A Sad Soul Can Kill You (2 page)

“Code blue,” the commanding voice on the overhead paging system said with clarity. “Fifth floor, room 524!” The operator repeated it. “Code blue, fifth floor, room 524.”

Tia Sparks had just started her Wednesday morning nursing shift at Victory Memorial Hospital on the south side of the city of Chicago. She'd entered the elderly patient's room to find him unresponsive and with no detectable pulse. After she'd called for help, she'd immediately begun CPR until the resuscitation team had arrived and taken over.

Tia had delegated herself to crowd control while the doctor and ICU nurses continued their efforts to revive the patient. She watched as IV lines were started and heart-monitoring patches were placed on precise areas of his upper body.

“Clear!” the doctor shouted as he gave the patient a jolt of electricity from the defibrillator.

Tia watched as the patient's body bounced slightly on the bed. Seconds passed with no detectable activity.

“Clear!” the doctor shouted out again.

There was still no response, and shortly thereafter, all resuscitation efforts were stopped and the patient was pronounced dead. Tia stood in the doorway, watching them prepare to transport the patient off the floor. She wondered if he had been discovered sooner would their efforts to save him have made a difference.

Suddenly, the memory of her extramarital encounter came flooding back to her. It had only happened once, but she convinced herself that she did not want the fire burning in her to be extinguished. She rubbed her shoulder. Good or bad it was the only indication that she was still alive.

She walked slowly back to the nurse's station and entered her notes into the computer, then she headed back down the hallway to check on her other patients. She reached the end of the brightly lit corridor and stopped in front of room 523. It was situated directly across the hall from the room where she'd called the code just a little while earlier. She tapped lightly on the closed door, and thought she heard someone crying.

“Come in,” the woman answered weakly.

“Good morning,” Tia said closing the door behind her. “My name is Tia. I'll be your nurse today.”

“Good morning. I'm Francis, but you probably know that already,” she said, pointing to the chart in Tia's hand. “At least I hope you do,” she mumbled.

Tia stopped at the sink next to the door and washed and dried her hands. Before putting on a pair of latex gloves, she walked over to the window and opened the blinds. Although it was a frigidly cold and cloudy day, the sun revealed itself intermittently, allowing its light to infiltrate the room. “Let's get a little light in here,” she said.

Francis's mottled hand shook as she dabbed at the corners of her eyes with a tissue.

Tia looked down at her weathered face. “Have you been crying, Francis?”

“No,” she said, rubbing the side of her face. “I'm just a little tired, that's all. And I usually go by Franny.”

Tia looked at the almost empty IV bag of normal saline that had been calculated to run slowly through her patient's veins.

“I'll be changing your IV when this bag is finished,” she said.

“Are you a nurse?” Franny asked.

Tia looked down at her navy and white nurse's pin; the gold trim surrounding it glittered from its position on her right collar. Just below the pin was her name badge with the initials
RN
in bold, black letters large enough for even the faintest eyes to see. Never mind the fact that she'd just told her who she was. She looked at the woman's gentle but tired-looking face. “Yes,” she said softly, “I am.”

“What was all that commotion a bit ago outside in the hallway?” Franny asked.

“Just a little situation,” Tia said as she placed her stethoscope in her ears, and then placed them on the left side of Franny's chest. She listened as the faint beating of her heart decreased, and then escalated like a motor being revved up.

Tia thought about her own heart and how the beating of it increased every time she heard the baritone of her lover's voice. It was like a musical opus, and it had slowly made its way to the core of her body where she'd invited it to mingle with her soul.

“Is everything all right?” Franny eyed her suspiciously.

“I'm not done yet.”

“No, I mean with the patient across the hall.”

“Oh,” Tia said. “Well, I can't talk about the condition of other patients; privacy rules, you know.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Can you sit up for me please?”

Franny slowly raised herself to a sitting position. “Did you go to college?”

Tia smiled. “Yes, I went to college. You can't get a nursing degree unless you do.”

“I was just wondering,” Franny said. “You look a little young.”

“Well, I guess that could be a compliment,” Tia said. She placed the stethoscope against Franny's back and listened to her lungs as they made a whistling sound when she inhaled. Each time her lungs reached their capacity, Tia instructed her to release the air and the sound reminded her of wood crackling in a fireplace. She pulled out her pen and began making notes on a sheet of paper attached to a clipboard.

“How old are you?” Franny asked completely dry-eyed now.

“I'm thirty-two.”

