by Barbara Ebel
“Not really. I wish he would, though. Then he’d visit me more. I’m lucky enough I see him each day only because I’m his pill-reminder nurse.”
“Mothers are good for a lot of things,” Anna said, “especially looking after their kids’ medical needs.” She left Marilyn with her tea and went in and cleaned the bathroom. In less than two hours, she finished the other rooms and gathered the garbage from the wastebaskets.
“I’ll take the trash out,” Anna said, putting her jacket back on. “I’ll be by again next Monday.”
“Thanks,” Marilyn said. “Your money is in the bowl on the counter.”
“I got it. Thanks and you holler if you need anything.”
Anna left and Marilyn listened to the same old absence of another human voice. She draped the nasal cannula over the side of the chair and got up to fetch the mail. Walking to the mailbox each day was one of her highlights; as invigorating as a new television game show.
She put on her dependable heavy sweater hanging on the front door coat rack and felt for her key ring inside her right pocket as she opened the door. The trip to the mailbox with her cane made her feel like she did when she used to hike a mile or two. She rested while she peered at the two envelopes she pulled out. Junk mail, as usual. She proceeded back to the house and wondered if Victor was back home yet but she didn’t notice his car around. That didn’t mean anything. Sometimes he parked in the strangest places.
What the heck, she thought. Why not go check to see if he’s at home yet. It had been a long time since she visited him downstairs and besides, next week she could ask Anna to clean his place if it needed it. She knew he wasn’t the neatest thing. If he was living in a pigsty, she didn’t want mice taking up residence in her home.
She separated out Victor’s basement key from her key ring, walked to the left and carefully down the two steps to his door.
-----
“We’re finished here,” Dr. Keeton said. She snapped closed the last outpatient chart and beckoned the team to follow.
“That was one decent note you wrote on Mr. Blake,” Selina said to Annabel. The large door separating the two facilities closed behind them and the sound of their shoes echoed in the hallway as Joshua and Bob followed behind them.
“Thanks,” Annabel said. “I’m learning from an excellent teacher.”
“I appreciate the feedback.” Her phone dinged and Selina artfully checked the screen while her pace didn’t change. She tapped her thumbs on the baby keys and smiled.
“Today is only Monday and he’s chomping at the bit for another date,” Selina said.
“Officer Banks?”
“The one and only. As a matter of fact, he may be the one and only.”
Annabel’s eyes grew big. “Really?”
“This is nonclinical chit-chat between women. Now that I’m engrossed in my profession and have earned highly regarded university status, I suppose my personal life could use a boost. Fine men are a rarity; I may have met a gentleman and a good looker all in one.”
“I’m happy for you,” Annabel said. Upon reflection, she added, “Officer Lowe may be as fine a man but I blew that even if I had been willing to continue dating him.”
“And you did a good job of it.”
Annabel gulped. Good thing Dr. Keeton would not be filling out an evaluation on her personal life. “Actually,” she said, “there is someone I have liked since the surgery rotation. I can’t delete the chief resident from my mind.”
“I see. Perhaps I know him.”
“I hope not. Robby Burk.”
“Don’t know him. However, are you putting all your hopes into one man and losing out on other resources?”
“For the time being, I can’t help it.”
“Just remember not to invest all your money in one stock. Balance your investments in more than one company. Unless, of course, subconsciously your vision is only set on medical school and then residency. In that case, your mindset is protecting you from any fall-outs with men, and relationships will fall into place later in your life.”
They all stopped at the elevator doors and piled in. Selina remained quiet and Annabel mulled over her words of wisdom. No wonder Dr. Keeton was in psychiatry. She could really figure things out.
-----
Marilyn placed her cane against the brick siding and turned Victor’s key. The door crept open and she stepped in with her wooden support, already sensing the sloppy bachelor’s pad. A coat rack she’d given her son in the past stood on the entryway tiles before the room carpeting began … which had its share of dust clumps. A pile of magazines had grown tall on the floor; so much so that they formed a slide from top to bottom.
She averted her eyes. Some were girlie magazines. A few dirty dishes littered the office-like rolling chair and table nearby. At least there were only a few, she thought. From a mother’s perspective, it could be worse.
The portable television was still in the same place she remembered it from last time she was here but the side had a crack in the plastic. She wondered if it still worked. He must not watch much TV anyway, she thought, because a short stack of paperbacks sat precariously in front of the screen. She searched the titles on their spines and deduced they were all science fiction. Which made sense since her son had a strange mental illness. Maybe his hallucinations sometimes embodied the other-worldly material he gained from reading the particular genre.
She straightened up. The long dreary drapes were closed so she stepped over to the front corner of the room and fumbled around to turn on the lamp switch. Clumsy me, she thought, as her hand bumped over a tall knickknack and it toppled off the table to the floor. She took a deep breath, let go of her cane, and crouched down. Not easy in her condition; sometimes she wondered if she could make it back up again when she stooped low or kneeled on the floor.
Marilyn saw the tourist souvenir, a long wooden bird, lying under the table and wrapped her hand around it. After pulling it out, she saw further between her and the back wall. There were some dead bugs and a candy wrapper but something else more strange.
