The Sisterhood

by Michael Palmer

  “In a minute. As usual, I’m the last one to start these damn shift notes. I think what we should do is just mimeograph one set and paste ’em in each chart. They all say the same thing anyway, if ya know what I mean.”

  Christine’s brief laugh was purely for the sake of the other woman. One of the other nurses had summed up Gloria’s skills when she quipped, “She may be careless as hell doing meds and notes and things, but just the same she doesn’t give a shit about the patients.”

  The last two nurses arrived and took their places at the table. Report began with a discussion of the new patients who had come onto the floor during the two shifts since the evening crew had last been on. They were discussed in more detail than the rest of the patients would be. Even so, most of the remarks from around the table were not about the patients, but about their doctors.

  “Sam Engles, patient of Dr. Bertram …”

  “… Uh-oh, Jack the Ripper strikes again.”

  “Bert the Flirt, ten thumbs in the operating room but a dozen hands around the nurses.”

  “Stella Vecchione, patient of Dr. Malchman …”

  “Good luck, Stella.”

  “Donald McGregor, patient of Dr. Armstrong …”

  “She’s nice, don’cha think?”

  “Nice, but senile. She writes like my grandmother.”

  “Edwina Burroughs, patient of Dr. Shelton …”

  “Who?”

  “Shelton, the cute one with the frizzy hair.”

  “Oh, I know who you mean. Is he on drugs or something?”

  “What?”

  “Drugs. Penny Schmidt on three said she heard from one of the O.R. nurses that Shelton was on drugs.”

  “Good ol’ Penny. Always a kind word for everybody. I’ll bet she could find dirt in a sterilizer.”

  They went through the rest of the patients on the floor room by room. As she listened, Christine pre dieted to herself which of the nurses would limit her report to facts, lab reports, and vital signs, and which would make some comment on the appearance and activities of her patients. Three stressed the numbers, and three the people. Christine scored 100 percent, noting with some satisfaction that the human-oriented reports were given by the nurses whose work she admired the most. Gloria Webster was not among that group.

  “Beall, I guess you’re gonna take four-twelve again, like always,” Gloria said as she doused a half-smoked cigarette in the bottom of a Styrofoam cup. She addressed all the floor nurses at her level by their last names, more out of a sense of camaraderie than any effort to display toughness. “Well, there’s not much to report except that things are even worse than they were yesterday, and that includes the bedsore, if ya know what I mean. Her temp and B.P. keep bouncing up and down. Nasotracheal suction is ordered every two hours. I did the bedsore, so you won’t have to do it again for four hours. Christ, does that thing smell. Nothin’ much else, I guess. Any questions?”

  Christine fought back the impulse to say, “Yeah, one. How can you talk like that about a woman who has more wonder, more magic in one cell than you have in your whole body?” Instead she bit back her feelings of disgust and anger and merely shook her head.

  The remainder of the report took ten minutes. Then the six day nurses put on their coats and left. The torch of care had been passed.

  After the lounge had emptied out, Christine sat with Charlotte’s chart and began reviewing it a page at a time. The process was painful. Page after page of notes, reports, and procedures. The chronology of a medical nightmare. As she jotted significant items on a small pad, Christine’s sense of resolve grew. It was enough. Just as Peg had said on the phone. Enough. She would present Charlotte’s case to The Sisterhood.

  She spent several minutes rewriting her notes and double-checking to insure she had omitted no important information. Satisfied, she opened her address book and copied a phone number on a scrap of paper. Then she hesitated. Her mouth grew dry. She sat, picking absently at a fingernail. Come on, lady, she urged herself. If you’re going to do it, then do it. In the moment before she stood up, her mind saw Charlotte’s eyes. The glow of peace, of infinite peace, was even clearer than before. “… Whenever you must really know, listen to your heart.”