“Oh, you're just a baby,” she said with a weak smile. “But you remind me of a girl who took care of me once before when I was in the hospital. Her name was Mary. She was real nice.”

“You were a patient here before?” Tia asked flipping through her sheets. “I didn't see that in your records.”

Franny looked down at her gown and began fumbling with the collar. “Uh, no,” she stuttered, “I . . . I was at another hospital.”

“Oh.” Tia stared at her for a moment before she continued writing notes in her clipboard.

“I really liked her though,” Franny continued.

Tia thought she detected a sound of sadness in her voice. “How young was she?”

“Oh, I can't remember.” Franny waved her hand in midair. “Maybe twenty-five, thirty . . . somewhere around your age, you know.”

Tia stopped writing and looked at her. “I thought you said she was a girl.”

“Honey, when you're sixty-eight years old like me, that age
is
a girl.” She laughed a short, weak laugh. “I wish she would have been my own girl. I never had a daughter.”

Tia looked at her. The way Franny smiled and dabbed at the corners of her eyes reminded her of her own grandmother, Mavis, back in Milwaukee. Her relationship had started out rough with her grandmother who had taken her in after her own mother, Ida, had been sent to prison for the negligent death of her brother. Tia had been six years old at the time, and she could barely remember her brother who had been just a baby.

But she remembered her grandmother and how ferocious she'd been. Over the years, though, Tia had seen a steady decline in her grandmother's health, and she couldn't help but wonder if it had been due to the stress of taking care of her husband, Henry, for three years before he died.

Although Mavis and Henry had separated prior to him getting sick, they had never divorced. And after Henry had a stroke, Mavis moved back into the house and took care of him until he died. Now that Mavis was getting up in age, Tia was glad that her own mother Ida, who had since been released from prison, was there to watch over her.

“Can you lay back down for me, please?” Tia said softly.

Francis slowly slid down onto the bed until she was flat on her back.

“Do you have any sons?” Tia asked as she pulled the covers down to take a look at her lower legs.

“I have one,” she said flatly.

Tia pressed on her leg gently. The varicose veins decorated her swollen limbs like swirls of green licorice.

“Are your legs still hurting?” she asked.

“A little.”

“I read that you came into the emergency room two weeks ago complaining of leg pain.”

“Yes, I did.”

“What happened? Did you do your follow-up?”

“I wanted to. But before I could make an appointment to see the specialist, I was back in the ER the next day 'cause I couldn't breathe!”

“Yes,” Tia said flipping through her paperwork. “I see they ended up admitting you to the cardiac unit for a full workup. Now,” she closed her chart, “you're here on our subacute unit.”

“What kind of floor is this anyway?”

“Well, it's supposed to be for patients who are stable enough to leave the floor they were admitted to but who aren't quite strong enough to go home just yet.”

“Do you think I'll be going home soon?” Franny asked softly.

“We'll have to see what the doctor says.” Tia tucked the covers neatly back around her. “Your lungs still sound a little wet so the doctor will probably want to continue your respiratory treatments for a few more days. But if they clear up, that might be a possibility.”

Francis turned on the television set perched on the wall directly in front of her bed.

“So, how old is your son?” Tia asked.

“He should be around fifty-one I think.”

Tia smiled. “You don't know?”

“Well, I didn't really raise him.” She rubbed her shoulder. “It's a long story, you know.”

Tia finished documenting her assessment and looked at her. “You're probably ready to go home, huh?”

Francis shrugged. She pointed to the television set. “You know that's a shame about what's going on over there in Africa,” she said.

Tia looked up at the latest news scrolling across the bottom of the television screen. More deaths in West Africa have been attributed to infections caused by the Ebola virus. “Yes,” she said sadly, “that is a shame.”

“Yeah,” Franny grabbed a tissue from the table next to her bed. “All those people dying and their children left without a mother or father. That's some kind of torture,” she said as she began to cry.

“Oh, don't cry,” Tia said rubbing her shoulder. “You're right. It is torture. The only thing we can do is pray for a cure.”

Pray.
Tia remembered how she'd begun praying when Scamp had started massaging the soles of her feet. “Lord,” she'd prayed between moments of euphoria, “please don't let this happen.” But even as she prayed, Tia knew she had waited too late to call on God. The flickering flames of temptation that had danced around in her had, by that time, already begun to burn out of control.

Tia looked down at Franny. Her tears had been reduced to sniffles. “Are you going to be all right?” Tia asked.

Franny nodded.

Tia stared at her for a few more seconds before she realized she was not going to answer her question about going home. “Well,” she said, touching her shoulder gently, “I'll be back to change that IV in a little while. If you need anything before then just call.”

