After a work night at the hospital, I take my shower and then I go home to sleep. If I can. Today, I finish my shift last. The lockers are empty but someone is still in the shower. Didn't I see the other girls leaving the building? I'm too tired, maybe it was yesterday. What a night! Eight hours on the same patient... and for what?
“Are you gonna be long?”
“I'm almost done. Is that you Sylvie?”
“Who else could I be?”
And who else speaks with that mixed foreign accent but Chantal? She's been training with me since she arrived in ER, two months ago. I don't know much about her. Everyone in the service wonders about her. During the rare breaks she spends with us, she never talks about herself, she always skirts our questions. But somehow it feels like she's been with us forever.
I'm so zonked, I can barely take off my scrub dress.
Come to think of it, Chantal also kept running and working all night. For a nurse trainee, she's got a lot of stamina or... Nah. I don't think she'd take drugs to keep up with us, she's just different. Usually, nurse trainees are rather shocked by the daring jokes from the staff. Chantal wasn’t put off; she easily played opposite us. Well, that’s one thing, but she quickly made us appreciate her working qualities and her love for the patients. Such an open heart! even said the head nurse. Such a heart to win! retorted the intern. To whom someone sassed, But that’s gonna be tough.
For sure her boyish look and standoffish demeanor don't help but, anyway, everyone seems to like her.
Her rating went up an additional notch, I remember, the day the paramedics brought in accident victims, South-American tourists; she translated in English and Spanish. I don’t know much about languages but I could tell the patients were speaking to her as to one of their own kind. Where did she learn these languages? What kind of girl is she?
I can't stay put very long, I throw my work clothes in the laundry bin and wait, picking at my hangnails, in the narrow hallway to the shower.
“You done or what?”
“Yes, yes!”
Towel on her shoulder, she comes out streaming, nearly indecent in her juvenile-looking slenderness, “I had a tough night too, you know?”
Of course I know: we worked together. I try to smile but I feel suffocated in the cramped space, I want to retreat, all I can do is lower my eyes, “Sorry, I’m uptight.”
“No offense taken.” She sidesteps to let me pass in the corridor, her hands on the wall above my head, her green pupils an inch away burn with curiosity, they paralyze me. “I guess, had our patient survived, we wouldn't be so tensed.”
“Does life ever give anyone a second chance?”
“Of course, if one can see it and grab it.”
“You mean that?”
“I know that.”
“I don't believe in luck, nor in chance. This guy didn't die because he wasn't lucky enough to make it, he died because he drank himself to death. What's luck or chance got to do with it?”
“I don't know.”
The few meters to the shower feel interminable.
Burning water, sedative hissing, dense vapor, cocoon of steam, smell of surgical soap, crude early morning light on the white tiles of the shower, slow breathing, I need to empty the tension, the tragedy of the alcoholic admitted during the night with a perforated ulcer, the hemorrhage welling up in the mouth and the nostrils… beep, beep, eight hours non-stop to hope, to worry, to persevere… beep, beep, beep, emergency intubation… beep, beep, swearing mentally first, then cussing out loud when he went into coma… beep, beep, beep, balloon probe fitted in the stomach… beep, beep, beep, beep, stoical nervousness… beep, beep, beep, pockets of blood pushed under pressure at the arms and legs… beep, beep, apprehension… beep, lassitude… beep, beep, erratic pulse on the scope… beep, beep, heightened senses… beep, unyielding at the inevitable… beep, beep, jolts of the patient, still conscious… beep, he recognized us… beep, beep, we’ve seen him a month ago, same diagnostic, beep, damn, we got him out safely then! Beep. Not this morning, he died in our hands at 5:53, the beep turned into a strident insistent incessant vexatious whistling as if to tell us You failed, I win… Cardiac massage, the intern was unrelenting, we all stared at him, he froze, somebody shut the scope sound off, leaving the luminous green deadly flat furrow on the screen signify the clumsy end of another life. I was so weary I almost cried.“Are you gonna be long?”
Chantal's still here?
Oh boy, this after-work languor is getting to me. I better snap out of it and finish my shower.
Strange… in spite of the fatigue and the stress, I love being a nurse. A vocation that demands devotion and love! stressed our biology teacher at the nursing school, which made some of the students giggle every time, especially Charlotte… so down to earth, she wasn’t thinking of the same type of love. But true also, there is a different state of mind among medical personnel, not unhealthy, simply more open. Have I changed! When we work all day or all night on sick and injured patients, their bodies take on a less glamorous or significant dimension, they're only flesh around bones and we have to make their pieces work again, period. I never thought I’d become so hardened, less prudish and even more philosophical about the human body.
I only wish I had a slender one, not as willowy as Charlotte’s though, more so like Chantal’s.
“You done or what?”
Darn, I asked for it, didn’t I?
She’s brushing her long blond pony tail, nonchalant, with one foot up on the center bench of the lockers, no make-up as usual, staring at me with an amused piercing look.
I shiver in the draft from the ventilation window; quick, my T-shirt, pullover, socks, jeans, and boots.
“Hey,” she titters with her slight accent.
“What?”
“You forgot your panties. Don’t you wear any?”
We leave the building laughing. It’s six thirty, the sky is clear, we blink at the sun already up above the roofs. I stretch, suck in my belly, filling my chest with the fresh morning air.
“Is that your stagecoach?” Chantal points her finger at the only visible car in the parking lot, “I thought you took the bus like everyone.”
My old Citroen, a sand colored 2CV, a bit rusty here and there but practical and economic. I don’t need much. I settle at the wheel with a sigh, suspensions and seat growl. I’m finally becalmed but I don’t feel sleepy anymore.
