People say every cloud has a silver lining. They insist upon it. They’ll tell you that even if you’re up to the hip in bullshit. Really? Every cloud? I ask because I’m waiting. My life has been pretty cloudy lately and I haven’t seen any silver. Not a hint or glimmer of the good stuff. Instead, I got a bolt of lightning, right in the butt. Because if you’re going to kick someone, you may as well do it when they’re down.
I got fired. Of course, Shawna didn’t call it firing because she’s nice. Shawna is very nice, but I was still fired, even though she called it “letting go”. What does that really mean? She’s returning me to the wild so I can forage with the other unemployed nurses?
If so, I’ll be all alone, because there are no other unemployed nurses. It’s a field with more jobs than people to fill them and you can have your pick, unless you happen to be radically incompetent, one of those killer nurses you see on the news, or me, Mercy Watts. I’m the exception that proves the rule.
It was a real low point, employment wise. I’d already called my old temp agency and they said, “You’ve got to be kidding,” and their biggest requirement seemed to be a warm body. Nobody was going to hire me, that much was clear, not with the current situation or, should I say, situations. If you hired me, you’d have to expect the worst was coming and you wouldn’t be wrong.
I closed my locker for the last time and leaned on the cold metal, blowing my nose and feeling so low I wanted to sink down and sob on the floor. No one would care. I was alone. Me and my sad little bag of crap would have to skulk out the back like a big, fat loser. The last thing I wanted to do was see patients. Plus, the cops were out there. They’d laughed the first few times, but they were past laughing now.
I peeked out into the hall and found it empty, which was rare, so I took off and dashed for the back exit.
“Where the hell are you going?” yelled Steve, the practice receptionist, as my hand hit the back door’s metal bar.
For a second, I considered hoofing it out and not looking back, but I couldn’t do it. Steve was a big sweetheart and it was hardly his fault, so I pushed the door open and let the chilly November wind rush in, drying my cheeks and providing a little clarity.
“I’m leaving,” I said, eyes closed, not looking back.
“You can’t leave,” he said. “We’ve got a full waiting room. You’ve been requested.”
“I know and yet…I’m leaving.”
“Are you okay?”
“Nope.”
Steve walked up and put a hand on my shoulder. “Oh, my God. Is it your mom? Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. On vacation, actually.”
“Then what happened?”
I took a breath and told him. “Shawna fired me.” I have to admit it was pretty nice to see his mouth drop open.
“But…but…she can’t fire you. Why would you get fired?” Steve asked.
“Have you seen the parking lot? ”I asked.
Steve gulped a couple of times. Of course, he had. Everyone had. Just over a month ago, Beth Babcock rammed her enormous truck into the Columbia Clinic in a fit of rage over her unpaid bill. Then she tried to set fire to it and, in a moment of supreme stupidity, I tackled her and we rolled into a ditch, which would’ve been fine, but I ended up all over the news, not to mention YouTube, looking like I’d been in a wet tee shirt contest. That kind of thing really brings out the weirdos. Nutters drove in from all over to ram the clinic, in hopes I’d tackle them, too.
Currently, there was a guy, who claimed to be named “Heaven”, chained to the porch, having stolen a tractor that was able to get over the barriers the practice had put in, and hit the front steps. For once, there wasn’t much damage. He’d hit the steps going five miles an hour. He didn’t steal wisely. It was a very old tractor.
But Heaven chained himself to a post, armed with fake grenades, bug spray, and a lighter. He said he wouldn’t unchain himself until I kissed him all over.
Not going to happen. The standoff had been going on for forty-five minutes with Heaven keeping the cops at bay with his improvised bug spray flame thrower.
“He’s just a nut,” said Steve. “He needs treatment.”
I shrugged. “The latest in a long line of nuts who need treatment.”
“It’s not your fault crazy guys want to, ya know, get close to you.”
