any good, he never had managed to finish an entire semester. He wasn't cut out for college. He wasn't cut out to be an orderly, either. He didn't know what he was cut out for.

  Lately he'd been reading the Scriptures at night. Sometimes he read them out loud. Nobody else wanted to listen. Just a few months ago Larry wouldn't have wanted to listen to the Bible, either, but now he couldn't understand why not, and he felt even more alienated from the rest of the world than usual but in a better way, for once in his life like he was right and they were wrong instead of the other way around.

  Sometimes if a patient was awake he'd read the Scriptures to them. You weren't supposed to do that, but he couldn't see why not. Guy like this Paul, for instance; what else did he have in his life? If anything ever happened to Larry like had happened to Paul, he'd take whatever he could get that would show him how to go on living. Paul, actually, didn't seem especially bummed out, but Larry knew that couldn't be real. Larry was bummed about his own life, and he wasn't brain-damaged or senile or anything.

  At the ajar door of Paul's room, Larry paused to peer up and down both halls. It was worth waking him up to read from the Word of God, but the others wouldn't like having a patient awake on their shift. He didn't see anybody. He hadn't expected to. It was three-thirty in the morning, and unless the administrator showed up for one of her bogus 'staff meetings,' there wasn't likely to be much stirring until they started getting them up at five.

  Paul was already awake. The minute Larry stepped into the room he could hear him moving around in bed and grunting. What was even more surprising was that he had a visitor. Larry himself had checked the doors at eight, when they were locked for the night, and nobody could have gotten in unless somebody'd let them in. At first he thought it was that Abby; she didn't usually work nights and he didn't know her very well, and it did look like a young woman with long hair like hers. But the hair was fluffy, not straight, and this woman had really long painted fingernails; he could see them glistening in the shaft of bright light from the hall when she lifted her hand over Paul's face.

  Larry found that he'd raised the Bible in front of him, and it seemed like not a bad idea so he kept it there as he made himself step toward Paul's bed. 'Hey,' he said, keeping his voice down. 'Hey, what are you doing in here?'

  'Waiting for you, honey,' the woman said, and came into him.

  Abby was trying to stay away from Alex tonight. She hadn't wanted him to know she was on, but somebody'd told him or he'd heard her or sensed her or something, because every time she turned around he was whistling for her and nobody else would do.

  She hated working nights. The girls were with the neighbor again. She could hardly keep her eyes open, and napping in the hard chairs in the lounge only made her more exhausted, and she couldn't bring herself to actually sleep on one of the empty beds the way some people did. But the money was worth it. She needed the money. And she'd imagined she could at least avoid Alexander Booth.

  She didn't know how to think about Alex. She didn't want to be thinking about him at all, except as one more patient she had to take can of for eight or sixteen hours at a time, but he didn't exactly seem like a patient. It was true th
at he had no control over his body from the shoulders down and you had to do everything for him, but he gave her the impression of power and even motion. 'The power of positive thinking,' was what he called it. 'Getting things done. Taking charge of your life. Being a hammer rather than a nail. Knowing who you are.'

  He'd catch her staring and sometimes he would wink: 'It isn't every day a pretty girl looks at me that way.' Or he would frown and turn his head away as far as he could: 'Cut it out, Abby. You make me feel like a sideshow freak.' Whatever his reaction, flattery or offense, she could never think of anything to say, and she'd feel found out. She would just finish whatever she was doing for him and leave the room. But then he'd call her back. Didn't he ever sleep?

  She thought about him more and more. Playing with her kids, sitting in a meeting, taking care of the routine intimate needs of some other patient, she would find her mind wandering to Alex. In bed waiting for sleep, which sometimes took a long time to come especially if she was really exhausted, she would try to make her body limp and numb like his, to imagine being paralyzed and making love, or making love with a paralyzed man.

  She shouldn't be having thoughts like that. Maybe she'd have to go find another job. It wasn't hard to find work as a nurse's aide in a nursing home—there was such a high turnover—but the prospect made Abby tired and scared and, for some reason, sad.

  He was whistling for her now, very softly. Sometimes she thought only she could hear it. She went the other way, hoping, for once, that there'd be lots of lights on. But everybody on her wing was asleep, or they didn't want anything, or they'd given up asking for what they wanted. She'd just finished bedcheck, and all her wheelchairs were washed.

  Alex was whistling, like a voice that didn't need words inside her own head. Maybe he was having diarrhea again. She ought to go take care of him if he was having diarrhea, make up for the other day.

  Her nose wrinkled. She didn't smell anything worse than the usual nursing-home smells. The other day she'd known it was diarrhea by the smell. She'd have thought she was used to it by now, between her kids and the patients, but her stomach turned. She'd told herself it couldn't be much fun for Alex, either, and that had helped some. She'd detoured to the clean-linen closet, hoping she'd remember to tell somebody that they were running low on clean sheets, but probably she'd be the one who didn't have any when she needed them.

  His wife was standing with her back against the wall, fists pressed over her mouth. 'You did this on purpose!' she was choking.

  Alex was covered from the waist down in b.m. His bed was soaked, and Abby had stepped in a puddle of it before she realized it had spread. 'Oh Alex,' she groaned, and hoped he'd read that as sympathy instead of scolding. But the expression on his face confused and angered her. He didn't look embarrassed or upset. He looked pleased with himself.

  'I'm sorry, Abby,' he said, but he didn't sound sorry.

  'I can't stand this anymore!' His wife had edged toward the door but wasn't showing any red signs of leaving. Abby couldn't do what she needed to do for him with his wife looking on.

