Forever Sheltered (5 page)

I set the mermaid high on a cabinet so none of the kids who came through could reach it. “I wish I could set it in a firing oven. This is that silly sort of nondrying clay for kids.”

Albert brushed some errant gray curls out of his eye, and I could see how pronounced the trembling was again. “It’s just a quick-and-dirty job,” he said. “Nothing worth saving.”

The orderly from Albert’s ward entered the room to take him back. I squeezed his shoulder. “If only all of us could do such amazing work in an hour,” I said.

He laid his hand on mine. His skin was chilly, the bones pronounced. “I’m glad I could get in a few last works.”

His tone made my throat feel tight. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.

“Tomorrow.”

The orderly began rolling him toward the door.

I perched on the edge of the table and picked up the lump of leftover clay. I couldn’t do anything with it. But Albert was the real article. I headed back over to the mermaid to examine it more closely. The pigtails gave it a youthful look at first glance. But the seriousness in the girl’s face belied the innocence of the hair. Her mouth was pulled down, as though she were thinking of something troubling. One of her hands was tightly clenched, holding her worries.

Is this how Albert saw me? Is this how I looked to the world? I glanced down at the knee socks below my skirt, blue and red argyle diamonds. Now that I looked closely at the mermaid’s scales, I could see the same pattern repeated on her fins.

Albert didn’t just notice my appearance, the way I presented myself. He also seemed to understand why I still wore my hair that way, what made me put on these stockings, a relic from my teens.

Maybe he even somehow knew my one fervent wish. That I could be back in that time, as hard as it was, those three special hours with my baby, Peanut. It was the only short period of my life that had ever really mattered.
 

Me and my baby, the only family that belonged just to me. I couldn’t get past it. Didn’t really try to.

Albert saw me for who I was.

Chapter 8: Darion

Charles leaned on the handle of his mop. “Didn’t fancy meeting you here, doc,” he said.

I pushed away from the wall, straightening the stethoscope around my neck before it fell. “Just having a chat with a staff member.”

Charles coughed into his hand with an audible chortle and adjusted the blue ball cap that topped his uniform. I had no idea how much he’d seen.

But things could be much worse. Charles was one of the few people at the hospital I had spoken with more than in passing. He was the reason I knew about this unused surgical suite. He sometimes snuck a smoke in here, then sprayed everything down with cleaner to cover the smell.

I wouldn’t talk if he didn’t.

“She’s a cute girl,” Charles said, tapping a cigarette from the pack he kept hidden in his cart. “Not like you’re the only doc around here sneaking a quickie with someone.”

I would have corrected him about the situation with Tina, but he’d seen enough. Five more minutes, and he would have been right. I ran my hands through my hair, trying to bring myself down from the encounter. I was not impulsive like that. I had to get it together.

Charles motioned over his shoulder at the door. “It’s got a lock on it, you know. You might want to use it.”

“I just brought her in here to talk.”

Another chortle. He lit a match, illuminating his face with the flare. Charles was easily sixty, Hispanic, fuzzy facial hair covering his jaw, gray intermingling with black. I met him a month ago after he spotted me in Cynthia’s room at three a.m. She was sleeping on my lap, her head on my shoulder.

I knew the minute he came in and saw us that he had discovered my secret, that I was family to Cynthia. I chased him down later and asked for his discretion. We talked here in Surgical Suite B.

I hadn’t hired Angela at that point. That incident is what prompted me to do it. Cynthia needed someone with her, and we had no one to step in. Our mother was an only child. Her mother had died young as well. Probably the same damn T53 gene.

Our grandfather lived in a nursing home in Houston, an impossible drive or flight in his condition. We had visited him on our trip to M. D. Anderson last week. He was recuperating from stomach surgery, but was alert and in decent spirits. Seeing Cynthia without hair was hard on him. I imagined how impossible it was to lose a wife, daughter, and granddaughter. No, I caught myself. Cynthia would be fine. We would get her in remission.

The whiff of smoke reached my nose. I would reek of it myself if I didn’t go. “See you around, Charles,” I said. “Don’t set off the fire alarms.” I glanced at the ceiling.

