Nights are Different in Hospitals

Nights are different in hospitals. It's quieter yet murmuring restlessly with a dry whispery voice all its own. Felt more than heard, the pain of the suffering, the comfort of pain relieved, the Souls transitioning that couldn't bear to leave with their families around. They instead depart quietly, holding the hands of family waiting for them, then almost running towards others in the misty distance. Joy

That didn't last long. I'm just finally gently drifting off to Ambien-inspired sleep when Wham! The heavy wooden door hits the wall of my semi-private like a semi—a moaning, thin as a spaghetti strand woman coming in on a stretcher with square wheels. Effortlessly but with a steady stream of cussing from noodle woman, they transfer her gently to the bed where she appears as only a mild ripple in the flat sheet. Report being given bedside since they assume I'm sleeping " Junky, actively using at present. Severe liver damage from Hep B and HIV.pneumonia. DNR says she's seen enough. Can't afford meds for HIV. Can't get a peripheral line, veins used up years Incontinent of bowel, just brown liquid, and bladder, urine orange-tea color. I watch as the color drains from Jennie, my favorite night nurse's face. Orange pekoe hot tea being her favorite, make it til morning drink. I turn my back on this malodorous intrusion into MY space, and Jennie quietly draws the curtain, blocking the sight but not the stench as she quietly cleans her new charge. She sings quietly as she always does, just a comforting sweet drone. Applying protective cream in a manner befitting the sacred. She leaves to check on her way too many other patients, and the moaning with every breath begins again.

Then the cough! I bunched my flimsy disposable pillow over my ears, then eventually squeegee a small corner of the softly worn sheet into each ear. No good. After 30 long minutes, I break. "Hey, Noodle! Could you put a plugin in it, please?!! I'm losing my mind over here" "Who the fuck are you?" "my name doesn't matter I don't want my name in your filthy mouth. We're room-mates just until the Sergeant comes in the morning to change your room. She's going to set you so straight you'll think you're rebar in concrete."

She's quiet for a bubble then " I don't know if I'll still be here in the morning, so no problem" Nope. Your kind hangs on. Seen it too often. You ain't ready. Silently I think of the choice I've been given. My original cancer is back. No guarantee of a cure as there are spots on my lungs, and my spine and ribs lit up on the latest whatever scan. Second Ambien and I finally close my eyes and turn the thoughts off. for a few blessed hours. Thanks, Jennie, hope you don't get in trouble with Sarge for the extras you didn't wake the intern to order. When I wake it is to the early bustle of morning on the ward, meal carts, lab, portable xray tank on wheels, transporters whisking the unlucky off from their breakfast that will be a cold gelatinous mass on their return from being parked in the cold xray hallway for an hour or more. I actually feel hungry until the lid comes off. Looks okay, but the warm steamy odors make me slam the lid back down. Which wakes the Noodle, who has made yet another deposit in the stank bank. I hit my call bell-like Ali "What?" comes over the speaker, my favorite ward secretary is on today. A tiny thing she backs down from no one and keeps even the God-deluded surgeons in line and keeps the interns properly humble and chastises the residents for not treating the interns right and teaching them the right way the first time. " Yeah, Lena we got a code Brown down here, and I'm about to throw my breakfast over there at this skinny-bitch's head. Need that pain pill like right now." I turn my attention to my girlfriend Adina who is keeping my son if I can pull off paying another month's rent. My red-haired kind soul of a boy, Insists that it doesn't embarrass him when the bus drops him off lingering agonizing

minutes to disgorge a steady stream of neighbor kids, the ones that stopped coming by to ask him to play some months back. And I'm on the porch in my wheelchair, still in my ratty nightgown with my too sensitive for the softest turban head shining in the afternoon sun. His face changes as he comes up the walk to the same look as always , a smile that lights up my heart and eases any pain. Talking a mile a minute, —the best part of my day. The bills keep coming. Rent, utilities, medical equipment, meds. Chemo ain't cheap. My son's wrist is inches below his cuffs, scruffy jeans inches above his ankle, and shoes repaired with duct tape. The bills set aside with a sigh ,and prayer as Derby arrives with my meds and an armload of linen to change the Noodle.

