The Tao of Apathy

The Tao of Apathy

Thomas Cannon

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of
the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is
purely coincidental.

Any portrayal, dialogue, or scene of anyone’s
sex, profession, sexual orientation, etc. is for comedic effect
only. The author tried his best to disparage everybody.

Cover art:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/anieto2k/6153919842

License

Some rights reserved
by
anieto2k

Copyright
©
2013 Thomas Cannon

All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

John often contemplated how much energy was
used at the hospital and found himself wanting to shut off lights
as he walked down the well-lit hallways. Every area of the hospital
was designed to have a sedate brightness that required a huge
amount of indirect lighting. Even the rarely used halls in the
lower level were kept in the perpetual brightness of a marijuana
grower’s basement and John did not want that much effort being put
into lighting his way. And yes, he did feel guilt from making the
electric motors of the elevators work, especially when he was so
thankful when he was able to ride alone. But he couldn’t believe
Dr. Callous was serious.

John had been on the elevator when Dr. Callous
wandered on with a file in one hand and a Styrofoam cup of coffee
in the other. With the pinkie of his coffee cup hand, he had pushed
the six button. John grimaced and squeezed his eyes as he always
did when someone rode the elevator with him. He lowered his head
and massaged his temples with his fingertips, but still the least
thing John wanted to happen, happened. Dr. Callous talked to him.
“You know,” he had said, “If you rode up to six with me and then
walked down to your floor, I could get to where I am needed
quicker.”

For a moment, the doctor stared at the
luminous five and six buttons as if waiting for John to unselect
his choice of the fifth floor. Then he turned to face John who was
only five foot six, but had a muscular body he had not put any work
into. Callous scrutinized John’s plain, gray T-shirt and blue jeans
frayed at the fly, and John’s rugged good looks with a strong nose
and brown hair feathered to his shoulders. “Doesn’t that make
sense, boy?”

Dr. Callous had bright silver hair that
receded gracefully from his wrinkled brow and a slight stoop that
made him eye to eye with John. Except John looked away and down and
said, “Yes” just to say something.

When the elevator doors opened on four and an
elderly housekeeper and her cart of spray bottles, mops and buckets
ambled on, Dr. Callous swore under his breath.

“
Good morning, Irene,” Dr. Callous
sung out, changing his tune once she was within hearing aid range.
“How are you today?”

“
Pretty good, Doctor.” Irene, a
small hunched-back woman who smelled of sweat and unwashed hair,
had been cleaning rooms at St. Jude’s for thirty years. The doctors
and all the nurses knew Irene, hated her and gave her a cheerful
hello whenever they ran into her. “You’re here early today, Doctor
Callous,” Irene said with a scratchy, cheery voice. “How are Janis
and your two girls?”

When the doors opened on five, John dove head
first through their dialogue and emerged out the other side and out
the elevator, skinning his knees on the bottom of their
conversation. Both ends were shallow.

The doors shut leaving Dr. Callous one more
floor to go with Irene. “They’re good. Tiffany and Sasha are both
getting straight A’s,” Callous guessed. He hated Irene for asking
the question when he didn’t know the answer. He resented her and he
resented his high paying job that gave him everything he wanted. He
resented himself because he would not give up the job he resented
even after he became independently wealthy and could go on to
resent retirement. “Good talking to you,” he seethed and brushed by
her as the door opened on six.

“
Well, thank you very much,
Doctor.” Irene pushed the door hold button to push her cart out on
six also, but before she got any momentum, two nurses from 6D- The
Sleep Disorders Department stepped on the elevator. They gave her a
warm “Hello.” God they hated her. But they wanted to prove to
themselves that they didn’t consider Irene and the rest of the
boorish nobodies in Housekeeping boorish nobodies.

Irene pushed her cart out of the elevator
while chatting with the nurses about cleaning rooms and her
arthritis. She started to go on about her biggest accomplishment
being all her friends at Saint Jude’s when one of the nurses pulled
out the door hold button and cut the umbilical cord to the
conversation. Irene went on, pushing her cart down the wide, staid
hallway. The patient rooms were darkened with only a few slants of
early morning sunshine coming through the east windows. Irene
watched the breathing mounds of blankets that were the patients of
6A-The Geriatrics Department. She continued on to 6B where the
offices of the third floor managers and directors were still
unoccupied. Irene stopped her cart on the yellow strip on the
carpeted flow that signaled the beginning of 6C-The Center for
Negligible Diseases Ward. Then she turned and retraced her steps
back to the elevator without her cart. It was break
time.

