The Safety Zone (A Novella by Bob Racine) - Chapter 2

Yesterday I began the posting of the novella, ten chapters in length, one chapter a day until the presentation of the whole work is complete.  In case anyone missed Chapter 1, please consult that previous posting before reading any further.  However long anyone takes to do the reading (people take varied lengths of time to complete a work of fiction) I must urge all who do read through it to do so in sequence.  For the fullest benefit please do not skip chapters. 

Chapter 2              Plotting to Escape the Jinx

Brother Vernon visits Cara and is called upon by her to intercede on her behalf for relocation.  She wants to put distance between herself and the undesirable roommate.  The vast difference in personality between the siblings comes very much into play to her vexation and apparently to his amusement.  He tries to shrug her off but he gets enrolled, in spite of himself.

                  

Shortly after a nurse fetched Dagne and steered her to her surgery, Cara’s brother Vernon entered the room.  Vernon was three years younger than Cara and had escaped the grandmother’s influence.  Cara knew that her own serious and reclusive personality had not been to her brother’s liking, when they were growing up. 

He had been the kind of coarse, roughhewn kid who excelled in school at wood and metal shop and always, from as early as she could remember, had what Cara considered industrial hands, those of a steel worker or a coal miner, even though he had never in his life, as a child or an adult, been anywhere near a steel mill or a coal mine. 

As far back as she could remember his face had always looked to her like that of a craggy adult, with creases and pockmarks, and his voice tight and sandpapery.  He was a very earthbound creature, who found the grandmother’s mystical musings silly, a subject only for the most bemused conversation. 

Cara let Vernon know that Dagne annoyed her, especially with the bizarre story of two earlier roommates passing away, but she had refrained from sharing her distressing thoughts about death and dying.  Her fear was something she kept hidden, though she was aware that her brother might read her fear without being told. 

Cara was a private person – some would say antisocial – and had always done battle with her trepidations by herself.  But her extrication from her present emotional predicament depended upon Vernon this time, much to her sorrow.    

“You’ve just got a couple more days here,” he said.  “Surely you can handle it that long, can’t you?  She doesn’t have some incurable disease, does she?”

“She makes me edgy.”

“You look edgy.  I haven’t seen you like this since right after you found out that mother’s illness was incurable.”

“I want to get out of this room,” she moaned.

“Maybe she should get out,” he suggested.  “You were here long before she was.”

“Please help me get another room!” pleaded Cara.  Oh, how she hated to ask Vernon for help in this matter, but she had no one else to turn to.

“Get another room!  That’s going to take some explaining, isn’t it?” As if in response to Vernon’s speculative comment, the morning nurse, Cheryl Macy, arrived at Cara’s bedside at that very moment. 

This was not Cara’s first encounter with her.  Cara had been impressed with how cosmetically fresh in appearance this young woman was.  She looked to be in her late twenties and had dark eyes and fine combed black hair that sparkled, and her complexion looked clean and almost lustrous.  Cara wondered how she kept herself looking so fetching with all the strenuous labor required of a medic watching after floods of patients. 

She was accustomed to nurses being, if not emaciated, at least plain, well scrubbed, or physically undistinguished behind their white, neutral garb.  But Nurse Macy was no mere functionary in appearance.  She had a vivacious aura that Cara found rather intimidating.    

Not surprisingly Nurse Macy asked the usual.  “Good morning, Mrs. Hutchins.  How are you feeling?” 

Cara could not remember when those words had sounded more dreadful and uninviting to her.  She knew that the cliché response Okay, I guess or All right, I suppose would have been a flat lie, so she avoided any direct answer.  She heard herself ask, in reference to the blood thinner, “How long am I going to be chained up to this thing?”  It was an innocuous question, and it skirted for the panting moment the issue of her lost safety zone, even though she knew the answer before the nurse spoke it.     

“I’m not sure. As long as your doctor considers it necessary.”  Macy had not taken the tone of a reproving parent in saying this.  Somehow she made it sound companionable – a way to reassure her that she was in good hands. 

The nurse popped the thermometer into Cara’s mouth and took a firm grip of her wrist, displaying her well-manicured fingernails against the pallid surface of Cara’s skin.  For all of twenty seconds, while the reading was being taken, nobody said a word.  When the thermometer was extracted, Vernon spoke up, while Macy took Cara’s blood pressure. 