I secretly hope she brought the new washcloths that feel like sandpaper. Not one of my favorites, Derby is no-nonsense with no filter. If she comes dashing in late as is her norm, she neglects to put on her lipstick, so her clay-colored lips blend in with her clay-colored skin, and she appears to have no mouth. Until it opens as it does frequently and loudly. She learned to whisper in a sawmill my soft-spoken Granny would have said. What the Hell crawled up inside of you and died, girl?! She starts briskly whisking covers off al-dente and none too gently cleaning her up, leaving my morning pain pill in the cup on my bedside table next to my uneaten breakfast. After she bustles out of the room, leaving the pile of reeking dirty linen in a heap in the corner for the lone aid for 36 patients to pick up. I hear my bunky softly crying. "Girl, call for some pain medicine, for God's sake," I say as gently as I can. " I can't have it. The doctor says I'm an addict, and he don't give no pain pills to addicts," she says in a small, strangled voice " I don't blame him."

'Well, hells Bells I do! You're hurtin' noodle" I lean way out of bed and push the curtains aside, getting my first really good look at her face, which is grayish black with yellowed dull eyes and short-cropped graying hair, although she can't be more than 35-40. I push my rolling table over to her. Here you take that pain pill. I can get another later. They haven't given her any breakfast or water so I retrieve my table and send her over a clean cup of cold water. She painfully takes it, and regaining my demeanor, I bark at her, "you better keep that down or I won't give you another if you beg me!" She sinks back lightly onto the pillow and squeezes her eyes shut, tears leaking from the corners waiting for the pill to kick in—quietness reigns. Back to they -ain't -nothing -I -can -do --about -them bills shuffling them like an all-in poker player shuffling a losing hand, trying to make some sense of them or devise a plan. I've always been so good at plans. When my husband thankfully left us after pushing my pregnant ass down the stairs yelling, "this should take care of that little problem", I had to plan like Hell. Plan to change all the locks, plan for raising this baby on my own, plan for how I was going to feed myself, and said baby and still work my then two jobs. Planning not happening now; they're here to get Noodle for a trip downstairs. Always have to be scanning something or other. Quiet at last, but can't turn down the doomsday bells tolling in my pounding skull. Regretting my decision to share my medicine already, I lay back and close my eyes just in time for my roomie's reappearance. And she's moaning wordlessly now; the rough handling and long wait have taken away any temporary benefit of the borrowed Norco. The afternoon passes slowly, and I check again to see if they can move her. No room in the Inn Derby says, "You're stuck." I take every other pain pill and roll the others over to Pansy as I now know she's called. They make us rattle off our names and birth dates with each pill like soldiers in an unwinnable war giving name, rank, and serial number.