“The insurance doesn’t see it that way. They’re threatening to cancel the practice’s policy and the provider policies if we don’t get this under control.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, shit. What about us?” Steve asked, a set of frown lines forming on his incredibly tanned forehead.
“What about you? I’m the one with bills, a bad rep, and no job.”
“You are very popular with the patients. They are not going to like you getting fired, even with everything else.”
The “everything else” hung in the air like the stank from a broken septic tank. Steve shifted from foot to foot and avoided my eyes. “I’ll talk to Shawna and the docs. There has to be something we can do.”
“Good luck with that,” I said. “It’s been nice knowing you.”
Steve hugged me. “We didn’t get to have a going away party.”
“It would be a get out and good riddance party.”
“It wouldn’t.” He hugged me again. “We all love you.”
“So do all the sex-crazed maniacs,” I said. “And off I go.”
“It’ll calm down. You’ll be back.” Steve tried to sound cheerful, but it didn’t come out all that well.
I stepped outside and a gardener yelled, “Hey, Smelly, where ya going?”
Steve winced and I said, “That’s my life. Wanna trade?”
“Dude, you couldn’t pay me enough to look like you.”
This coming from a guy who did a drag routine every other weekend. I kill with drag queens. But my situation was so bad, I had it on good authority that even the Marilyn Monroe impersonators had to change up their acts, lest they be confused for me. There was a little odd satisfaction that, for the first time, Marilyn was taking it on the chin for looking like me, instead of the other way around.
The gardener yelled again. That time calling me “odious” and bursting into laughter. That word didn’t mean what he thought it meant, but that didn’t make me feel any better about it. The sooner I got home to hide out with a half-gallon of ice cream the better.
I rounded the corner and headed into the parking lot, keeping my head down and hoping for the best. I didn’t get it.
The cops had cleared the area directly in front of the practice, except for the squad cars and the fire trucks. I was in clear view and Heaven spotted me straight away.
“Mercy! Mercy! I love you!”
I didn’t look and wished my coat had a hood. I really could’ve used a hood right about then.
“Don’t do it!” yelled Carrie, a local cop, who never called me anything but my name, which is more than I could say for her boss and the firefighters. “Oh man!”
The men started laughing and yelling, “Hey, Smelly! Get a load of this.”
“Get a blanket, you assholes!” yelled Carrie.
“Smelly’ll get it.”
Then I heard a little kid say, “Why is Mercy smelly?”
That was rock bottom and I have to say there’s some stiff competition for the honor. I think the parent said I wasn’t actually smelly, but it didn’t matter. Once the internet says you smell, you flipping smell. I wished that tractor had hit me. Maybe I should stick around. It was only a matter of time before another one showed up.
“Mercy!” yelled Carrie and I looked up on instinct. That did not work out for me. Heaven had stripped and was pouring something out of a plastic grenade all over his head.
“I’ll do it! Come over here or I’ll do it,” he yelled, his skinny, pale body shaking violently in the cold.
Jordan, another cop and Carrie’s boss said, “It’s not gas, Heaven. For God’s sake, pull up your pants.”
“I want Mercy!”
A woman ran up to me, shielding her son’s eyes, “This is ridiculous. Talk to him, Mercy. He needs help.”
“I can’t,” I said. “Shawna fired me. I’m supposed to leave the premises immediately.”
“You cannot be serious. Logan needs his shots.”
Logan looked up, his blue eyes huge. “No shots.”
“Other people can give shots,” I said.
“I want Mercy,” wailed Logan.
“Can they?” asked his mother. “Can they? I don’t think so. Where is Shawna or Dr. What’s-his-face?”
“Inside.”
“I’ll be right back,” she said, marching past Heaven, who’d opened another grenade while holding a lighter to his face.
I will not be here.
I went for my car, my mother’s car to be accurate, since my truck was still in the shop after being demolished by another kid that needed professional help.
“It’s lemonade, Heaven,” yelled Jordan. “You can’t light lemonade.”
“I can light roach spray. What do you think of this, Pig?”
