Nights are Different in Hospitals

Nights are Different in Hospitals

Peg’s story

Nights are different in hospitals. It's quieter yet there’s a murmuring. Felt more than heard, the souls transitioning. They depart, slowly, then running towards others.

Suddenly, the semi-private door opens, a moaning, spaghetti strand comes in. No help from noodle woman, they transfer her to the bed. "Junky, actively using at present. HIV. Pneumonia. DNR says she's seen enough. Incontinent of bowel, and bladder, The color drains from Jennie, my night nurse’s face. I resent this malodorous intrusion into MY space, and Jennie draws the curtain, blocking the sight but not the stench as she cleans her up, applying cream in a manner befitting the sacred. She sings, just a hum. Moaning with every breath again.

Then the cough! Pillow over my ears. Then, I break. "Hey, Noodle! shut up!”

She's quiet "I don't know if I'll still be here in the morning." Nope. You ain't ready. I think of the choice I've been given. Cancer is back. No hope. Awakening to the bustle of lab, transporters whisking patients from their breakfasts. The noise wakes the Noodle, another deposit in the stank bank. I hit my call bell."What?", "We got a code Brown down here." I turn my attention to Adina who keeps my son, if I can pay another month's rent. My kind boy, it doesn't embarrass him when the bus drops him off, amid a stream of kids. And I'm there in my wheelchair, with my too sensitive for the softest turban head shining. His face lights up, and that lights up my heart. Derby arrives with meds and linens to change the Noodle.

Derby is no-nonsense with no filter. She starts whisking covers off al-dente, cleaning her up, leaving my morning pain pill next to my breakfast. After she leaves, I hear soft crying. "Call for some pain medicine." I caint have it. Doctor says I’m an addict, so no pain pills for me"I don't blame him."

“I do! You're hurtin' noodle" I lean over, getting a look at her face, grayish black with yellowed eyes, graying hair. I push my table over to her. Here you take that pill. She takes it, and I bark at her, "you better keep that down or I wont give you another if you beg me!" She sinks back onto the pillow , eyes squeezed shut, tears leaking from the corners. Quiet. Back to bills trying to devise a plan. When my husband left us after kicking my pregnant belly yelling, "this should take care of that problem." Plan to change the locks, plan for raising this baby, plan for how I was going to feed said baby and work. They're here to get Noodle. Quiet at last. I lay back just in time for my roomie's reappearance. She's moaning now; the wait has left her in pain. The afternoon passes, I take every other pain pill and roll the others over to Pansy as I now know her. They make us rattle off our names and birth dates like soldiers in an unwinnable war.

Later that night, Pansy starts talking. A junky, , raped, some she got paid for. Her baby, a little girl who just didn't wake up one morning. I just went out and did what I do.. I got messed up and knocked-up again. Except this time I loved the man, and, he loved me. I was afraid I was gonna blow it. First person to ever love me in my life. And he ran away. He ran to a treatment center. Said he wasn't gonna be a messed-up dad. He'd had one of those, and the scars to prove it. I waited 6 months thinking he was not coming back. Why would he want my addict-ass when he was trying to stay clean? But back he came! Tried to get him to leave me for real then. He talked to that baby, played classical music ‘cause he read it would make him smarter. Imagine us two having a smart baby? Probably talk early so he can tell us what's wrong with the way we talk and how to take care of him. I saw his future as clear as I've seen anything in my life. I managed to stay clean while he was growing. I was his home. I wasn't going to shit in the corner of his home. I came off the needle, snorted a little, but I made it. And first time I looked into his little eyes I fell hard. The Nurse, Betsey, told me I was lucky I had someone to take him or she'd be calling Social Services. She held that baby in her hands before anybody rubbed the new off him.

Angelo was ready. He had a job, an apartment with soft baby stuff. They shipped me to rehab.They couldn’t come see me when I was shakin' and sweatin' and clawing at the bugs under my skin. Came home to Angelo's place. I slept wherever my johns lived if they didn't kick me out or in alleys. My eyes were clear, and I had a big butt lump from some shit they gave me to keep me from usin’. Still didn't sleep; I had to make sure this one woke up every morning. Alonzo was taking care of us. Right up until he wasn't. He drove to the center, but he did his pre-check-in needle full of his old dose. His body wasn't used to it no more. He died in the next-door lawyer's office parking lot with the needle still in his arm.