At first, Marilyn’s reaction was to be alarmed. But the thing didn’t move so she stared with stupefaction. It looked old and at peace with the dust and surely it was not a living thing. Whatever it was, its length was around two feet and the dried-out item appeared fragile and tattered in several places. She wondered if the top side previously had some kind of smooth scales but under the table she didn’t have the full privilege of the light coming from the lamp.
She thought to rise back up. The thing gave her the creeps and she would need her oxygen back on soon. Besides, she still had the effort of going back upstairs via the front of the house. She could never make the cellar stairs. Victor was not home and she decided she would shell out the money as a present to her son and send Anna down next week to clean the damn place.
After getting up, Marilyn walked slowly the few steps to the kitchen, pulled a cup from the cabinet, and poured a short glass of water while avoiding a couple of soiled plates and the grime in the sink. And what the hell was on top? A plastic bag with a furry animal! No possible explanation for the rodent-looking thing came to her and she stepped back in fear.
Making matters worse, when she scanned the floor and under the lip of the counter, she saw a similar thing as under the table. Her heart sped up as an awful idea came to her. Once she watched a nature show about certain insects and crabs shedding their skin – they called it an exoskeleton. But, damn, lizards and snakes molt, too, she remembered from the program.
God forbid, she realized, what she saw may be from one or two of them. For months before her son’s hospitalization and diagnosis, he talked about the snakes he’d acquired and everyone, including her, thought he made them up. It appeared as if she stumbled upon the old skin or the remains of Top Gun and Cat Man.
Now she began to tremble and wanted nothing more than to leave her son’s apartment. She put the cup on the counter and grabbed her cane. She didn’t even w
ant to walk out past the table with the thing under it so she walked around the kitchen island and along the back wall of the living area with bookshelves.
Now she faced the inevitable. A long table with a wide glass container. Or something like that. A cage for exotic creatures … she had seen them before in pet stores. There, mostly curled, was a long snake. It seemed to spot her and its tongue flicked with wickedness at her.
Marilyn’s breathing ramped up. The grip on her cane strengthened like her life depended on the stick as a weapon and she headed for the door. In her physical condition, for her, it was a bolt to the door, and now her breathing not only took on a life of its own, but her heart squeezed in her chest as she set the door’s lever to lock when she snapped it shut.
The two steps up to the sidewalk almost caused her to lie down but she continued on. Inside her own place, she made it to her chair, gripped it after dropping her cane, and proceeded to clutch the left side of her chest. The pain from her heart spread to her neck and her shoulder and her left arm and her vision began ebbing away. Her hands were so close yet so far from the saving grace of her oxygen cannula and tank as she fell to the floor.
-----
After making late day rounds with Selina, Annabel and Bob walked back into the lounge to pick up their things and head home.
“I finished clinical duties before you,” Karla Weaver said to Bob. She sat on the couch and had his backpack on her lap. “Here you go,” she said, pointing to it.
Bob set it next to her and smiled. “Ready?”
“For a change, I’m waiting on you.”
Annabel took off her white jacket and slipped on her coat. Bob and Karla had become thick as thieves. They aren’t studying the same material, she thought, but they must be studying together. More than that, they must be sleeping together.
“Hi, Annabel,” Karla said. “We’re stopping at the bar and restaurant a few blocks from here. They have a decent happy hour. Two for one. We order their burger, however, not their hard liquor, and then do the same thing. Two for one; the burgers are so huge, we split one.”
“Would you like to join us?” Bob asked. “Best sweet potato fries you’ve ever had.”
Annabel went to shrug off the invitation but reconsidered since they both seemed sincere.
“Sure, I’d love to.”
They geared up and when they got to the parking lot, Annabel followed them in her car. After parking in the restaurant’s lot and heading for the door, she caught up with them. The pub’s name was boldly scrawled across the glass windows and many customers stood with drinks inside. She was already glad she was not eating at home by herself.
“We can seat ourselves,” Bob said inside. The biggest crowd was along the bar but they grabbed the only table available against the wall. Old framed photos decorated the walls and the liquor menu was written above the bar on a blackboard.
A waiter came over and put drink napkins on the table. “What’ll you have?” he asked.
Annabel leaned in. “I’m having whatever you two have.”
“We already know,” Bob said. “Two Jack burgers and sweet potato fries and the three of us will split them. We’re med students so we need to conserve our cash.”
“I hear you,” said the waiter. “Doesn’t everybody in here.”
“It’s a millennial problem,” Bob added.
“What about drinks? Two for one liquor or half price on our bottles of wine.”
All three students eyed each other. “On a weekday?” Karla asked.
“What difference does that make?” Bob said and smiled. “No exams this week and no call tonight and we’re all on target with studying, right?”
Annabel and Karla nodded.
“We’ll take a bottle of your house white wine,” he said.
The waiter nodded, took back their menus, and left.
“I’ve been dying to know,” Annabel said to Karla, “and I bet Bob has the total scoop from you. What can we expect from the medicine rotation? What’s it like?”