There was the sound of streaming flames and a firefighter yelled, “Get Smelly over here!”
I ran for it.
“Mercy!” yelled Carrie. “Wait! You gotta help us with this guy!”
“Let’s spray him!” yelled someone.
“We can’t spray him. He’ll get frostbite.”
“Shoot him!”
“Get a hostage negotiator. This is getting old.”
“There’s no hostage.”
“I’m a hostage. It’s thirteen degrees out here. My butt’s numb.”
I got to the new Mercedes Dad bought Mom after she said she didn’t want it and very nearly got the door open before Carrie hit the door full tilt, ramming it closed. She bent over gasping, “Why did you make me run? I hate running.”
“I’m leaving. Get out of the way,” I said.
“You can’t leave. This guy…this guy, you gotta talk to him. Throw him a bone so we can break out the bolt cutters and get the hell outta here.”
“Just spray him and do it,” I said, tugging on the door handle.
“How’s that going to play on the news? We spray a mentally ill guy with water and give him hypothermia.”
“He’s already wet with lemonade.”
“He needs help.”
“He needs a professional.”
“You’re a professional.”
“I just got fired.”
I was rewarded with a blank look.
“I don’t work here anymore thanks to the flipping media and Heaven and all the other Heavens out there.”
“You can still talk to him. You’re still a nurse.”
“Look. I just cleared out my locker and spent the last fifteen minutes crying, so I think I’m gonna pass.”
Carrie pushed me away from the car and I flinched. She’d touched my casted arm and I was sensitive about it. Another young man, Porter Weeks, gave me a spiral fracture after he found out his father’s secrets. Secrets and publicity were two things that never worked out for me.
“Oh, crap. I’m sorry, but please, Mercy, he really needs your help.”
“It will just encourage this stuff.” I pointed at a news van pulling up, satellite dish perched on top and ready to roll. “You know it will. I have to draw the line somewhere.”
“Well, draw it somewhere else,” said Carrie. “I know your life sucks right now, but his life is worse.”
I looked over at the now sobbing Heaven. “This is so unfair.”
“I know.”
“I hate you.”
“Don’t blame you.”
“I am not kissing him at all or anywhere,” I said.
“Understood.”
“Fine.”
“Great. Let’s go see what he’ll settle for.” Carrie turned me around and steered me toward Heaven. Jordan ran over to the news crew, ordering them off private property, but they were rolling and more vans were pulling up. No matter what happened this was not going to work out for me. Period. No chance at all of it working out.
We stopped ten feet away, well out of roach spray range. Now that we were closer, I realized Heaven was a lot younger than I originally thought. College-age. Twenty. Maybe less. That made it worse, for some reason, and I felt so sad it was like a big hand was pushing me down into the dirt.
“Hey there,” I said.
He continued to cry.
“Heaven!”
He looked up and focused. Sort of. He was on something. His eyes were bloodshot and, even from there, I could tell his pupils weren’t reacting right. “Mercy?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Want to talk?”
“Really?”
“Sure. But I need you to put your clothes back on,” I said.
“Why?” he asked, although the reason was painfully obvious.
I took a breath and kept my eyes up. You know how it is when you don’t want to look at something? Your eyes just absolutely insist on going there.
“There are kids in the clinic. You don’t want them to see…your stuff, do you?”
“Kids?”
With perfect timing, Logan’s mom came out, still shielding his little eyes, and said, “Shawna says you can give Logan his shots. She’ll put you in as being let go after.”
Well, isn’t it just my lucky day.
“Alright. Give me a minute. Kind of in the middle of something,” I said.
She glanced over and clenched her jaw. “You’re a good person, Mercy. And I want you to know that we all know that you don’t smell.”
“Could you put that on Twitter? I’m getting roasted.”
“Yeah, I know. You were on The Daily Show last night,” she said.
“I saw that,” said one of the firemen.
“Friggin’ hilarious,” said another.
Don’t start crying again. Don’t do it. Crap. You’re doing it. For the love of God, stop.