  'Jenny, please,' Alex began in his reasonable, insinuating way, so much quieter than the women's voices and the background noise in the hall that everybody worked hard to listen to him.

  Now Jenny Booth was addressing Abby. Abby didn't want to talk to her. She just wanted to get Alex cleaned up. She didn't think she could stand the smell much longer. ''Ten years ago I was just like you. I was an aide in a nursing home, we took good care of our patients, too, and he was married to another woman at the time, and he used to tell me awful things about his wife just like he's telling you about me. What are you telling her about me, Alex?'

  'Jenny,' Alex said.

  'Did you tell her you had the power turned off? My four-year-old had a terrible cold, it could have been pneumonia for all he knew, and her daddy turns the heat and the lights off on her for three days and nights in the middle of February. How could you do that, Alex?'

  'I had to do something to get things off dead center between us. I do not intend to spend the rest of my life in a nursing home, not when I have a home of my own to go to and I'm paying the bills. Even though they do take better care of me here than you ever did.'

  'I need to get you cleaned up' Abby started.

  Sobbing, Jenny pushed post Abby and out of the room. Her loose sandals made an awkward sound as she rushed down the hall. Then the door at the end of the hall swung open and shut, its heavy spring slowing and muting the slam. Abby stood there breathless, clean linen in her arms, tasting the fecal odor now on the roof of her mouth.

  Alex sighed. 'You see? You see what I have to put up with?' Abby didn't know what to say. She hated nasty talk and yelling. 'I think she's gone crazy,' Alex said under her hands. 'I think she's actually had a psychotic break.' There was a pause. Abby worked. Alex said in a different tone, 'Maybe I can make use of that.'

  Abby was going to be sick. She dropped his cold leg onto the bed and backed out of the room. Behind her the whistling started up again.

  Somebody came into the bathroom with her. Abby was too sick to care. She made it to the toilet and threw up, rested her forehead on the edge of the toilet—which wasn't very clean—and then threw up again.

  When her daughters threw up, she held their heads and wiped their lips with a damp washcloth. Somebody was doing that for her now. In between heaves, she tried to see who it was. As far as she could tell, nobody was there. She must really be getting sick. Who would take care of her kids if she got sick? She kept retching even after there wasn't anything left in her stomach, and her throat filled with hot bile. Ordinary throwing up was bad enough, but at least you knew your body was getting rid of something it couldn't use; dry heaves made her imagine parts of her body itself coming up, stomach lining and lungs and other things she didn't know about but that her body needed even if it didn't know it did.

  She stayed in the bathroom for a while after she'd stopped throwing up, just to make sure, and because her knees were too shaky to support her, and because she couldn't face cleaning up Alex's mess or listening to him bad-mouth his wife while he pretended that wasn't what he was doing.

  Somebody suggested that she could just sleep in here and nobody would be the wiser, a soothing and alluring voice hinting at a lullaby, and Abby did fall half-asleep on the floor, which wasn't entirely clean and wasn't cool anymore but was smooth. Her head was filled with pink and blue perfumed gauze that floated like a soft scarf in a soft breeze, very pretty, hard to hold onto but worth the try.

  She made herself get up. She wasn't being paid to sleep. She wasn't being paid to be sick. Her patients needed her. Alex needed her. She washed her face at the sink and dried it with the last paper towel, telling herself not to forget to tell Dave that the dispenser was empty. Her mouth tasted terrible and, naturally, she didn't have a toothbrush or even a mint. She sucked water from cupped palms and swished it around in her mouth, spat it into the sink and made sure to rinse the sink out. Her head was clear now, and she felt better. Who could that have been, talking to her?

  Florence and Shirley were just coming out of Alex's room with giant white plastic bags full of dirty laundry. 'We got it,' Shirley said cheerfully to Abby. 'He wanted you, but we told him he had to put up with us, so he did'.

  'Sorry. I didn't mean to leave it for you.'

  'He's on my assignment sheet tonight, not yours,' Florence pointed out.

  'But I'm the one who found the mess. I should have cleaned it up. I meant to.'

  'You okay, hon?' Shirley asked on her way past. 'You look a little peaked.'

  'He just really got to me' Abby started to say, but

  Shirley and Florence, lugging the bulky bags, hadn't stopped on their way to the laundry chute.

  Abby's memory of the incident was unpleasant, but it also didn't seem very real. Clearest was her feeling of having failed, which she felt a lot anyway, and the impression of the pretty colors, pretty fragrance, cool hands, soft voice she'd had to resist of
whoever had been in the bathroom with her while she was being sick. She didn't think there really had been anybody. Could a person just imagine something like that?

  She became aware that a buzzer somewhere on Wing 2 had been going off for a long time. Where was that guy Larry? Hiding somewhere reading his Bible, probably. She'd been warned about him, but so far he hadn't tried to convert her. From the nurses' station she could see that Paul Brautigan's light was on, and she went to answer it, chased by Alex's whistle whether he was actually still whistling for her or not.

  Paul was standing at his open window. Before she'd even taken in the whole scene, Abby was remonstrating, 'Paul, what in the world are you doing? It's four o'clock in the morning! You can't have your window open, you'll catch cold!'

  It took Paul a long time and a lot of effort to move, and he didn't even try to turn around by himself. But at the sound of her he started yelling, like a toddler unable to form words but full of emphasis and intent. His arms flailed. His pajamas, mismatched and too big for him, had slid off his hips and shoulders, and his heels were on the bottoms of them so that he'd surely trip and fall any second. Abby rushed toward him, and was horrified to see him lean out the screenless window, bend almost double over the sill. She grabbed his skinny hips and tugged him