The Side of the Angels (36 page)

When I emerged from Clare's office, Louise had arrived. She was applying felt lettering with a glue gun to a banner that a contingent of our nurses would carry tomorrow, when Clare or her designee went to the state house to testify before a subcommittee on a new needle-stick safety law. The law would require Rhode Island hospitals to switch to retractable needles within the next three years, and Clare had played a large role in drafting the legislation.

The banner read, “Safe Needles Save Nurses' Lives.” Louise was jazzing the lettering up with some “alarm lines” around the edges of the words when I came up behind her.

“I see they put you to work.”

“I asked for something to do. I want to hang around for a few days, if you don't mind.”

“Mind? It'll be great.”

She began to draw an exaggeratedly pointed needle next to the banner slogan, and made it drip with tiny scraps of red-felt blood. On the scene for an hour and she was already a natural.

I returned to my desk to discover that Eric had ornamented my keyboard with a large
E,
executed in painterly fashion with white correcting fluid. I spied the tail of his shirt disappearing into the men's room, and went right after him.

“You can't come in here,” he said. He was wearing the same shirt he'd worn the day before, a brown and black stripe that had probably been bought at the Salvation Army. His skinny wrists stuck out of it. Suddenly, I wanted to take him to a department store and buy him a warm pullover, to scrub his little face and show him how to brush his hair. Someday, when he put a little weight on him, he'd be a handsome kid. Now he was a scrawny brat with exhausted but loving parents who couldn't keep pace with him. Why did people have so many children if they weren't up to it?

By a social worker's standards you could not make a case that he was neglected, but Eric was not thriving. Someone should say something before it was too late.

I sighed. I had been born with an urge to interfere even stronger than my mother's, it seemed.

“You can't come in here,” Eric repeated. “Didn't you see the sign? Men's room. No girls allowed.”

“I'm here, aren't I? What did you do to my screen?”

“I was just expressing myself.”

I pulled two dollars out of my pocket.

“You express yourself by going down to the pharmacy right now and buying me a nail file.”

“I don't know what a nail file looks like, Torchhead,” he said.

“Ask the lady at the counter. Then you're going to sit with me while we scrape that off.”

“I have homework.”

“I'll help you with your homework afterward. Is it English? If it's math, Kate can help you. If it's English, we can ace it, me and you. Bring it on.”

“You can't tell me what to do. Only Tony and my mother can tell me what to do.”

“You want me to call Tony?”

“Give me another two dollars for Pop Rocks,” he said. Pop Rocks were a rather frightening candy that sizzled and popped on the tongue. Eric liked to open his mouth while consuming them, to display the never-failing wonders of this process.

I pulled out a five. Some days you have to know when you're beaten.

“There's plenty. Now go,” I said.

“I have to piss.”

“You piss when you get back.”

He departed with a smirk of satisfaction on his face that robbed me of all triumph.

Talks were broken off that afternoon, less than three hours after the local and the hospital went into mediation.

“It was a joke,” said Tony. “We offered two hours of mandatory overtime, then four. They stuck to eight hours of overtime, on demand, per shift. That means sixteen-hour shifts for nurses at management's request. And they wouldn't discuss staffing at all.”

An impasse was declared. On the evening news, every local channel showed Bennett Winslow standing in front of the hospital, saying, with the kind of shameless bravado that was a Finchley and Crouse signature, “Why did nurses return to the bargaining table if they weren't willing to negotiate? Why did they waste our time?”

Winslow was beginning to perk up as he sensed the nearness of victory. Assurance was returning to his mellifluous voice, and he no longer visibly cringed at the tough questions.

“I'm bringing them back in,” said Clare. We sat around the conference table, not looking at each other.

“Another three days,” said Tony. “That's all I'm asking. If we go back in then, it'll still be before the holidays.”

“Won't that be a jolly, forgiving season inside the hospital,” said Kate. “I'm sure a lovely Christmas spirit will prevail.”