He lowered the cigarette. “Disabled them in ’09,” he said. “Tell the pretty art lady I said hello.” He guffawed again. “Your secret’s safe with me. I got a ton of them. I could be a rich man if I were the blackmailing kind.”

“I bet.” I strode out and walked briskly, deciding to cut through an exterior courtyard to hopefully remove any lingering smell on me. Smoke or Tina.

Just saying her name in my head made my crotch tighten again. I had to get it together on this. I didn’t have time for a love affair, and the last thing I needed was another random person knowing about Cynthia.

But she wasn’t random. She was like a child herself in her pigtails and colored stockings, petite and full of energy. But her attitude was all woman.

And so was the response of her body.

New subject.

A couple of families lingered in the courtyard by the fountain. The air was chilly, but the sun pleasant. I recognized one of my patients. Melancholy Melanie. I waved hello and called out a greeting. Melanie waved from where she perched on a concrete bench, gazing down at a few winter flowers. Another leukemia case. Her visit was routine, unlike Cynthia’s. Her remission had lasted four years. Still, she was sad, always, as though the cancer cells might be subdued but she would not forget the years they stole from her.

Back inside the corridor, the smells and sounds of a busy hospital helped drive the past half-hour from my head. By the time I made it back to the nurses’ desk to check on my rounds and what patients were lined up to fill my morning, my distraction with the art therapist had been shoved into the deepest recesses of my mind.

Chapter 9: Tina

My biggest art therapy group was eight adults from the traumatic brain injury ward. This class was always challenging. I had two aides who assisted, since four of the patients were just regaining use of their arms and hands and two of them often erupted into unexpected shouting matches.

I quickly learned what types of activities would frustrate them the least. I wanted my time with them to be relaxing and productive, not upsetting.

But still, this hour was the one with the most flung paint, torn paper, and angry outbursts. I felt acutely undertrained for this group, although I wasn’t sure anyone could be prepared when a hulking three-hundred-pound man hurled a pair of scissors at your head.

I ducked. The plastic safety scissors meant for young children crashed against the wall and broke in two.

“Maybe we should skip cutting today,” a heavyset nurse said, rolling the patient away from the table before he could get his hands on any more missiles.

You think?
I thought, but I just smiled. “I’ll get some clay.” Sculpting was always a foolproof art activity. Pretty much anyone could roll a ball around, and punching at it was as good a therapy as anything.

I glanced up at the mermaid on the tallest cabinet. Thinking of Albert and our quiet time always gave me something to look forward to. Just meeting him made all the other groups worth it. Maybe I could ask someone in administration if we could showcase his work somewhere in the hospital.

When I turned back around, Sabrina, my supervisor, was standing unsmiling in the doorway. I waved and pried open the plastic bin.

“Class is ending a little early today,” Sabrina announced. She seemed anxious, clutching a folder full of papers to her chest. She’d decided to dye her hair red a week ago, and the color made her wild hair appear to be flames shooting around her face. With black cat’s-eye glasses and a zebra-print dress, she looked like she stepped from a 1960s magazine.

I set the bin on the desk. The aides helped their patients make the tight turn to head toward the door. One man hunched over his drawing of an angry rooster as though he would refuse to leave. And actually, without someone coming to escort him back, I wasn’t sure how to get him out.

“What’s going on?” I asked Sabrina.

She flashed an artificial smile, one that seemed more menacing with her dark red-black lips. Corabelle had been totally creeped out by Sabrina when she was in the hospital. The clothes, the glasses, the busybody attitude. But I’d hung out with stranger people than this. Sabrina was all right by me. Maybe a little excitable. I hoped this emptying of my class was just another dramatic act, and not an indication of something more serious.

I thought back to my moment in the surgical suite with the doctor and yesterday’s upset nurse when Cynthia snuck to my room. Plenty of errors to be held accountable for.

Only the rooster picture patient remained, filling in the blue sky on his page. I knew he couldn’t get back to his room on his own. Since his car accident, he had struggled with basic tasks. He talked only in quotes from cartoons he had watched as a child, and preferred to spend class drawing the characters.

