Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 62430 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 312(@200wpm)___ 250(@250wpm)___ 208(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62430 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 312(@200wpm)___ 250(@250wpm)___ 208(@300wpm)
The nurse who visited three times a day came right before each meal. Her name was Gina. I had learned that because I asked her, one time in one of my fever dreams. She told me her name and that she lived alone. I wasn’t sure how I had come by that knowledge. Maybe it was wishful thinking, or maybe it was the accumulation of many conversations we had had.
She would come in and sit down on her chair, going over her notes in that same melodic voice she had used to bring me back from my nightmare.
“How are you today?” she would ask.
At first, I couldn’t answer her, so I would just watch. When I was finally able to speak, I tried to crack a joke.
“I’ve been better.”
“Oh,” she crooned, genuinely interested. “You had a bad couple of days.”
Couple of days? It had been more than one? I was confused, and the confusion felt like cotton in my ears. How long had it been? How long had I taken off work? Mr. Matthews said he would hold my job, but for how long? It seemed like I had been here forever and also as if I had just arrived.
“How long has it been?” I had asked.
She answered, but I didn’t remember what she said. Only her voice broke through the fog, not her words. She tried asking me about my life, and I might have explained that I worked for a lumberyard. She seemed interested in knowing how I had come to be there. How had I maintained a job? Why hadn’t I wasted away like her other patients?
I thought we might have had a lovely back-and-forth about heroin, about how addictive it was. She might have opened up about something in her own life, but I couldn’t be sure. By the time I had grown comfortable with our routine, I had developed a fantasy about her that went way beyond sex.
We were going to fall in love. I would meet her in a park somewhere, and we would walk hand in hand, pointing out the flowers and the squirrels that dashed from tree to tree. We would walk along a lake, watch people fishing, and talk about our childhoods. Maybe we would take one of those paddle boats out and ride around in lazy circles, drinking up the sunlight.
It would be innocent and sober. There would be no specter of addiction between us, neither mine nor hers. We could do all the things that couples did; go to the movies, go on long walks, maybe hit up a museum. It would be far from the sweaty fumbling I’d experienced with my previous girlfriend. No backseat scrambling or make-out sessions on couches in basements—this relationship was going to be legitimate.
I would spend my time getting to know her. I would share my secrets and listen as she shared hers. We would have nothing but respect for each other. I would get clean and stay clean, and that’s where the fantasy broke down. I had no right to pine after Gina. She was in a different league. She would go home with a doctor or a lawyer, have a handful of perfect kids, and never think about the treatment center again.
Meanwhile, I was destined to relapse and maybe wind up in the morgue. It was a chilling thought that put out my ardor immediately. We were of two different worlds, and she was forbidden to me. I could look and lust all I wanted to, but in the end, I could never have her. Those walks along the beach would never happen. I would never pick her up and drive her to a movie, holding hands while we shared a bucket of popcorn. It wasn’t going to happen because it couldn’t happen. She was a nurse, and I was her patient. I had to remember my place.
But somehow, the sweetness of my dream leaked into my daily routine. I began to look forward to her visits, to count the time between them as lost and the time I spent with her as therapy. She never touched me, never held my hand, though I knew she wanted to. At some point, she had a chart she was filling out and asked me all kinds of questions about my family.
“Did anyone have cancer?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Did anyone have mental illness?”
“My mother.”
At that, she had nodded and made a note of it, as if there were something more to be said.
“Was your mother sick?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. I remembered vividly because her face fell, and all that beautiful energy she had diminished. “She was an addict. I had a hard time growing up.”
At that confession, I wanted to reach out. If we had been in my apartment, I could have wrapped her up in a hug. I could have chased the demons in her memory away by placing loving kisses across her forehead. But that was impossible. I didn’t have an apartment anymore. I lived in a damn hostel. What was I thinking about? I would never take her anywhere, because this relationship we had was all in my head.