She went again to a priest. He advised her to donate some of her spare time to work at a charitable institution. She did so, helping out as a junior candy-striper, bringing mail, newspapers, drinks, and phone messages to the patients. She had a pretty little uniform and the patients liked her. She was, some said, a breath of fresh air in hell.
For these were not people in for pleasant recuperation following hangnail surgery. This was the accident ward, and some patients were bandaged all over, in casts, or with amputated limbs. Some could not move at all, yet their minds were whole. She read to them from the newspapers, and they appreciated it. She was doing good; she was giving back to the world some of what she owed it.
She was moved to the Sunday morning shift. The wee hours: midnight to six A.M.. This wasn’t properly candy-striper business, it was more like Gray Lady business, but few cared to take those hours, and she volunteered. The doctors knew she was underage, but she was a good worker and mature for her age of just thirteen, so they did not make an issue of it. The nurses needed the help, and it wasn’t as if she was alone. So when patients were restless, the nurses did not force sleeping pills on them, they had Colene come in and read the paper. As often as not, that did put them to sleep, and it was always appreciated.
One man was recovering from abdominal surgery. He had fallen on a spike and punctured his gut; they had had to cut out the affected intestine and sew the ends together. He had lost a lot of blood, and they didn’t have enough of his type. Infection had set in. But he was tiding through, though too weak as yet to lift his arms. When the nurses were busy at the far end of the ward, he spoke to Colene: “Not that dull stuff. There’s a novel under my mattress. Read me that.”
She felt under the mattress and found it. A visitor must have left it for him, or read it to him during the day. There was a marker in it. She opened it at the marker and started reading.
It was an erotic novel. Colene was fascinated. She had never read anything like this, and knew she wasn’t supposed to. The four-letter words were there, and not as expletives. The man didn’t know how young she was, probably. She did not let on. Instead she read the text as it was, about steamy hot women who approached virile men with indecent offers, and amply fulfilled those offers. Colene learned more about raw sex in one hour (with pauses; she had the wit to switch to the newspaper when a nurse came within hearing range) than in all her prior life. She learned exactly what men did with women behind closed doors squeeze by squeeze and inch by inch. She was doing the man a favor, but he had done her a much greater one, inadvertently: he had completed her education in a forbidden subject. She was grateful.
A week later, wee Sunday morning, she read to him again. The marker was well forward of the place she had left it, but that didn’t matter; plot was the least of this story. This time she read about man, woman, and animal, and it was a further education. It was as if God were rewarding her for her good work by sneaking in this secret information she so valued.
The third week the man was gone; he had recovered enough to be moved to another ward, along with his book. A new patient was in the bed: a perfect young man with a bandaged head. He had shot himself, trying to commit suicide. This, too, fascinated her. She offered to read for him, but the nurse told her not to bother. “He’s in a coma. He’ll die soon. He’s a vegetable. We are waiting for him to die.”
“But he’s so handsome!” Colene protested, as if that counted for anything in this ward.
The nurse laughed. She was old, with decades of grim experience; she had seen death hundreds of times, and was calloused. She lifted one of the man’s legs and let it drop with a thud onto the bed. “Look, he is as good as dead. He can’t feel, see, or hear. Don’t waste your time.” She went on about her business.
But Colene lingered, unwilling to believe that such perfection of body could simply die. Why had he shot himself? What reason could someone this handsome have to want to die? It was a mystery that lured her mothlike to a candle flame.
She bent over him. “Don’t die, elegant man,” she whispered. “God loves you—and I love you too. You are too beautiful to die!”
Suddenly his eyes opened, focusing on her. Colene was startled and frightened, for it was the first motion he had made on his own. She ran from the room and told the nurse. “He’s conscious! He looked at me!”
The nurse returned with her. She checked the man’s pulse and eyes. There was no reaction. “You are mistaken,” she said gruffly. “There is no change in him.”
Colene couldn’t believe it. She knew the man had looked at her. She went to the bed and took the patient’s hand. “Please open your eyes,” she pleaded.
His eyes opened. But when he saw the nurse, his eyes closed. Tears trickled down his cheeks.
The nurse was staring. In all her decades of experience, it seemed she had never before seen this happen.
Next week the man remained, undead. It seemed he had not moved a limb or an eyelash in the intervening time. But when Colene took his hand and spoke to him, his eyes opened, and his mouth tried to smile.
He began to recover after that. Week by week he improved, most dramatically when Colene was present, until he was well enough to be taken home. He could not speak or walk without help, but perhaps that would come.
Two weeks later came the news: the beautiful man had gotten his hands on another gun. This time his shot had been all the way true, and he was dead.
What had she accomplished, by interfering with the natural course? She had thought she was doing so much good; instead she had hastened the man’s death. She should never have done it. She should have had the humility to know that she could not change another person’s destined course.
Suicide. What was its attraction?
She continued with the wee-hours Sunday shift, but the heart was gone from it. What was right and what was wrong? She had no sure answers.
Then there was an emergency. A bus had been involved in an accident, and there were horrendous injuries. The call went out: all available personnel report to assist in the emergency room.
Colene went down. In the throes of it, no one challenged her. She carried bandages and ran errands for the harried doctors. There were so many bodies to deal with all at once, they were doing triage.
A teenager not much older than Colene herself was hauled in on a stretcher, his legs crushed. Colene passed the bandages as the doctor tried to stanch the flow of blood; as he said, succinctly, the legs would have to wait because they would do the kid no good if he bled to death. A woman was almost unmarked on the body, but she had been struck across the face and her eyes gouged out. Colene held her hand while the doctor gave her a shot to abate her screaming. A man was sitting, waiting his turn, coughing lip blood, helpless, bewildered, and in despair. Colene went to him and put her arm around his shoulders. “The doctor will be with you in a moment,” she whispered in his ear. He turned his face to her, started to smile, and slumped. Now at last the doctor came, performing a hasty check. “He’s dead.” And he was; they could not revive him.
Now a nurse recognized Colene. “Child, you don’t belong here!” she exclaimed, horrified.
“Yes, I do,” Colene said. But she left, knowing the nurse would not report her if she got out before anyone else caught on. Most of the injured had been classified by this time anyway.
But it was enough. She asked to be relieved of her job, saying the night hours were interfering with her sleep and her homework. The hospital administration, covertly aware of what had happened, gave her a fancy Certificate of Merit and let her go. It was their secret. Colene was learning about secrets, learning well.