31
The drive to the hospital Tuesday morning was tense. Which would have been true even if Ruth had picked up milk. But she hadn’t and instead used the last of what remained in her coffee, and I’d had to take mine black, which did nothing to improve my mood.
“Passover began last night,” Ruth said mildly as we drove toward the hospital.
I cringed guiltily, the memory of Harry’s rich baritone leading the story of our exodus from Egypt flooding my head.
We hadn’t held a seder since Harry died.
The first year, we were only a couple of months past his death, and I think we forgot about Passover entirely.
Last year, Janet invited us to join hers—one of the major tenets of Passover involved inviting in anyone who needed a place to be.
But I worried it would just be too sad without Harry, and my mother surprised me by agreeing.
So we swapped bread for matzo and called it good enough.
While I was sure Janet would let us come this year if I asked her, it was too much on such short notice, and I didn’t read Hebrew so I couldn’t lead a seder of our own.
“I’ll buy some matzo when I go get more milk,” I said pointedly. I expected her to argue to uphold the tradition—her father had been a rabbi after all.
“Get some gefilte fish and horseradish too,” she said. “We can tell the kids the gist of the story in English.”
If I wasn’t still so angry about Dr. Howe, I would have loved that idea and the simplicity of maintaining the custom without making it sad as we missed Harry. But a good idea coming from Ruth right now was enough to sour the whole concept. We rode the rest of the way in silence.
I pulled into a parking space, took a deep breath, and turned to look at her. “No more funny business—especially at my place of work.”
Her hands were clasped over her handbag. “No,” she said, a hint of contrition in her voice. “Nurse Ramirez dressed me down about him already.”
Thank goodness for Gloria, I thought. I needed to thank her.
“He’s a wonderful doctor,” I said. “But truly one of the worst people I’ve met in my life.”
“He couldn’t have been kinder to me.” I lowered my sunglasses to give her a look. “How was I to know?”
To be fair, we didn’t assign young candy stripers to any rooms he would be in without supervision.
We didn’t discuss his indiscretions in front of patients or volunteers.
And while I complained to Dr. Harper weekly about Dr. Howe’s behavior, the nursing staff was careful about our reputation as a whole.
He had never been inappropriate with a patient to any of our knowledge, and with the hospital unwilling to sanction him, it was his word against ours.
I sighed. “I suppose you weren’t.”
“Were men always such cads?” she asked.
She had met Abe at eighteen and was married by nineteen. And while yes, she spoke frequently of “the men” who had chased them from their home in Russia, I doubted she had ever been on a bad date prior to Mr. Moskowitz.
“Not all of them,” I said lightly. “We both found ones who weren’t.”
“Were they the only two?”
If her choices for me were any evidence, that was a distinct possibility. “They may have just been the ones we were allotted,” I said, my anger dissipating. “But, Ruth, if you pull something like that again, you’d better at least go replace the milk that spoiled.”
“You really should have put that in the refrigerator before you came to the hospital.”
“Yes, well, I figured the wasting of food would do you in if whatever put you in the hospital didn’t,” I grumbled. But there was no malice left in my tone. I supposed I was getting used to her shenanigans by now.
I still wrapped Gloria in a hug as soon as I saw her.
“Want her on bedpan duty today?” she asked.
“No,” I said with a chuckle. “I think she got the message loud and clear.”
“She might wind up on bedpan duty anyway,” Gloria said. “Dr. Howe called out, and now we’re short staffed.”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, he did suffer a tremendous bruise to his ego yesterday. I’m sure he’ll need to nurse that for the rest of the week. Then make my life miserable when he comes back.”
“I wish we weren’t considered expendable,” Gloria said, shaking her head. “I’d love to see them try to run this hospital without us. But if we make him miserable, we’re out. He’s too important.”
“Or at least he thinks he is.” I patted her arm. “Don’t you worry. I won’t let him take it out on anyone else.”
“I don’t want him taking it out on you though.”
I smiled at her. “I’m living with Ruth. I’m sure I’ve been through worse.”
Someone called for Gloria, and she looked over her shoulder. “Duty calls,” she said, shaking her head. “Gonna be a busy one.”
“Like a full moon on the Fourth of July,” I agreed. “Let me know if you need help—I can call some more candy stripers in.”
“This is why you’re the best,” Gloria said as she hurried off.
Busy or not, I’d take a reprieve from having to face Dr. Howe after Ruth’s stunt.
Hopefully his ego was badly bruised enough that he wanted nothing to do with me, but a year of working with him didn’t leave me hopeful on that front.
I was paged over the hospital intercom and determined to put him out of my head.
There wasn’t room for him in there anyway.