Nightshift

I was in a hurry as I turned into the hospital parking garage, but tried to drive slowly enough as to not draw attention to myself. I was late for work. I had gotten high about an hour and a half before, and while the initial giddiness had worn off there was certainly some residual fogginess. My first mission was to get to work as close to on time as possible. The second was to avoid any attention my driving, glassy eyes or sluggish demeanor might draw. The third was to read my book.

I pulled into the first spot in the garage I could find, grabbed my book, and power-walked to the front doors. No one was by the doors at 11pm except the security guard.

“Hey Jim!”

“Hey Spencer.” I said without slowing down as I passed.

“How ya doin’?”

“Good” I turned my head but didn’t stop walking. I was glad it was Spencer on duty. He was affable, not too bright, and far too awkward and nervous to notice the same in someone else. The elevator was slow so I ran up the stairs and slid my card in the receptor 4 minutes after 11. Not too bad. Would still show up on reports, but nothing anyone would get too steamed about. I’ve never been one for perfect records anyway. I used my key to open up the doors to the mental health unit and was in the office a minute later. Chad was sitting at the desk staring intently at the computer screen.

“Hello hello.” He said without looking up from the screen

“Hey man, how’s the night been?”

“Well, Suzan thought we were trying to poison her milk and started yelling at everyone around 6 but besides that they’ve just been watching TV all evening. Now they’re all conked out.”

“Cool.”

He made a few final clicks on the computer and stood up. “O.k., have a good night, bud.

“Have a good night, Chad.”

He walked out of the room and I was left alone for the foreseeable future with my new book. I had read online that the author grew up in the same small township that I grew up in 10 minutes away, and it was based on a true story from the area. The reviews said it had some shocks. It had been a while since a book enticed me so much.

It started out on a charming note, describing places that were familiar to me with shadings of nostalgia. I didn’t think the old school building and train tracks were as majestic as the descriptions, but I also hadn’t been living on the East Coast for the last 20 years. We met the three protagonists, George, Dave and Colin, about age 12. A sort of rural coming-of-age story started to unfold as the boys discovered their sex drives in ways that both excited and frightened them. They took notice of Dave’s older sister Priscilla and her blossoming figure. Not least of all Dave himself.

A subplot involving a romance between Priscilla and a young garage hand named Bill also took shape. He looked like a less-handsome James Dean and smoked cigarettes and got in fights and sulked a lot. Word had it that he had spent a few nights in jail after a physical altercation with his dad. I assumed this was true, but expected a fuller explanation of context would show him justified later in the book. He was friendly to her, in a nervous, awkward kind of way.

The three boys started a trip into the nearby woods looking for a coyote. They didn’t know coyotes were mostly nocturnal. The sun started to go down and George asked if anyone knew the way back. It slowly dawned on them that none of them did.

I was jolted back to reality by Spencer coming through the door.

“Hey Jimmy-Jim-Jim. How’s the night?”

“Good. Just enjoying a good book.” I lifted the book for visual aid.

“Yeah, you’re one of those book-smart people. Lots of school and brain power.”

“Just cause you read doesn’t make you smart.” I said a little insincerely. I hated feeling guilty or uncomfortable about my privileges.

“It sure don’t hurt. You see anything crazy up in here tonight?”

“No. It’s been a quiet night. A good night for reading.”

“Yeah, nothing goin’ on downstairs either. This floor’s usually where all the action is.”

“Better quiet than busy with jobs like ours.”

“I guess. I just get bored.”

I made a barely audible humming sound and didn’t respond further. I let the silence do it’s work.

“Ok well I’m gonna check around for any shenanigans”

“You get ‘em batman!” I lifted my arm for a single fist pump for extra encouragement.

“I’ll see ya.”

“See ya Spence.”

He left and I resumed reading. I could read faster now that most of the fogginess had worn off. No more re-reading because I somehow tuned out for a few pages.

The boys had started to argue and blame each other as a panicked response to being lost. In the heat of argument, Colin called Dave out for spying on his sister changing through the window. So did Colin. Yeah, but she’s not Colin's sister. Dave was angry and, for the first time, shamed about his sexual urges. This created a rift between the boys while they searched for markers that could give them some idea how to get home.

The story cut to Priscilla, who was having difficulties with Bill. She asked if he would go to a party at her friend Chelsea's house with her. He called her friends stupid and phony. He didn’t have any friends. She said she was feeling suffocated and that they couldn't have friends because of him, and she was going to the party with or without him. He said he didn’t care what she did, and she said that was obvious. She slammed the door as she left.

Priscila had just gotten to the party when I heard steps coming down the hallway, and a few seconds later Helen appeared in the doorway. Helen was a nurse on the adjacent wing of the unit. Never have I seen a person resemble an animal as much as Helen resembled a chicken. She was in her fifties, short, hen-shaped with a long arched nose and tiny eyes and mouth. She always spoke with an old-fashioned common sense tone and lack of patience for what she called “stupidity.” I think she fancied herself a sort of Judge Judy type. I liked her. Sometimes when I was bored I would go by her station and tease her, joking that I was living the fast life with expensive cars, more girls than whose names I could remember and lots of booze, but that I wanted to settle down, and Helen was the only suitable wife in all the land. I would beg her to make an honest man of me. “Stop that!” she would snap before chuckling to herself.