“People suck,” said Logan’s mom to the firefighters and they had the decency to look away.
“Yes, they do,” said Carrie. “Can you go inside, ma’am? This will be resolved in a minute.”
Will it? That sounds optimistic.
Carrie gave me a tissue and Heaven pulled up his pants. That was something anyway.
“Now the shirt,” I said.
“No shirt,” he said. “Why are people calling you Smelly?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Swell.
“If I tell you, will you please toss me the roach spray and let us cut those chains?” I asked.
He thought about it and it took more consideration than I would’ve thought. Maybe the teeth chattering was inhibiting what little thought he could muster.
“Okay. I’ll do it. For you. Nobody else.”
So I told him, a mentally ill, half-frozen kid, why people were calling me smelly, even though I didn’t think it would help and might possibly push him farther over the edge.
“I’ve got this uncle—”
“Is he drunk?” asked Heaven.
“Not usually. But that is a part of this story.”
“Okay. Go ahead.”
My Uncle Morty, hacker, gamer extraordinaire and best-selling author, had done what no one ever expected. He fell head over heels in love with Nikki, a Greek lady, who, for reasons no one could ascertain, fell in love with him, too. Then he did the one thing she couldn’t stand. He lied to her about helping me with the Porter Weeks case. He didn’t have to lie, but he did, and she found out. Nikki dumped him like toxic waste and skipped town. She went to Greece and would not respond to anything or anyone.
Uncle Morty blamed me. My case, my fault. I had to help get her back. He insisted and bought tickets for us to go to Greece and I was going to talk the love of his life into forgiving him, presumably by taking the blame. Whatever. It was a free trip to Greece and I had some snooping that I wanted to do on a little side interest of mine. So I packed my bags and took an Uber to the airport. That’s when it went south. Like all the way south. Antarctica south.
Uncle Morty was there, waiting at the check-in counter and looking like no human I’ve ever seen, outside of a body in the morgue. He was drunk, crusted with food, and had body odor that could drop a deer at ten yards. He belched and farted up a storm while he argued with the airline rep. I stood there in shock. I hadn’t seen him in a few days and I had no idea it had gotten so bad.
That was a time when I would’ve liked to have called my parents, but my mom was recovering from a stroke and the attack that caused it. My father was recovering from being a lousy husband and father, so they were out, and I was on my own.
I thought we’d have to turn around and go home, but somehow Uncle Morty talked his way onto the plane. He pulled out the celebrity card, my so-called celebrity card. That’s how we became the Mercy Watts party, despite the fact that Uncle Morty paid for the tickets and was the lead passenger. I think he also bribed people. If he did, it must’ve been a whole lot of people. Did I mention there was gagging?
On the upside, I’ve never gotten through security so fast. The line cleared. People were ducking under the stringers and voluntarily going to the back of the line to avoid us. I was apologizing to everyone in sight, which elicited anger from Uncle Morty and more belching.
Someone must’ve called ahead because our seats smelled strongly of Febreze and I thought maybe we could get away with it. The plane took off. We weren’t in the air fifteen minutes before Uncle Morty was asleep and began to snore like a gorilla with a deviated septum, only slightly less hairy and with worse table manners. I stuffed tissues up my nose and in my ears, as did everyone else. It didn’t help. Kids were crying. The flight attendants’ eyes were watering. I think I heard the lady in front of us retching.
Then we banked hard and the captain announced that we were returning to Lambert due to a situation in the cabin. Since all the regular gates were full, we went to a gate where you had to use one of those old-fashioned ramps. I couldn’t get off that plane quick enough. It took three flight attendants and the co-pilot to get Uncle Morty out of his seat and down the aisle. I hustled off the plane first. I was so glad to get away from the cheers and clapping. I thought I couldn’t get more embarrassed. I was wrong.
When the pilot radioed the tower, he named me, specifically. The man said, “We have a party with unusual odor. Flight is unsustainable. Party of Mercy Watts will have to be removed.”
