The Tides Read online

  Stopped.

  Confused, swaying, dizzy, Marshall forced himself to push the button again, again setting off both a light and an unpleasant repetitive sound. Someone would come now, and they would know why; he didn't have to try to keep it in his mind any longer. He let himself lie down on the floor.

  'No, Marshall,' Faye said, gently scolding. The call light and bell went off again, and this time the cord was unfastened from the bed and lifted well out of reach, out of consciousness. 'Don't call anybody else. I'm right here. Let me take care of you. I'll take good care of you.'

  In the staff lounge, Abby slid her dinner tray across the sticky table and dropped into a chair. 'God, this is horrible. Doesn't anybody clean up their own mess around here?'

  Nobody answered. Rebecca's embarrassment and guilt were muted only because she was so tired and preoccupied. She was, of course, responsible for everything that happened in this facility, including the indisputable fact that the staff lounge was always a mess. Not getting to her feet until she had to, she started stacking dishes and trash onto her tray.

  'I didn't mean you.' Blushing, Abby got up and moved the trash can closer to the table so she could push litter directly into it. But it was already overflowing, and napkins and pop cans bounced onto the floor.

  'Sit down and eat your dinner,' Rebecca admonished her. 'You only have half an hour. I'll get housekeeping in here after you guys are off break.'

  Abby sighed, sat down, and unwrapped her silverware, which clattered against the plastic tray. 'Look at this. Macaroni and cheese. Bread and butter. Creamed corn. Cake and ice cream. Now that's a real balanced meal. Starch, starch, and more starch.'

  Rebecca frowned defensively, and Florence protested, 'The cake is homemade, though. Roslyn does try.'

  'Alex was upset tonight because of all the starches. I guess he's made kind of a study of nutrition because it's so important when he can't move his body.' Abby paused. 'Alex is real interesting to talk to, you know?'

  Rebecca nodded eagerly. 'A lot of these people are.' She and Abby exchanged a smile, and Rebecca would have liked to say more. She'd have liked to talk about the profound satisfaction she got from working here, the excitement that sometimes bordered on giddiness from coming into contact with all these personalities confined in such a small, rarefied space, the sense she sometimes had that she could pick and choose from them to cobble

  together something for herself. But that seemed silly and melodramatic, not to mention unprofessional, so she contented herself with adding, 'It's an honor to work here, isn't it?' which was risky enough.

  'Yeah, sure,' scoffed Maxine. ' You try wiping ass eight hours a day for minimum wage and see how much of an honor you think it is then.'

  'I know,' Rebecca agreed carefully. 'You guys are the ones we couldn't do without.'

  'You can tell,' Maxine pretended to confide to Abby, 'because we're the best-paid and most respected workers in long-term care.' Abby smiled uncertainly. Rebecca ran a hand across her tired eyes, wondering wearily whether she could talk Dan into an across-the-board raise for the nurses' aides, knowing that would mean a raise for everybody else, too, which would have enormous budgetary impact while leaving the system as a whole essentially unchanged.

  After an awkward pause, the various conversations around the table resumed, and Abby said quietly to Rebecca, 'It must be hard having your dad here.'

  Rebecca thought it ought to be harder than it was, but she didn't say that. 'Sometimes,' she admitted. 'But it's also nice having him nearby.'

  'Your mom is such a sweet lady,' Abby said.

  People often said things like that about Billie Emig, but Rebecca still didn't readily associate such observations with the woman she knew. Kurt said he liked her, although he didn't go out of his way to spend much time in her company; her father made him uncomfortable, and he wouldn't come to the nursing home at all.

  It was not that she disliked her mother; even at the worst of her adolescent rebellion, which actually had bee n rather mild now that she looked back on it, the strongest reaction she'd had against her was irritation. But 'sweet' was not an adjective she'd have used. 'Polite.' maybe. 'Guarded.' She just smiled, which was what her mother would have done under these circumstances.

  'And your dad's so cute. Easy to take care of. He's never mean like some of the others.'

  Trying for neutrality, Rebecca nodded. 'I'm glad to hear that.'

  'It must be hard, though,' Abby said again with an awkward persistence. 'I mean, seeing him like this.'

  'Yes,' Rebecca answered minimally, hoping to end this line of conversation. Abby's clumsy though kind commiserations were forcing her to think again about the peculiar experience of her father's senility as an invitation. Abby seemed about to say something else about him, and to forestall her Rebecca inquired, 'How are your girls? I haven't seen them lately.'

  Abby sighed. 'They've all had the flu. I just hope I don't get it.'

  Abby had just left her husband again. Now she was supporting three little girls on minimum wage. Sometimes she was late for work because she missed the bus or one of the kids was sick or the toilet backed up and flooded the apartment or she had another migraine. Sometimes she missed work altogether. There was no sick leave, so every time she missed work she missed wages, which meant there were more bills she couldn't pay plumber, doctor, daycare and then her migraines and her missed days became more frequent.

  Rebecca liked knowing about the lives of the staff, too. Craved knowing about them; hungered for detail. Their lives all seemed so much more complex than hers, richer.

