The Tides

by Melanie Tem

  Rebecca had tugged off her high-heeled boots and scrambled down the incline. She knew the depression was shallow, but almost at once she lost perception of anything above or around it; she knew it was dry, filled in with weeds and urban debris she'd been meaning to have cleaned out, but she was submerged in light and odor so thick they should have had tactile properties, too, should have been wet and viscous on her skin.

  Her father moaned again. She pushed toward him, through the assaultive smell of roses that must be adhering to her. Her father's arms were curved around a form she couldn't quite see, but the volume of air and light it displaced was substantial. Her father's parted lips were

  pursed in a lingering kiss and his tongue glinted out between them. His penis was erect.

  'Dad!' Rebecca started to cover his nakedness with her clothed body but was flung away. The back of her head hit the ground hard. Dazed, she struggled to clear her senses.

  Then she heard her father roar, 'No! Faye! I won't allow you to have her!' and he was pulling her by the wrists up out of the depression and stumbling with her toward the back door of The Tides.

  His strength had horrified her, so obviously born of desperation and of a love for her that defined him now, defined her, too, beyond the particulars of who they were. She'd glanced back once and seen pulsing pastel light in pursuit of them like a monstrous incoming tide, but the back door had not been locked, as it was supposed to be, and she and her father had rushed inside, where he'd collapsed and she'd shouted for help.

  Now, at her father's bedside in broad sunny daylight, with budget reports needing to be attended to and Viviana Pierce trying to die across the hall, Rebecca watched his face. But she was thinking about Faye. Dementia could produce powerful fantasies, but she'd seen and smelled and heard things last night, too, and even now she felt things—a pressure in the air, a lightness that in itself should not have been sinister but radiated intense danger.

  She looked across at her mother. The ceiling lights were too bright, of course, their illumination flat and graying, practically shadowless. Billie Emig looked stalwart and unapproachable in the other mustard-colored chair, just like Rebccca's, hard arms and awkwardly angled back; the rectangles made by the aluminum bedrails streaked her bulky shoulder, her thick cheek. Her hand on the vertical crosspiece didn't seem to be trembling; that might be because she was clutching the rail so hard, or she might really be as calm as she appeared to be.

  Her wedding ring glinted, the ring Rebecca must have seen on her mother's hand countless times every day of her childhood and had never really noticed, didn't know what its pattern was or whether there was an inscription. Only one of countless things she didn't know about her mother, it suddenly appalled her.

  Seized by a desire to make contact with Billie, she thought what to say. She might try a statement of empathy, which she could offer sincerely to any other resident's family member but could not quite bring herself to say to her mother about her father: 'It must be hard for you to see him like this.' Most people responded warmly, correctly inferring that she cared about them. If her mother thought so, it would be true, but not entirely so, and the possibilities made Rebecca squirm. If her mother thought she was being a professional instead of a daughter, that would be true, too, but not entirely so.

  She could just ask straight out about Faye.

  'Faye.'

  Somebody had spoken the name aloud. Rebecca was sure she herself had not, but her mother was still staring straight ahead, face lined and drooping in the harsh light, and gave no sign of having said anything. Rebecca leaned forward to look again into her father's face.

  His eyes were open. When she moved into his line of vision, his eyes focused on her, and she saw in their wet feverish surfaces her own reflections on a swirling variegated background. Her father's lips moved, and she thought he was saying, 'Faye.' But when she bent closer she heard nothing; his lips kept moving, opening and closing very slightly, twitching in minuscule tics and tremors, the top gum coming down to touch the edge of the bottom lip again and again. She felt the faint intake and outrush of his breath on her own lips, but there were no words.

  Rebecca found herself glancing behind her and overhead for the source of the filmy pastel colors that had framed her in her father's eyes. The fluorescent lights had bluish auras, but that was all.

  The commotion across the hall in Viviana's room coalesced into shrieks, and something crashed onto the floor. 'I want to die here! Please! Leave me alone!'

  Rebecca was on her feet and out into the hall. A small crowd had gathered. Steeling herself, she pushed past Petra, who was clutching the crossed arms of her pink sweater with her own crossed hands and muttering. The man in the flannel shirt was Viviana's grandson, but he was well out of the way.

  The scene inside the room was a physical shock. Viviana lay on the floor with bedclothes scattered around her, one thin leg tangled in a sheet and caught on the edge of the bed. She was covered with blood. The sheets were wet and spotted dull red. With both hands she was clutching the gray metal frame of the bed, which hardly rattled although she must have been using all her strength.

  Diane was kneeling over her. For a split second it seemed to Rebecca that Diane's stance was threatening, and instinctively she started forward to come to Viviana's aid. But then she saw the look on the nurse's face. 'Diane, what's going on?'

  'She's hemorrhaging.' Diane glanced up, brushed a lock of damp dark hair out of her face and then lowered her gaze and her hands again as if to grapple with the frail, bleeding old woman on the floor. She grasped Viviana's wrists but did not seem to be exerting any real pressure. 'The ambulance is on its way.'