Then I stepped out on that ramp. Alone. There were cellphones everywhere, catching me doing what was deemed a smelly perp walk down the steps. Did I still have tissues up my nose? Yes, I did. The lead on the local news, which was quickly picked up by the national news, said, “Mercy Watts can’t stand her own smell.”
Yeah, Uncle Morty got off the plane. Yeah, he was photographed. Yeah, he looked like a rotting wildebeest, but did he make the news? No. That was me. If it gets worse than that, I’d like to know how.
“So that’s why people call you smelly?” said Heaven.
“That’s why,” I said.
“Where’s your uncle?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. He can bite me.”
Heaven looked at the firefighters. “You guys suck.”
The guys fidgeted and looked at their boots.
“How about throwing me that spray can?” I asked.
Heaven tossed me the can and Carrie cut his chains. Together we got him into dry scrubs and gave him hot tea in the waiting room after the clinic declined to press charges. It wasn’t as easy as it sounds. Heaven was pretty wasted and kept trying to kiss me. While I was giving Logan his shots, we found out that Heaven was really named Thomas Wright III and had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, which he tried to self-medicate with a wicked combo of pot, whiskey, and LSD. Why he thought that would help remains a mystery.
“Mercy?” Thomas Wright III looked at me as I picked up my sad, little bag of crap to once again try to slip out the back unnoticed.
“Yeah?”
“I see things.”
“What kind of things?” asked Carrie.
Thomas kept looking around me. I got the odd feeling that there were bees swarming around me. I just couldn’t see them.
“People,” said Thomas. “I can smell them, too. They smell good, like candy.”
“Weird,” I said.
Carrie chuckled. “Dude, that’s Mercy. She smells like candy. It’s her lotion.”
Thomas frowned. “I see people. Right now. Around Mercy. They’re in the pictures.”
A chill went up my back. “What pictures?”
“You have people around you.”
The entire waiting room stood up and stepped back.
“This is freaking me out.” Steve got on the phone and started talking to someone about needing a bed ASAP.
“I’m sure you see a lot of things,” I said.
“People,” said Thomas. “You have the most people. I wanted to tell you.”
“Is that why you came here?” I asked.
“They love you.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“Not all of them. Some want to hurt you.”
Swell.
“Thomas, we’re going to send you to a hospital so you can get the right kind of medicine. Okay?” I asked.
“But then I won’t see the people,” he said.
“That’s probably a good thing.”
“I don’t think so. I like seeing what other people can’t.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” Thomas slumped down. The tranquilizer Shawna gave him finally took effect. “She’s nice.”
“Who?” I asked.
“The one touching your hair.”
The waiting patients took another step back, but I noticed they couldn’t look away.
“Who’s touching Mercy’s hair?” asked Carrie.
Jordan helped me get my coat over my cast and said, “Don’t encourage him.”
Thomas’s head lolled to the side. “She’s got red hair all piled up and an old-fashioned dress with an apron.”
Jordan turned me toward the door. “That’s enough.”
“She loves you. She wants you to know her.” With that, Thomas Wright III went to sleep.
Jordan opened the door for me and hustled me out. “Now get in your car and forget this ever happened.”
“You make it sound like that’s a real option,” I said.
“It is, if you want it to be.”
“I want a lot of things.” I walked down the steps with chills still running up and down my spine. A red-haired woman. That was plausible.
“Anything I can help you with?” asked Jordan.
I turned around. “You could stop calling me smelly.”
Jordan flushed to the roots of his hair. “Done. I’m sorry about that.”
“Good. I’m glad.”
I went for Mom’s car and I made it. I got in, closed the door, and turned on the ignition. I put the gear shift in drive and a woman ran up to pound on my window.
“Son of a bitch,” I muttered.
“Mercy! I need to be seen. It’s an emergency.”
I rolled down my window. “What is it, Mrs. Lundberg?”
“It’s an emergency.”
“Go to the ER.”
