Looking pale green under the harsh fluorescent lights of Ward Two’s kitchen, Nora continued complaining as she mixed granola and plain yogurt in a stainless steel emesis basin.
“Then he says, ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a generally unrewarding job like this?’ “She stirred the contents of the basin, added another handful of granola, pulled out one of her blonde hairs coated in yogurt, and stirred again.
“I respond with ‘Well, sir, the way I figure it, we’re nurses because we’ve done wicked things in our past lives, like putting ant poison in the family’s iced tea on the fourth of July. The only way we have to work off all that bad karma is to be a nurse.’ “
Making no move to actually eat the stuff herself, Nora held a spoonful of the dreadful-looking mixture to Cat’s mouth.
Obediently Cat accepted the concoction. “I’m so hungry,” she said, chewing. “It’s miserable serving breakfast to everybody else when you’re starving.”
Nora nodded in agreement. “My solution to that problem is that when I deliver the tray and take the lids off the plates, I bend inward at the middle, suck in my cheeks, and let my eyelids kind of hang all droopy, trying to look as much like Kate Moss as possible. Then I say something in a starved sort of voice like, ‘Do you think you’ll be eating all your oatmeal this morning, Mrs. Smith?’
“If that doesn’t work, I usually stick the spoon in the middle of it and pull the whole gelatinous mess out of its bowl and say, ‘I see you’ve ordered one of the poisonous porridge pops.’ That usually does it—the patient hands over the tray untouched. I admit, someone in the Food Pit makes decent toast, and the fresh fruit is basically safe.”
“Personally,” Cat sipped her decaf, “I wouldn’t touch anything that came from the Food Pit.” She took another mouthful and grimaced—the granola was getting mushy. “Let me recite for you the description of the Food Pit from Mercy’s propaganda booklet: Nutritional Services—a misnomer if I ever heard one—is where the patients’ wholesome food is expertly prepared.
“What they leave out is how the dieticians have perfected the art of extracting and discarding every bit of flavor and nutrition from the four basic food groups. They specialize in opening canned vegetables, then cooking them down to paste. Last year they apparently took first prize in the Grand National Powdered Potato Glue-off.
“The pamphlet ends by saying, and I quote here: ‘The Nutritional Department is situated in the bowels of Mercy Hospital adjacent to the Department of Mortuary Affairs.’ “
“Sounds like the correct location for the kitchen, considering what the food actually tastes like,” Nora said. “Did you know that the infamous ‘They’ did a study on the nutritional value of hospital food, and discovered that if a person was to eat nothing but hospital food for six months, he’d die of malnutrition?”
Cat dried her coffee cup and hung it on the peg previously marked ‘Richardson’ but recently edited to ‘Bitchardson’. “Next I’ve got to extubate the Benner kid, put Stella on the commode again, turn and clean Detlef, put Professor Dean on a cooling blanket, serve the dreaded lunch trays, see if Lucy Cross will wake up, give out meds, check on Benner and Walker, turn and clean Detlef again, ditto for Prof Dean, and thank you, Scaly Scanlin, you wretched son of a bitch, for setting me back two hours.
“Let’s face it, Nora, the idea that our medical system is some sort of all-powerful benevolent mother that’s required to spread an equal share of love to everybody is bullshit. When we take care of a hateful person, something inside of us recognizes them as a thing gone rotten. It’s human instinct to sidestep it, ignore it, and get the damned thing buried as quickly as possible.”
Nora waited a molasses moment, and shrugged. “So?”
That set them off laughing until Nora aspirated a soggy oat and choked. Wiping choke spit from Nora’s chin, they moved on to the burned raisin toast Nora had pilfered from the breakfast trays.
Cat spread a thick pat of margarine over the charred bread and was automatically reminded of the way burned flesh absorbed ointment. Quickly killing the thought, she picked out all the raisins and carefully placed them, one by one, on Nora’s toast. Raisins, she explained, had no business being in bread, just as pineapples had no place on pizza.
“By the way,” Cat lowered her voice and glanced around, as if to make sure there weren’t any hidden microphones. “You didn’t by any chance see that guy who was looking for Lucy Cross this morning, did you?”
“You mean the fox with the curly black hair, the unusually sweet face and the cream-your-jeans smile? How could I miss him? The nurses who still have some estrogen left are still drooling.
“He’s the detective on the Lucy Cross case. He’s tracking down the psycho boyfriend who tried to kill her.”
Nora dried the emesis basin and set it in its hiding place in the empty fuse box under the paint-by-number Renoir. “No, he’s not married. He’s forty-four, four years divorced, no kids, quick wit, lonely, and from what I could surmise in a few seconds, unbelievably bright. Just your type.”
Cat suddenly became absorbed in wiping down the already immaculate cabinet doors; she didn’t want to ruin her long-standing reputation as a forlorn, asexual old maid. “Sounds like you got to him first. Finders keepers.”
“Your unruffled attitude needs work, darling. You know very well that the only men I like are the extreme left fielders.”
Interrupted by the nurse alert bell, both women moved quickly into the hall.
“Crap,” Nora sighed. “My new admit is here and I still have to tell you about what happened last night. How about we go to Salato’s for dinner?”
“Sure, if we survive.” Cat headed toward Stella’s room. “What’s the new admission?”
“A three hundred plus pound pneumonia, complete with bedsores running over with staph-infested pus the color of the yogurt we just ate.”
Cat swallowed hard. Sometimes, even after all the years of feces, urine, vomit, and blood, just a description could still get to her.
“Lovely, Nora. Excellent imagery. Use it in your charting. The chart reviewers will be thrilled.”
Nora’s whinny echoed down the hallway.