“I will,” Franny said.

Tia walked back over to the sink and tugged at the outer rim of her latex gloves until she had pulled them down and off. As she washed her hands, she thought about all the patients she'd taken care of who were similar to Franny in that they never followed up with the doctor's recommendations.

Victory Memorial Hospital had once been deemed a central dumping ground for the majority of city residents. But since the restructuring of its financial plan, the hospital had expanded not only in space but in technology as well.

Now its specialty services were offered to all of the counties surrounding the city of Chicago, and Tia hoped Franny would follow up with the doctor's referral and take advantage of the services being offered to her once she was discharged.

Her thoughts shifted back to the memory of Scamp's fingers and the massage he'd given her the night before. She turned off the faucet and sighed. Even if she had wanted to, she wouldn't have been able to put out that fire. There was no amount of water that could have doused the inferno that had burned within her.

Lorenzo, her husband, had neglected her needs for so long that the slightest bit of attention from another man was enough to cause her to subconsciously hunt for more. Scamp had made whatever she was looking for easy to find. When he'd introduced himself in the grocery store that cold day in January, Tia had initially been resistant. But when he'd let it be known that he could give a good massage, her interest had been piqued.

Once she'd looked into his hazel eyes, it was as if she had become hypnotized. She became blind to the consequences of what their meeting would eventually lead up to, thinking only about the opportunity standing before her . . . an opportunity she was desperate to take advantage of.

Tia snatched a paper towel from the wall dispenser in Franny's room and began furiously drying her hands. They had been washed clean, but what about her soul? She threw the used paper towel into the wastebasket and walked out of the room.

Lorenzo Sparks stood nervously in the middle of his parents' kitchen, staring at the stainless steel toaster on the countertop behind his mother. The small appliance glistened in the setting sunlight that filtered through the window, and he was thankful for the rays that bounced off its metal rim. It created a blinding effect and gave him a reason not to look directly into his mother's disbelieving eyes.

“Son, are you sure?” his mother asked feebly. “Are you
sure
that's what happened?”

Lorenzo glanced at his father. “Yes,” he said. “He took me up to the attic and told me to take off my pants—”

“That's enough!” Lorenzo's father yelled.

The sudden loudness of his voice caused Lorenzo to jump. He jerked his head just in time to see the hostility in his father's eyes.

“I won't sit here and let you smear my brother's name!”

Lorenzo lowered his head as his father stormed out of the kitchen.

The crushing silence that followed was soon interrupted by the swishing sound of bundled straw sticks as his mother began sweeping the already immaculate kitchen floor. He watched her as she swept invisible crumbs of debris into a neat little pile. She scooped them up into the dustpan, and then deposited them into the wastebasket where they would be escorted out with the rest of the trash.

Lorenzo knew then that relinquishing the weight of what had happened to him twenty-seven years ago had been a mistake. The apathy and hostility in his parents' eyes told him so. It confirmed what he'd always feared, and what the perpetrator—his uncle—had told him would happen if he ever told anyone.

They would not believe him.

And they didn't.

The realization that his parents wouldn't or couldn't accept the truth made the burden he'd carried for so long all the heavier. Lord, would he ever be able to release this load? His shoulders slumped as his heart began to swell from the inward pain he felt. Would he ever be free?

“I guess I'll be going,” he said awkwardly.

His mother continued with her make-believe cleaning.

Lorenzo slammed the door behind him and shuffled quickly to his car. With every step he took, he wished he could take back the words he'd just spoken to his parents. The car rocked gently as he squeezed his large frame behind the steering wheel. He let the engine idle while he turned on the CD player. The lyrics from a popular Gospel artist filled the surrounding space:

Lorenzo turned off the radio and sighed. He put the car in gear and headed toward the interstate.

His parents lived in an upscale suburb on the North Shore of Chicago, almost parallel to I-94. As he drove along the highway, the views quickly transitioned from suburban neighborhoods to grungy residential to industrial by the time he made his exit.

He drove toward Lake Michigan, passing through an eclectic neighborhood of auto shops, liquor stores, restaurants, and churches until a winding road led him directly to the lakefront. He parked his car on a nearby parking lot and turned off the ignition.

As Lorenzo got out of his car, he looked up at the smokestacks from the factories nearby. The stream of soft gray smoke paled against the night sky that was illuminated by the city lights. There was not a single star in the sky as he watched airplanes returning from unknown destinations. He closed his eyes and prayed.
Just make it better, Lord. Please make it better
.

