Блейз Клемент - Cat Sitter On A Hot Tin Roof

As we met them, passed them, and were passed by them, my mind went off on a little naughty thought trip about those truck drivers. It’s what minds do when they’re not strictly disciplined. Especially female minds. I mean, let’s face it, construction workers, pool men, landscapers, all those outdoor guys have incredibly firm butts that you don’t see on other men. They also have pelvises that move when they walk. Men who sit at desks all day have flat butts and walk just by bending their knees—their hips don’t move at all. It makes a woman imagine the difference in their respective lovemaking abilities, and the truck drivers come off best.

I mused on those high-minded thoughts all the way to the exit to I-275. Then, as we headed toward the Skyway Bridge, my mind drifted to the memory of Ethan Crane’s butt, which was fantastic. Better than Guidry’s, to tell the truth, and Ethan sat at a desk all day.

While my mind was wandering down that guilty little avenue, Pete’s had different priorities. To get my attention, he made a big to-do of wadding up his pie sleeve and stowing it neatly in the McDonald’s bag with his used napkins and empty Coke cup.

He said, “That detective came back again. He asked if I was sure it was Tuesday morning I saw that lady crossing the street, and not the day before. I’ve already told him it probably wasn’t Laura after all, and now he wants to know when I saw some completely other lady. Dumb shit must think I’m too old to know what day it is.”

“That’s odd.”

“Nah, lots of people think you lose your marbles once you pass about ten years older than they are. If they’re sixty, they think seventy is old. If they’re seventy, they think eighty is old. Personally, I know people in their thirties that are older than me.”

“It’s odd that Guidry questioned you about when you saw some other woman crossing the street.”

We rode along for a while and I said, “You’re positive it wasn’t Laura?”

“I wasn’t up close, if that’s what you mean. I thought it was her, but I guess it wasn’t.”

“Did she see you?”

“She didn’t wave if she did. It was so early, she probably didn’t think anybody else was out.”

The first time I’d met Laura, she’d gone running after nine o’clock. I’d got the impression that she always ran around that time, but I could have been wrong. Lots of runners get up as early as I do and get their exercising done before the sun is up.

After we passed through the tollbooths on the way to St. Petersburg, Pete’s brow furrowed and his eyebrows began to climb even higher, and I knew the reality of what we were doing had hit him the same way it did me. We both knew there was no absolute guarantee that Hal had been able to get all the necessary permissions for Mazie to go to Jeffrey’s hospital room. Jeffrey was a child. He had just had brain surgery. Mazie was a dog. Some people would think her presence in his room so soon after surgery could be a health risk.

Besides that apprehension, I had other reasons to be tense, reasons that increased the closer we got to the golden girders of the Skyway Bridge. It’s silly, I know, but I don’t like leaving solid ground. I especially don’t like the gigantic roller-coaster feel of the Skyway. By the time we got there and the Bronco’s nose began to point toward the sky, I gripped the wheel with both hands. Call it phobia, call it my need to control, but if that sucker collapsed, cars would drop like boulders.

Once we left the Skyway behind and my breath was even, I began watching for the exit that would take us to I-175. Pete watched too, his eyebrows waggling like writhing caterpillars. We found I-175, and after a while took the Sixth Street South exit. The closer we got to the hospital, the higher and twitchier Pete’s eyebrows got.

He contained himself until we were turning into the hospital parking lot.

He said, “You didn’t really get permission, did you?”

I looked at him the way a mouse coming out of its hole would look at a watching cat.

“Hal promised to clear it with the doctor and the hospital.”

Pete said, “I’m like that too. I always operate on the theory that it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.”

I said, “I could go in first and talk to the charge nurse.”

“I’m afraid they’ll say no, Dixie.”

“I didn’t mean I’d ask if we could bring Mazie in. I’ll just talk. You know, as in distract-her-attention-from-the-man-going-down-the-hall-with-a-dog.”

“Okay, that’s good.”

I wasn’t sure if it was good or not. But right or wrong, that seemed to be what we were doing.

Pete directed me to a side lot near an unmarked entrance. “This is the wing where Jeffrey’s room is. He’s on the fifth floor. There’s an elevator near the side door that’s not as busy as the main one. I’ve seen people taking therapy dogs up that elevator. I don’t think anybody will stop Mazie.”

Okay, that sounded good. At least for a moment. Therapy dogs and service dogs go into hospitals all the time, and Mazie was a service dog. But therapy dogs go in with therapists who have been vetted and authorized by the hospital, and service dogs go in as authorized companions of a person visiting a patient. Mazie was a service dog, but she was a companion to Jeffrey, not Pete. The bald truth was that Mazie was going in the hospital simply as a four-legged visitor to see a patient. If the hospital rules didn’t allow dogs to visit patients, we were sunk.

I said, “Give me time to go around to the front entrance before you go in.”

I don’t know why I thought that was a good idea, but it seemed necessary at the time. It must have sounded good to Pete too, because he looked at his watch the way bank robbers coordinate time before they make a big heist.

I parked and nipped around the lot to the front entrance where streams of somber-looking people were leaving and arriving. Inside the lobby, I realized I hadn’t asked Hal or Pete for Jeffrey’s room number. Feeling as if somebody at the other end of a surveillance camera was probably watching me and calling security, I stopped at a welcome desk.

A grandmotherly volunteer checked Jeffrey’s name on her computer. “He’s in the Neurology Center on the fifth floor. Room five-sixteen.”

I followed arrows to a hall to the Neurology Center, then joined a gaggle of people waiting for an elevator. My palms were sweaty. As the elevator descended, red numbers above the door told us what floor it was on—now seven , now six , now five —moving, moving, moving. We stared up at the numbers as if our lives depended on knowing when it would get to one . When the number two flashed, we all tensed like cattle about to stampede.

Inside the elevator, I tried not to think about why the other people were there. Children shouldn’t get sick. Childhood should be a golden time of laughter and play, it should not include pain and weakness.

At the fifth floor, I left the elevator and walked briskly down a long hall toward a nurse’s station. The sound of crying babies and toddlers floated on the air, and several nurses wearing bunny-printed smocks hurried past me, their rubber-soled shoes not making a sound. From one of the rooms, a woman in a dark leather recliner lifted a hand to wave at me as I passed. A hospital crib was hidden behind a drawn curtain, and I got the feeling the woman had been keeping lonely vigil for a long time.

More bunny-printed smocks were at the nurse’s station, every person serious and intent. It looked as if five or six corridors met at the station, and from their vantage point, they could see down every one to the elevator at the end. More than likely, some of their computer monitors showed every person who got off those elevators. They were people who saved kids’ lives, good people who shouldn’t be tricked.