Authors: Ian Vasquez
“Yeah, but—”
“No fucking but. Don’t screw this up, now. Lemme repeat this
quick so me and you on the same page, chapter, verse and shit.” Freddy started at Leo’s four o’clock call and reeled off the plan again. Then he said, “Clear?”
Leo felt a stab of anger in his chest, pressure building in his throat, but forced himself to stay calm. “Clear.”
“Your night to shine, brother,” and Freddy hung up.
Leo walked directly into the conference room, closed the door, and dialed Patrick’s cell phone.
Patrick answered after two beeps.
Leo said, “Yeah, it’s me. We have a little problem, exactly what I feared might happen. They want him out tonight.”
“Tonight? Wait one second.” Some shuffling, background noise, a door opening and closing: Patrick leaving the bedroom. “Tonight, you say?”
Leo told him about the call, all the details. “There’s more. Freddy knows Massani is out of seclusion, he knows the layout of the floor, even knows the name of the other tech on night shift. The guy’s been doing his homework. So I think this is serious now and I just need to know if your plan remains the same. Just calling to make completely sure.”
A silence. Patrick mulling it over. “I’ll call you back, all right? Give me five minutes.”
Leo rang off, poked his head out the door to see if anyone missed him. He had no idea what Patrick was planning, but after tonight, Leo would not be taking orders from him anymore, or from felonious Freddy Robinson. Maybe that meant Massani would need to go somewhere else, leave the hospital on his own terms. Maybe Leo was just the man to arrange that, and give Patrick and Freddy the finger.
After an eternity, the phone rang again. He answered, “Annex Three, may I help you?”
“Here’s what I want you to do,” Patrick going straight to the point. “Tell Freddy when you call him at four that Massani is giving you trouble, he’s acting up and there’s too much heat so you’ll have to try again tomorrow night. That man absolutely cannot leave that floor tonight. Under no circumstances.”
“So tell Freddy tomorrow instead, you sure about this?”
“Final word, I’m sure.”
So that was that.
LEO DID all the half-hour rounds from then until 3:30, which gave him the opportunity to pace. Now and then, he’d hit the bathroom for a nerves-induced leak. Now and then, a patient would shuffle out of a room to a water fountain, slurp, shuffle back in. Otherwise, the floor was dark and quiet, Martin writing notes, Rose watching him. Leo wondered how he’d tell Freddy, if he’d sound cool or if he’d hesitate. He wanted to sound natural.
At 4:10, Rose took her break, toting blanket and pillow to the conference room.
At 4:16, satisfied she wasn’t coming out anytime soon, Leo dialed Freddy’s number, stretched the cord out the door and around the corner. “Yo, man, it’s me.” He paused, trying to relax. “Look, we can’t do this thing tonight. Massani’s been acting up something awful, really paranoid, you know? And they’re keeping a close eye on him.” A glance over the shoulder at Martin. “In fact, the other tech here, Martin? He’s basically babysitting Massani, making sure his behavior doesn’t escalate. So tonight’s not gonna work. Let’s try again tomorrow, same time.”
Freddy said,
“Reeeally.”
It wasn’t a question. He said it like a man talking to a child. “Really, now.”
“Yeah.”
“Tomorrow, uh? Wouldn’t that be cool. Now listen to me, ’cause I’m going to say this only once: Don’t lie to me. You don’t think I know your voice by now? I know when you’re spouting a falsehood, Lee. This ain’t no fucking game, Lee. This man’s stepping off that floor
tonight
. You never heard me ask your opinion in the matter, so you coming with this suggestion right here is bullshit I got no interest in. You got fifteen fucking minutes to get the man off that floor, feel me?”
The line went dead, and Leo resisted the urge, barely, to slam that phone down. He slipped into the bathroom, took yet another leak, washed his hands and splashed water on his face. He paper-toweled dry, looking at himself in the mirror. Flecks of gray hair on the sides. Crow’s-feet. He did feel old tonight. Man, he despised Freddy.
He paced the hallway with the rounds board again. A bear in a cage.