She wrinkled her nose. “That takes forever. It’s so inconvenient.”
“Emergencies usually are.”
“Can you get me in? Steve says they’re booked, but I have to be seen.”
I did my best not to sigh dramatically. I may have failed. Mrs. Lundberg always thought she had whatever was on the evening news. I kept expecting her to show up claiming that she got a shark bite in the Black River that would turn out to be a couple of chigger bites.
“I can’t get you in. They really are booked.”
Mrs. Lundberg started wringing her hands. “But this is serious. Can you take a look?”
“Shawna fired me. I don’t even work here anymore.”
She was already taking off her coat and didn’t hear. “This won’t take long. I know Shawna will see me if you confirm my diagnosis.”
“Have you been looking on WebMD again?”
“I did. That site is so useful. I don’t understand why you don’t like it,” said Mrs. Lundberg.
“I know you don’t. What’s the diagnosis?” I asked.
She straightened up and put on her suffering-with-a-terrible-disease face. “I have Lyme Disease.”
Breathe, Mercy, breathe.
“Well that’s…something. Why do you think you have Lyme Disease?”
“I had a headache. I’m so tired all the time and I have a rash.”
“This just happened?”
“Yes.”
“It’s almost Thanksgiving.”
She nodded vigorously. “I know. To have this happen right before the holidays. Can you believe it?”
No.
“People don’t tend to get a tick in November,” I said.
“I’ve always been unlucky.”
Are people calling you smelly? I don’t think so.
“Okay. Where’s your tick?”
“It’s gone,” she said with an odd amount of pride. But removing a tick wasn’t exactly rocket surgery as my dad would say.
“When did you remove it?” I asked.
“I didn’t.”
“Then what happened to it?”
She shrugged. “Must’ve fallen off. But I have the spot, like on WebMD.” She rolled up her sleeve and thrust her arm at me. “See, it’s warm to the touch and everything. What am I going to do? Lyme Disease is fatal. Fatal.”
“It’s rarely fatal. Very rarely fatal.”
“But I’m very unlucky,” she said, a tear rolling down her cheek.
“You don’t have Lyme Disease, Mrs. Lundberg,” I said. “Can I leave now? ‘Cause Ben and Jerry are calling my name.”
“What’s this then?” She pointed at the reddish lump on her forearm. “It’s got the bullseye.”
“That is an ingrown hair,” I said. “No big deal.”
Her face went blank. “An ingrown hair?”
“Yes. That’s it. You will live to peruse WebMD another day.” I put the car back in gear.
“But wait.” She thrust her arm in front of my face and I fought the urge to bite it. “It’s hot and tender.”
“It’s infected,” I said.
She drew back in horror. “Infected?”
That’s when my bad angel poked me in the brain. “That’s right, Mrs. Lundberg. You have an infection. In your skin.”
“What do I…what is...an infection?”
“Yes and, on second thought, you should go into the clinic and demand to be seen. Right now. This instant.”
“You think so?”
“I do. You might need antibiotics,” I said with a sly smile.
Fire me, will you? Let’s see how you like this.
“Antibiotics?”
Antibiotics are music to a hypochondriac’s ears. Mrs. Lundberg once asked for antibiotics for menstrual cramps. Because that’ll help.
“You never know.” Then I said the magic words that would undoubtedly send the entire clinic into a tizzy. “Better safe than sorry.”
“You are absolutely right.” Mrs. Lundberg ran for the clinic, shoving people out the way and throwing the door open so hard she nearly took it off its hinges.
Some people might say this wasn’t very nice to Mrs. Lundberg, but they’d be wrong. Yes, I got her all worked up over nothing, but, honestly, getting worked up over nothing was her favorite thing. I gave her a parting gift with a side of revenge for me. Nobody got hurt and I needed less ice cream.
If Thomas was less schizophrenic and more psychic, there might really be a red-haired woman hanging about in my car. If so, she was probably quite disappointed. I was good with it.