  'I don't want to go to the hospital!' Viviana wailed, kicking with her free leg as Diane tried to remove her fingers from the bed frame. Blood spread around them, dark red and shiny on the shiny gray and white tiles.

  Viviana's nightgown, spattered and torn, was up around her hips. Diane reached to pull it down and the old woman twisted away from her as if the nurse were causing her pain. 'Viviana, you listen to me,' Diane commanded. 'You have to go to the hospital. You're losing a great deal of blood.'

  'Nana,' said the grandson, who had come back into the room but was keeping himself on the periphery of the drama, not to overstep his role or second-guess the professionals. 'Nana, please,' but it was unclear what he was pleading with his grandmother to do.

  'I think,' said Rebecca, 'we should discuss this.'

  Diane sank back on her heels and looked at Rebecca, keeping one hand on the back of the struggling old woman. 'What do you went, a committee meeting? Rebecca, she'll bleed to death if she doesn't get to the hospital immediately. This is a nursing decision.'

  'It's not only a nursing decision,' Rebecca began.

  'I want to die! Can't you people understand that? I want to die!'

  Diane's white uniform was speckled with Viviana's blood and with dust from the floor. She put her hands on the old woman's shoulders and bent to look into her eyes. 'Viviana, I can't let you die like this.'

  Rebecca forced herself to step into the room. 'Diane.'

  Diane was fussing over Viviana, efficiently, as if there were no doubt in her mind about what she should do.

  Viviana lay still now, eyes closed, toothless mouth open, obviously exhausted. But she still gripped the frame of the bed. Without looking up, Diane said to Rebecca, 'I'm a nurse. I won't let someone bleed to death in front of me without trying to save her life. That's what I'm trained to do. That's why I'm a nurse.'

  'You were willing to let her starve herself to death.'

  'That was different. Calmer. Passive. Not an emergency. This is a medical emergency, and I have to intervene.'

  Viviana was crying almost silently now, but she would not let Diane loosen her grip. Blood still flowed—from between the old woman's legs, Rebecca could now see—and Diane's white shoes were flecked with it. Rebecca struggled with sudden nausea and her vision blurred violet, evidence of her own blood rushing to her
head.

  Then her vision cleared, even assumed a hyper-clarity, as though she were looking through a high-powered lens that concentrated on the small bright sphere where Viviana's hands were wrapped around the aluminum post of the bedframe. Other fingers were among hers, working hers free. Not Diane's; Diane had risen, was talking to the grandson by the door. No one else was in the room. But Rebecca clearly saw long strong fingers with painted nails twist and scratch and claw at Viviana's fingers until, one by one in awful surrender, they let go.

  The ambulance pulled up outside, its siren ceasing mid-wail. Two attendants with a stretcher raced in the side door. One of them picked up the old woman from the floor, as unresisting now as if she were already dead. He laid her more or less flat on the stretcher, where the other attendant covered her to the neck. Rebecca looked for blood on the white sheet, but before it could appear Viviana was whisked away, Diane following to provide the information necessary for hospitalization and the grandson hastening to his car.

  Haltingly, Rebecca joined the hushed little group of residents and staff outside Viviana's room. Shirley was in tears. Rebecca went to her, started to put an arm around her, but the aide pulled angrily away. 'How could you just let that happen? You didn't think it was right, but you just stood there and let it happen!'

  Rebecca shook her head. 'It wasn't up to me'

  'You're the administrator! You're the boss! Everything is up to you!'

  Rebecca could scarcely think. 'I didn't know what was right,' she started to say, but stopped, pressed her back against the wall, took deep breaths that hurt and made her sick.

  Florence spoke up. 'I think Diane was right. You can't just let somebody bleed to death right in front of you.'

  'She's been wanting to die for a long time,' Shirley said fiercely. 'This was her chance, and we took it away from her.'

  Florence smiled. 'Believe me, she'll have other chances.'

  Tillie and her crew had already arrived and were hard at work cleaning the blood from the floor, stripping the bed, purging from the room any sign of the struggle—life-and-death, certainly, but bewilderingly inverted. Purging, too, apparently, any residue of the disembodied fingers Rebecca had seen; there was no sign, either, of anything that could account for such an illusion.

  Abby went to the linen closet for clean towels. She was shaky and upset, not wanting to talk to anybody about the awful thing that had just happened to Viviana, whatever it was, whether it was bleeding to death or not being allowed to bleed to death. Wanting, actually, to talk to Alex about it, but she could never talk to Alex about anything again. She'd hit him, and she deserved to lose her job at least, and even if she didn't lose her job she couldn't face him, couldn't ever take care of him anymore. That made her feel terrible.

  She'd been on her way to give Paul a shower when she'd heard the screams from Viviana's room, and she wished now she'd just gone about her business and left Diane and the others to handle things. That was their job, not hers. Because she'd been there and watched the whole thing, stood by and witnessed it all, somehow Abby felt she had to decide what was the right thing to do. She didn't know what was right. What had happened wasn't right, but she didn't know what anybody should have done different. She told herself to just quit thinking about it. She had enough things on her mind.

