TUESDAY, 8:00 A.M. Stony sat on the narrow locker bench scraping crud from the corners of his eyes. He had half changed into his hospital whites. The other orderlies were dressing, drinking from hip flasks of Old Mr. Boston apricot brandy and bullshitting around in general.
"Hey." Reynard discarded his wet-look vinyl jacket and opened his locker next to Stony's. "We late, man, we only got time fo' some quick tokes." He removed a white Baggie from his locker.
"Uh. No way." Stony shielded himself from the dope. "I almost jumped out the window yesterday."
Reynard lit a joint, took three long wet sucks, ground out the burning end and put the roach back in the Baggie. "You on you own today, baby." Reynard struggled out of his street clothes. "But you need some help, give me a yell."
They punched their time cards under the gridded wall clock and walked through the beige, glazed-tile corridor past a vast stainless steel kitchen and scattered stainless steel food carts toward the elevator. Reynard slapped five to every other guy they passed, shouting and laughing, taking his ease. Stony knew Reynard would never become a hairdresser.
"Mr. Plotkin?" Stony braced himself as he walked into the pale green room.
A small, hairless, toothless, blind man sat on the bed, smiled beatifically as if touched by the voice of God. "Yas?"
Stony could see his eyeballs moving under his shut lids, his wide gum-grin stretched from ear to ear. His white gown was too big for him and hung off one skeletal shoulder in a parody of a 1945 movie goddess. Stony clenched his teeth. "Enjoy your breakfast?"
"Yas I did. Who iss dis I yam talkink to?" As if he was on the phone. He kept smiling nervously, jerking his head in the direction of Stony's voice.
"I'm the new lifter."
"Vere is Reynard?"
"He's around, I'm helpin' him out." Stony moved the wheelchair into position, locking it with his foot. "I'm gonna take you to the john now."
"O.K." In a singsong.
Stony cringed for a moment before slipping his arms under Mr. Plotkin's armpits. He was surprisingly light. When Stony lifted him high enough and the blanket slipped away, he saw why. Plotkin was legless. Stony gasped. Plotkin laughed. Stony held him at arm's length, afraid of the smooth stumps. He deposited him in the wheelchair, replaced the blanket, unlocked the catch and wheeled him down to the huge white tile and stainless steel bathroom. He dumped him on the pot and stood there while Plotkin grunted, plopped and farted for ten minutes, smiling all the while. Stony unwound a wad of toilet paper consuming half the roll, lifted Plotkin with one hand across his chest and wiped his ass, his head behind Plotkin's back, almost in the bowl. Stony held his breath the whole time. His eyes were screwed shut. But somehow he still managed to get a lungful and an eyeful in the scant ten seconds the whole operation took.
"Misteh leefteh, you ah colid boy?"
"Nope. I'm Italian." Stony wiped the cold sweat from his face. He was chilled with disgust.
"You are vhite boy? Vhat you do dis for?" Then he whispered, "Dis a chob for der niggers."
***
"Come in here, please." The black nurse beckoned to Stony in the hallway. Stony's heart sank. It was ten-thirty. Hour and a half until lunch. Ten ass-wipes to go. "Meestah Beckahmon vomited all over heself," she said, ushering him into the room. "Please clean him op. I have to go get sheets and a gown. I be back in five minutes."
Stony stared at a cadaver rigid in his bed. An oatmeal-textured catastrophe lay on his chin, chest and blanket. His eyes burned into Stony like a black fire. "Hey look, that's an orderly's job. I'm a lifter." Stony pointed to the name-and-job tag on his breast pocket.
"Meestah De Coco, ah don care what you are. You work in de hospital, you got to do all jobs."
"Oh yeah? When do I get to hire an' fire nurses?"
She glared at him for a second, then marched out of the room. Behind him in the room came a high-pitched cackle. Stony wheeled around.
"Das sweet!" A short, thirtyish Puerto Rican in a gray custodian's outfit was mopping the floor, a galvanized steel bucket with a wringer attachment at his feet. "Dat bitch sometin' else!" He slapped the mop around, making semicircles on the already immaculate floor.
Stony grimaced as he approached Mr. Beckerman. A stainless steel bowl half filled with an antiseptic-smelling green bubbly solution lay on the radiator. A small yellow sponge floated on top like a dead fish. Stony took the bowl over to the bed, squeezed out the sponge and took two half swipes at Mr. Beckerman's face. He avoided looking into his eyes. The stench made him tear. He dropped the sponge into the bowl, splashing the bed. "Shit!"
"Aw, fuck dat chump!" The custodian winked.
"I can't swing it, Jack." Stony slapped his thighs in exasperation. Mr. Beckerman blinked.
