The Ward (2 page)

“
Oh,
Rene
…Earth calling Rene…”

She giggled, arms dropping away, and
he stepped back. He held her at arm’s length. Finally she found the
courage to say what was on her mind. Slowly she was opening up to
him—he could see that, but it was slow and painful and had to be in
little wee baby steps.

“
But where, Ben?” He
couldn’t get out and she probably didn’t have any money.

He’d never really considered that
before, but it was a side issue anyway.

Ben was in an open ward of four males.
They couldn’t go there very well.

Rene had put two and two
together.

“
Old Missus Beck next
door…” She looked up, searching his eyes. “That scrawny old man on
the other side…he’s always watching me.”

He likes you, Rene. He’s
bored stiff and he has no life of his own and you’re the most
wonderful thing in this whole miserable place.

You couldn’t really
say
that, could you? So
much better for everyone to live in a state of permanent
denial.

Too many of them had no hope and would
never get out of there. He, at least, stood a chance. He was making
damn sure of it. Rene might stand a chance. Some of them didn’t
even care anymore. If that was what had happened to her, then it
was a real tragedy.

Then it was too late
already.

He could not, would not accept that.
She deserved better.

It was wrong, for someone like her, to
give up on themselves. There must be some way.

Words failed him for a
moment.

“
So. She won’t know. We’ll
be real quiet and she’ll be gone anyway. I won’t ask you to trust
me. But I say this very seriously. I won’t sneak around for you,
Rene.”

He was being a little hard on her, but
he had a purpose.

Her mouth pursed in an O. One thing he
liked, when she looked him in the eye, she stayed put.

“
I am not ashamed of my
feelings for you, Rene.”

Ben stepped further back
decisively.

“
I want people to know how
I feel about you. I’m proud of it.”

She stared at the floor.

“
How you feel about me is
also an important question. And it’s like you don’t even seem to
really know yourself, although…” He paused, choosing his words
carefully. “Although, so far you haven’t screamed bloody murder or
asked me to go away. Well, there was the one time.”

She didn’t say anything.

He tried again.

“
We could watch TV. Any
show you want. I will read a book aloud to you. I will recite
poetry. I will stand on my head and spit quarters, just to be with
you, and to have dinner with you.”

Just the two of us. Far
away from the madding crowd…all too literally in several
cases.

She looked up at Ben, suddenly afraid
of losing him.

“
Well. Ben. Ben, I don’t
know.”

“
Don’t you worry about a
thing. I’ve got it all taken care of.”

Rene’s eyes wandered but then people
were passing them on the sidewalk in front of the
Institute.

“
Rene, there’s something I
really need to talk to you about. Privately, you know?”

Ben threw down his cigarette butt and
quickly lit another. There was no smoking anywhere in the building
these days. They only had so much time out there. She didn’t even
smoke, but he’d dragged her along and she came with him. They were
making progress.

“
Well…all right.” Her eyes
searched his. “So, so what do I have to do? Just not go
down?”

Ben nodded encouragingly.

“
Yeah. Good girl. It’s no
one’s business but our own.”

She had no idea of what he meant by
that of course.

The familiar figure of Mister
Nushirivani, an unarmed security guard, stepped out of the door and
gave a cheerful call. Outside break was over. Butts were tossed and
bodies moved towards the side door and vestibule leading directly
up to the Third Floor of the Mental Health Annex.

Rene moved along, close at his
side.

He held her back at the top of the
stairs, and they paused while still outside the ward.

He would have to give her simple and
specific instructions. Asking her not to tell anyone about it made
him feel furtive—dirty, and dishonest. She just wouldn’t understand
the risks and so he left that part out. There were too many other
wards, and for her own safety, the staff would move her in a
heartbeat. They’d be worried about their own liabilities more than
anything. A pregnant patient under their care and charge, a
disappearing boyfriend, and yes, he could see their dilemma. That
much was clear, and not so romantic, and also something you really
couldn’t explain.

Not to her, anyway. Not at this exact
moment. It was an unnecessary risk.

Voices babbled and the shuffling of
slippered feet going by on the way to the Games Room was oppressing
him. They huddled and whispered, him not being too physical and
with Rene seemingly calm and untroubled now that the decision was
actually made.

Rene was funny that way.

Luckily, all Rene had to do was to
just stay in her room when everyone else went down to dinner. If
anyone asked, which didn’t seem very likely, she could just say she
wasn’t hungry. She could say she wasn’t feeling well, or had
stomach cramps from her period.

It was best to keep it simple. The
serving people were busy enough at the best of times and the odds
were good that she wouldn’t be missed. People took their meals in
their rooms all the time. She had nothing to worry
about.

It was just some irrational
fear.

***

A light knock came at the door and
Rene’s heart fluttered. Her long, pale hands flew to her face and
her hair. Gasping slightly for breath, swallowing once or twice
convulsively, she tiptoed to the door.

“
Psst.”

She heard
something
out
there.

“
He-hello?”

“
Come on Baby. It’s me.
Open up.”

She was terribly nervous. He kept
calling her that.

She twisted the knob and then,
stepping back, she allowed it to open. His shoulder, his body was
right there. Ben came in bearing two heavy plastic
trays.

He nipped in and deposited them on the
end of her bed.

“
Coke or
Pepsi?”

“
Coke!” She closed the
door hastily, yet taking great care not to let it thump or bang
when it hit.

