Chapter 21
I spend the next hour with Mary,
I learn more about her life. She worked as a secretary for thirty years for a man named Mr. Timmerman.
Mr. Timmerman liked a cup of coffee every morning at ninety-thirty sharp, and he liked one spoonful of sugar and one spoonful of cream in his coffee, and to stir it once, but no more than that.
Actually, I learned quite a bit about Mr. Timmerman’s coffee.
“Well,” Mary finally says, her voice raspy, “I’ve talked your ear off, haven’t I?”
“I like listening.”
“You’re a very good listener,” she tells me. “It’s a fine quality. You’re going to make an excellent doctor, Amy.”
My face flushes. “Thank you.”
“Also,” she adds, “will you please tell Dr. Beck that I never would have hurt that little girl? I was just taking her off the swing so the squeaking would stop. You know how annoying those swings can be, right?”
“Absolutely. I always hated swings.”
She looks relieved. “Thank you, Amy. I just want to go home. Tell Dr. Beck that I’m okay to go home, will you?”
“I will,” I promise. As if the attending would listen to me.
She closes her eyes for a moment, and she suddenly looks so old. She could be a hundred. “I’m truly afraid I might not make it through the night.”
“Why do you feel that way?”
Mary opens her mouth as if to answer, but then she changes her mind and shakes her head. “I’m too tired to talk anymore. You should go.”
She does look tired, and it’s getting late. I can talk to her more in the morning. “Okay, if that’s what you want.”
As I stand up to leave the room, Mary reaches out to grab my arm with her spindly fingers. “Hold onto that knitting needle I gave you, Amy. You’re going to need it.”
This night seriously better not end with me needing to stab somebody with a knitting needle.
When I get out of Mary’s room, I almost run smack into Clint Eastwood. He is shuffling down the hallway, still holding that paper bag filled with saltines with one hand and hiking up his pajama pants with the other. He has some white spittle in the corner of his mouth.
“Nobody took my crackers!” he cries accusingly. “I still have them!”
“I’m so sorry,” I say.
“I have diabetes,” he reminds me. “These crackers could kill me. Why would they give these to me?”
“I have no idea. But… I’d be happy to take them for you.”
Clint grumbles something under his breath. He looks like he’s about to give me the bag of saltines when he gets distracted by room 912. He scratches at the gray hairs jutting out of his chin.
“Hang on,” he says.
Clint shuffles into Mary’s room. I don’t know if he’s supposed to be in there, but he seems harmless enough, and Mary doesn’t seem upset about it. When she sees him, she looks up and smiles.
He reaches into the bag and pulls out a package of saltines. “This is for you, pretty lady.”
Mary accepts the package of saltines. “Well, aren’t you sweet!”
Clint winks at her, and the two of them grin at each other. It’s so darn cute, I almost can’t stand it. I let them have a little bit of privacy.
I don’t even realize how late it is until I notice a lot of the lights are out in the patients’ rooms. Many of the doors are closed, and it looks like everybody has gone to sleep.
I suspect Cameron is sound asleep on the couch in the staff lounge.
Maybe I can kick him out, although I’m truthfully not that tired.
Instead, I return to the nurses’ station. Even though it’s not required, maybe I’ll write up a note on Mary Cummings. At least in the morning, I’ll have something to give Dr. Beck when Cameron hands in his own novel-length masterpiece on Spider-Dan.
Ramona is sitting at the nurses’ station flipping through that same magazine. This time she’s looking at a page with tips on how to spice up your love life. She looks up and smiles when she sees me. “You look tired,” she comments.
I am tired, but at the same time, I know I won’t be able to sleep. “It’s weird doing a night shift.”
“Oh, that’s right.” She snickers. “You’re at the very beginning of your third year. You haven’t gotten used to the schedule yet.”
“Not yet.” And unfortunately, it’s only going to get harder. Psychiatry is the easiest rotation of the year. I’m dreading surgery—I don’t have Cameron’s stamina. “I’ll be okay, though.”
“Don’t worry,” she says. “It’s usually quiet here at night. Unless Mary Cummings starts acting up.”
I think of Mary and her knitting needles. Instinctively, I reach for the outline of the needle in my pants pocket. It just barely fits inside.
“Have you been doing the night shift for a long time?” I ask her.
“Oh, forever.” She grins. “It’s nice to have your days free for appointments and all that. And I don’t have a significant other to bug me that I’m always sleeping when he’s awake.”
“Do the patients cause much trouble here?”
She doesn’t need to think about it before shaking her head. “For the most part, they’re very easy. Every once in a while, we get a troublemaker.”
“Like Damon Sawyer?”
Her eyes darken slightly. “Yes, like him.” At those words, she sneaks a look down the hallway, in the direction of the seclusion room.
The first room is still shut tight. “But that’s an exception.
Generally, I just pass out the meds and that’s about it.
” She holds up her magazine. “Then I get to read all night.”
I glance up at the rack of charts. “Well, I don’t want to bother you. I just wanted to do a quick write-up on my patients that I saw tonight.”
“No bother.” Ramona gets out of her seat and pulls a chart out of the rack, then places it down in front of me. “You’ll be keeping me company.”
“Thanks,” I say.
I sit down on one of the rolly chairs and pull the chart closer to me. That’s when I realize she didn’t pull Mary’s chart from the rack. She saw me in Jade’s room, so that’s the chart she pulled for me. Jade’s chart is sitting right in front of me.
It’s not a thick chart, which I wouldn’t expect.
I don’t think she’s been here very long.
And most of her notes are probably on the computer, which I can’t access right now thanks to the maintenance being done tonight.
But at the very least, her emergency room note will be in the chart.
It will have her past psychiatric history and her reason for admission.
It would be so easy to look.
I place my hand on the cover of the chart. I grab the plastic cover, wondering if I should go ahead and open it. If roles were reversed, Jade would definitely look at my chart. And she wouldn’t feel the slightest bit guilty about it.
I’ll just take a quick peek. That’s all.
I flip the cover open, but before I can even read the first sentence, the lights overhead flicker and go out.
“What the hell?” Ramona says.
The power must have gone out. It’s pitch dark in here—I can’t see so much as my hand in front of my face. Ramona is swearing under her breath, and I hear a chair topple to the floor. She can’t see much either, obviously.
Oh my God. If the power went out, does that mean the locks on the doors stopped functioning?
Including the seclusion room?
“Ramona?” I call out.
“I’m here.” I turn my head in the direction of her voice, but I can’t see a thing. “Don’t worry. I don’t know why the power went out, but there’s a generator. We should be okay.”
“Ramona,” I say urgently, “if the lights are out, does that mean the locks on the doors don’t work anymore?”
She’s quiet for long enough that I’m starting to worry she’s not there anymore. “I don’t know,” she finally says.
Oh no.
But before I can panic too much, the lights flicker back on.
I let out a sigh of relief that I’m not going to have to spend the rest of the night in pitch blackness.
But before I have a chance to celebrate the return of the lights, a man stumbles in the direction of the nurses’ station.
It’s Miguel, except he’s not wearing four shirts anymore.
In fact, he’s not wearing any clothing at all.
And he’s covered in blood.