“Well . . . there’s my feet.”
“Let’s see.” Rosamunda pulled the sheet and light blanket away from Alice Walker’s feet. They appeared to be in a terminal state of trench foot. Rosamunda was startled, mostly that she had not detected the odor.
“It’s hard to keep them warm in the wintertime,” Alice Walker said apologetically.
“I know you’re here for your gall bladder . . . but hasn’t anyone done anything about your feet?”
“No, I guess not.”
This was by no means a unique case. Not long before, Rosamunda had encountered a patient with horribly ulcerated legs, who was about to be discharged after a successful colon resection. It was one of the nastier byproducts of the DRG—Diagnostic Related Group—approach to health care. The patient’s care was limited in time and cost to that allotted by the government to colon resections. His time and money was used up. Any additional cost would have to be borne by the hospital. And that would not do.
Rosamunda had been unable to aid that patient; his discharge had been too imminent. So he had been forced to depart from the hospital with a repaired colon and bad legs. The same would not happen to this patient!
“The priest will be in to hear your confession, darling, and I will bring you Communion. And there will be a podiatrist in to see you and take care of those feet. You can depend on that!”
Alice Walker knew she could depend on it.
Try to put her on the shelf, would they! Well, thought Rosamunda, we’ll just see about that!
* * *
It hadn’t been that long since George Snell had been forced to promise a reformation. The three pledges he had made to his superior burned in his memory. But so far—to his amazement—he had kept them. He had arrived for patrol on time and had not left early. He had faithfully kept up the log of his tour of duty. And—by far the most difficult—he had kept moving when on patrol. He had not succumbed to any of the upholstered chairs or couches in any of the visiting parlors. He had not sacked out in any empty one-bed patient rooms. And, most sadly, he had not philandered with any of the many nubile nurses or aides.
In short, George Snell had kept his nose clean. On the one hand, he was rather proud of his—albeit short-term—achievement. On the other, he was concerned that he might be sinking into middle-class morality.
These and kindred thoughts buzzed through his brain as he began this evening’s tour of duty.
Once again, he had begun on time; he had manfully walked on by any number of comfortable chairs and couches as well as the occasional empty bed.
“Good evening, Officer Snell,” a crisply dressed nurse’s aide greeted as they passed in the corridor.
There it was, thought Snell, in a nutshell. A pretty young thing, chipmunk cheeks, nice trim body, perky steatopygic bottom, long dark hair, and willing. God, was she willing! But he was pledged to walk on by. So he did.
Besides—he continued to develop the thought—why was she so instantly willing? Prior to the other night when he had been instrumental in saving the CEO from probable death, that aide would have walked by without even acknowledging his existence. It had happened too many times for him to doubt it.
So why was she now greeting him so brightly? Because now he was a hero. Suddenly, the security guards’ image had prospered. Before his ostensibly heroic action, the entire service had been lightly regarded. Now the guards, and especially and naturally George Snell, were treated with a measure of respect. With that in mind, Snell found himself reluctant to exploit the situation.
That little aide back there, for example: Only a few evenings ago, she might not have greeted him as brightly, but with any effort at all he could have charmed her into bed long before his tour of duty was over. As it was now, he couldn’t bring himself to take advantage of the circumstances. But then, as he had already admitted, he was becoming a victim of middle-class morality. March on! he commanded himself like the shining knight he envisioned himself to be.
Meanwhile, in the medical office into which a stolen key had admitted him, Bruce Whitaker had prepared and was gathering his stickers. All was ready. How proud of him his colleagues would be when he carried off this gambit. Yet he readily would admit that he was far more concerned with Ethel Laidlaw’s reaction. Without doubt, he was about to become her hero. That was proving to be a dandy feeling. He had never before been anyone’s hero. And to be considered a champion by the object of one’s love was particularly delicious.
He had, of course, some lingering doubt about the coming adventure. On the face of it, this was a complicated and ambitious project. But he had carefully prepared for it. If not for his lifelong and virtually uninterrupted history of screwing up, he would have felt considerably more assured. Yet he could not deny his history. So he began the adventure as cautiously, deliberately, and carefully as possible.
He departed the medical office with mixed feelings of apprehension and enthusiasm. He had planned to be nonchalant but he found he could not carry that off. Unconsciously reverting to form, he found himself slinking along the shadows of the corridor. Now, instead of heading for the main floor clinic, he was headed for the second floor.
Whitaker was seldom in the hospital at this time of evening. Volunteers ordinarily served during the day shifts. He found the milieu peculiar to this period between the close of visiting hours and lights-out. It reminded him of what choir vespers used to be. Something between the busy prayer hours of day and compline, the night prayer. For those patients who were not suffering, this was a restful period. Everything gradually slowed in preparation for sleep.
No one on the elevator. Good. He hadn’t really expected anyone, but there was always the chance. Actually, every successful step he took was for him a pleasant phenomenon. He was almost beginning to permit himself the thought that he might succeed at this. Was it possible?
The door hissed open. The second floor and no one in sight. He walked quickly to the end of the hallway and peered around the corner. A miracle: No one was at the nurses’ station! Of course that was as he had planned it.