As if she had read my mind, she retorts, “Wanna do something? I’m not sleepy either. Must be the stress.”
“Or because I’m not wearing underwear?”
Oops! I didn’t mean it that way.
She glances towards the building, blushing, “I don’t care about that.” There is fire in the green of her eyes, and nervousness in her gesture to keep her pony tail from flying all over her face in the wind, “I don’t feel like being alone after what happened. I need somebody, a presence. You know what I mean.”
She is so direct, almost like a guy trying to turn on the charm.
No, this is silly, my imagination is playing tricks on me. I’m just like her, all on edge after work and, to top it off, Etienne is not in town to pamper me. Sure, I know what she means and yet my heart pounds louder when she leans down, her long fingers on the edge of the car door, artist’s hands made to create a space of gentleness.
“Shall we go, then?”
“Where to?” I answer a bit too briskly.
With her inimitable accent, she tries to explain that she lives in a very tiny apartment, “And so, it’d be better if we went to your place. I think.” In the face of my silence, she becomes feverish, “I… I have no one. Do you understand?” She swallows her saliva, waiting with round eyes, her fingers turning white on the door frame.
“All right, I’ll make coffee if you want me to.”
She smiles, “OK, then. Wait for me, wait here,” and walks away, almost dancing.
I shouldn’t stare at her skinny gawky body, even if it reminds me of Charlotte’s. But Chantal doesn’t swing her hips, she seems gauche and at the same time so mannish, or butch, as would affront Etienne. I wonder why she studies to be a nurse at her age. True, I haven’t mentioned it, what’s the point? The point is… the point is that I’m still staring after she turned the corner of the building, the point is that my body is tired and my brain in slow motion. Why did I let her invite herself to my place? I live with enough sequels of suffering and forgotten faces, but for one forever engraved in my memory. I cry so much, sometimes I want to die and people think I’m bizarre. Or they say I'm strange because now and then I let myself go a bit too far at the will of my imagination. Charlotte, Etienne, and now Chantal... I’ve got plenty to titillate my imagination with only these names.
Cigarette. Lighter. Acrid odor. Dream in the smoke, the night repeats itself on the screen of the windshield. Like a film editor, I cut the scenes, I arrange a ballet of blue and green bodies, in the foreground the double exposure of the intubation, the pose of the catheters, I add a background scenery with pine trees, I mix the whole thing with my favorite Prokofiev’s piece, The Love of Three Oranges. The whole thing has this cadence, this animation like an old Méliès’s movie in black and white. No, buff-color and white – it’s more intimate, warmer.
The music explodes in the honk of a horn. A yellow beat up Postal Service Renault arrives. Chantal waits at the wheel, window to window, “Obviously, I didn’t take the bus either. I'll follow you.” Her enthusiastic smile disorients me, “And don’t try to lose me, I’m good.”
Ignition, nasal noise of the starter, vibrations of the shell, creak of the centrifugal gear box, rattle of the suspensions, first gear, full speed ahead, direction due north, pick up some croissants and have a lie-in. That’s what I have to do, that's what I want to do. Maybe Chantal is right: after a shitty night like that I’m not in the mood to be alone. Etienne has disappeared God knows where these last few weeks. Does he imagine I’m going to wait for him? Yes, of course. I’m too much a fool to do otherwise.
Back to reality on the boulevards, Chantal’s car is right on my ass. Let’s leave the sleepy town quickly, go through the nauseating tunnel, up the long hill, then the unattractive highway to the small winding country road to the meandering streets to the bakery on the square.
The fragrant smell of croissants scents the car. I have such a weakness for them, I cannot stop myself from nibbling, tearing one end, gnawing, savoring the unctuous sweet piece and turning a deaf ear to that little inner Voice that teases me too often.
― You know you shouldn’t…
Yes, I know. Etienne also gives me a hard time about my silhouette, and silliness clutters my thoughts when I eat, but inexplicably Chantal has entered my mind like an intruder accepted in advance. Perhaps she’s some sort of a sister, hiding like me the mark of something or somebody deep down, there, at the very bottom under the moss of forgetting. What if I were right?
Here we are, in front of my place. It's almost seven o’clock. Now what? In the rear-view mirror, I see her locking her car. Is she staring at me? She approaches rapidly. She opens my door. She moves aside and bows, “If Madame wishes…” Her faded jeans and tight T-shirt accentuate her casual masculine appearance, her thinness I envy because of my feminine curves, because of the nagging Voice.
― Is it because you’re fat that this Etienne of yours fools around?
I exit my car and, again, I lower my eyes in front of her. She laughs, “You’ve got crumbs all over!” Dumbstruck, I let her touch me. Her fingers are icy on my chin, light on my chest. I smile to give an impression of composure, but the Voice pursues me.
― So, what are you going to do with that tomboy?
The building is silent, the entry cold, dark and quiet, there is no sound from upstairs, no baby’s cry, no Arabic voice exclaiming, not even a door slamming, as if the outside world faded away behind the gates of my tenement. Tension in the air, fleeting sensation of promiscuity, sudden freedom at this transient isolation. Etienne had taken advantage of me in this very same empty hallway on a day like today.
Chantal nudges me, “Hey! Want to go up now?”
Chantal’s eyes… She suspects my agitation. Etienne had said the same thing, while tucking himself in.
Chantal incites me, “Which floor do you live on?”
Chantal’s voice… She takes the stairs four at a time, as Etienne did after asking the very same question.
Chantal calls me, “Are you coming?”
Chantal’s body… She waits on the first landing. My belly still tightens at what Etienne did to me upstairs.
― Wake up, airhead!
( to be continued )
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