“At least we'll manage to get them a paycheck in time to buy presents for their kids,” said Tony morosely. “Or pay the heating bill.”

We all sat there silently and pulled apart an enormous braided rye that the Ironworkers had sent over.

Another loss for Tony, I thought, not sure I could bear seeing that.

Late in the afternoon, Eric returned with the nail file, three packages of disgusting beef jerky, and a bag of Pixie Sticks, a powdered candy in a paper straw that I remembered from my youth. The drugstore was out of the exploding confection he'd have preferred. He proceeded to spill sticky orange granules all over my keyboard, causing my fingers to smell like baby aspirin all day.

It took me half an hour to painstakingly, delicately scrape his decoration from the screen, where it left a visible shadow. After six minutes of “helping” me, he hightailed it off to the office supply store with Margaret. The only thing that cheered me up was that Margaret later reported that Eric had embarrassed her by asking loudly in the check-out
line, “Margaret, do you pronounce it
clit
oris, or clit
or
is?” Margaret was so mortified that she forgot paper clips and masking tape and had to make a second trip just when she was going to sit down with me about her idea for a Christmas recipe corner in the strike newsletter.

Perhaps there was some good in the kid after all.

“T
HEY LIKED YOUR
idea on the mammogram stuff,” said Ron. “They think they can work with it, anyway. And Wendy had an inspiration that we'd give every woman who participates in the mammo-van program a free coffee mug with a slogan on it.”

“What sort of slogan?”

“I think she wanted something like ‘I Got an A+ in Breast Responsibility.' I couldn't tell if the client went for it or not.”

“I hope to God the client didn't go for it. Would you want a mug that said, ‘Kiss me, I passed my prostate exam'?”

“I'm too young to worry about my prostate,” said Ron defensively. “What was Wendy doing sitting in on that meeting anyway? It's not her account.”

“She has everything but the last details wrapped up for the Camp-sters banquet and she was bored. Besides, I need to have staff beside me in these meetings. We don't want them to think we're some rinky-dink mom-and-pop operation.”

“No, we wouldn't want them to think that.”

“I hear you have your little cousin helping you out up there,” said Ron.

Louise had picked up the phone the night before when Wendy made one of her bedtime calls.

“Louise is pitching in, Ron. For free. Is there a problem?”

“No,” said Ron. “I think it's cute. I just want to warn you that I have no idea how much longer you're going to be able to stay up there. Goreman thinks you're an unnecessary expense.”

“Those designer suits he wears are an unnecessary expense, with
that pudgy figure of his. I don't get paid enough to be an unnecessary expense.”

“You don't know how bad it's gotten over there. Goreman and Weingould aren't even speaking. Goreman is having his secretary communicate with Weingould on everything.”

Even I had to feel sorry for the beleaguered Weingould. Goreman's secretary, Beatrice, was fiercely loyal, even though it had been years since she and Goreman used to sneak off for expense-account nookie trips. Beatrice had gone to one of those old-fashioned secretarial schools where they teach you a freezing, formal business etiquette that daunts the unwelcome caller and deflates the out of favor. She still called Weingould “Mr. Weingould” after a decade, claiming that it was a mark of respect.

“Ron, I don't like that mammogram pitch,” I said. “It's not my best work. It's weak and mediocre.”

“The client's happy, Nicky. I'm happy. Wendy is happy. Everyone is happy. By the way, I'm thinking of promoting her.”

So low was I that this news didn't even depress me further, though it should have. Wendy at every key account meeting, making suggestions for upping the perkiness quotient of Alzheimer's bike-a-thons and abortion rights rallies. Wendy in the big office right next to mine, installing tailored peach window shades for that warm but energy-efficient look. Wendy pushing for a staff retreat in some cabin complex outside Lynchburg so that we could review our personal and career goals with the help of a corporate facilitator. It was almost too much to bear, but at that moment, I didn't take it in. There would be time later for cursing and throwing things.

“Do whatever you want about Wendy,” I said to Ron, since he would anyway. “But keep me up here if you can.”