Later that night, with Norco loosened tongue, Pansy starts sharing a bit. A junky since 14, an unwed mother, product of repeated rapes, some she got paid for to finance her addiction, her baby, a little girl who just didn't wake up one morning. The county hospital took her and buried her; Pansy's not even sure where. I just went out and did what I do... I got fucked up and soon ended up knocked-up again. Easiest thing I ever did, except this time I love the man, and miracle of a miracle he was crazy about me. Thought about having it scraped out, afraid I was gonna blow it with the first person to ever actually love me in my whole life. But when he found out, he did run away. " Shit!" I say, " you knew better, why'd you do that?" Girl, he ran straight to a treatment center, charity case but the whole 6-month real deal! Said he wasn't going to be a fucked-up dad. He'd had one of those himself and the scars to prove it. I waited 6 months thinking he was probably not coming back. He was going to run and not look back. Why would he want my addict-ass when he was trying to stay clean his own self? But back he came and honey was he handsome! They'd helped him get his meth teeth fixed, and I fell for him all over again. Tried to get him to leave me for real then. He deserved somebody way better than me. He wouldn't budge. Stuck to me like glue. Talked to that baby, sang to him. Even played this lame-ass classical music cause he read it would make him smarter. imagine us two idiots having a smart baby? He gonna be telling us how and what to feed him, how to take care of his dirty diapers. Probably talk early so he can tell us what's wrong with the way we talk. Won't let us go to his school and meet his teachers, won't have to look in their eyes, see the pity or know they have social services on speed dial if he shows up with so much as a bruise on his pinky. I saw his future as clear as I've seen anything in my whole worthless life. I managed to stay relatively clean while he was growing inside me. I was his home I wasn't going to shit in the corner of his home. I came off the needles, snorted a little, smoked a lot, but I made it. And first time I looked into his little eyes, all smeary from that gunk they put in 'em and the Nurse named Betsey told me I was lucky I had a baby daddy to take him or she'd be calling Social Services to come get him. She felt for me, but she held that baby in her hands first before anybody got to rub the new off him She delivered him, the doctor didn't get there in time. Angelo was ready for him. He had a job, an apartment took up with baby stuff. You coulda fallen down and the wall to wall stuffed animals.you wouldna have had one little bruise. Betsey, a pretty white girl was even flirting with him. Anyway, they shipped me straight to take the cure. I woulda gone for a walk over hot coals to get to come home to that baby and that man. They wouldn't let either of them to come see me. Not once, Not when I was shakin' and sweatin' and clawing at the bugs under my skin. I could hear those damn things clicking their jaws in my ears. Came out 30 days later clean for the first time since I was 14. Came home to Angelo's place, hadn't had one of my own in years. I slept wherever my johns lived if they didn't kick me out when they were done or in alleys or flop-houses. My eyes were clear, my hair was coming back, grey, but it was coming back. My brain was clear, and I had a big lump in my butt from some shit they gave me to keep me from wanting to use. It helped a little. Still didn't sleep; I had to make sure this one woke up every day. Alonzo was great taking care of us both. Right up until he wasn't. He drove to the treatment center, I think he meant to ask for help, 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 scream with me. I walked the floor with that precious thing in my arms, praying for God to take us both so he wouldn't grow up in a foster home like me.

I thought about jumping out that 10th-floor window with him in my arms. And then I got better, not good, but better I could function. I could be a mother, maybe not a good one, but I was trying. Fighting to keep him, fighting to be there for him. When the shot wore off, I couldn't afford another one. I couldn't be hauling no baby down to a damn methadone clinic every day. I started using again, and it wasn't time before Social services came to take that baby away. I could only send one stuffed toy with him so the purple Hippo with no eyes, Angelo took them off cause he said the baby could choke on them went into the goddam trash bag with his diapers and a few clothes. I coulda changed that baby twice a day without running out of clothes for a year. He had all brand new clothes. He went out the door with one change of clothes. a nice little Guardian ad an item youngster came to see me once to talk about what I needed to do to get my baby back, a sweet little thing who meant well but had no idea how impossible it all was to me Her name was A somethin'. Then, i got serious about doin' drugs till I died. I didn't eat I didn't do nothin' but use and sell all my babies nice things to keep usin' That's when those assholes came and dragged me here. Another week and I'd a made it. I wouldn't have seen Angelo cause he was in heaven someplace I wasn't never gonna see. i'd done failed two babies, and my husband I wasn't gonna be seein' no angels when I left this world.

I'm sorry, you got me as a room-mate, I'm sorry I take your medicine that you need as much as me I'm sorry I let you down it's what I do. I let everybody down" She was winding down, beginning to slur her words and go down the Hydrocodone highway. As she started to snore, still moaning softly in her sleep. Jenny came boppin' in gently but perky as always. I don't do perky, especially on my half dose of pain meds and hospital coffee. I was hand to God or whoever is in charge up there, glad I'd done it. I'd do it again. Hell, I'd even give her my precious Ambien that let me float off to sleep unaware of pain, unaware of the damned stack of bills, unaware of the story of pain Pansy had vomited up all over me. Jenny told me as she gave me my precious pill. " you know you're going to wake up to a room full of scared shitless interns, residents, and the best surgeon on this coast telling you why you should have this surgery. Why you have to let them take all of that leg of yours and "Barbie-doll" you between your legs to save your life" I went to sleep with Jenny with the angel eyes and red hair singing to me softly as she does with everybody. After telling me about the crazy guy down the hall who was begging her to call security. The same security guard that took his money and didn't bring him the good pot He promised. It's oregano or the worst weed ever. he says he wants me to call the cops on him. Swear to God he wants to report this guy for a drug deal gone bad. You cannot make this shit up. I went to sleep to her half giggling, half-singing. Angel.