  When any of them asked about her life , which wasn't often , she had not much to tell them. She lived with Kurt. She was an only child. She had a master's degree in social work and a nursing-home administrator's license. She'd worked in long-term care for several years, but this was her first facility as administrator. They knew her parents; her father had probable early-stage Alzheimer's, and everybody liked her mother.

  She took a forkful of the fluorescent orange macaroni and cheese as Abby sighed again and rubbed her temples. 'Boy, am I tired.'

  'Not much sleep, huh?'

  'No, and we've been so busy today. Everybody's always wanting something.'

  'What you've got to do,' Florence instructed, 'is train them right from the beginning. Otherwise you won't last the shift.'

  'Train them?' Abby's tone echoed Rebecca's own alarm.

  'You do things when you're ready, not when they're ready. Otherwise you'll spend all your time running around answering lights, and you'll never get anything done.'

  'It's your job to answer lights,' Rebecca objected, not as diplomatically as she probably should have. Florence shrugged and fell silent.

  'Alex can't turn on his light.' Something in Abby's tone made Rebecca glance at her. Her long brown hair, parted in the middle and hanging straight, always looked lank and a little sticky; it didn't invite touch, but it did hide most of her face when she bent her head in this characteristic way.

  Maxine snorted. 'Don't waste your time feeling sorry for ol' Alex. He knows exactly what he wants and he gets it.'

  The Director of Nursing appeared in the doorway. 'Rebecca, I need to talk to you.'

  There was anger in the older woman's face and in the way she held herself, and Rebecca heard Maxine say under her breath, 'Uh-oh, you're in trouble.'

  Rebecca laid her fork down with a dull click. 'Sure, Diane. Let's go into my office.'

  'I think the kids should hear this, too.'

  Involuntarily Rebecca glanced at Florence, who was sixty-three and had been at The Tides for nineteen years.

  'Are you aware of what's been going on around here?'

  Trick question, Rebecca thought, and made herself grin. 'I hope so.'

  'Are you aware of what's been going on between Beatrice Quinn and Dexter McCord?'

  'What specifically do you mean? I know they're close friends.' Maxine and Larry hooted.

  'Are you aware that they have been
regularly engaging in sexual activity?'

  'How do you know that?'

  'We see them. My kids see them.'

  'We see them.' Shirley echoed. 'All the time.'

  'Do you mean to say that they're engaging in this — sexual activity — in public areas?'

  'No. In their rooms. You walk in and there they are. It's embarrassing.'

  'I think,' Diane declared, 'something should be done about it. And now is an opportune time, since she is in the hospital. I think we ought not to readmit her.'

  Shirley exclaimed, 'Oh, come on!' and Rebecca, taken aback, stared wordlessly at the nurse.

  'If it were my grandmother in a place where they were supposed to be taking care of her,' Diane went on grimly,

  ' I certainly would not want her taken advantage of like that.'

  'What makes you think Beatrice is being taken advantage of?' Rebecca managed.

  Colleen spoke up indignantly. 'What makes you think it's any of our business? We shouldn't even be talking about it.'

  'Beatrice Quinn is not rational. She's not capable of making decisions in her own best interest. She's not what I would call a consenting adult.'

  'How confused do you have to be,' Rebecca demanded, trying unsuccessfully to keep her voice calm, 'before you don't know what feels good? She can say no. Dexter doesn't strike me as a rapist.' Larry and Maxine guffawed.

  'So you're not going to do anything to stop it.'

  'No. If anything, maybe we need to step up our in services on respecting people's privacy before Beatrice comes back.'

  'Well.' Diane drew herself up to her full height to deliver her final shot. 'How do we even know his hands are clean?' She turned and left the room.

  'That's it!' Maxine was on her feet amid the general laughter, shaking her finger at the group. 'I'm going to get another cup of coffee, and when I get back I don't want to hear another word about work. You hear me? I'm sick of it.' She leaned across the table and pointed into Rebecca's face, smiling to pretend she was kidding but raising her voice to show she was not. 'That includes you, too, boss lady. You hear me? I got more in my life than this place, and if you don't you ought to.'

  When Abby got back to the floor, lights were on all up and down the hall, bells going off in various beeps and dings, all of them purposely annoying so you'd answer them in a hurry. By 6:30 almost everybody wanted to go to bed. Abby sent the aide who had been watching the floor on to supper and stood by the nurses' station for a minute, fighting back the nervousness that was a constant part of this job because there was always too much to do, trying to decide where to start. It was hard to think, and her body felt strange - heavy, crowded. Maybe she was getting sick. She thought she saw movement in the long hall, about halfway between the nurses' station and the exit, outside Marshall's room, a darkening and then lightening of the fluorescent ripples off the waxed floor, as if someone had passed through. But the hallway was empty.

  Abby rubbed her eyes, pressed her knuckles against the buzz of tension in her chest. She was antsy, didn't want to be here. But she couldn't think of anywhere else she wanted to be, either.

  The most natural thing for her to do, the thing that she had to think about least, was to answer Alex's light. She went into his room. 'Yes, Alex, what is it?'