“There's such a thing as cutting your losses, Nicky. We knew what the odds were on this one.”

Louise had stayed with me three days now, taking care of her clients in a long-distance, listless way that would probably drive scores of them into cloistered orders. This was horribly unlike Louise, a veritable
Sugar Plum Fairy who normally loved fussing happily over her holiday client roster and sending recycled-paper Christmas cards to every one of the couples who, through her good agency, had tied the knot in the past year.

Every day she spent a few hours at the strike office, typing mailing labels for Margaret or playing game after game of checkers with Eric, who always won because Louise was constitutionally unable to plot more than two moves ahead. Then she'd disappear, wandering over to the public library or taking my car to the huge Providence mall. Strange behavior.

None of my galvanizing comments seemed to rally her at all. Louise huddles into herself in moments of despair, and all you can do is stand by.

Without her permission, I had phoned Johnny at home, at an hour when I knew he'd be at the shop, and left a message that Louise was vacationing on her own, but had asked me to let him know she was safe. She wasn't ready to talk with him, I said, and had given me no number where she could be reached, but she'd sworn she was fine and in good health and desired only a space for solitude at present.

I thought this sounded like something Louise would say. There was no sense in Johnny being driven crazy with worry while Louise decided what to do. If Louise ever decided what to do. If she stayed here much longer she could apply for her own library card.

I'd have worried that Michael or Joey would grow concerned about her whereabouts, but for the fact that they'd assume Johnny was keeping tabs on her. Sometimes men's inability to convey crucial information to each other comes in handy.

Clare's deadline went by, day after day, hour after hour. Tony began by arguing with her every twenty minutes, then he gave up and sat at his desk, shooting rubber bands, one after another, in a grim, unbreach-able silence.

I'd drafted a press release with a stalwart quote from Clare about how every one of the St. Francis nurses was going to continue to try to provide the best care possible to their patients, and how the union
would persist toward the goal of a safe and well-staffed hospital. “We are giving up the battle on the picket line, but we are not giving up the fight,” I had her say, cornily.

By two o'clock on the last day, I'd done what little I could to get us press-ready for settlement. For caving in. I knew that Clare was doing the responsible thing, but I wished she'd be less mature and composed about it. I never saw her lose her temper, slam a door, throw a paperweight. It was admirable. It was unnatural.

She'd taken even Doug's sudden departure with equanimity, not even blinking at Tony's explanation about Doug's being needed at the national to chair a committee on OSHA violations in the deep-south states. Clare had probably been on to Doug's tricks before any of us. Right now, Doug's defection was the least of her worries.

I never spared a regret for our two comrades in the trenches. Without Suzanne and Doug, the office felt less crowded to me, less wearing. My cold cleared up. Tony—well, he didn't look like he was pining away to me. Perhaps, away from Suzanne's intoxicating presence, he was giving some belated thought to what life with her might be like in the long-term, a life filled with staged play readings, underattended gallery openings, and summer visits to writers' colonies where he'd be reduced to taking the bird-watching course for spouses. Odds were, though, that he was concentrating his entire being on averting the defeat that lay before all of us.

“Come on,” I said to Kate when the press release had been typed and vetted and lay folded like a Dear John letter on Tony's desk. Clare had already put in a call to Winslow asking for a meeting. “Let's go over to the hospital and walk the picket line one last time.”

“God, Nicky, you talk like we're already beaten.”

“I'm a pessimist by nature. It keeps me on an even keel.”

“You're full of baloney,” she said. “The woman who still thinks this might be the year for the Red Sox. Okay, I'm coming. At least when this is over I won't have to go sneaking around the back elevators any longer.”

“You were starting to get a kick out of it.”

Louise was already over there. She'd been taking it upon herself to bring coffee out to our picketers once every shift, good coffee that she
picked up at the local Starbucks, not the slop we produced in the office. Eric was there, too, seeking new frontiers in which to misbehave. Worst of all, Bennett Winslow was expected any moment for one of his “curbside chats.”