“Don’t you have something else you want to ask her?” 

Nurse Macy, who had not been looking in Vernon’s direction, thought he had spoken to her.  “What more do you think I should ask her?  I’ve already asked her how she’s doing.”  She seemed not the least annoyed by what she thought she had heard.  She seemed to take it as a kind of flirtation.

“Now you don’t think a nebbish like me is going to have the brass to tell a nurse how to do her job, do you?”  He said this with enough of a twinkle in his eye that Macy knew he was poking fun.  Then he added, “I was under the impression that she had something more to ask you.”

The nurse put Cara on the spot.  “Ask away.  Now’s your chance, while I’m here.”

Cara felt intense hatred of Vernon at that instant for forcing upon her the onus of broaching the unpleasant subject.  Her heart began to pound more heavily, and she took a few deep breaths, as she deflected her eyes from both of them, wishing she could crawl under the covers and hide or slink out the door.  She made a weak effort but could not get beyond two words.  “Could you-      ?”  With a sigh she gave up the effort. 

“Could I what?” the nurse asked.

Cara threw a pleading look in Vernon’s direction, hoping he would get the eye signal.  He did, but he did not interpret the signal with precise accuracy.

“My sister is concerned about Mrs. Denison – the lady in this other bed, the one who’s having her breast removed.”

“Is that what she told you?” inquired Macy.

“Yeah!” replied Vernon.  “According to Cara she’s a very talkative person.  Most people wouldn’t want to advertise that sort of thing, but she just rambles on about it.  How long would she live, if she didn’t go through with it?”

“It’s hard to say,” said the nurse. 

Cara felt like throwing something at Vernon.  “Vernon!  Would

you-   ?”

“Would I what?”

“About the room!”

“What about the room?”  Cara knew that he was either playing with her, pretending ignorance, or he was no more eager to broach the subject than she was and was using a delaying action.  Finally he called a halt to the act.  “Oh, the room!”  He then addressed the nurse.  “Yeah, she wants me to talk to you about the room.”

“The room?”

“She wants another room.  She wants to get away from this Denison woman.”

“Is she a bother?” the nurse inquired, looking toward Cara.

Vernon this time did not have to be implored to speak for his sister.  “She’s very talkative.  Cara’s afraid that she’ll make a lot of conversation and keep her from getting her sleep and rest.”

“Just ask her not to talk to you,” suggested the nurse, still directing her words at Cara and not at the brother who had raised the issue.  “Tell her you want to be left alone.”

Seeing success slipping away, Cara finally got together enough voice of her own to put her request to the nurse pointedly.  “Can’t you find me another room?” 

“Well, the placement of patients isn’t exactly my job,” Macy replied.

“I’ve got to get out of this room.”  Cara’s voice was now an angry whine.  But Macy remained calm.

Vernon finally put an end to the charade.  “Cara, why don’t you tell her about the jinx?  That’s your real reason for wanting to change, isn’t it?”

“Jinx?” puzzled the nurse.

“She’s afraid Mrs. Denison has cast some kind of voodoo spell on her.”

“Voodoo spell?”  It was apparent to Cara that the nurse was making a strenuous effort to keep from laughing.  What is she, Cara wondered, a party girl in a nurse’s disguise?  And she was shocked to find out that Vernon had indeed read her unspoken morbid thoughts, even though she had not used the word “jinx” herself.

At that moment the tease in Vernon took full charge.  “Mind you, I’m not the superstitious type, but my dear sister is.  She went through, I know, at least a dozen rabbit foots all during her childhood.  She nearly had hysterics once on the way home from school.  A black cat not only crossed her path, but then followed her all the way home. 

And for all the gold in China she would never tell anyone her scary dreams before breakfast.  You know!  Any dream you tell before breakfast will come true, right?  That’s the kind of thing her grandmother laid on her.”         

Macy then did emit a slight guffaw.  “Superstitious!  I’m not getting this.  What am I missing here?”

“Denison’s room mates die,” asserted Vernon with a touch of ersatz melodrama.

“Her roommates die?  Who told you that?” asked Macy, by now wide-eyed with curiosity.