The flashing red light from the pier danced about his face. Why didn't his parents believe him? Why . . .? He stopped and opened his eyes. There was no use in starting another internal dialogue.

He shuddered as he pulled the collar of his coat up around his neck. Then he started walking until he found himself standing directly in front of the lake. It had been an unusually cold winter, and the temperatures for the first week in February had fluctuated between 25 degrees above zero and -25 degrees below with the wind chill factored in.

The picnic tables had all been lined up neatly against a toolshed that stood deserted for the season, and mounds of snow that had been plowed from the walkways surrounded the benches, trees, and any other area that was not in the direct path of would-be pedestrians. Off in the distance he thought he saw someone running; his dark outfit a mere silhouette.

He stared at the frozen water; its exterior decorated with never-ending patterns of cracks and curves. He could hear a soft, steady rumbling just below the surface where the water had not completely frozen. It was as if the massive body of water moved in unison, rushing to reach an unknown destination. He stood listening until the sound began to blend in with his own thoughts, until like the horizon, he could not tell where one ended and the other began.

It had been twenty-seven years and Lorenzo was still reliving the memory of what happened to him when he was eleven years old. Each time he recalled the incident it induced a kind of internal explosion within him, and the internal void he lived with became a gaping tear. It was a tear with shredded edges that continued to expand, and Lorenzo could not mend it.

He remembered the subtle curvature of the man's (whose name he refused to speak out loud) mouth, and the lies he'd used to bait him back then.

“I'm telling you, little man,” the perpetrator had said to Lorenzo, “this is 1987. You better get with the program.”

Lorenzo recalled the perpetrator's finger poking into his blue jean-covered thigh while he talked.

“I know what I'm talking about,” he continued, “and you need to let me help you. Your girlfriend is gonna need you to tell her what to do. How are you gonna tell her if you don't know? You don't wanna look like a chump, do you?”

Back then, Lorenzo hadn't known what a chump was, but he remembered shaking his head slowly, thinking it was probably something he would not want to look like.

“And,” the perpetrator added with persistence, “if you let me do this now, it won't hurt you later when she's doing it to you.”

“But I don't even have a girlfriend,” Lorenzo remembered saying as he watched the perpetrator blow transparent circles of cigarette smoke into the air.

“But you will,” he'd said. “You will.”

“And boys can get hurt?” Lorenzo had asked.

“Oh yeah,” the perpetrator said, baring his crooked, mushroom-colored teeth. “Guys get hurt too.”

Before anything happened, Lorenzo attempted to verify the accuracy of what he'd been told. He'd asked his mother if it was true that “doing it” with a girl for the first time was painful for the boy. The sound of shattering glass from the plate his mother dropped was still vivid in his memory.

“Where'd you get that information from?” his father had asked, looking at him as if he'd lost his mind.

Lorenzo had opened his mouth to tell, but then he remembered he'd been sworn to secrecy by the perpetrator. “Nowhere,” he'd answered. “I was just wondering.”

“Well, wonder yourself on upstairs,” his father had said sternly. “You ain't got no business thinking about stuff like that. Go on upstairs and read a book. Get your mind out of the gutter.”

Several days later, when the perpetrator knew no one would be at home except Lorenzo, he came to the house. He took Lorenzo up to the attic, reminding him along the way about his vow of secrecy. He told him to lie down on the dusty wooden floor, and Lorenzo, surrounded by items long forgotten or no longer wanted, silently wondered why the thing being done to him for his own good had to be kept a secret.

Just a few days later, the perpetrator wanted to “help” Lorenzo again, and had carried him into the downstairs bathroom. But Lorenzo had begun to sense that something was not right with this kind of “help.” He remembered struggling and kicking until the perpetrator had given up. That had been the last time Lorenzo allowed himself to be in the same room alone with the perpetrator. Still, the damage had already been done.

He had wanted to tell someone what had happened, but his uncle had convinced him that if he told it would be Lorenzo who got into trouble. And so, believing yet another lie, Lorenzo kept the secret and grew up convinced that it had all been his fault.

He shuddered as he remembered lying in the attic, frightened and confused while the perpetrator “helped” him to become a better boyfriend for his nonexistent girlfriend. The intricate patterns formed by the cobwebs in the corner of the ceiling were still etched in his memory. And Lorenzo wondered how long they had been there, hidden in plain sight.

He looked around the deserted lakefront. He had no idea how long he'd been standing in that one spot, but the numbness in his cheeks let him know it was time to go.