Irene stood in the elevator and watched as
John got back on the elevator on five. He pushed the B button and
brushed past Doctor Zamboli, two nurses, and a patient with an IV
on an IV pole going out for a smoke. John looked like he had a
migraine headache so everyone made room for him and quietly went
back to what they were doing which was staring at the floor
indicator in silence.

With his job, John had many opportunities to
meet people and make friends. He couldn’t handle that. It took more
muscles to frown than to smile, but it took a lot more energy to be
friends than indifferent non-acknowledgers of each other’s
presence. He could say hi to the hundreds of co-workers he saw
everyday. One hello would lead to another hello and soon he would
be exchanging familiarities with someone everyday. But John was
sure that it would never progress to “What are you doing on
Friday?” and then to “Shall I make you breakfast?” (With men it
would never progress to “Do you want to come over for the game on
Sunday?)” So why bother with hello? was John’s thought. As a result
John was rude. Not out of hostility, but because there was no
reason to be otherwise. He never made eye contact walking in the
halls. When he needed others to sign the supply sheet, he did not
ask them how it was going first. If the elevator was not empty when
the doors opened for him, he would probably tell the people on it
that he would just catch the next one.

He was consistently non-friendly and as a
result, everyone wanted to know him and several nurses had met him
in bars and slept with him.

Irene got off the elevator on two to meet a
few other housekeepers for break. John studied the blank sheet of
paper he held in his hand and pretended not to notice her tentative
glance at him as she passed him. Seeing the same person back on the
same elevator demanded that John or Irene make a comment and that
the other person laugh and say, “We got to stop meeting like this.”
John certainly was not going to talk to Irene, especially since she
had chosen to ignore him and talk only to Dr. Callous before. If
Callous had not been on the elevator, Irene would have talked
John’s ear off; but she was not going to waste her breath on John
when she could waste all of it on a doctor.

Once Irene was out of the elevator and the
doors had shut, one of the nurses bravely said, “God, she smelled
awful.”

“
Yeah,” the other nurse whose
breath reeked of eggs, bacon and generic cigarettes agreed. “They
should make those housekeepers shower when they get here. They
stink.”

The two nurses laughed as the door opened on
one. Doctor Zamboli said in a heavy middle-eastern accent, “A woman
in her early sixties can be terrified of slipping in the bathtub.
Even with the emergency room here, I don’t think she would shower.”
The nurses laughed again. “I don’t think she is to be ridiculed.”
The doctor let the patient with the IV pole out and then stepped
out. The nurses waited a moment and then sulked out behind him.
Later going out for a cigarette, they would commiserate on how the
doctor had insulted them.

A security guard got on the elevator and John
would have to talk to him, even scanning his important blank paper.
He could carry this paper throughout the hospital and instead of
eye contact or a hello; he could read the blank paper and look busy
on an errand. If that didn’t work, he could nod through a
conversation, but he would have to talk to the security guard. The
three security guards at Saint Jude’s looked debonair in their
uniforms with their shiny badges and embroidered insignias and
silly because their uniforms never fit right. This guard, Tim, had
neatly pressed flood pants. They were different from the rest of
the staff John met in the elevators. Without anything to do, but
steal lunches out of the break rooms and have sex with nurses on
the desk in the security room, they were always so friendly that it
forced John to smile and crack a joke and wish them a good
day.

To avoid this, John jumped out of the elevator
as the doors closed. He stopped short of bumping into a man wearing
green shoes and purple pants. “Hey Dykes,” the purple-panted man
called out as he reacted with a jump.

“
Hey, Bigger,” John returned with
a smile and furrowed brow. “Hey, Joe,” John (Dykes) said to one of
the other guys with Bigger. Joe was dressed all in white. Even his
hat was as white as paper. In fact, it was paper. John didn’t say
anything about the other guy with them that he didn’t know. He had
on white pants and a white T-shirt, too; so John assumed he was a
new guy in the kitchen. The newbie was a younger guy, maybe
twenty-one or twenty-two with blonde hair cut short and a bunch of
earrings in each ear. “How’s it going in the kitchen?”