  'You look tired,' he said at once, scanning her face. His eyes were green and restless, eerie in the stillness of the rest of his body.

  'I am tired.' She reached across him to flip the switch that would turn off the light outside his door and silence the dinging. 'We're short tonight. Again.'

  'You work too hard,' he admonished gently.

  'Tell me about it.'

  'I'm sorry to bother you.'

  'That's my job, to be bothered.' A thought occurred to her. 'Who turned on your light for you?'

  'My roommate. Before he left for supper.' He smiled apologetically, his green eyes darting back and forth across her face as if he were playing a video game.

  'Oh, Alex, that was half an hour ago! I'm sorry.' There were tears in his eyes. The nurses had explained that emotional lability was often a side effect of brain damage and you shouldn't take it personally, but Abby was still bothered by his easy tears. 'What do you need?'

  'Well, I wanted to use the urinal.'

  She was one of the few aides he would allow to do this for him, and, because she didn't know why, his confidence made her nervous. She brought the urinal, folded back the sheets and blanket, unzipped his pants, gently positioned his penis. It embarrassed her, but Alex, a quad for thirty years and, she supposed, used to this, stared quietly at the ceiling while his urine clattered into the pan.

  'My wife was in today,' he remarked.

  'I heard.'

  'I just don't understand her, Abby. She's not reasonable.'

  'What did she say?'

  'Oh, she said all kinds of things. She was here for over an hour, shouting the whole time. The kids were running loose in the halls.'

  'We can't have that, Alex.'

  'I know, I know, I told her.'

  'They could knock somebody down, running like that.'

  ''That's what upsets me, Abby. What she's doing to my kids.' His soft voice broke and tears ran down his cheeks. Abby straightened the urinal under him, not knowing what else she could do. 'She's just not a fit mother. She won't even cook for them. She never wants to cook for me when I'm home, either, but I just insist. I can't even go home anymore. She's got the furniture arranged so I can't get my chair through. It's my house. I pay the mortgage payments. She won't get a job.'

  His pee had stopped. Abby took the full urinal into the bathroom and emptied it into the toilet, only then remembering that his output was supposed to be measured so the nurse could record it in the chart. Her spaciness annoyed her. She was annoyed with Alex. She had heard all this before.

  'Now she's accusing me of having illicit affairs.'

  'You're kidding.' Catching herself appraising his body where it lay helpless under her hands, she blushed.

  'Don't act so surprised,' he said with a grin. 'It's not impossible, you know.' She busied herself around him and said nothing, but waited to hear what more he would say about that. 'She's accusing me of having an affair with someone here. Someone who takes care of me.'

  'Well, you're not. Are you?' She laughed self-consciously.

  'Abby, she's talking about you.'

  'Me? Why?'

  'I guess,' he said, his fly still open, his restless eyes still traveling across her face so that she could almost feel the soft little trails they left, 'I happened to mention what a nice girl you are, what good care you take of me.'

  'It's my job. Does she want my job? Obviously not.'

  'She used to be a lot like you. I fell in love with her when she was an aide taking care of me, after my first wife put me in a nursing home. She used to say it wasn't a burden taking care of me, it was a privilege.' He smiled wistfully, his eyes on her face, and her heart went out to him.

  Scrambling to protect herself, Abby commented, more sarcastically than she'd intended, 'You sure have a way with the ladies, don't you?'

  'Who, me? My wife says I'm no thing but a paralyzed old man.'

  'You're not old.'

  'Before we decided to get married we spent a weekend in the mountains together. She didn't seem to mind my body then. I don't usually approve of such things, but I wanted her to know what she was getting.'

  Her face hot, Abby zipped up his pants and covered him, then stood well away with her hand on the doorknob. 'Is there anything else you need right now?'

  'I'd very much like to get up.' There was an urgency in his voice. 'If it's not too much trouble.'

  'You'll have to wait, Alex. I've already got you up and put you to bed twice this shift. It takes a really long time. I have other patients to take care of, too, you know.'

  'My muscles are cramping a lot today. I don't like to be a bother.' He smiled ingratiatingly at her from the bed, his eyes full of tears again and his hands motionle
ss at his sides.

  'I don't have time right now. I just don't.'

  'Abby,' he began, but she shut the door on his quiet voice and went to answer somebody else's light at the far end of the hall. Out of the corner of her averted eyes she thought she glimpsed somebody flitting past and hovering around Alex's door, and she thought maybe his wife had come back. Unwillingly, she turned around to look. To her relief, nobody was there, and Alex wasn't calling for her anymore.

  When she'd finished putting everybody down on the south end of the wing — alone; it was too much for anybody to do alone, but what choice did she have? — she went to help Shirley on the north end. Myra had wet her bed again, so what else was new, and Abby was on her way to the linen closet, hoping there'd be enough clean sheets for a change, when she glanced into Marshall's room and saw him on the floor. Yelling for help, she ran in. At first she thought he was dead. But as she and Maxine got him up and into the bed, he opened his eyes and rasped, 'Faye!'