At this time of evening, a reduced nursing staff was usually busy bringing final medications and answering call bells. It was a good possibility that the station would be vacated. Whitaker just couldn’t believe his luck. It was working!
He moved into the station, trying, despite his excitement, not to botch this just when everything seemed to be moving like clockwork.
Just as Whitaker began fingering through the medical charts, George Snell turned the corner at the far end of the corridor. Immediately, Snell spotted him. Whitaker was too far away for Snell to be able to identify him in any fashion. But something wasn’t right. Snell was certain of that. He moved rapidly toward the station.
“You! Down there! What are you doing?” Snell spoke just loudly enough to be heard by the person in the nurses’ station without disturbing the patients.
Whitaker heard the challenge. No doubt about it: The ball game was over. He had not planned for the eventuality of being discovered. It would not have mattered. Even if he had prepared some sort of explanation, Whitaker knew he would be too nervous and nonplussed to carry it off. And so he was. He stood frozen while his knees turned to pudding.
“Where ya goin’, big fellah?” a sultry voice called out.
Snell froze in midstride. The voice was familiar. Familiar enough for him to turn and investigate. Aha! The terrific aide of the evening of his triumph . . . what was her name? Helen. Helen Brown. But what a time to show up! What a goddam time!
“Well, where are you going, anyway?”
“There’s somebody . . .” Snell had no idea what to do next. He was the human embodiment of the donkey standing between two bales of hay.
“C’mere, big fellah,” Helen Brown beckoned.
Snell had to give this situation serious, if hurried, thought. He had no idea who was in the nurses’ station. It could very possibly be a legitimate staffer. It probably was. Why would anybody else be there che
cking things out? Especially someone in a hospital frock?
Added to which, there was this willing young woman. And, added boon, she was the sole person in the world who knew he was no hero. She had been alone and very intimate with him when he had tumbled from the bed and flattened the CEO’s assailant. With her, he would betray no trust . . . there was no trust to betray.
No contest. Time enough to find out more about whoever was in the station. For the moment, he would explore Helen Brown. It was kismet.
From his vantage under bright lights, Whitaker could not see clearly down the corridor, although he could see well enough to identify his challenger. He did not know the man’s name, but he knew it was the guard who had almost apprehended him the other night.
What Whitaker found utterly incredible was that the guard had stopped halfway down the hall. Whitaker could not see Helen Brown standing in the shadows of a patient’s room. All he could know was that, for whatever reason, the guard had halted and had apparently lost interest in him.
It was so unexpected and unlikely a development that Whitaker could take it only as an act of God. As far as he could figure things, he had been on God’s side through thick and thin. But now God seemed to be on his side. Well, it was about time.
Whitaker returned to his endeavor with renewed confidence. For once, things were working out perfectly. Until now, he would not have described anything in his entire life as “perfect.”
“Well, if it ain’t Ms. Brown.” Snell had turned his complete attention to the task at hand. “Have somethin’ in mind?”
“Seems to me we got some unfinished business from the other night. When we were so rudely interrupted you was about to show me some kind of movement.”
“Maneuver,” Snell corrected.
“Whatever.”
“Well,” Snell looked about, “not in the hallway.”
“Follow me, big boy.” Helen led the small procession down the hall in the direction whence Snell had come.
Snell followed gladly, focusing intently on the rhythmic undulation of her tight bottom.
Helen Brown entered Room 2218, tailed, almost literally, by George Snell. Almost at once, by a magical wave of her hand, Helen’s clothing dropped on an empty chair. As wondrously expeditiously as Helen disrobed, Snell would have won that race, but he was momentarily distracted.
“Somebody’s in here! There’s a patient in the other bed,” he protested.
There was. Even though the curtain had been pulled shut around the bed near the window, a soft light outlined the bed and its diminutive occupant. And there was the steady, muted sound of chewing.
“Don’t you worry your head, big boy. That’s just old Alice Walker. She’s been in here off-and-on a hundred times maybe. Believe me, she don’t know what’s going on. She’s just chewin’ her crackers before she goes to sleep. Believe me, this room is the best shot we got tonight. Come on, big boy, I’m waitin’ for your movement.”
“Maneuver.”
“Whatever.”
George Snell decided to take his time. By his standards, it had been a long while since he had frolicked in the sack, an activity which showcased perhaps his greatest talent.
Having completed his disrobement, Snell observed Helen Brown as she climbed onto the narrow hospital bed. Such confined quarters might have proven too constricting to the average practitioner of concupiscence. To Snell, it was no more than a small challenge inventively met.
When it came to women and sex, a single concept in Snell’s lexicon, he was an omnivoluptuary. He lusted after them all. Each had her own peculiar attraction. Of course some were declared off limits by society due to the veneration of old age or the proximity of relationship. Snell was willing to go along with this. There were some conventions of middle-class morality that made some sort of sense. But George remained eager to accommodate all women not proscribed by society’s mores.