She’d heard people going by earlier,
but that might not account for everyone along this particular
stretch of corridor. She bounced lightly up and down on her toes,
silently golf-clapping and beaming at Ben. He smiled at the sight
of her.

He grabbed her around the waist, and
they spun in mindless dance, perhaps a little more so in her case.
His heart soared. She was glad to see him. It was an adventure for
her, just to do something different.

“
I gotta go back. One
minute, Baby, one minute.” Ben tiptoed in an exaggerated fashion
over to the door and quietly let himself out.

Keeping his hand on the door, once in
the hallway he rotated the knob back into position, not allowing
the latch to snap or anything like that.

True to his word, he was right back.
He snapped a can and handed it to her.

“
Sorry, Baby, all they had
was Pepsi.”

She took it, looking at him with wide
eyes over the top as she sipped it.

Rene had the insulated covers off
their trays. Her room was neat as a pin, not like his, which was
strictly temporary…he hoped. She had flowers by the window, in a
clear green glass jug. She changed the water every day. Rene had
lovely embroidered towels from home, in the bathroom, and a TV up
high on the tall dresser at the end of her bed.

Ben reveled in getting her to agree to
this. Rene was terribly naive and had led an extremely sheltered
life. She had been in here for the last six years, after one or two
previous episodes. Apparently her mother called once a week,
usually on a Sunday night. She had one or two sisters that called
sometimes, and a brother that never did.

She didn’t seem lonely. Ben
desperately needed to get out. She didn’t seem particularly unhappy
here. If anything, the reverse was true. She’d adapted too well,
and that spoke of something. As for himself, Ben had hated every
minute of every day right up until he started talking to
Rene.

That very adaptability, that
malleability, might be her strength. He would have to go carefully,
though. He went around behind the high, narrow bed and sat on his
left hip, back to the wall so he could see the TV.

“
Oh, boy.” He set the lid
aside. “Lasagna.”

There were the usual plastic forks and
little things in cellophane packages…a roll, hard as a rock and a
pat of butter. Two slices of limp, dark green lettuce and a
paper-thin slice of the usual flavourless tomato. Four ounces of
milk in a waxed container was their idea of a beverage. He looked
up at Rene.

She was watching Jeopardy, perched on
the other side of the bed. A chunk of her dinner clung dubiously to
her fork and she was unaware of it.

“
Honey…your
dinner.”

She looked back at him, looked down at
her fork and then absently put it in her mouth, eyes inevitably
drawn back to the TV set. Whatever had been bothering her earlier
must have been forgotten.

Rene, with her fine
eyebrows, crystalline blue eyes and that pale, silky blonde hair,
looked devastatingly beautiful. The moment he first laid eyes on
her, he wanted to
know
her, to know who that girl was. He wanted to
speak
to her.

Not that that didn’t happen fairly
often of course, but this one was different.

This one was very
different.

Ben seemed to fall in and
out of love on a regular basis. He could admit to himself in a
private moment that he was promiscuous with his affections. But
they were
only
affections. That was because nothing ever came of
it.

Somehow he had found the guts to talk
to this beautiful girl, only to discover the mind of a rabbit or a
lamb or something, and a kind of vulnerability he had never quite
seen before.

It didn’t take too long to realize she
wasn’t quite normal, whatever that meant. There were some pieces
missing, or more likely carefully squirreled away somewhere safe.
He was familiar enough with the illnesses he saw all around him.
She didn’t fit into any neat pigeonholes.

It didn’t take too long before he
realized it was happening again. Ben was in love—and this time the
lady in question wasn’t the usual sort. She wasn’t to be listed
among the unattainable, and meant only to dream about, and think
about, and long for hopelessly like a puppy.

This time he was in love, real love,
with some girl who was actually there, on hand, and not just an
airbrushed image on TV or on the cover of some glossy
magazine.

If only he could have escaped—gotten
her out of his mind, and moved on. But of course he was stuck here
just as she was.

She was the most beautiful woman in
the world to Ben. Not that he knew all that much about the
world.

Ben knew he was sunk, of course. After
a while the realization came. She twitched a bit, turned and gave
him a radiant smile, and picked at her food for a
moment.

Her shift was climbing and it had
exposed a lovely knee. Ben wanted to kiss that knee so
bad.

It would be too much for her. She
needed to trust him implicitly before anything like that could
happen.

She made the hospital gown-thing look
good. He wore his backwards, more like a housecoat, but Rene tied
hers up at the back like a good little patient. The staff had given
up on talking to Ben about his housecoat, the whole subject of
personal modesty, and the fact that it was a mixed
group.

Rene’s breasts were high, small but
not too small—just nice, and she had good shoulders. She carried
herself with an unconscious grace. She wasn’t down on herself or
anything like that.

Comfortable with her existence and her
fate, she needed a gentle shaking. She needed to see other
possibilities.

He was only going to be so patient on
that score, but he wasn’t going to push too hard either.

She would be ready when she was ready
and not a moment sooner. Rene might be more resilient than she
looked. He wanted it to be right for her. He already knew it was
all right with him. No matter how insistent that urge became, he
must not damage her. Rene was already damaged enough.

So was he. He was already
damaged—and Ben had caused enough damage in his own right. So much
so that he did not want to cause any more. That was a promise to
himself, and a secret from her or anybody. She wouldn’t understand
that part. No one would. No one else could. She wasn’t unique in
that. She didn’t need to know what she didn’t understand. He had
that figured out. If you can’t explain it, then
don’t.