Visiting hours start at 6 P.M. and end at 9 p.m. except on Sundays when they run from noon until 5.
Albie glances at his watch. “How are you doing with the smoking?” he asks.
Today is not Sunday. Maybe it’s Wednesday. Or Tuesday.
“They give me Nicorette gum.”
“You’re okay with that?”
“No,” Bunny says. “I’m not okay with that. I met with one of the psychiatrists today. She wants to put me on Paxil and Abilify. I said no.”
Albie remembers the Paxil days all too well. “So, now what?” he asks.
“Now nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“What about talk therapy?”
“I said nothing. Nothing is nothing.”
Albie is about to say how that’s not possible, that they must have something planned, after all, this is a hospital, but instead, he asks, “What did you have for dinner?”
“Rice with canned vegetables.”
“How was it?”
“Are you for real?” Then she tells him, “You’re allowed to bring me food, as long as it’s not in a glass jar.”
Because she can’t think of anything in particular she wants, Albie suggests she make a list. “You can give it to me tomorrow.”
Then, as if this were something like exchanging gifts, she says, “I made something for you in Arts and Crafts, but one of the fruitcakes stole it.”
Albie suggests that perhaps she ought not to refer to the others as loons, fruitcakes, nut jobs or the mentally defective, that perhaps it’s not nice to call them squirrels and psychos, but Bunny disagrees. “You can’t call them squirrels and psychos, but it’s okay if I do it, because I’m one of them.”
Throughout the years of their marriage, Albie’s feelings toward his wife have crisscrossed the emotional range: love, deep affection, joy, anger, delight, frustration, irritation, passion, fear, sorrow, but never pity. Until now; and Albie wonders if to feel pity is something from which you can recover. “Maybe you’ll feel better if you take a shower,” he suggests, as if somehow she would be less pitiful if she were clean.
Again, Albie glances at his watch, and Bunny asks, “Is today Wednesday?”