  There was a pay phone at one end of the floor, partially shielded by a glass partition. The nearby corridor was deserted. Christine hesitated once more, sensing her resolve begin to crumble. Maybe the Committee won’t even return the call. Maybe when they review the case they won’t approve. Maybe …

  With every muscle tensed, she set the scrap of paper in front of her and dialed. After two rings, a click sounded, then a short beep. A female voice, nearly neuter on the recording, said, “Good day. Ten seconds after my voice goes off, you will hear a tone. There will then be thirty seconds for you to leave your message, the time of your call, and a number where you can be reached. Your call will be returned as soon as possible. Thank you.”

  Christine waited for the tone. “This is Christine Beall, evening shift, Four South, Boston Doctors Hospital. I would like to submit a patient for evaluation. The number at this pay phone is five, five, five-seven, one, eight, one. It is now three fifty P.M. I’ll be available at this number until eleven o’clock tonight. After that I can …” Before she could leave her home number there was a sharp click as the recording machine shut off. She moved to place the call again and finish her message. Then, overcome by renewed uncertainty, she returned the receiver to its cradle. If it’s supposed to happen, it will happen, she thought.

  Harrison Weller stared vacantly at the ceiling, unaware of Christine’s entrance. The tiny Sony television suspended over his bed by a metal arm flashed the logo and closing music of “The Guiding Light.” He took no obvious notice of it. He was seventy-five, but his narrow, craggy face had a serene, ageless quality.

  “Mr. Weller, how are you doing?” Christine asked, crossing over to him. “Why do you have the drapes closed? It’s just beautiful outside. The sunlight will do you good.”

  He looked at her and forced a smile. “Charlene, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “Mr. Weller, you know my name. I’ve been in here nearly every day since you arrived. It’s Christine.”

  “Sunny out, you say?” Weller’s creaking voice reminded Christine of a high school actor trying to imitate an old man. He had arrived on the floor following repair of a fractured hip and immediately had become a pet of the nurses. Although he never seemed to mind their endearments, neither had he responded to them. He often appeared confused or withdrawn, behavior that had led his orthopedic surgeon to label him senile.

  Christine opened the drapes, flooding the room with late afternoon sun. She raised Weller to a sitting position and set herself down next to him so that he could see her face. The old man squinted at her for a moment, then broke out in a grin.

  “Well, aren’t you a pretty one,” he said, reaching up and lightly pinching her cheek.

  Christine smiled and took his hand in hers. “How’s your hip feeling, Mr. Weller?” she asked.

  “My what?”

  “Your hip,” she said more deliberately in a voice that was nearly a shout. “You had an operation on your hip. I want to know if you are having any pain.”

  “Pain? In my hip?”

  She was about to try again when Weller added, “Nope. Not a twinge, ’cept sometimes when I move my foot over to the left.”

  Christine gasped. It was by far the most complicated response he had made to any question since she had met him. All at once realization sparkled across her face.

  “Mr. Weller,” she shouted. “Do you have a hearing aid?”

  “Hearing aid?” Weller creaked. “Of course I have a hearing aid. Had one for years.”

  “Why aren’t you wearing it?”

  “Can’t very well wear something that’s in a drawer at home, now, can I?” he said, as if the conclusion should have been obvious to her.

  “What about your wife? Can’t she bring it in for you?”

&n
bsp; “Who, Sarah? Her arthritis has acted up so bad, she hasn’t even been able to get out of the house to come see me.”

  “Mr. Weller, I can send someone out to your house to get your hearing aid. Would you like that?”

  “Why sure I would, Charlene,” he said, squeezing her hand. “And while they’re at it, tell ’em to fetch my glasses too. Sarah knows where they are. Can’t see past the tip a my nose without ’em.”

  Christine’s glow had blossomed to an excited smile. “Mr. Weller, who’s helping Sarah at home while she’s sick?” she asked.

  “Don’t know for certain. Annie Grissom next door helps out some when she can.”

  “I can send a nurse to your house, Mr. Weller. If she thinks your wife needs one, she’ll arrange for her to have a homemaker.”

  “A what?”

  She started to repeat herself, but stopped in midsentence and threw her arms around him. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything,” she said in a voice that was half shout and half laugh.

