My checkbook was screaming to be fed it when my final paycheck from the Frenault estate arrived, barely enough to pay my bills and buy groceries. I didn’t buy much at the Thrift-Mart, though. After someone dies in my care I tend to lose my appetite for a while. But since I was there, I bought a pound of whole coffee beans, a quart of milk, and a bag of raisin bagels and stashed them in my empty refrigerator. I had taken so many meals at the Frenault estate my refrigerator had developed that abandoned smell, and it reminded me of Jesse, so I scrubbed it with baking soda and hot water while shuddering and holding back memories of blood and mucous.
It had been months since I had enjoyed a walk and I headed for town, hoping to elevate my mood. I couldn’t afford to buy anything. I forgot my scarf and gloves so I shoved my numb hands into my coat pockets. It was just above freezing, cloudy and blustery. Hardly uplifting.
Leisure time affords the opportunity to see and hear things one doesn’t want to remember later: an old married couple arguing over whom is too blind to drive, a young couple fighting about money, an impatient mother scolding her toddler. Someday she’ll pray he’s forgotten what she said.
“You’re a brat. I should spank you right here where everyone can see! Stop crying! I don’t want an ugly, bawling kid with me.”
I’d never say things like that to my child. I was married once. Pregnant.
In the middle of town was a corner pharmacy. It had a window display of blood-pressure cuffs. I stood there, comparing price and features, reminded of Jesse Frenault. Behind me, brakes screeched, followed by an awful, double-thump. A man shouted. People raced by me into the intersection.
From inside the open door of the drugstore, someone shouted, “Call 911. Pedestrian hit by a car!” The pharmacist rounded the end of the counter and ran out the door and into the street.
I pushed my way into the crowd behind him. “Let me through. I’m a nurse.”
The pharmacist was already there, kneeling beside a little girl on the cold, damp street. She looked to be about six years old and bled from a deep gash on her thigh. A jagged bone protruded through the torn flesh. A blue lump swelled on her brow.
“My baby,” a man moaned. “Someone, help!”
Ten feet away the gleaming bumper of a silver Mercedes hummed. No dents, no blood, no sign of colliding with the child. I wondered how the car had managed to miss a big, hefty guy like the father and mow down a tiny girl.
I knelt alongside the pharmacist, “I’m a registered nurse,” I said. He nodded, his face as gray as the pavement. I placed my hand over the girl’s wound and pressed, staunching the flow of blood. A siren wailed from the fire station six blocks away.
“Shouldn’t that doctor be helping that kid, instead of just some... pedestrian?” The voice came from behind us. “Aren’t you a doctor?” A man tapped the pharmacist on the shoulder. The pharmacist shook his head, looking pale to the point of green.
With my free hand I stroked the child’s light brown, wavy hair. Her blue eyes were half open. I smiled, hoping she would blink or return the smile, but she didn’t.
“It’s her birthday. I promised we’d go out for milkshakes. Vanilla is her favorite.” Her father crumpled to his knees, gasping.
“What’s her name?” I asked.
The father shook his head as if my question made no sense.
“Her name?”
“Angela.”
Chills raced down my neck and arms. Why, I asked. But God has never answered that question, and I have asked it a million times in the past six years.
Angela was the name I had chosen for my baby. Had she been born she would be the same age as the child in the street, this child whose warm blood coated my hand.
Angela blinked.
“Help is on the way,” I told her. “You’ll be okay.”
Like her, my husband had light brown, wavy hair and blue eyes, and like her he had a spray of freckles across his nose.
Derek.
This Angela wore a navy blue coat and black Mary Jane shoes with white ruffled anklets. The hem of a red-checked dress escaped where a missing button allowed the coat to fall open. The dress hem was small, about a half-inch wide and hand stitched. Maybe her mother had sewn the dress for her with barely enough material, or it was secondhand. I’d never know, but it made me angry. An innocent child from a poor family, her birthday party was a milkshake and her party dress was a hand-me-down. And now this, hit by a car, her blood on the street. Strangers staring. Her father crying. Life was cruel.
The crowd parted and the ambulance rolled to a stop. Two men scrambled out carrying a stretcher, a third carried an emergency aid kit.
“Got her,” one of them said. I moved aside. My hand was sticky with a sheer red glove of blood.
They loaded Angela into the ambulance and sped away with lights flashing and the siren screaming. The crowd shuffled away, dragging me with it. The ambulance was swallowed by traffic while my old familiar numbness returned to my neck, back, and legs.
The pharmacy assistant patted me on my shoulder. “Good thing you were here.” She nodded toward the front door of the drugstore. Inside, the pharmacist leaned against the counter, swallowing again and again as if trying to hold back vomit. “He hit a jaywalker with his car a couple years ago. Killed him.” She patted me on the shoulder again. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I lied.
I hadn’t been okay in six years, alternating between anger and numbness. Sometimes the anger startles me and makes it difficult to respond to anyone with a calm, tolerant voice. The numbness makes me appear uncaring.
I had often made conversation with co-workers, patients and neighbors, gave injections and baths, took blood pressures, administered prescription drugs, detected fevers and even diagnosed illnesses in time to save lives, but I had done it all with a detachment no nurse should have. I was either angry and shooting my mouth off, or numb and going through the motions, looking like I didn’t care. No wonder the hospital put me on probation.
My attention was drawn to something in the gutter at my feet, a dark blue button. I squatted and picked it up. Angela’s missing coat button gleamed in my palm like a beveled jewel. I squeezed it tight and suppressed a sob.
As I stumbled back toward my apartment I whispered the things I’d sacrifice for Angela’s survival. A soft voice inside my head asked, even Derek?
He’s already gone anyway.
Your profession?
I’m not such a great nurse.
Your own health?
Who cares?
Happiness?
What happiness?
The Bible says one cannot bargain with God, but that has never stopped me from trying.
When I reached the steps to my apartment building, I paused, looked up, and studied my darkened fourth floor windows. The thought of unlocking my door, opening my refrigerator, and smelling Jesse Frenault again made my throat hurt. I didn’t want to think about Jesse or Angela or Derek. Numbness or the anger would be better; I was accustomed to both.
I kept walking.
An hour later I found myself at another intersection with another corner pharmacy, this one newer and larger. I studied their window display of bath mats, shower curtains, towels, washcloths, security railings, hot water bottles, thermometers, and bed trays.
Inside was a fifties-style lunch counter with six red vinyl-covered stools, one occupied by a man sipping coffee from a bisque-colored mug. Half a sandwich remained on a matching plate. The sight made me yearn for shelter from the cold wind, and to wrap my hands around a cup of hot coffee.