At 4:28, the nurses’ station phone rang. He walked by the door and continued down to the men’s side. The phone kept ringing, then he heard Martin’s voice. “Annex Three, this is Martin, may I help you?” Leo walking on, reaching the door at the end of the hall, turning around in the darkness, hearing, “Mrs. Wash-burn? May I ask who’s speaking, please? No, sir, your aunt hasn’t been discharged… .” Leo watching the rectangle of light from the nurses’ station, hearing Martin say, “I’m not sure why anyone would say that… . That’s right. It’s Dr. Burton.” Leo keeping still, listening to Martin going, “Yes… . Uh-huh… . Yes… . No,
sir,” Freddy yakking it up, keeping him on the phone, thinking Leo was doing the deed.
A long five minutes later, Leo heard Martin hang up and saw him come to the doorway and look both ways, Leo quickly pretending to check the bathroom, feeling he could breathe again.
Fuck you, Freddy. That’s all I got to say.
LEO STARTED feeling calmer just before dawn. He’d been so keyed up he hadn’t taken a break. First time in years. He was still pacing the hall when he heard someone talking in one of the male rooms. He tracked the voice to a room on the right, slowing down to determine which one. He opened the doors, peering in, happy to find something else to occupy his mind.
A room door on the right opened and a patient trekked out, tugging at his droopy hospital-issue pajama pants, flip-flops slapping down the hall toward the bathroom. He swung open the bathroom door, the light inside illuminating the face of the new patient, Reynaldo Rivera.
Leo followed to check that all was fine, heard the man talking to himself in one of the stalls, probably hallucinating. Leo saw the stall door open, Reynaldo’s back turned to him, the man whistling a tune now.
Around six, Leo traipsed into the nurses’ station and started morning preparations. He broke out a new sheet of patients’ names for morning vital signs, wheeled two blood-pressure machines out into the hallway, a table, and two digital thermometers. Martin helped Rose set up the medication cart and rolled it just outside the door.
Pretty soon patients were wandering the hallway. At six-thirty,
Leo picked up the microphone and switched on the intercom. “Goooood morning, patients,” his voice booming over ceiling speakers all down the hall, “it’s time to rise and shine and come and get your vital signs taken. Today is February sixteenth, Thursday, and that means it’s linen change day, so after vital signs, strip your beds of all linen and that means you, too, Frances Hoy. Come to the nurses’ station for vital signs, everyone.”
Here’s where things got hairy, change of shift, night staff getting ready to leave and day staff strolling in. A time for patients to take advantage of the confusion—to elope, maybe sneak into each other’s beds or try something in a bathroom stall.
Now patients were trickling out of their rooms, some yawning, hair messy, eyes sticky. Some formed a line, others stood around scratching themselves. A couple of day-shift nurses pushed through, saying excuse me, morning, slipping into the locker room off the hall to punch time cards, then going to the staff room to pour coffee, finish their makeup.
Rose took blood pressures, Leo handled temps, Martin recorded the readings.
After a while, Rose said, “So who’s left to do?”
“Lemme see.” Martin going down the list with a finger. “Cenovia Delgado… . Frances Hoy, so what else is new? … Herman Massani, and who else? … Reynaldo Rivera … that’s it.”
“Can I have some cranberry juice?” A female patient getting into Leo’s air space.
Leo took a backward step into the nurses’ station. “In a little bit, Dolores,” reaching for the microphone and snapping on the intercom. “Cenovia, Frances, Herman, and Reynaldo, please report to the nurses’ station, we need to get your vital signs.”
Dolores said, “That boy Reynaldo loves him some Herman. All morning I see him he looking at the old man.”
“Really? Do me a favor, Dolores, don’t block the doorway, please. I’ll get everybody some juice soon as I’m through here.”
“The man got a cell phone, too. I seen it.”
Leo, arranging charts alphabetically, looked up. “Which man has a cell phone?”
“You gonna get me my juice?”
“Of course, but tell me, Dolores, who has a cell phone, now?”
“Reynaldo. He got a visitor yesterday gave it to him. Think I didn’t see? They slip it to him under the table in the dining room, a woman. I seen them, they think they slick.”
Leo moved past her and out into the hallway and looked down to the men’s side. He didn’t like what he was feeling. He started toward the men’s bathroom, saying without looking back, “The only men left for vitals are Herman and Reynaldo, correct?”