  Suddenly, Christine shuddered, then slowly loosened her embrace. She felt the eerie sensation of eyes watching her from behind. She spun around. Standing there, filling the doorway, was Dorothy Dalrymple, director of nursing for the hospital. She was in her mid-fifties, with close-cropped hair and a cherubic face. Her uniform stretched like a snowy tundra, enclosing a bulk of nearly two hundred pounds. Puffy ankles hung over the tops of her low white clinic shoes. The fleshy folds around her eyes deepened as she appraised the scene.

  Christine hopped off the bed, tugging her uniform straight. Although she had come to know Dalrymple professionally over the years, she had never felt completely at ease around the woman. Perhaps it was her imposing size, perhaps her lofty position. She had certainly been kind and open enough.

  The director moved toward her, stopping a few feet away, hands on hips. “Well, Miss Beall,” she said reprovingly, but unable to completely conceal a wry smile, “is this some new nursing technique, or have I walked in on a budding May-December romance?”

  Christine smiled sheepishly and turned back to Weller. “Harrison,” she said softly, “I told you we’d be discovered. We simply cannot go on meeting like this.” Christine squeezed his hands reassuringly, then followed Dalrymple out of the room.

  Over the decade and a half she had headed the service at Boston Doctors Dotty Dalrymple had become something of a legend for her fierce protection of “her nurses.” Never considered a brilliant thinker, she was nevertheless well known throughout the medical community not only because of her bearlike charisma, but also because her identical twin, Dora, was the nursing director at Suburban Hospital, located some fifteen miles west of the city.

  The two were called Tweedledum and Tweedledee—though never to their faces. They were, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, the only nursing directors in the area who still faithfully wore their uniforms to work. It was a gesture, however unaesthetic, that contributed to their popularity.

  Dalrymple put a motherly paw on Christine’s shoulder. “So, Christine, what was that all about?” she asked.

  Briefly, Christine recounted her discovery of the likely causes of Harrison Weller’s “senility.” The nursing director shared her excitement.

  “You know,” she said, “I spend so much of my time buried in paperwork, labor negotiations, and hospital politics tht sometimes I actually forget what nursing is all about.” Christine nodded modestly. “The flair you show for your work reminds me that no matter how little respect physicians show us, no matter how much they demean our intelligence or our judgment, we are still the ones who care for the patients. The ones who really know them as people. I honestly believe that most patients who recover from their illnesses are nursing saves, not doctor saves.”

  What about those who don’t recover? Christine wanted to ask.

  They walked down the hall in silence for a bit, then Dalrymple stopped and turned to her. “Christine, you are a very special nurse. This hospital needs you and more like you. Always feel free to talk with me about anything that troubles you. Anything.”

  Her words should have been reassuring, but something about her expression did not seem to fit with them. Christine felt suddenly cold and uncomfortable. She was searching for a response when the pay phone at the end of the hallway began ringing. She whirled to the sound as if it had been a gunshot.

  “Well, it doesn’t look like that telephone is going to answer itself, Christine,” Dalrymple said, starting toward it.

  “I’ll get it,” she blurted out, racing past the bewildered director and down the corridor.

  Christine slowed as she approached the phone, half hoping it would stop ringing before she could answer it, yet at teh same time worried that it might. She hesitated, then grabbed the receiver, reaching into her pocket for the pages of notes on Charlotte Thomas. Somehow she knew with total certainty that the call was for her.

  The voice was a woman’s, stern with perhaps that hint of an accent. “I am calling Miss Christine Beall, a nurse on this floor.”

  “This is Christine Beall,” she said, swallowing against the dryness that had reappeared in her mouth.

  “Miss Beall, my name is Evelyn. I am calling in answer to your message of earlier this afternoon. I represent the New England Regional Screening Committee.”

  With darting, fawnlike eyes, Christine scanned the corridor. Dalrymple had gone. There were people, staff and visitors, but none within earshot. “I … I have a case I wish to present for evaluation and recommendation,” she stammered, not quite certain she remembered the prescribed order in which their conversation was to proceed.

  “Very well,” the woman said. “I shall be taking notes, so please speak slowly and clearly. I won’t interrupt unless I feel it is absolutely essential to do so. Please begin.”