"Hey!" The custodian tapped Stony on the shoulder. "Look." He placed the bowl on the floor next to his bucket. "Take off his shirt, man." As Stony gingerly removed Beckerman's pajama top, the custodian wrung out his mop, splashed it in the steel bowl and then proceeded to swab down Beckerman's face and chest. He wrung out the mop, dunked it into the remainder of the soapy solution and gave him a second coat. Beckerman's eyes were blazing with outrage. Stony was caught halfway between laughing and crying. "Das all dere is to it, man." He wrung out his mop again, flung it over his shoulder, stooped, picked up his bucket and left the room. Stony grabbed a towel off the radiator, patted Beckerman's dripping face and chest. He wouldn't look into Beckerman's eyes on a bet. When he finished he tore ass out of the room.
***
"Lifter!" Resisting the temptation to duck into the john. Stony walked into the room. A young nurse leaned over another stiff, naked this time, who looked like Beckerman's twin. "Lifter, I need some help here. Mr. Garro had a little accident. Can you just lift him a sec so I can pull the sheets out?" As Stony headed to the bed someone behind him clawed his sleeve. Stony jumped. The old woman was about four-foot-six. Her hospital gown hung down, revealing withered breasts the size and shape of Santa Clara prunes—Stony looked. Her face had more cracks and crevasses than the Grand Canyon. She was almost bald—the scattered wisps of white hair on her scalp reminded Stony of an empty cotton candy machine before it's cleaned. She squeezed his arm with an anguished urgency. "Be careful."
"Mrs. Garro!" The nurse charged around the bed. "I told you not to hinder the help!" She gently pushed the doddering old lady into a second bed. "Just lift him real quick." She hustled over to Mr. Garro. As Stony lifted him from behind he noticed the old guy had gigantic balls. The nurse pulled out the sheet like a magician yanking a tablecloth without disturbing the dishes. There was a four-by-four shiny black oilcloth underneath. "O.K., drop him." Stony did and stepped back. This was a his and hers private room. Between the twin beds on a night table stood an eight-by-ten gilt-framed photo of Mr. and Mrs. Garro sitting in a restaurant. They were both laughing, he had his arm around her shoulder. They wore leis around their necks, his over a loud pineapple shirt, hers over an aqua blue sleeveless dress. The inscription read "Tommy and Marie—Oahu Hilton 3/2/62."
Stony backed out of the room as Mrs. Garro struggled out of bed and fluttered around her naked husband like a bird with buckshot in its wing.
***
Stony wheeled an old guy named Valentine Valentino to the john. As he lifted him out of the chair, he slipped through Stony's fingers, bounced off the toilet seat and fell on his side, his pajamas wrapped around his ankles, his flaccid skin pressed against the cold tile. Stony gasped, grasping him under the arms to lift him onto the seat, hoping nothing broke.
Reynard wheeled a patient wearing a Yankees cap into the john. Stony and Valentine were holding each other face to face, knee to knee, in a semierect crouch.
"He's peein' on ya! He's peein' on ya! Get 'im onna toilet! Get 'im onna toilet!" the old fuck in the baseball cap yelled like a wheelchair general.
Stony looked down. The legs of his baggy whites were slowly turning yellow. "Shit!" Stony almost dropped him again, as he twisted and turned, trying to get out of the line of fire.
Reynard ran behind Valentine, slipped his forearms under the hairless armpits and dragged him backward to the toilet. Straddling the bowl, his spine against the upright toilet lid, he deposited Valentine on the seat, swinging his leg over the old guy's head to free himself. Stony furiously wiped the piss from his dripping pants with a fistful of toilet paper. Reynard's charge wheeled himself over to Valentine on the pot and shouted in his ear, "Yer awright, Valentine? Yer awright, Valentine?"
Valentine sat hunched over, gloomily staring at his white kneecaps, his lips moving, the expression on his face a cross between Buster Keaton and a basset hound.
"Where's your head, Jim?" Reynard rubbed his hands together as if just finishing a grimy job. Stony didn't answer, still wiping his pants. "Don'choo know how to lift someone? You coulda killed the dude!"
"If that's a dude, I'm James Brown."
Reynard turned to his charge in the wheelchair, jerked him up and swiftly deposited him on the toilet seat next to Valentine. He turned back to Stony. "You better get your act together, bro\"
The piss trickled into Stony's shoe.
"Hey, Reynard! Hey, Reynard! I'm finished! I'm finished!"
Glaring at Stony, Reynard roughly jerked his patient off the toilet, wiped his ass and almost threw him back in the wheelchair. He started out of the bathroom, then turned. "Valentine's finished."