However even an omnivoluptuary had his predilections. And among George’s favorites was a zaftig frame such as that of Helen Brown. Which is why he derived particular joy and arousal from studying Helen in bed nude. The soft light from behind Alice Walker’s curtain highlighted the curves, the hills and valleys, of Helen’s tantalizing body. As far as Snell was concerned, the greatest declarative statement in the English language, whether or not the Ape Man ever said it, was, “Me Tarzan! You Jane!”
But enough of philosophy—to bed!
He clambered onto the bed and enveloped her body almost as completely as water in a pool.
“Do we start where we left off, big boy?”
“Oh, no. That’s the piece of resistance. We’re gonna start with the hors d’oeuvres.”
“If they’re as good as last time, that’ll be fine with me.”
Both George and Helen could testify that hors d’oeuvres could be better the second time around and their barely restrained moans and groans blended with Alice Walker’s barely audible, rhythmic mastication.
In the nurses’ station, Bruce Whitaker’s hands trembled as he manipulated stickers on a medical chart.
Whitaker’s amazing string of luck would, in an ordinary human, have engendered feelings of growing confidence. The ordinary human might well feel that this was his lucky day and be loath to go to sleep and end that day.
Not Whitaker. The longer his good fortune continued, the more he expected doom to strike at any moment.
It almost did.
He had almost completed his work when an aide came out of a nearby utility room and entered the nurses’ station. Whitaker allowed himself only a furtive glance, but he didn’t think he’d ever seen her before. That was probably true, he assured himself, since most of the staff worked the same shifts each day. And ordinarily, Whitaker was not active in the hospital at this hour.
As he pretended to study the chart he had been altering, he kept turning so that his back was to the aide. At every moment he expected her to notice his peculiar behavior and challenge him. Or even worse, to summon that guard who had disappeared somewhere.
Once challenged, he knew he would become a blithering idiot. Oh, God, he prayed, I don’t know how you’re going to get me out of this, but please, please, get me out of this.
As if in answer to his prayer, the aide left the station. He watched her out of the corner of his eye. She walked down the hall and into a patient’s room. She did not reemerge. She stayed in. Miraculously, yes miraculously, she had paid no attention to him. His mission was still intact. And it was nearly completed.
He examined the stickers. They were not neatly placed, that he had to admit. The out-of-sync positioning of the stickers was attributable to his nervousness and consequent trembling hands.
And yet, as he checked the chart critically once more, it looked quite normal. After all, genuine hospital personnel spent no time at all on producing a neat chart. They slapped things together in a perfunctory manner born of necessity. Yes, it looked better, more authentic, this way than if he’d been able to be precise.
His work was done. It looked to be a success. But, as he replaced the chart and departed, he was more than willing to give the entire credit to God, whose humble and unworthy instrument Bruce Whitaker was pleased to be.
Meanwhile, back in room 2218, two exhausted, perspiring bodies panted in Bed B. There was no sound but the heavy, satisfied breathing of George and Helen—and that of Alice Walker’s methodical chewing.
“Oh, oh!” said Helen.
“Oh, oh!” said George.
“Oh, George! I’ve never . . . come . . . like that . . . before!”
“Matter of fact . . .” Snell thought on what he was about to admit. “. . . matter of fact. . . neither have I. Amazing!”
“You are something else, my man!”
“I know that. What I can’t quite figure out is, so are you.”
“We-ell, thanks . . . I guess.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Give me just a couple of minutes to get my breath, then we can get dressed.”
“Get dressed! We’re only halfway through.”
“Halfway! You’ve got to be kidding! I’ll be lucky if I can walk!”
“Baby, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”
“Oh, God! You mean—”
“The Maneuver!”
“George, I don’t know what you’re talking about. But whatever it is, I think I’ll break in half if you try it.”
“Baby, you are about to find out what a climax is.”
“George, you’re out of your mind! You can’t dish out any more just the same as I can’t take any more. You’re going to kill the both of us!”
“What a way to go!”
Snell raised himself on one elbow; he seemed to need more room, but was willing to go with what he had. He raised one arm high above his head and reached back as far as he could without falling out of the bed. With the other hand he began positioning Helen to receive him.
“George! George!” Helen was close to instant panic. “George! She stopped breathing! She stopped breathing! George, stop! We’ve got to help her! George! Alice stopped breathing! We’ve got to help her!”
George did not seem so inclined. “There are some things once you start ’em, there’s no stoppin’ ’em!”
“George!” Helen pushed as hard as she could.
* * *
By now it was becoming almost routine.
It was late at night. The bright overhead lights in the corridor should have been off, but they were on. A crowd of staff and patients had gathered. At the center of the group stood Guard George Snell and his superior, Chief Martin. There was much hubbub. People who could inch close enough tried to touch Snell or pat him on the back. All seemed very pleased, with the exception of Chief Martin, who was wearing his usual look of skepticism.
“So,” Chief Martin began to recapitulate, “you just happened to be walking down this corridor at the right time. And what made you go into Mrs. Walker’s room?”
“Well,” said a modest George Snell, toeing the carpet, “she had stopped breathing.”
“You heard her stop breathing.” Martin used his most incredulous tone.
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