Martin said, “That’s right.”
Leo sure didn’t like what he was feeling and hurried past bundles of bedsheets outside the doors. Reynaldo’s room door was open, bed not stripped, no one in there. Leo barged into the men’s bathroom, one patient taking a shower. He headed for Herman Massani’s room now. The door was closed. It wouldn’t open, something blocking it from the inside. He put his shoulder into it and pushed, leaned with both palms and pushed harder.
Something scraped the floor, the dresser it sounded like, the door opening a fraction. He walked to the opposite wall, ran to the door and stomped it, the door bucking open, leaving a space wide enough for him to squeeze through. He poked his head in, jammed a shoulder through, saw what was happening and stepped
back out and hollered down the hall, “Red code! Red code! Help, red code!” Banging the door against the dresser that was blocking it, shoving his way inside.
Reynaldo was pressing a pillow over Herman’s face, the old man clawing at Reynaldo, skinny legs flailing.
Leo shouted, “Stop!” running to grab Reynaldo. Reynaldo stuck out a hand and jabbed Leo in the throat. Leo gagged, backing up. Reynaldo released the old man and pivoted to face Leo.
Right there, something in Reynaldo’s eyes turned all icy, and gave him away: Dude was no mental patient. He smiled and punched Leo in the side of the head. Before Leo could raise an arm, Reynaldo hit him solidly in the face, dropped a step back, and Leo charged, reaching for the arms, to immobilize those lightning fists, seeing too late Reynaldo’s foot lifting in a roundhouse kick, the leg flying at Leo as he moved his head to the right to evade it, but the foot smacked him in the left temple and fireflies flickered and his vision dimmed, going darker, tunnel vision, and he swooned, felt himself floating … no way to stop floating …
T
HE DOCTOR’S FACE LOOMED OVER HIM. “Just a tiny pinch, that’s all you’ll feel.” He tipped Leo’s head back on the table with a finger and aimed the needle at his chin. Three injections later, chin numb, he lay staring at a lit lamp in the cold room.
The doctor, an East Indian, his breath steely with garlic, leaned over with what looked like a sewing needle now, using a pair of scissors to string the sutures. His name was Dr. Bhatt. Leo didn’t know exactly how he knew that. His head was foggy.
Dr. Bhatt positioned the light close. “Okay, here we go. You shouldn’t feel a thing.”
“How many?” Leo asked.
“About four, maybe five, we’ll see.”
Dr. Bhatt began stitching him up. Pieces of stray memory floated by and Leo reached for them through a haze.
HE SAW himself in a chair in the psych ward dining room. Bloodstains on his pants, his shoes. His chin throbbing.
People milling about in front of him. Techs, nurses. Jesus, his head ached.
A doctor arrived and huddled to one side with the nurses. Leo’s left ear was ringing, he couldn’t hear a thing. He opened
and closed his jaw a few times. The techs started leaving, no more work for them here, Reynaldo in seclusion already.
Someone put a hand on his shoulder. Martin. “How you feeling?”
“Not too smart.”
“Transportation will arrive in a sec. Hang in there.”
“Transportation?” Leo had to lean back to look at him.
Martin seemed amused. “To get you stitched up, Leo, have the doctor look at you. You were out about three minutes, man. Completely out. You had us worried.”
They wheeled him out on a gurney and he remembered going down in the elevator, looking up at the face of the young black orderly with a pencil-line mustache.
When he opened his eyes again he was talking to the doctor he knew as Bhatt, who was telling him he’d split his chin when he fell on the floor and in the future he really should be more careful whom he picked fights with.
Tittering at this attempt at humor.
LEO LEFT Dr. Bhatt’s office with four stitches under his chin and a small bottle of ibuprofen. It was 11:10; he should have been home hours ago. Tessa would be worried. When he got home he’d say … what? He’d say, Hey, listen …
No matter what he said, the result would be the same: stress for her and the baby. She was already fretting about their finances, their future, and he couldn’t disagree, he needed to begin hunting for other opportunities instead of merely talking about it, especially since this job exposed him to kung fu mother
fuckers posing as mental patients who found pleasure in kicking him silly.