I woke up instead to Pansy on the phone talking to her mother, begging her to come to see her. Begging her to take her baby and raise him better. Mommy-dearest was not being cooperative. " you're already dead in my eyes. Been dead since you chose those drugs over your family. You don't have no disease. You had a choice, and you made it" All I could hear after that way Pansy crying like her heart would break. Breaking mine right along. She was standing at the great abyss all alone. Noone held her, and now good old mom gave her a nudge on over. Damn. NOW here comes the whole motley crew. Sleepy-eyed interns, cocky residents, and my gentle giant of a surgeon. Hungarian he still after 30 years in the states, had a thick accent and the scars of his Nazi tormentors who burned his big rough face with cigarettes. Sausage-like, but gentle fingers which took mine now. Ignoring the cloud of smoke that hung over my cigarette, He started talking to me. How do I explain to him I can't go home to my sweet boy a fourth of me gone, peein' in one bag and poopin' in another that comes off regularly. How many times can I hear his classmates getting off that bus makin' fun of my baby. Trying to explain to him how his friends just forgot to give him an invitation to the latest party? Not hearing the cacophony going on in my head, he began quizzing the rookies on the surgery. I was a hot property, a potential gold mine of a surgery where they might be allowed to hold a retractor or burn a bleeder. I was not the focus of attention now, so I got up to pee. When I came back, a new attending and the same cast of castigated newbies were going around to my room-mate. The new attending was one of my old doctors when they thought he could cure me with his witches brew of pills and potions before they started whittling away what was left of me. Dr. McEvans was old school in that when he couldn't save them, he would instruct nurses to "snow them." Hospital-speak for giving high-dose narcotics until they stepped on over to the other side. Woe to the Nurse who said, "but she was sleeping, so I held the last few doses." There's nothing more we can do here. Her liver's shot, and the HIV is going to take her first. No one, not one of them, looked into her red-rimmed yellowed eyes to give a crumb of comfort. Except for Dr. McEvan, he actually held her hand and gave her a soft kiss on her shrunken cheek. He was that kind of doctor. Maybe they would learn, most of them would not. You can't teach someone to care.

Just pretend, and if they're good little actors, they'll fool most. Not me, and sure as shit, not Pansy. Our BS meters are set to stun. When I came back to my room after having the pre-op Chest Xray and obligatory Ekg Still nothing I couldn't back out of. I see Pansy sitting up in bed, her matchstick legs cross-legged, holding an invisible bundle close to her failing heart. When she coughed, she turned her head carefully to the side to avoid coughing on her arms. She wasn't even high since I'd been downstairs for freakin'ever they hadn't been bringing by any happy pills. I got settled into my bed and heard her began to speak, her dry as dust voice a small whisper that tickled my ears and made me smile despite myself. Isn't she beautiful? She looks just like she did when she was born. When they first put her in my arms, and I had something of my own the first time ever. She's just looking at me like my raggedy ass is the most beautiful thing she's ever seen. She's almost as glad to see me as I am to see her. She don't weigh nothin' I can hold her forever. Nobody gonna take her from me again. She's not going to be lying so still , cold, and pale in her crib no more. She's home.

I got my pain meds, and she didn't want her share. "I'm not in no pain. The first time in years, I've not got one bit of pain. As I was drifting off, I heard her singing to her imaginary baby, and my heart split. When I woke up, it was to the sound of Derby zipping something on the other side of the curtain and saw a dropped tag on the floor with Derby's sensible dusty shoe print on it. I heard them doing the three-count thing, moving Pansy to a stretcher with a high cover over it. My mind went immediately to Oklahoma! and the shiny red surrey with the fringe on top. Singing it in my head, I watched around the divider as they wheeled Pansy out to the morgue. "She lasted longer than I thought she would. I would have put money on her not lasting that first night. what holds them here?' OOOOKLAHOMA where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain! Better than crying over Poor Judd being dead, a candle lights his head. Which would have been the end of my last shred of composure. I knew why she stayed. She needed me to hear her story. She needed me to know how she was just like Ado-Annie, who couldn't say no. She needed me to bear witness to what the world and her addiction had done to her. She made one choice. One bad choice that stole her life in agonizing bites, eating her alive like the cancer was doing to me. Eating me alive just as surely with big surgical bites that stung and pinched but wouldn't kill me or save me. I waited anxiously for Jenny to come be-boppin' in to tell me vegetable boy was moving his fingers on command, and she got thrown from her horse onto her ass today on her morning ride. I told her anybody stupid enough to climb up bareback onto something big enough to kill your butt with one well-placed kick deserved what they got. Then I asked the hardest thing I ever asked anybody. Hand me that cat-killer purse of mine please?"

