Promise to Cherish (7 page)

“Listen, listen, calm down.” The director gestured for them to sit. He patiently waited for each of them to comply before he went on. “I know it’s bad—very bad. That’s why we’re here. You have to remember that both the patients and the staff aren’t being treated properly. Yes, the patients are not being taken care of at a level even close to humane in some instances, but the staff has been grossly overworked for a very long time.” When the round of voices grew louder again, he put a palm up. “I’m not done. That does not give them an excuse; it just gives us a reason to minister to them as well as the patients.”

Many of the men agreed and nodded their heads. The righteous uproar over the situation at the hospital twisted around them like twine and gathered them together with one clear mission.

Well, most of them. Eli was still unsure if he could handle working in these conditions. It seemed a strange sort of hell on earth, if he was being honest. There were several moments with no one talking before the director asked DeWayne to close their meeting in prayer.

The only sound that could be heard was the rustling of everyone kneeling at chairs, the couch, or where they stood near one another. Though this was more commonly an Amish exercise, they had decided early on to do this in order to truly be humbled before the Lord.

As DeWayne began to pray, Eli opened his eyes and stared at his tightly folded hands.

“We’ve no right to judge them. Even if they judge us,” DeWayne said.

Eli’s jaw tightened.

“Let us partner with the staff, let us befriend and love our patients. Let us be Your light—a salve of healing—for all the broken here . . . not just the patients. Remind us to decrease so that you may increase.”

DeWayne’s prayer brought a familiar prick into his heart and he pushed it away. Wasn’t it time that people accept the work of the CPS camps? The camps had been serving the country for several years and yet there was still such unrest regarding the C.O.’s. He and the others who served were still Americans, yet they were working without pay, with the exception of the little money from the churches that supported them. That money barely covered their basic needs. As a detached unit, the hospital would pay them another fifteen dollars a month, but how much less was that than the other attendants?

“Move us—use our hands and feet. Let the words from our mouths be like sweet honey to
all whom we serve
. Humble us. Remove our egos and break our hearts to prove that all of Your creation deserves dignity and respect. You love them all. The senile, the simple, the invalid, and even the cruel.”

For the next few mornings Eli only followed through with his duties half-heartedly. He was kind and followed instructions to the letter. Nurse Freeman avoided him but was as friendly with DeWayne and James as they were with her. When she told him to hold Rodney down for his insulin injection after an outburst he did so. When she could’ve asked—told, rather—any of the attendants to mop up the disgusting mess on the floor from a patient who had gotten sick and vomited several times, she asked him. He even thought she had a smile on her face as she did so.

He bit the inside of his cheek when the bucket sloshed over the edges and his pants and shoes were splashed. He wanted to spew a curse but the room wasn’t empty and DeWayne might walk in any moment. The C.O. was quite like having a preacher following him around. He wasn’t altogether sure he liked him.

He pushed the sopped mop against the filthy floor and considered how he’d rather be mucking out barn stalls.

“Seems like women’s work to me.” Wally plopped down on the moth-eaten couch nearby.

Eli paused. “Why don’t you—” he stopped just in time. He cleared his throat and went on with his mopping with his back to the patient. Wally was right. It was women’s work.

“You let that nurse boss you around like a cheap floozy.”

It took all of Eli’s strength to keep quiet after that remark.

“At least you got a nice, pretty one. That Minton in the other hall’s a battleax.”

Eli raised an eyebrow and turned to face Wally. “Yeah?”

“You wanna smoke?” Wally handed him a cigarette.

Eli shook his head. He’d tried cigarettes years earlier, soon after he started his
rumschpringa
. He’d pretended to like them for a few weeks before making up a story about his parents finding out so he could quit. He hated smoking.

“Nah.”

Wally shrugged his shoulders and stuffed his pack away in the front pocket of the coat he wore over his patient uniform.

Eli worked in silence for several minutes and the floor looked as clean as he thought was possible and he pushed the mop back into the bucket. He sighed.

“Gum?” Wally offered Eli. He blinked rapidly and coughed loudly. Eli started to realize this was one of Wally’s usual ticks.

Eli chuckled. “What else do you have in your pocket?”

“Oh, smokes, gum, a few pieces of peppermint candy. My mom sends them in every so often. She sent me this coat. Nurse Eager Beaver always makes sure I get my mail but I’m not supposed to have them at all.”

Eli nodded. “Why are you being nice to me? Nurse Freeman told me that—”

He waved a hand at him.

“I was drugged up the day you came. I tricked the good nurse today. My lunacy isn’t as bad as they think.” Wally’s
eyebrow raised and reminded Eli of his hard-as-nails brother Mark.

“What?”

“I don’t need those pills.” He leaned forward on his knees as if trying to hide his twitch with a gesture for Eli to sit. He did, glad for a short break.

“Nurse Freeman said you had a breakdown after you came back from . . .” Eli stuttered when he spoke. He’d never really talked about the war or breakdowns.

He nodded a confirmation. “Still get these sort of—
memories
.”
Twitch.
“Almost seems like I’m still over there. But the drugs make it worse.”

“Why are you telling me all of this?” Eli leaned forward and asked in a loud whisper. It almost infuriated him. He didn’t want to get personal with the patients, or the staff, for that matter. He just wanted to do his job and leave. “I thought you hated me because I’m a C.O.”

“Come on, man, you’re like me.” His smile was part humorous and part cynical. “Angry all the time. You hate your life as much as I do. You’re not like the other C.O. do-gooders.”

Eli sloshed around the mop and bucket. He swallowed hard. Wally spoke the truth. He did hate working there and couldn’t easily fake a smile.

“Why don’t you just go home? You can leave, can’t you, if your parents take you? Maybe there’s—” He kept his eyes far away from Wally.