“Mrs. Denison told her.  Seems she was in the hospital two times already in the past year, and both of those times the women she was rooming with-  well, they died right after she introduced herself to them.  Well, you get the picture, don’t you?  She tells her roommate her name, and they cash in their chips.  It’s like hello is really goodbye.”

Macy turned to Cara, attempting no longer to disguise her incredulity.  “Mrs. Hutchins, you actually think she’s a jinx and that your life is in danger?”

Cara felt so foolish that she lowered her head and almost prayed that the ceiling would fall on her and bury her.  Vernon then rose to the height of his flippancy. 

“It’s already too late isn’t it, sister dear?  The deed’s already done.  She’s already hexed you.  Moving elsewhere won’t do any good.  You’ll just take the hex with you.”

As dignified as she could manage to sound under the circumstances Cara rebounded, her head still bowed, “I want to get away from her.  I don’t feel safe.”  With these words she signaled that she was closing the book on why and wherefore. 

Vernon, addressing Macy, continued to poke fun.  “I guess there’s a difference between being safe and feeling safe.  I’m afraid that if she doesn’t feel safe, she won’t be safe.  She might be safe from some jinx that she only imagines, but if she doesn’t feel safe, that means that she’s scared and nervous and all psyched out.  So not feeling safe is not being safe from not feeling safe.  Does that make sense?  I think I got that right.”

Macy responded, sounding suddenly very professional.  “If she moves, she’ll have to move to another room on this ward, and I know for sure that all beds are taken at the moment.”

By this point Cara had risen to the peak of her nerve, finally lifting her eyes to meet the nurse’s.  “Couldn’t I switch with someone?” she earnestly inquired.

“Switch with someone!  No, we couldn’t ask anybody to do that.”  Cara could not tell if there was any rancor in the nurse’s reply.  At least ostensibly she was being courteous and kind. 

Vernon was still on a roll.

“Besides, sister dear, what would you tell them?  It would be unfair to the person you’re switching with.  You’d be subjecting them to the jinx.  Once they’re in here, old Denison would pop her name to them, and then they’d be marked for extinction. You’d be sending another innocent person to their doom.  How could you do that?”

Macy walked to the far side of Cara’s bed and pulled the separating curtain far enough around the oval track on the ceiling that it obscured Dagne’s half of the room.  “Perhaps this will give you more a feeling of privacy.  Okay?” 

Cara still felt distressed and she knew Macy was reading it in her face. 

“Well, if I hear of any vacancies, I’ll try to put in a good word for you.  I’m afraid that’s the most I can do.  I have to go now.  I’ll check on you again later.”  She then left the room.

Even with the nurse departed, Vernon kept at the witticisms.  “You only have one other option.  You’ll have to come up with some potion or some incantation to counteract the spell she’s put on you.  You’ll have to fight voodoo with voodoo.  Or, if nothing else, you could pray.  Maybe prayer will do it.”

“Oh, shut up!” Cara shrieked, waving her hand at him in an air of surly dismissal, wishing she could wrap the cord from the thinner around his neck and choke him.

“I’m trying to save her from drowning, and she tells me to drop dead.  Maybe I ought to leave, before the curse falls on me.”  He did not leave, but he did remain silent, at her request.  Cara in the meantime closed her eyes and stayed mute.  She half hoped that when she opened them again, he would be gone.

He was the brother she found it difficult to like, one she could not live with but the one she could not do without.  She felt demoralized by the manner in which he had lampooned her before the nurse.  He had often in their lives made fun of her when no one else was around, no one except perhaps a few family members, but never before a stranger and at a time and place wherein she felt so vulnerable. 

After a few minutes of the welcome silence lapsed, she learned that he too was thinking about the past.

“You know, this isn’t the first time you’ve had trouble with roommates.  I couldn’t begin to count the number of boarders you’ve had in your house in the past nine years since Mom died, and it hasn’t taken a single one of them but a few weeks or months to find out how difficult you are to live with. 

“You’re so fanatical about your space and where things are put, how the silverware is arranged in the drawer.  You object to them having visitors when you happen to be in the mood for peace and quiet.  How can anybody know how your mood is going to change from moment to moment?  Why even bother with boarders?  Why not just live alone?”

“I need the money,” said Cara quite peevishly.