“Toby?” I said, kneeling next to him. “I’m going to call a nurse from your ward to come get you.”

He turned away from me, and I saw a tear drip from his eye onto the table, as though he were a child losing something he cherished. This was so hard, as otherwise he was a full-grown man with a beard and big beefy arms. No one knew how or when he would recover. The brain was so mysterious.

I glanced over at Sabrina, still hugging the file and standing to one side of the door, as I reviewed the list of patients and called the nurses’ desk for Toby’s ward. No one answered at first, but finally a clipped voice said she’d send someone after him.

A puddle of tears had formed on the table when I went back to him. I was irritated at Sabrina now. For many patients, this was their refuge, a place that wasn’t like the rest of the hospital. She was taking this away from them. Why couldn’t she have come between groups? She had my schedule. She was in charge of it.

“Tell me about this picture,” I said gently. Sabrina could just stand and rot over there for all I cared.

“Who’s responsible, I say, who’s responsible for this ruckus?” he asked.

“It’s Foghorn Leghorn!” I said. “You did a great job on him.” The rooster in his drawing had his arms folded across his chest. Toby had done a remarkable job capturing the details of the character. “What is he saying?”

“Son, you’re dimmer than a ten-year-old lightbulb,” Toby said.

My throat tightened at that. It could have been a random quote. Or Toby could be projecting the way he felt about himself. If he was, it would indicate higher-level thinking skills, an awareness of his condition. I’d have to write that up in his report.

If I got a chance to make a report.

“Can you write that sentence at the bottom?” I asked. Toby had been relearning to read and write. The skills came back in spurts, as though he wasn’t actually learning, but remembering.

He shook his head. At the rooster’s feet, he began to sketch out the baby bird from the cartoon, one with giant round glasses. I waited and watched, not just to avoid Sabrina, but also to give Toby some attention since I had him one-on-one.

The minutes ticked by. There must not have been anyone available to come get Toby, which didn’t surprise me. Hospitals were nothing if not highly scheduled.

Sabrina wandered the room, looking at the pictures and paintings I had taped to the walls. She paused when she got to the clay mermaid.

My indignation welled up. I didn’t want her looking at it. It felt intimate, as though she were spying on some private communication between me and Albert.

The group had only five minutes left when an aide arrived to escort Toby back to his room. Toby picked up his picture and held it tight to his chest as he stood up to leave.

I was doubly irritated now, as group could have gone on as usual. This couldn’t be good for the patients. They needed structure, to know what to expect from one hour to the next.

I snatched an antibacterial wipe from the container clipped to the end of the table and began cleaning all the colored pencils.

When the aide and Toby were gone, Sabrina turned around. “I need you to pack any personal things right now,” she said.

My face popped up in shock. “What?”

“I have to escort you out of the building.”

I jumped from the chair. “What for?”

God, was it that bad with the doctor? Or Cynthia? I couldn’t imagine that either transgression would warrant this sort of treatment.

“It’s not you. I made a grave error in protocol. You aren’t cleared for this job. Not trained. I should have known better. I have to let you go.” Sabrina glanced around the room. “At the time I had to hire someone quickly or lose the endowment.”

“We should go talk to someone. I think there’s been a misunderstanding.” I circled the table to confront her. “You don’t just escort someone out like this.”

“No choice. You’re not a licensed therapist.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t find one.”

“The hospital director is quite certain I could have.” She pinched her dark lips in a tight line. “Don’t worry, you’re not alone here. I’ve been given my notice too.”

“What?”

“Yep. After dealing with paint splatters and irate patients myself before you came, PLUS my regular flow of referrals and paperwork.” She leaned against the counter, and I could tell she wanted to cry. “He’s a difficult man. He knows social workers like me are a dime a dozen, and he’ll have a hundred applicants.”

“This is ridiculous. What are you going to do?” And what was I going to do? It hadn’t really sunk in. I’d moved across the country for this job, and now I had nothing.