Lenore & Me (Part One)

“A Hospital is no place to be sick. ” ~ Samuel Goldwyn

“Nooo!” I croaked through my dusty throat, which made the old woman pause in mid-jump, her wrinkled white thighs suspended over the gunmetal steel of the hospital bed railing, as she turned her head in my direction. “I’mma gonna figure out how to get outta this bed, and when I do… God help you!” She threatened this in a thick Italian accent as a small bluish light over her bed illuminated her creased face. As I stared at her, my right hand scrambled to find the nurse call button before she could really injure herself. I cleared my throat, wincing with the scraping pain of it, before saying to her,“Don’t jump out of bed, I’ll get the nurse to help you, just relax…” This seemed to work, she let her hips and legs slide backwards over the railing, onto the mattress as she loosened her grip on the metal pole. Finally, her face slid out of the little blue track light as she clumsily settled her body back into bed. She was mumbling something that I couldn’t hear because the nurse was finally responding to me through a tiny speaker over my right shoulder. A bored voice asked, “Can I help you, Ms. Hewitt…?” The question squawked through the little speaker two more times, but I couldn’t answer through my scratched up throat. Finally, one of the nurses decided to get out of her chair and walk the twenty feet into our room from the nurse’s station to find out what the emergency for themselves.

The nurse was a pretty, petite, young, black woman with a perfect toothy smile, wearing a trapezoid shaped cap which was pinned neatly to her short dark hair. As she walked over to me, she passed my roommate whom by now was perfectly calm and asked the nurse if she would kindly get her doctor for her. The nurse acknowledged her by nodding her head in her direction as she pulled the curtain closed between our beds and turned her attention toward me. “Hi Dawn, my name is Shawn, and our names rhyme, in case you didn’t notice…” She giggled at her own corny joke as she fluffed my pillows and peeked under my gown at the sutures on my belly, not realizing that I was trying to talk, unsuccessfully. “Your incision looks good, girl, nice and flat…, you’ll be back in your bikini in no time!” She was smiling and shaking her head. “I had the same surgery for a pedunculated fibroid, but my stomach went all flabby afterwards…, so I’m jealous girl!” She was holding my right hand in one of hers and patting the back of it with her other. “Now, you are going to have to go back to sleep young lady, or else you’re not going to recuperate properly… Can I get you anything, are you in pain?” I was, but it seemed more important for me to get her to help my nameless roommate. I moved my mouth, which made her lean in closer and closer, until she could hear my hoarse whisper. “That lady… she thinks I work here and she tried to jump out of her bed…” The effort of talking made my throat, neck and shoulders hurt as if I had done some rigorous exercise and the stitches in my belly felt as if  they had torn through my skin, my body convulsed as a layer of greasy perspiration popped out on the skin of my forehead. Nurse Shawn pivoted on her heel as she whipped the curtain back to face my roommate, “Are you bothering this nice lady? She’s very sick and needs her rest! I don’t want to hear about you bothering her again. Are we clear?” Turning around, she whipped the curtain closed again, winked at me and turned the lights off on her way out.  The closing door made a soft clicking sound. Immediately, the old lady resumed her shouting. “She’s sick? What about me? She works here and I’m just an old lady with a broken leg!” I closed my eyes and tried to block out the noise and confusion from the other side of the curtain, mostly because the pain from my belly and throat made me wish I could just pass out until the pain disappeared. “Son of a bitch! You had to rat me out to the nurse cause you sooo lazy to work? Imma gonna freak out if you don’t get up and turn on the lights! Did you hear me?! I’M CLAUSTROPHOBIC!”

My heart raced erratically, but I kept my eyes closed, faking sleep. Tears slipped from the corners of my eyes, across my cheeks, down my neck and collected in the hollow of my collarbones before rolling down the slope of my shoulders and wetting my pillow. I had never been so exhausted, in so much pain and so alone. The metal rings of the curtain scraped violently against the metal rod they were suspended from, at which I opened my eyes in the darkness and saw my crazy old roommate again. She had propped herself up on her elbow and jerked the curtain backward with her free hand while she screamed, “How dare you! You know I’m claustrophobic!” “I’m calling the nurse again!” I screamed hoarsely back at her, “I don’t work here lady! Leave me alone!”

“Oh, so now you don’t work here, right…? That’s a new one!” She laughed bitterly at her own attempt at sarcasm, her white wrinkled face glowing garishly in the darkness. I repeatedly pressed the button for the nurse but didn’t hear any response. The old lady’s nasty laugh was ringing in my ear and that’s when I knew, it was on between her and I. Whatever sympathy I had felt for her was gone, I wanted to get away from her or get her out of my room as fast as possible, by any means necessary! My anesthesia was wearing off and pain was now tearing through me like hundreds of daggers, but I made a decision to get myself out of bed and walk to the nurses station to tell them about the old woman and to make arrangements to change rooms.