Stony tossed the ball of toilet paper on the floor, lifted Valentine off the pot, pulled up his pajama bottoms and tried to maneuver him into his wheelchair. He forgot to lock the wheels and as he began Valentine's descent the wheelchair rolled away from him. Reynard pushed the chair back and braced it as Stony sat Valentine down.
"You forgot to wipe his ass," Reynard reproached.
"He didn't shit."
After depositing Valentine back in his room, Stony stomped through the corridor, eyes straight ahead.
"Lifter!"
Stony ignored the nurse and ran down six flights of stairs to Personnel.
***
"Miss Guardino, I can't hack it." Stony shook his head as he leaned forward hunched over in his seat. "It's too depresso up there. I'm up to my elbows in shit, I got piss on my pants, and I got death up my nose. Excuse my language."
Miss Guardino regarded him with a half smile, played with a pencil on her desk. "Well, this is a hospital."
Despite his misery Stony noticed she had some fine bosoms on her. "Yeah, I know, but this isn't what I was promised. What's the story on the children's ward? Because I'll tell you honestly, if nothing's gonna happen, I'm gonna hafta quit."
She picked up the phone, dialed once.
"Three-four-three, please." She winked at Stony. "Yes, Mrs. Pitt, please. Thank you. Florence? Rae Guardino. Hi. Listen, I have a boy in my office now who's been working on six and he was promised last week that he would be working with you. Uh-uh. Uh-uh. Yeah. Thomas De Coco Junior. D-E-C-O-C-O. Uh-uh." She lightly scratched her nose with a chipped pinkynail as she talked. "Well, he's been having a rough time on six and ... Yeah, O.K. O.K. Thanks. Bye."
"Go up to the fourth floor, Room Four-o-one, and see Mrs. Pitt. She'll try to switch you over today." She winked again.
"Fantastic." Stony got up. "I was really gettin' the horrors up there."
"Geriatrics isn't for everybody."
"You can say that again. Thanks a million." As Stony left the office Miss Guardino studied his ass, whipped out a brown paper bag and a thermos from her desk drawer and had lunch.
***
"Have you ever worked with children before, Mr. De Coco?" Mrs. Pitt was a short, heavyset woman in her sixties who wore her gray hair in bangs. Stony could tell by her patient smile that she had worked with kids for two hundred years.
"Nah, not really, unless you wanna count my kid brother. He's eight. I take care a him pretty good. He's anorexic." Stony scratched his jaw and glanced at a photo cube on her desk, stuffed with Instamatic shots of a family around a Christmas tree.
Mrs. Pitt followed his gaze. "That's my son's family, they live in Hawaii."
"Oh yeah?"
"He's a sergeant in the air force at Pearl Harbor."
"Pearl Harbor? Far out," he said, still scratching his jaw.
She picked up the cube and rotated it, revealing a photo of a six-month-old infant wrapped in a blue blanket. "That's the newest addition, Tracey."
"Wild." Stony tried to appear impressed.
"Tell me about your brother." She tossed the cube on her desk.
"Albert?" Stony straightened up in his chair. "He's all right. I mean, there's nothin' wrong with him except that anorexic thing. He's really skinny. He's pretty nervous too. I just sort of look out for him, you know? See, my mother ... she's not exactly what you would call a portrait a mental health. I mean, she yells a lot and I don't know how to put it exactly. It's like there's two kinds of people in the world. Her and the enemy, right? An' she takes it out a lot on Albert. I just try to cover for him from time to time. Hey, look, she's my mother, right? An' I love her as such, you know?" Stony leaned forward, lightly touching his fingertips. "But just between you, me 'n' the apple tree, she's a stone whacko sometimes."
Mrs. Pitt leaned her cheek on her hand, still smiling. "Do you like kids?"
"Hell, yeah!" Stony sat back. "I dig 'em a lot, more'n I dig adults."
Mrs. Pitt laughed briefly.
"I mean, no offense." Stony felt like he had just tripped on his dick. "I dig adults too."
"O.K." She brushed his apology aside, righted the photo cube so that Tracey was visible. "It's twelve now, why don't you take the afternoon off. What's tomorrow, Wednesday? Come in at eight and we'll see what we can do for you."
"Fantastic." Stony stood up. "Lissen, after geriatrics you can throw me in a dress an' call me a candy striper. I'd get into it."
"I don't think we'll have to do that." Her chair, on casters, squealed as she pushed away from her desk.
Stony hesitated at the stairway, debated whether to pop up to six one last time to tell Reynard that he had swung the switch. Fuck him. He was a full-time chump if Stony ever saw one.