I thought I'd die or use again, at least. I wailed and made that baby screech with me. Walked with him in my arms, praying for God to take us both. Thought about jumping out that window. And then I got better. I fought to keep him with me. When the shot wore off. I couldn't be hauling no baby down to no methadone clinic. I started using again, It wasn't long before Social services came to take my baby away. I could only send one stuffed toy with him The purple Hippo with no eyes went into the trash bag with his diapers and one change of clothes. Little Guardian ad an item came to see me to talk about getting’ my baby back, no idea how impossible it all was to me Then, i got serious about doin' drugs. I didn't do nothin' but use and sell my baby’s nice things to keep usin' They came, dragged me here. Another week and I'd a made it. I wouldn't have seen Angelo, he in heaven someplace I wasnt never gonna see.

I'm sorry, you got me as a room-mate. I let you down it's what I do. I let everybody down." She began moaning softly in her sleep.

Jennie came boppin' in always perky. I don't do perky, especially on half dose meds and hospital coffee. I was glad I'd done it, the pills. Unaware of the story Pansy had vomited all over me. "You're going to wake up to interns, residents, and a surgeon telling you about this surgery. She told me of a guy who was begging her to call a security guard. He’d taken his money, didn't bring him weed. Says he wants me to call the cops. I went to sleep then, her half giggling, half-singing.

I woke up to Pansy on the phone, begging Mom to come to see her. "You're already dead. Since you chose drugs over your family. You don't have no disease. You had a choice, You made it" All I could hear was Pansy crying, breaking my heart too. She was at the abyss all alone. and now given a nudge. In came Interns, Residents, and my surgeon. Hungarian, had a thick accent, scars on his kind face. How to explain to him I can't go home to my boy a fourth of me gone, peein' in one bag and poopin' in another? How can I hear his classmates makin' fun of him? They just forgot to give him an invitation to the party? He began quizzing the rookies on the surgery. I was a potential surgery. I got up to pee. An attending and new cast were now around my room-mate. The attending was thedoctor who thought he could cure with his potions. Dr. McEvans was kind, in that when he couldn't save them, he would "snow them." Hospital -speak for giving narcotics until they stepped over. "The HIV is going to kill her” No one looked into her red-yellowed eyes. He gave her a soft kiss on her cheek. When I came back to my room later I see Pansy sitting in bed, her matchstick legs cross-legged, holding an invisible bundle close to her heart. When she coughed, she turned her head to the side to avoid coughing on her arms. “Isn't she beautiful? She looks just like she did first time in my arms, I had something of my own first time ever. She's just looking at me like I am the best thing she's ever seen. She's come home.”

I got my meds, and she didn't want her share. "I'm not in no pain.” Heard her singing to her imaginary baby, and my heart split. I woke up, to the sound of zipping on the other side. I heard them moving Pansy to a stretcher with a high cover. My mind went immediately to Oklahoma! and the surrey with the fringe. I watched as they wheeled Pansy out to the morgue. "Only 25. Why do they stay?” OOOOKLAHOMA where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain! I knew why she stayed. She needed me to bear witness to what the world and her addiction had done to her. One choice.

One choice that stole her life in agonizing bites, eating her like my cancer is eating me with surgical bites that pinched but wouldn't kill me or save me. I waited for Jennie to come in. She got thrown from her horse. I told her anybody stupid enough to climb on something big enough to kill them deserved it.

I held a Morphine vial.“ I need you to draw up a dose. I don’t want my boy to see what they leave of me." Jennie breathed, “ I tell you Debra has decided we are having pictures made? We’re going to boob flash. They'll never stop talking to our chests.”

I want you to snow me."I watched her walk to the door. I won't be seeing my friend again, instead she took a look down the hallway. “Are you certain this is what you want?' I nodded. "I wanna dream of you on that horse and on your butt. I need to dream of the life my boy can have." Then, singing. I woke up in the morning anyway. “You have a visitor.” A black man stepped in. "Im Alonzo Jr.” he says, “I'm the man with your son. Wanted to say thank you. I’ll tell him all about you. How much you loved him, how much you wanted to stay for him. He handed me a small black book with $20,000 in it. My mother wanted you to have this. The only thing she never touched when feeding her demons. "I can't take this. He gently laughed, “I'm a lawyer. I do drug court on the side to get addicts into treatment ” This is for your friend Adina. It’ll keep her going ” He squeezed my hand wrapped around that book.He got up to go. He was right, Adina could keep doing her guardian-ad-litem work with those kids. He was whistling “People Will Say We're in Love,” as he left. I looked at the blind stuffed animal he had tucked in beside me. Purple Hippo was my undoing. I was crying as Jennie came in to tell me they were starting the morphine protocol. I’ll be with you, singing you to sleep.