  Paul loved his shower. He asked for a shower a dozen times a day, and Maxine and some of the others said it was because he liked to get naked with girls. Abby thought maybe that was at least partly true, and so what if it was? Or maybe Paul just liked the feel of the warm water on his skin, the soapy washcloth, her hands. Colleen was talking to a massage school about the students doing internships at The Tides, and Abby thought that was a terrific idea; maybe they'd have time to do her, too. She didn't get touched enough, and neither did people in a nursing home, and neither, she suspected, did most people in the world. It seemed to her that one of the ways you knew who you were was when other people touched you, but it was never enough for anybody.

  Except Alex. She didn't want to be thinking about Alex, but she knew she had to. Alex got touched pretty much whenever he asked for it, and he asked for it a lot, and as far as she knew he couldn't feel a thing below his neck. They touched his face as part of his daily care routine, shaved him and put on aftershave, brushed his teeth and wiped away the foam. He also directed them, especially her, to touch the rest of his body, bathing and drying and oiling and powdering and moving his limbs in his exact range of motion exercises, and he acted as if it felt good.

  Now, reaching up to shampoo Paul's hair, she laughed along with him and promised herself that she'd touch her girls more. Maybe those massage students would teach her how to do it. 'Okay, kid,' she said to Paul, 'turn around and I'll do your back.'

  If you gave him time, Paul could do this part by himself. Usually they couldn't give him time because they had so many other showers to give, but today Abby stood still with soap and washcloth at the ready and let him get himself turned around the way he wanted. First he braced both hands on her shoulders, hard. Then he took his left hand off and pressed it against the slippery tile wall and moved his right hand from her left shoulder to her right. He stood like that for a minute, grinning, making sounds. Then he took his right hand off her right shoulder, moved his left hand to the corner of the shower stall, put his right hand where his left had been, and in this way turned his upper body all the way around. But his feet still pointed sideways and he was twisted at the waist. One foot at a time, he turned step by step to his left until he was fully facing the back Wall and his bent shoulders, long back, droopy butt were toward her and under her hands.

  'Good,' she called to him over the clatter of the water. 'Now here comes the best part.' Paul's snort of assent and anticipation echoed.

  By 'the best part' she'd meant getting his back scrubbed.

  She wished they had one of those long-handled bath brushes; the bristles would feel really good, and he might even be able to use it himself. Diane would think that was a stupid idea, but Rebecca and Colleen and Lisa wouldn't; she'd bring it up in Paul's care conference. When she told Paul, 'Here comes the best part,' that was what she meant.

  But all of a sudden her hands were around in front of him and she was rubbing his private parts with the washcloth and then with her bare fingers and Paul was hooting in obvious surprise and pleasure.

  Horrified, Abby snatched her hands back and retreated out of the shower stall. She turned the water off. Paul kept standing there with his back to her, waiting for more, or maybe just not able to turn around fast enough to suit her now. Mortified, she was furious with him; although she knew he couldn't possibly have made her do that, it really did seem to her that it hadn't been her idea, that somebody had pushed her hands there, that she would never have done something like that on her own.

  She started to dry him off, not very well and too roughly. When he realized that his shower was prematurely over and she wasn't going to touch him anymore anywhere, he got himself turned partway around, and she saw that he had a huge hard-on.

  Disgust made her even rougher then, and a couple of times he almost fell; once, she almost did. By the time she got him more or less dried off and more or less dressed—clothes on him, anyway, but his shirt buttoned wrong and the collar not turned down neatly the way he liked it, and she didn't bother with his hair—he was as upset as she was, hollering and swinging at her, and she had to call for Maxine to come help her get him into his chair and restrained.

  When they finally had Paul tied down so he couldn't hurt himself or anybody else, Maxine stood back, panting. 'So what got into him?' When Abby didn't answer, the other aide cuffed her arm in what was supposed to be a friendly way. 'Hey, girl, you can't let 'em get to you, you know?'

  Barely able to keep from screaming at her and hitting her back, Abby did hiss venomously, 'Shut up, Maxine, okay? You think you know everything. Just shut up, okay?'

  Maxine raised her hands in mock self-defense and backed off, pretending t
o be afraid of her, which made her even madder. 'Hey, hey, what got into you?' But she did go away, leaving the door to Paul's room open behind her.

  Abby stood looking down at Paul. He was all twisted up, one leg half over the other, head off to one side, but he was still glaring and yelling. Through his thin yellow pants she couldn't help but see that he still had a hard-on. Meaning to calm him, to apologize to him (not for touching him in his private place; already she was starting not to be sure that had really happened, but for being impatient with him), meaning to make friends again, she knelt in front of him, holding on to the arms of his chair. 'Hey, Paul, come on. We're buddies, aren't we? Don't be mad at me.'