The Safety Zone (A Novella by Bob Racine) - Chapter 3

Cara is accosted once again by Dagne late the coming night, but the roommate this time, though just as needful of attention, seems to have undergone a complete change of personality, one that Cara finds strangely infectious. The balance of power between the two women seems to shift. But will it stay that way?

 

It was a little past 10:00 PM, and Cara was dismayed that she had not yet gotten to sleep.  It was very quiet on the ward, but the silence did not feel friendly to her at all.  She lay on her side facing the curtain that partially surrounded her bed and with her eyes shut, but slumber eluded her.  All she heard at the moment was the sound of Dagne shuffling off to the bathroom past her bed, the wheels of her IV in tow squeaking across the floor. 

Cara was grateful for the privacy that the curtain provided away from the bothersome roommate, even though it contributed enormously to her feelings of disconnection and loneliness in an unfamiliar place.  She felt boxed in.  But all that strange mixture of security and alienation was suddenly snatched away by Dagne’s voice. 

“Are you awake?” 

A cat’s purr would not have sounded much softer.  Nevertheless it was startling.  It was not just the voice itself that frightened Cara, but the proximity of it.  She realized, without having to turn over and see, that Dagne had not been on her way to the bathroom at all but had walked around and was now standing behind her.  She could hear Dagne breathing at her back, almost down her neck. 

This was a shock on top of the day’s earlier shock.  The woman had invaded her space.  It felt to her like a molestation, a grave indignity.  Every fiber in her body tightened up, her breath almost cut off.  She froze.  She figured she did not dare move a muscle, if she had any hope of getting rid of the unwanted woman.  The fact that she was faced away from Dagne afforded her the option of pretending sleep, and she took advantage of it.  She spoke not a word in response. 

But Dagne repeated her question, just as softly.  “Cara, are you awake?” 

Cara knew that it would take a few thwarted attempts on Dagne’s part for the intrusive woman to be convinced that she was indeed asleep.  As she remained motionless, with her eyes shut, fear began to overtake her, a fear stronger than anything she had felt all afternoon and evening. 

She thought of her childhood, when she could have sworn somebody had entered her bedroom in the dark of night and was thrashing around a few feet from where she slept.  She had always frozen then too, not daring to turn and look, lest she provoke her ghost or spirit or intruder to the rash act of harming her.  She had preferred keeping the invading presence invisible to the eyes.  What she might see, if she turned over and looked, would be more likely to mortify her than some faceless phantom she only heard. 

Is this how Dagne incited her roommates to die?  Was she about to work some spell in the quiet of the night?  On the other hand, maybe Dagne was hoping she was asleep.  Maybe whatever device Dagne used for doing people in only worked when they were out cold.  Maybe she would thwart Dagne’s evil intention, if she did turn around and face her. 

         

All at once the decision over whether or not to respond ceased to exist, as the dryness in her throat triggered a cough reflex.  The involuntary action forced her to move and jerk and heave.  She hacked three times before the cough subsided.  Dagne took immediate advantage of this development.

“Can I talk to you a minute?  I won’t keep you awake all night, I promise.”

Dagne spoke in the kind of hush she might have used if there had been another patient in the room that she did not want to awaken or disturb.

Talk?  Even if Dagne’s intentions were honorable and not fraught with peril, Cara dreaded the thought of being made to hold a conversation at that hour and especially with this overly burdensome woman.  But her wakefulness was now apparent to Dagne, and she knew she could no longer remain unresponsive.  She chose to plead helpless and remained on her right side as she answered. 

“I need my rest.” 

“I know, but you won’t have to say much.  You don’t really have to say anything.”

Cara considered buzzing the nurse, but she knew that doing so might antagonize Dagne and make cohabitation with her even more unpleasant.  She wanted to avoid a scene and avoid giving Dagne any more power over her than she already had.  Perhaps appeasement would be better.

“What do you want to say?” she asked, hearing the tremor in her own voice. 

“Just that-   well, I guess I want to say that-   I’m not as strong as I appear to be.  That’s been the story of my life: Everyone thinks I’m so strong, so sure of myself.  All my friends, all my family-   they believe I could walk through fire and think nothing of it.”   

Dagne’s manner of speech had drastically changed.  She had toned herself way down.  No longer was she the cheeky, rapid-talking extrovert working the room.  Gone was any hint of the grandiloquent, loquacious spinner of saucy humor.  Her tone was now beseeching, almost subservient.  Cara assumed that this was the tranquilizing effect of the medicines she must be taking. 

“I have been strong.  But you can be strong and still feel alone, can’t you?” 

Dagne paused a few seconds, as if she wanted to make sure Cara had absorbed that comment, then went on.  “People don’t always know each other – even people in the same family.”  The even lengthier pause that then followed suggested to Cara that a reply was expected. 

“You have a lot of family?” asked Cara. 

“A lot of family, yes!”  Cara was tempted to ask why, if she needed to talk, couldn’t she talk to them instead.  But then Dagne surprised her with her next statement.  “And a lot of family can be too much family.”

This reflection on Dagne’s part seemed so out of character for her that it induced Cara to turn over and face her at last.  She saw at once that Dagne had seated herself in the same bedside chair that Vernon had been using, the plastic tube still connecting her to the IV, which stood along side her.  Her face, Cara noticed, was just as beseeching and subservient as her voice.  She was leaning slightly forward in the chair, looking at Cara rather piteously.  

“Too much family?”

“Yeah, too much!  I know what you’re thinking.  If I have so many relatives, how can I say I feel alone?”  Cara wondered upon hearing this if perhaps Dagne was a clairvoyant after all.  Dagne had read her mind perfectly.  