He shook his head rapidly. “Can’t do that. All my friends are dead. My mom dotes over me like I’m a child. I’m—”

“Afraid?”

Wally’s eyes sharpened before they softened but stayed diverted from Eli’s.

“Brenneman,” Nurse Freeman’s voice interrupted the two men. “Don’t put that away. There’s another mess in the hall.”

Wally elbowed Eli. “Go on, little miss maid.”

Eli laughed as he got up.

“What’s that?” Wally grabbed the magazine from Eli’s back pocket. He flipped through it and looked up at him.

“Oh. Pulp fiction. Do you mind?” Wally raised his eyebrows.

“Brenneman,” the nurse called out, sharper this time.

“Go ahead.” Wally nodded to him.

Their interlude rolled around his thoughts for the rest of the day. Wally had seemed so normal and real. He’d seemed almost like Eli himself. A grown man afraid of his past and unsure of how to move forward.

Hours later, as he lay on the cot in his room, Wally’s situation and DeWayne’s prayed words from earlier in the week pressed against him. Sleep had run far away from his busy mind. Praying wasn’t something he was good at, but he began breathing heated words from his mind to God. He told God how unfair this was, that it was too hard. He didn’t deserve to be treated this way. Without warning, he began weeping. Embarrassed by himself, he got up and turned on his light to wash his face with cold water. He caught his image in the small shaving mirror that was attached to the wall and wondered when he’d grown so angry. His face declared it with a furrowed brow and a set jaw. Was this his face now?

DeWayne’s prayer poured into his mind with the verse he’d referenced.

He must increase, but I must decrease.

In the silence of his room he pictured Floyd and the soldier Wally. Nurse Freeman’s words plagued his memory. Before the hospital, before his draft, for as long as he could remember, he always made sure he won—every last word, every bit of attention, and especially every girl. Pushing his ego ahead of everyone else, proving his masculinity, his popularity, to anyone
willing, or unwilling, to hear and watch him. Who was he without this arrogance?

He would have to lose himself here in the filth of the hospital in order to find himself—to become the person God wanted him to be.

Usually he only knelt in prayer out of obedience to the church and his
dat
. But tonight his knees fell onto the concrete floor harder than he expected, and yet it was trivial to wince when there was so much greater pain surrounding him. He rubbed away the furrow on his brow and laid his head in his hands, his back hunched over his bed. The realization dawned that he knew he could do nothing truly good on his own—not with the patients, not with the staff, and not with his life—without Him. Why hadn’t he realized this of himself when he was at home?

Lord, help me decrease.

CHAPTER 5

A
s Christine walked to Edgewood from her apartment in the Kirkbride building, she noticed a commotion at Ryan Hall. Jeanne caught up with her and linked her arm through Christine’s.

“Are they really getting fired and arrested?” Jeanne questioned. “I knew Ryan Hall was bad, but I never expected this.”

Christine vacillated between frustration with the C.O.’s for having gotten the attendants at Ryan Hall fired to being glad that the four regular attendants were gone—arrested even. The patients didn’t deserve to be abused.

“How are the C.O.’s in your ward?” Jeanne asked.

Christine shrugged. “Well, if any of them try this with my crew, they’ll have another thing coming.”

“But your staff isn’t anything like the Ryan Hall staff.”

That was true.

“Are they nice?”

“I have to admit, they are nice and fine workers. The patients like them and they’ve been a huge help, even if they’re cowards.”

“Hear from Jack?”

Christine raised an eyebrow as she looked over at her best friend.

“When are you going to stop asking, Jeanne? It’s been weeks. He hasn’t even acknowledged me the few times he’s been to church. It was just a few fun dances, that’s all.” Christine hoped she had convinced her friend. She’d secretly hoped on a daily basis that Jack would seek her out and ask her on a real date, but so far—nothing.

Only ten minutes later Christine was in the corner office in the day room. Brenneman’s loud whoop caught her attention as she prepared the medications for the day. He had the patients more engaged in a fake game of checkers than she’d seen them in all of her time there. Wally laughed out loud and it annoyed her that he had chuckled.

His shoulders barely fit into his starched attendant jacket. His white-blond hair and icy blue eyes made him striking. He was handsome, in an unrefined, rustic sort of way—nothing like Jack. Eli had avoided personal conversations with her since that first day when she’d let him have it. He seemed to have gotten over the verbal slapping she’d administered and had been cordial ever since. His easygoing manner had deflated her. His special attention to Wally forced a knot in her stomach as tight as her clasped hands. She cleared her throat and lifted her chin. She would not be remorseful for the truth she’d spoken to him.

Eli even took five or ten minutes to sit next to Wally and read novels about some amazing adventure or tell him about the green farmlands he came from. At first she wanted to tell him there wasn’t time for sitting and reading, but it calmed the patients, like reading a child a bedtime story. In the end, it was worth his time. The patients loved the colorful covers and even the less-than-intricate line drawings inside. He’d taken to the job quicker than expected and even Adkins complimented his work.

Brenneman began doing a magic trick—a rather poor one, too. He then pointed in her direction and the patients near him began lining up for their meds.

He stood by the Dutch door to ensure that everyone took their medications by checking their mouths. Without being asked, he’d started taking on this responsibility his first week of work.

“What do you think about what your pals in Ryan Hall did to get the regulars fired? Now we have four fewer workers.” Christine hadn’t expected to go at him like that, but being around him made her feel defensive.

Eli inhaled and then he cleared his throat.

“I’m sorry that it happened. Honestly.”

“Which part?”

“All of it,” he stated simply, checking a patient’s mouth for pills with the tongue depressor. “We don’t want to cause problems, just help.”