Slowly I rolled my body until I was lying on my right side, then I swung my legs off the right side of the bed and when my feet were on the ground I used my right arm to prop my upper body off the pillows. Next, I grabbed my I.V. pole and using it as a cane, I pulled my body up until I was standing. The salty sweat pouring from my scalp blinded me momentarily, I waited for a moment until my breath evened and my heart stopped skipping beats before I dragged myself out of the room the few feet to the nurses station. As I passed the old lady’s bed, she tried to sit up as she yelled, “Get over here and help me, you lazy son of a bitch! Turn on the lights, you know I’m claustrophobic!” I was barely standing, I didn’t have time to search for a light switch in the darkness, I glared at her as I kept moving past, taking pleasure in being spiteful.

“What are you doing out of bed, Ms. Hewitt?” The nurses looked horrified that I was standing in front of them. “My nurse call button is broken!” I almost choked on the word as I tried to catch my breath, mopping my sweaty face with a tissue. Nurse Shawn dashed around the desk and put her arm around my waist, holding me up as she guided me back to my room. “I thought you had gone back to sleep… what happened? “It’s that woman!” I answered. “She keeps trying to get out of her bed and threatening that she’s going to hurt me if I don’t help her… I can’t take it, every time I close my eyes she starts!” By this time we were passing the old witch’s bed and she stared at us with her mouth open. Nurse Shawn pointed at her, yelling, “I’ll deal with you in a second!” As she guided me back to my bed, sat me down while pulling the curtain closed and then lifted my legs onto the mattress and adjusted my pillows under my head and neck as I slid forward until I was laying down again. “I’ll be right back, you try to relax, ok? She patted the back of my hand again before pulling the curtain back and taking a step to the other bedside. “Now, did I not just ask you to leave Ms. Hewitt alone? Why are you bothering her? She’s a patient here, she just had surgery and she needs her rest! Leave her alone, do you understand?!” The old lady blinked and gasped like a fish out of water. She sputtered in disbelief, “She just had surgery? What about me, they operated on my hip last night and now they wanna operate on the other one tonight, but I told them I only broke da one hip so I aint gonna pay for another surgery. I’m an old lady, so dey try to scare me, but Imma gonna call my son, so he canna get me outta here! And whadda about my doctor eh? When I’mma gonna see my doctor…? I been here for twenty four hours, gotta da surgery and still I can’t see my doctor…? Why? You people think I’m a stupid old woman, Imma gonna sue all of you! Watch me! “Nurse Shawn shook her head as she picked up the woman’s chart, flipped pages and read. After looking up to the ceiling and drawing a deep breath, Nurse Shawn started talking. “Lenore, is that your name? First of all, you just got here five hours ago, second, you haven’t had any surgery yet, your surgery for your hip isn’t even scheduled until tomorrow afternoon. Finally, your surgeon will be in tomorrow morning to meet you and discuss everything before your operation. So please stay calm, go to sleep and leave this nice lady alone! Hear me?”

Nurse Shawn turned to my side of the room as she drew the curtain again. I whispered to her, “I think that she has some form of dementia…, my mom works with elderly people and I have seen it before, when you turned off the lights earlier, she panicked, I mean full on…” As I talked I held onto my abdomen, each word caused my sutures to pull. Nurse Shawn walked to the foot of my bed, pulled back the covers and looked at my hands gripping my stomach. “Dawn! You’re bleeding! Why didn’t you say anything, didn’t you feel your stitches tearing?” “I’ve been in such pain since that woman woke me up, I can’t differentiate one sensation from another, everything in my ody hurts like hell!” “Ok, ok… fair enough… You probably tore them when you walked to the nurses station. Luckily, your incision is pretty much intact, we’ll clean it up with some betadine, put a fresh bandage on, and as long as you stay in bed, you should be fine.” She walked out of the room and finally silence settled in like a cloud of fog.

I couldn’t believe how quiet it was, I felt myself starting to relax and was vaguely aware of  Shawn and a male nurses aide lifting up my gown, removing the bandage, cleaning me up, putting another bandage in place and injecting more morphine into my I.V. Then they were gone, the lights had been left on this time and the door was cracked open a few inches through which both Lenore and I had a clear view of the nurses station. As I dozed, I looked over my left shoulder through the window and saw a snowstorm layering thick ribbons of snowflakes on the street below in circular gusts. The thick glass blocked out the sound of the storm, which made it look as if the street were being softly coated with cotton candy. Feeling as if I could finally drift off to a nice, fluffy sleep, the last thing I remembered was trying to pull up the extra blanket folded over my feet, before I finally drifted off to sleep.