"Why do you call it a cat-killer purse for Heaven's sake? Jennie asked.

"Because if you dropped it on a cat or for that matter, a small child it would probably kill them!"

I dragged through my purse that would have made me a winner on Let's Make a Deal. There was nothin' Monty could have asked for that I couldn't have pulled out of that purse. I pulled out something Monty would never ask me for. Not on his slowest rating day would he have asked for the multi-dose Morphine vial I held in my hand "honey, I don't have any syringes, and I cant see to draw it up. I need you to draw me up a big dose of this stuff and keep giving it to me till I don't wake up in the morning. I don't want the surgery; I want my boy to not have to see what they leave of his mama." Jenny took a trembling breath and changed the subject. "Did I tell you Debra has decided we need to have a calendar made? All of her and the other nurses are going to titty-flash for the camera—one for every month of the year. The residents will never yell at us again. They'll never stop talking reverently to our chests!" I gently said Jennie, you told me once the best thing you can do for some patients is go to their funeral and help their families let them go. I don't want to be carved away a little bit at a time. Please help me do this. I don't want you to snow me; I want a damn blizzard. I don't want to know nothin' Please Jennie" I watched her walk to the door. Thought, well, I won't be seeing my friend Jennie again. Instead, she took a long look down both sides of the hallway before coming back on shaking legs to my bed. "are you sure Peg? Are you certain this is what you want?' I nodded and took her hand. "Sing me to sleep, Jennie Lynn. I need you to sing me to sleep". I need to go to sleep and dream of you on that damn horse and on your butt in the grass. I need to go to sleep and see the life my boy can have without me" With seriously shaking hands, my dear Jennie pulled up a non-lethal dose that would start the job. She who could put a 16 gauge in a hair of a vein, had trouble hitting my port. She swabbed it first with povidone and alcohol like it still mattered. Then she delivered the dose. She was singing Oh What a Beautiful Morning.! How did she know O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A had been in my head all day as I slipped away. I woke up in the morning. PISSED off, I was still here! How dare she break that promise to me! I was never speaking to her again! Then she put her traitorous face around the curtain. You have a visitor. A handsome young black man stepped around the curtain, and Jennie beat a hasty retreat from the daggers in my eyes. "Im Alonzo Jr; he says, I'm the adoptive dad you gave your son to. Me and my partner just wanted to say thank you. I've been sitting on the floor outside your room all night waiting for you to wake up. Just to say thank you. We will give him the best life ever and tell him all about you. How you signed those papers and had the hospital lawyer witness them How much you loved him, how much you wanted to stay for him, whatever that took, but you just couldn't He handed me a small black book with $20,000 in it. My mother wanted you to have this. It was my college fund. The only thing she never touched when feeding her demons. She was determined I was going to college. " I can't take this. You've got to go to college. You're responsible for my son now. He gently laughed, oh girl, I've done gone to college. I'm a rich lawyer. I do drug court on the side to get addicts into treatment and off the streets and out of jail". This is for you so your friend Adina B who kept our boy safe for all of us, so she can stay in your little Thomas Kincaid cottage and live a good life.

Not enough to last anytime, but enough to keep her going until she can get back on her feet. Now take it and use it the way it was intended to be used." He gave my hand wrapped around that book a gentle squeeze and got up to go. He was right, of course, Adina B could keep doing her guardian-ad-litem work with those poor kids. He was whistling People Will Say We're in Love, as he went out the door. So why is everyone an Oklahoma! Fan today? I looked at the small blind stuffed animal he had tucked in beside me as he left. The little well-loved blind purple Hippo was my undoing. I couldn't stop crying. I was crying as Dr. McEvans came in to tell me he was starting the morphine protocol this evening. You won't feel any pain. Jennie will be with you, private duty, and you know she'll be singing to you. Just try to stop her.