Mark McGinnis - The Simpleton

8 across and 10 down: A nine-letter word for Repeated to perfection . Jackie Hansen brought the eraser end of the pencil to her lips and thought about it. Then wrote in, Practiced . She dropped the crossword puzzle to her lap as a middle-aged nurse, wearing light pink scrubs, entered the room and moved to the other side of the bed. The nurse checked the heart monitor, flicked her middle finger several times against the bottom of the hanging IV, before turning her gaze over toward Jackie and smiling.

“You should go home and get some rest, honey. We’ll call you if there’s any change. He’s stable now… there’s nothing you can do here.”

Jackie nodded. Truth was, she was exhausted. Totally spent. Had driven like a bat out of hell to get back here. Seven hours straight behind the wheel. Hadn’t even locked her dorm room door—only grabbed her backpack which doubled as her purse, and her keys, and ran to her car.

Her eyes leveled on the old man’s face. Propped up with several pillows behind his back, he looked different here. The florescent lights exaggerated the etched lines around his mouth and eyes—lines cultivated from working too many years beneath a relentless overhead sun and smiling a broad, contagious-type grin that was present far more often than not.

According to the doctor, her father had suffered a massive myocardial infarction—a heart attack. More precisely, an ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction—referred to as a STEMI. She knew what that was.

Feelings of guilt and self-loathing washed over her. He’d been living alone on the ranch far too long—her mother gone ten years now—with no other children, siblings, to help out. Three years ago, she left for college, only returning on breaks and holidays. Down at her feet, her eyes momentarily held on the corners of two pre-med-school books peeking out from the top of her backpack. She instantly felt the pull to dive back into her molecular and cellular biology studies. She could ill afford a day away from her coursework, let alone a week or more.

Looking at him, now, he was still a bear of a man, filling the confines of the narrow hospital bed—looking like a gnarly giant lying asleep there. Still unconscious, he shifted in bed. He’d insisted she follow her dream of becoming a doctor, stating, what good is having a full-ride scholarship if you’re not going to use it? There was so much she wanted to tell him. As a pre-med student, she was graduating a year early from the University of Tennessee. Accepted into the prestigious Vanderbilt School of Medicine—on track to be a licensed MD in less than four years and hopefully a practicing neurosurgeon two years after that.

But now, she had to figure out how to balance both her obligations to her dad and school. She was the only family her dad had. He’d be laid up in this small, sixty-bed hospital for a week or two, then be convalescing at home after that. He’d need her help—cooking meals, walking to the toilet— shit, taking care of the damn farm animals. Cows don’t milk themselves , her father used to say. Oh God… Frustrated, she kicked out at her backpack.

“Tomorrow we’ll get him up and walking around a bit,” the nurse said, ignoring Jackie’s obvious mini tantrum.

“Um… you can do that, with all the damage done to his heart?” Jackie asked. She quickly glanced at her smartphone and saw two more missed calls had come in. Glancing at the caller I.D. she saw that it was Brian, again. She didn’t have the mental bandwidth to deal with him right now.

“Well, spending weeks lying around in a hospital bed isn’t going to help him recover faster either. Nope… we get our patients up and moving about as quickly as possible.”

Jackie nodded and stood, placing a hand on her father’s foot. Feeling warmth beneath the blanket, she said, “I’ll be back in the morning first thing. You have my cell number…”

They both looked up as the ceiling lights suddenly flickered then went out. As if on cue, heart monitors, including her father’s, began to chime loudly. In the distance, Jackie could hear auto alarms going off, one by one. Then, just as quickly, everything returned to normal—electric lights came back on, heart monitors normalized, and car alarms went silent.

“Been happening like that since last night… more and more often, too. Heard one of the maintenance guys talking about it. Says it’s some electrical issue, external to the hospital. Saw it on the news. Cosmic interference—something like that. He mentioned something about solar flares, you know… from space, the sun. It’s downright disconcerting, is what it is,” she added, looking flustered.

Jackie remembered her own car radio acting up on the drive up from Knoxville.

The nurse motioned she should leave, and said, “If there’s any change… we’ll call. Go on home now, hon… get some rest.”

Jackie headed for the hospital’s front lobby exit, suddenly conscious she was wearing black, form-fitting gym pants and a purple Lycra sports top. A top revealing more than what was probably appropriate for these conservative southern surroundings. She repositioned her large handbag over her partially exposed cleavage. It hadn’t been intentional garb. Hell, she was on her way to the gym—to work out—when she’d gotten the call from the on-duty nurse at Stone River Hospital.

She felt multiple eyes tracking her progress. A man, covered head to toe in mud—his arm held high up at an awkward angle—smiled a toothless grin in her direction. Dislocated shoulder , she thought. Five will get you ten… the idiot was thrown from his ATV.

“Jackie!”

She turned to see another Tennessee hayseed in the hospital lobby, waving enthusiastically at her, and figured it was someone she’d probably known in high school. She had zero interest in reconnecting with anyone from Woodbury. Flanked by an older, gray-haired woman, there was something about the young man’s manner—his smile. His shirt was neatly buttoned to the collar, his face a mess. The guy had obviously been beaten within an inch of his life. Wait… Could it be? “Cuddy? Is that you?”

He awkwardly ran ahead of his mother, his arms outstretched. Jackie mirrored his smile, prepared for what was about to come. Taking her in his arms, he raised her high off the floor then swung her around. Giving a sudden grunt, he quickly set her down, wincing at the pain he’d caused himself.

“Cuddy… is that really you?” she asked with genuine excitement.

He nodded sheepishly. “I saw you. I knew it was you. I said to myself… that’s my best friend in the whole world. That’s Jackie!”

Joining them, Mrs. Perkins looked pleased to see her, too. She gave Jackie a hug, then pushed her an arm’s length away and held her there. “What are you doing back here? Why aren’t you at school, dear?”

Jackie let out a sigh. Looking back down the hallway that led to the room her father was in, she explained, “Dad… had a heart attack. I drove back here right from school.”

“I’m so sorry. How is he doing? Is he going to be okay?” she asked.

“I think so. I hope so.” Jackie’s eyes became moist and she found it hard to swallow. She looked at Cuddy, who was still beaming at her. He’d gotten so big. Normally, she knew, he’d be handsome, except for that ridiculous, bowl-type haircut and those far too short high-water pants. Jackie wondered if it was no accident he looked like he did. That Mrs. Perkins helped dress him this way, sending a message to anyone who came in close proximity: Back off, people—this boy is severely mentally challenged. Don’t mess with him.