“Are you doing that next?” Bob asked.
“Right after psychiatry. Confirmation was in my med school mailbox today. You should check, too.”
“Medicine is the groundwork for everything else,” Karla said. “No matter who you get for upper members of your team, the material is interesting and challenging. You end up with patients with so many medical problems, you can’t keep them all straight. Some of it gets redundant but sometimes a whole group of doctors can’t figure out a diagnosis. People end up with weird symptoms that don’t sound familiar to the medical community.”
The waiter interrupted and poured them each a glass of wine. “Your food will be ready soon,” he commented and stepped away.
“Cheers,” Bob said.
“To medicine,” Annabel said.
“To psychiatry,” Karla said.
When the three of them polished off the two entrees, Annabel had drunk two glasses of wine. Bob tilted the second bottle to see if she wanted another.
“I’ve had enough,” she said. “I’ll be lucky if I stay headache-free from those two.”
Karla leaned into Bob. “We’re going to wash this down at my place with a pot of coffee. Maybe it will revive us enough to study.”
Bob put his arm around her shoulder. “We may not be studying,” he said.
Annabel felt her own cheeks blush. They were an item, despite the fact that she was older. She felt a pang of regret; he had liked her first.
After they paid the bill, Bob and Karla walked Annabel to her car. “You okay to drive?” he asked.
“I’m only a tad bit sleepy and I’ll drive home carefully. See you both tomorrow and thanks for the company.”
She was tired and after finding a parking space at home, the two-block walk refreshed her. The night with friends, and now the street lights, busy corner café, and cool, crisp air made her feel like she’d taken a break from the heavy subject matter of her rotation.
She was pleased about her enjoyable evening but it surely wasn’t as satisfying as a successful Findar date. The problem lately with that app and her risky encounters, she thought, may be Findar itself. She crossed her legs in bed and scrolled around on her iPhone. There were plenty of other dating sites and she would find a better replacement. One that would take the weirdos out of the picture.
Chapter 25
Victor woke up with a newfound sense of purpose. He stumbled in his jockey shorts to the bathroom, brushed his teeth and threw water on his face, and then went to check on Whatever Your Name Is. When he arrived home late yesterday, the rat was adequately softened and thawed out in the sink so he had dropped it in the terrarium. Victor was sure that, if reptiles could smile, his showed happiness with his darting tongue and swiftness of speed. Whatever was already busy with his gourmet meal before Victor lay down for the night.
“You look like you’ve eaten a rat,” Victor said proudly. The snake was unfurled as if it needed to digest while in an outstretched position. Although snakes can’t close their eyes or blink, Victor could swear the snake was in a catatonic state from the Thanksgiving-like feast it consumed. Ha, he thought, catatonia is a physical disturbance characteristic of schizophrenics. So it’s true people can sometimes look or behave like their pets.
He inched his way to the kitchen and threw a tablespoon of instant coffee into hot water and stirred. It turned out too watery but he didn’t care. Today was his first day to work at the burger place and he could probably drink some of their coffee there. His first-day hours were from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and his scheduled part-time week was for Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, allowing his medical appointments to be fulfilled on Monday and Wednesday. He didn’t take the manager for a fool; the hours would be busy ones because they wanted him to cover the late breakfast customers, lunchtime, and into the rush for dinner burgers.
Victor got dressed and picked up his car keys. He was annoyed at his mother. She had not yelled down the stairs for him to come up for his risperid
one. Screw it, he thought. No big deal for today.
-----
Annabel made coffee at home and hastily picked out a pullover sweater from her drawer. A cold snap had settled across the flatness of Ohio and she already despised the cold temperatures inside the hospital. That was a downside of going into hospital-based medical practices or working inside the OR most of the day like she’d done on her surgery rotation.
She finished a cup of coffee and narrowed her eyes as she peered into the back shelves of her refrigerator and pulled out two vanilla yogurts. After grabbing a banana and sticking the food into her backpack, she left for the day.
In the hospital, she skipped the lobby’s coffee and went straight upstairs to the lounge. She took the food out of her bag and went back to the lunchroom where she hoped to find Lillie Carter.
Lillie sat at a table with one other patient but there was no conversation going on between them. Her tray with breakfast items lay untouched except for the eight-ounce orange juice container which was poured into the bowl meant for cereal. Annabel wondered what purpose that served.
“You must feel better about your transfer over here,” Annabel said.
“I like the IV out and no more needle sticks for blood. At least for today. I don’t know if you doctors here will take so much blood, too, but more upsetting to me is this locked-up facility. There’s a code to go in and out. That means I’m really a prisoner.”
“This ward is locked,” Annabel said softly, “because it protects and keeps the patients in here safe where they receive treatment in a quiet and non-trafficked area from outsiders.”
She sat across from the young woman and put the food on the table as Lillie gave her a slight nod of understanding.
“I must ask you the usual morning questions, Lillie, but I brought what I eat for breakfast and I brought some for you. I wondered if you would eat the food on your tray.”
Lillie frowned at the items.
