Virginia Reeves - Work Like Any Other

“Is it raining?” I ask.

She turns to the man. “It may be time for a rest, Chaplain.”

“Yes.”

“Can’t you hear it?”

“Mr. Martin,” the nurse coos. “Open your eyes — it’s a beautiful day.”

She whispers something to the man who’s now standing by my bed, but I cannot hear it. The man is wearing black. His face is familiar.

“Have we met?” I ask him, and I don’t know why his face looks so desperate and caught. “I’m hot, and sick of lying on my back. Will you roll me over?”

But the man is gone and in his place is Nurse Hannah, this woman tells me, the prettiest little bird in her fluted hat. I have forgotten how lovely women are. Look at her: almond eyes and a tiny nose, and lips that would never peck or bite. They squeeze together, those lips, and then they say, “You can’t roll over, Mr. Martin. Not onto your stomach. But we can arrange you on your left side, if you’d like.”

“Yes,” I croak, and I let my body fall into her hands — there at my knees, and again at my hips, and again at my ribs and back, and finally, here at my face. Her hands cradle it, one tiny palm against each of my rough cheeks, and I am sure that she will kiss me. I have never lived on Marie’s father’s land, or in his home vacated by his death. I never ran power lines that stretch across this state and out into the country and all the way to the sea. I have only ever been here, in this white bed, with this small bird’s hands on my horrible face.

“Are you comfortable, Mr. Martin?” she asks.

“Does God not live high in the heavens?” Chaplain responds. Has he returned?

“Mr. Martin?”

“Roscoe?”

“Chaplain?” I whisper back.

“No, Roscoe, it’s me.”

And, again, I open my eyes to a stranger.

“Marie?”

She puts her hands on my right arm, where the nurse left it angling over my chest as though it were broken. “The doctors say you’re mending.”

I cannot focus my eyes on her face.

“You’ll be all right. I spoke to the doctor, and he says you’ll be just fine.” Her hand is heavy on my arm, pushing through the muscle and tendons, deep into the bone.

Her voice is the same, and she’s put something in my hand — one of her fingers to grip? I am an infant curling my fist round the pointer of my mother. The slight effort awakens something rigid in my stomach.

“Right here, dear Roscoe,” and I am happy to be here with her, to hold this small bit of her. Where has she been?

Then Nurse Hannah is back, and I can see Marie there with her clearly, and the nurse is angry, viciously so, and Marie’s finger in my grasp is gone, though her other hand remains on my arm.

My nurse bird squawks, and Marie screeches back. I try to understand, but there’s only noise in the room, a strange chorus of sound, truncated and taut. The voices are clotted things, and they’re all I hear.

Now, Marie is standing. Her hand is leaving the bone of my arm. The muscle and veins close the gap, stitching themselves back together. I reach for her, trying to sit up, but she’s so far away already, down there by the sad iron foot of my bed, and I am stopped by the desperate torment in my stomach. The pain guts me, scoops a voice I don’t know I have from the depths of my lungs, shoots it dark and gruesome into the air, where it strikes Marie full in her nearly familiar face.

Does she tell me she’s sorry? Is that what I hear?

The nurse switches her tone, comforting now. “Oh, Mr. Martin. No, no, no. It’s too early to sit up.” I wait for Marie to say something more, but she is gone. There is only my nurse, this lovely thing. Marie’s words feel as light and shifty as her presence did, her apology hanging there in the sick breath of this hospital wing.

“Everything in time, Mr. Martin,” Nurse Hannah is saying. “Are you all right?”

Put your hands on my face, again. There. Like that. Keep talking. I am Gerald, quite possibly, a boy, under the hands of my mother.

My nurse is a full bird now, shiny jewel white, her fingers a feathery touch on my skin. In her bird voice, she speaks of forces and affinity, attraction and change.

We are in the pasture, standing over our dead grandchildren. The bird says, “They never meant much to me.”

But she must be lying.

“THEwarden’s been asking after you,” Nurse Hannah tells me one morning. I have no idea how long I’ve been in this bed, but I know it’s more comfortable than the cot in my cell. I appreciate the pillow.

“Was my wife here?”

“Shush, now. Don’t make yourself upset. You’re finally getting past that infection. Goodness knows we don’t need another fever.”

I have not yet seen my stomach or leg.

“We’ll have you out of here soon enough.” Hannah’s checking on the solutions that drip slowly into my arm. Her voice reminds me of Marie’s.

“My wife.”

The nurse cuts me off with a curt shake of her head. “You realize how special you are, don’t you, Mr. Martin? What with the warden asking after you himself? He told me you work with Deputy Taylor on the dogs.”

I don’t work the dogs, I want to tell her. That isn’t my job. I collect milk and shelve books. Don’t think of me as one of Taylor’s boys.

“I visit them sometimes, the dogs.” Her thin fingers slide something up the tube that connects to the needle in my arm. “Deputy Taylor scolds me for being out there alone, but he always seems to be there when I come round, so I’m never actually on my own. It’s such a short distance to the village from there.”

This information shifts my attention, and instead of correcting her about my prison employment, I ask, “You live in the village?”

“Oh, I’m talking too much. You rest, and I’ll be back in a bit to change those bandages. The doctor will be round shortly.”

I am in a long room full of beds. Most of them are empty, except for a few men — one with a plastered leg up in a sling, another looking near dead against his pillow, another with a bandage round his forehead. That one whistles as Nurse Hannah walks by.

“Hush,” she says.

“But I’m in pain, Miss Hannah.”

“Don’t be a pest, Mr. Daniels.”

I don’t know how many hours and minutes pass before a tall man arrives with Hannah alongside him.

“Well, well, well. Mr. Martin. Awake for the first time.”

“I was awake before.”

“I’m sure it felt that way. Now, let’s have a look.”

The man’s hands go to my stomach, lifting the loose gown, peeling back the cloth tape. I raise my head to catch a glimpse, but Nurse Hannah sets a hand on my shoulder to hold me down. “It’s not good for you to engage those muscles, yet. You’ll be able to see it in a moment.”

I feel the air on my skin, a cool shock of pain.

“Now, this is more like it,” the doctor says. “Well done, Mr. Martin. We might actually be able to let you go someday.”

“How long have I been here?”

The doctor smiles. “About two weeks, I believe. Isn’t that right, Hannah?”

She flips a few pages on her clipboard. “Yes, Doctor, it’s been fifteen days.”

“Going into week three, then.” He turns to the nurse. “Let’s bring the man’s head up. See how he does with some elevation.”

Nurse Hannah turns a crank on the left side of my bed, and I see my wound for the first time. The stomach I see does not fit with the stomach I know to be my own. A great swollen line is down the center, midrib to pelvis, and I can’t make out the indention of the navel. It is lost in stitches and flesh. The skin seems puckered and weak, both red and yellow, something like decay, like a carcass, sour and putrid. This can’t be the look of healing.