“I don’t know what to say to you,” Cara confessed.

“You don’t really have to say anything,” Dagne assured her.  “I guess I just need to sound off, and you’re handy.  Yes, I have a lot of relatives.  And not one of them knows what I’ve been feeling.  I needed a little empathy, to have one of them say something like, ‘Dagne, I know you’re not looking forward to this, because I know I wouldn’t be looking forward to it’ or ‘Dagne, is there anything else I can do for you, anything to make this a little less frightening, a little less dreadful?’  I didn’t want them to do anything, just be with me.  I think they thought I couldn’t stand talking about the operation, but I believe they didn’t relish talking about it.”  She said all of this quite self-piteously, not disparagingly or in anger.          

 

“I’m so sorry!” Cara heard herself say this, and in spite of her fear and confusion she realized that she meant it.  This new disposition of spirit and posture of body on Dagne’s part was becoming at the same time a little creepy and a little disarming. 

Cara sat up part way, took a tissue from the side table and blew her nose.  She felt her fear begin to drain away and the tension ease.  For better or worse Dagne had snared her attention and, amazingly enough, a little of her sympathy as well. 

Dagne was once again apologetic.  “I’m keeping you up.  I shouldn’t be doing this.”

“I wasn’t quite asleep,” said Cara.  She avoided telling her that she was actually a long way from sleeping.  That admission would have signaled to Dagne that she had deliberately tried to evade her through pretense.  It was better for Dagne to think that her roommate had been on the verge of slumber.      

“But you might be asleep now if I wasn’t bending your ear.”

Cara almost went on to say that she hoped Dagne would keep on talking.  Somehow the personal confessions and the intimate tone were making the woman seem less threatening, less a weight on her mind.  She was becoming more human every second she spoke – more human and more needy.  But Cara was not yet sure if it was safe to encourage unbridled conversation from a woman she already knew could be quite garrulous.  She did not want to trigger the rude and insensitive Dagne she had earlier run up against.  Cara wondered how much control she presently had over this encounter. 

Dagne leaned all the way back in the chair and was once again looking down at her breast, covered by her gown and mounds of gauze and bandages as it then was.  This time her roommate’s preoccupation with the breast did not seem so distasteful.

“I’ve been diminished!  They tell me that a woman rarely dies from a mastectomy.  But how do I know if they got it all?  It could come back.  I dread those chem-    those chemo-   You know, those treatments!”  Dagne then drew a little closer to Cara, talking into her face.  “Just think how terrible a fifty/fifty chance would be!  Some think fifty/fifty is good, but it isn’t!  It’s the pits!” 

There was not the slightest trace of passion in Dagne’s manner.  An ascetic could not have looked more harmless or humdrum in appearance or sounded more wounded and worried.

“They tell you that?” Cara inquired.

“No.  They say my outlook is good, or at least fair.  But I know I’ve

embarked on a dangerous journey, and when I stop to think about that, I feel a little pinch of fear.  Not a lot, just a little pinch!  Sometimes I think that’s the worst kind of fear – the little pinch, the little eye drop of it they feed you.  If I was frightened out of my wits, I’d have to gather up all my reserves to fight that big monster, and I would.  But when it’s only a pinch, a little droplet, you’re not as prepared for the worst.  That’s what I’m feeling now – just enough fear to make me depressed, not enough to make me a fighter.”   

Cara felt an amazing affinity with Dagne at that moment.  Dagne had expressed her own feelings about what she herself faced and in language Cara could never have commanded.  She guessed that Dagne was an educated woman, perhaps a college graduate, whereas Cara had barely finished high school.  It seemed to Cara that the balance of power between them had shifted. 

Dagne was confessing weakness.  She was not being manipulative or glibly terrifying any longer.  She was baring her soul.  And the fact that she was confiding in Cara gave Cara a feeling of renewed strength – and renewed importance.  It had been so very long since anyone had called upon her to be a listening ear.  Her mother was the last one to do so.  

Dagne looked down again at her breast.  “I dread that sinking feeling, when they take all this off and I see the hole they’ve left and the incision.”  She said this with what looked to Cara like a shiver and a chattering of teeth. 

“You’ll gather up your strength and courage,” Cara assured her, more hopeful than certain, but pleased that she could give Dagne something halfway comforting to hold onto.

“Strength and courage!” Dagne groaned, “I guess they’re down inside me somewhere – if I can only find them.”  Dagne leaned back in the chair and was quiet for a few moments, looking sad and a bit haunted, before she shifted the conversation.  “Our families!  How can they know what we’re feeling?” 

Cara emitted a sizeable and spontaneous yawn. 

“Go on off to sleep, if you wish,” Dagne urged, in a whispered, pleading tone.  “I won’t mind.  I’m just grateful to you for giving me the chance to share all this.”  With these words Dagne reached across and laid her hand upon Cara’s arm.  There was nothing insistent or overbearing or abusive about her grip.  It just seemed to convey in tactile terms the gratitude just expressed, and the warmth of her hand penetrated the sleeve of Cara’s top. 

For ten minutes or so Dagne murmured about her life situation, reiterating over and over again what she had already said and Cara giving her perfunctory words of comfort.  Cara knew that under different circumstances she would be bored at listening to all this droning monologue, but she welcomed the chance to see and hear Dagne in a less threatening turn of mind.  It all ended when Dagne fell asleep in the chair.  Cara then buzzed the night nurse, who came in and guided Dagne back to her bed. 

Cara did not stay awake very long after that, just long enough to breathe in a lungful of what felt to her like newly purified air.  The hospital room had become friendly at last, her safety zone restored.  She felt connected and supposed that she had made a new friend.