“You need the money!  Yeah, I suppose you do.  But the people who live with you are kind of cash short too, or they wouldn’t be there putting up with all your fuss.  You were even that way to some extent with Mom, when she was alive.  So why should anyone be surprised that a hospital roommate would get on your nerves?  You want to live alone, but you don’t want to live alone.”

Cara saw the perfect comeback.  “Sometimes you have to do things you’re not happy about.  Just like you, when Ruth kicked you out, but you went.” 

“I had no choice but to go.” declared Vernon. 

“That’s right,” replied Cara, “You made her very unhappy.” 

“Ruth was always unhappy; she manufactured unhappiness.”

“But I took good care of Mom.  I got along better with her than you did with your wife.”

“Mom never complained, you mean, and why should she?  She depended too much on you.  That what you call getting along?  I grant you you took good care of her.  I grant you that.”

Cara wondered how Vernon would respond, if she were to ask him how much he enjoyed living alone.  How lonely was he?  She knew his separation and divorce had caused him money troubles.  Supporting three children, one in college and two not yet out of high school, had been a severe drain on him.  She supposed he was just barely making it on his construction worker’s salary and must have sizeable credit card debt.  But he was too proud to let her hear him complain. 

She supposed that that was one personality trait the two of them did have in common – concealing troubles.  They concealed from each other, by a kind of tacit code of agreement.  So she saw no reason to violate the code and said nothing more to him.  She only asked him to pull back the curtain that Macy had drawn, so that she could have some sunlight. 

She felt that since human contact was proving less than comforting, she would let the natural light provide a little much-needed warmth, until Dagne was brought back.  He acceded to her wish.

Those words I need the money, Cara thought, seemed to have become a theme song on her lips for the past quarter of a century.  There was never much money, yet there was always somehow enough money.  She had held down a job as a seller of lingerie at a high profile department store for all of that time, a fact in which she took some pride, with a salary that she supplemented with money her second husband left her. 

She had held onto her small slightly substandard house, little more than a cottage, built during the 1920s, which had never heated very well, and she had been forced to rent out the one extra bedroom to close the gap between too little and just enough.  She dreaded to find out how much or how little of her hospital expenses were going to be covered by her employer’s group health plan. 

She had struggled alone, and because of that she clung to the right to suffer alone whatever circumstances called upon her to suffer.  She wanted a private room in which to do that suffering, but it was out of the question, she was told.  And now her solitude had been disrupted by an overbearing woman in the next bed and by a brother who she knew was attending to her only out of duty, not to mention the shade of the grandmother who seemed to be standing ominously invisible at her bedside. 

- - - - -

Somewhere around 3:00 pm Cara was about to sink into sleep, when Dagne was wheeled in by a nurse and deposited in her bed.  Vernon had departed a few hours before.  At least for a while, Cara thought, she will not have to worry about Dagne talking her to death, being as anesthetized as she was. 

A few minutes after the dazed and silent Dagne had been settled, Chuck entered the room and walked over to Dagne’s bedside once again.  But this time there was no conversation between them, and by the end of half a minute he had turned and started on his way out.  Cara stopped him in his tracks with her request.

“Would you pull my curtain around me?”  The less she saw of this Dagne, the better she liked it, even if it meant sacrificing the sunlight once more.

“Certainly” was his reply. 

“How she doin’?” she asked, as he closed her off.  She longed to be told that everything went fine with the operation and that Dagne would be discharged the very next day, as unlikely as that was.

Chuck paused at the foot of Cara’s bed and stared for a moment in Dagne’s direction, before he spoke.  “No complications that I know of!  The surgery took about two hours.  How she’ll be feeling when she wakes up-  well, her state of mind will determine that.” 

Cara thought she caught sight of something unspoken in Chuck’s face.  He looked at Dagne as if he was looking past the matter of breast removal or physical recovery, as if he was seeing something more in the patient, something that gave him personal pause – and concern.  As he walked out, he threw Cara a look that seemed apologetic, that suggested a wish to say more but a regret that some hidden restraint stood between him and doing as he wished. 

Cara attached no importance to this gesture.  Whatever it was, she knew it in no way concerned her, nor did she want it to concern her.  She yearned more than ever to have this crazy woman out of her sight and hearing.