  Christine’s hands were shaking as she set the notes in front of her. Thirty seconds passed during which her thoughts and emotions were racing so fast she was unable to speak. Charlotte wants so much to have it end, she reasoned, it must be right. It has to be right. Somewhere deep inside her, though, a kernel of doubt lingered. She was able to begin only after convincing herself that, even if the case were approved, she could always change her mind.

  “The patient in question is Mrs. Charlotte Thomas,” she said in a slow, factual monotone that she hoped would mask the quiver in her voice. “She is a sixty-year-old white woman, a registered nurse. On September eighteenth she had a Miles’s resection and colostomy for cancer of the colon. Since her surgery, she has not done well at all. I have known Mrs. Thomas since her diagnostic admission in August and have spent many hours talking with her both before and after her operation. She has always been a vigorous, active, athletic woman and has told me on several occasions that she could never face life as an invalid or crippled by pain. As recently as this past July, she was working full time for a home health agency.”

  Christine sensed that she was rambling. Her hands were wet and cold. She had known it wouldn’t be easy. Peg had told her this morning that it shouldn’t be. Still, she had not expected this kind of tension. And this was only the initial case report. What if they approved? What if she actually had to …

  “Miss Beall, you may continue,” Evelyn said. At that instant Christine heard footsteps close by. Panicked, she whirled to face the noise. “Miss Beall? Are you there?” Evelyn asked.

  Dotty Dalrymple was standing a few feet away. My God, what’s happening, Christine thought. Has she heard?

  “Miss Beall, are you there?” The voice was more insistent.

  Her knuckles whitened around the receiver. “Oh, ah, yes, Aunt Evelyn,” she managed, “hold on for a minute, can you? My nursing director is here.” She set her arm down on the counter of the booth. Even then she could feel it shaking.

  “Christine, are you all right?” Dalrymple said in a tone that seemed too bland, too matter-of-fact. “You look a little pale.”

  How much explanation does she want? Christine wondered. How much of
a lie? “Oh, no, I’m fine, Miss Dalrymple. It’s my aunt. My Aunt Evelyn.”

  Dalrymple shrugged. “As long as you’re all right. You nearly jumped out of your skin when the phone rang before. Then, when you didn’t come back, I became concerned that perhaps something had …”

  Christine cut her off with a laugh that felt far too forced. “No, everything is fine. It’s … my uncle. He had an operation today and I was waiting to hear. Everything’s fine.” Lies, one after another. She couldn’t remember the last time she had lied.

  “Tell your aunt I’m glad everything is okay.”

  “I’ll just be another couple of minutes, Miss Dalrymple.” She could barely speak.

  “No problem, take your time.” Dalrymple gave her a perfunctory smile and headed down the hall. Christine felt as though she were going to be sick. The notes on Charlotte Thomas were a crumpled ball in her fist.

  “Evelyn, are you still there?” she said weakly.

  “Yes, Miss Beall. Can you continue now?”

  Christine thought, No, but said, “Yes … yes, I’m okay. I mean, just a second while I arrange my notes.” Her fingers felt stiff, unwilling to respond. First Peg’s phone call, then the agony of John Chapman’s wife, then Charlotte, and now Miss Dalrymple showing up on this, of all days, and seeming to be watching her more than any of the other nurses. Barely connected or unconnected events, yet suddenly she was nearly paralyzed, her imagination braiding a cord of panic that tightened around her chest and throat. Awkwardly she smoothed the notes on the counter, fighting to regain control.

  “The … the home health agency. Did I tell you about the home health agency?” The sound of her own voice began to loosen the fear.

  “Yes, you did,” Evelyn said patiently.

  “Oh, okay. Let’s see. Oh, yes, I was here.” The words blurred in and out of focus. “Mrs. Thomas has been on hyperalimentation through an in-dwelling subclavian line for nearly two weeks and is still on intravenous antibiotics, hourly pulmonary therapy, and continuous oxygen.” At that moment she realized that she had skipped a whole page. In fact, she was not certain what she had already covered. “Evelyn, I … I seem to have passed over some things. Is it all right to go back?”