“Jim, could you cover my one-to-one close watch while I go to the bathroom? I gotta pee so bad I think I’m gonna pop.”

“Well, I might have to think about it...Ok no problem.”

We walked over to the other wing and she showed me her chair outside one of the rooms in the hallway. I knew the patients in this room. One was an elderly homeless man who was found groaning to himself outside a grocery store the previous evening. He had not said a single word to anybody. Only grunts and moans. Maybe drug withdrawal. Since no one could get any info on him, we called him John Doe. His roommate was a man diagnosed with bipolar disorder who had grey flowing locks that went down well past his shoulders. During the day he was energetic and unpredictable, often amiable but sometimes violent (he had punched another patient earlier that day). He called himself “The Highlander” and the title seemed strangely appropriate to his renegade persona. He had contracted HIV from some prostitutes. He came in as a failed suicide attempt.

I took my place in the chair and went back to the book. Priscila was feeling awkward at the party. She hadn’t seen her friends much since she had been with Bill. Only her friend Danny approached her and did all he could to make her feel comfortable. They talked and brought a few of the beers from Chelsea's fridge to the front porch and talked some more. She didn’t drink much, and started to feel light-headed.

I looked up as I started to hear sounds from within the room. The sound was moist, rhythmic, and was accompanied by quiet groans as a wet slapping sound gained momentum. I grimaced and looked down at the book. A few seconds later John Doe staggered to the doorway and rested his head on its borders. He looked thin as a rail, lost and exhausted. The sound continued. It was coming from the Highlander.

“Hey man, how you feeling?” I asked.

He groand.

“Is there anything I can get you?”

Same response.

“Was something nasty happening in there?”

“It was about to.” It was a weak and scratchy voice.

I smiled and leaned forward, delighted he had said something.

“Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?”

“Eh...eh.” He shook his head “no” and drifted back into the room.

A few seconds later Helen strutted down the hallway and resumed her post. At first I was excited to tell her that John Doe had said something, but opted out for not wanting to go into the details that would give the necessary context. Instead I just went back to my station and was reaching for the book when Spencer came in from the hallway.

“How’s things goin’?” We were both townies, but his accent was much stronger than mine. Never say college is useless.

“No changes. You?”

“You weren’t here a little while ago.”

“Just covering for Helen a minute.”

“Most excitement of the night huh?”

“Not really. I was pretty excited to finish this book. I’ve got two hours left in the shift, and if all stays calm I think I can finish it by then.”

“O.k. well I’ll let you to that.”

“Ok Spence, see you.”

“See ya.”

Finally I got back to the story. The boys had found a creek that George recognized, and they started to follow it back to the clearing by the park near Dave’s house. Colin and Dave didn’t speak. Dave was still angry at being called “psycho sister-fucker.”

Meanwhile, Priscila was feeling light-headed at the party when Danny leaned in to kiss her. They were the only two on the front porch. She didn’t object. He drew his head back a few inches, stroked the back of her cheek under her ear and leaned in again. Seconds passed before Bill’s voice called out “What the fuck?!” from the darkness as he approached the house in search of Priscila. She stood up and started telling him it wasn’t what he thought, but Bill immediately turned around and yelled profanities to himself as he left. Priscilla was crying too much to stay at the party. When she got home she saw that Dave, Colin and George were in trouble for getting home so late. Colin and George were waiting for their parents to pick them up in the living room, and things were still tense between the boys. First George left, then Colin. Dave wished it was the other way around. Then it was only Dave, his mom and Priscila. Dave was watching cartoons in the living room when there was a knock on the door. Mom came into the living room, followed by Priscila. A sharp boom cracked as their mom answered the door, and she fell to the floor limp, her face masked by blood and facial dubris. Bill cocked his shotgun, took a step inside and shot a stunned Priscila in the chest. She screamed on the floor. He cocked, took a step forward, aimed and cracked off one more before turning around and leaving seconds after stepping in. Either he didn’t see Dave or didn’t care. Dave saw him.

Dave was taken by child services and didn’t see Colin or George again. The book ended with Colin thinking about Dave years later and feeling guilty about shaming him. He wondered what Dave was up to.

I closed the book and took a deep breath. That ending had thrown me for a loop and I needed a second to process. This happened in my town? The book dates itself as taking place in 1988. That would have been before my time. I still had 5 minutes left of the shift. I got on the computer and started to research the event. It only took a few minutes before I found some archived news stories about a double-murder that took place in the town in 1988. God, the internet’s amazing.

MOTHER, DAUGHTER, KILLED BY JEALOUS BOYFRIEND. SON SPARED

Just then Page walked in to relieve me.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning.” I replied without looking up from the screen.

“How was the night?”

“Nothing to report.” My attention was elsewhere.

“Good book?” She looked at my book resting on the desk.

“Huh?...oh yeah. Just one second Page. I just need to close all this out.”

That bought me a few seconds of silence to read the article. It only took a few sentences ithe articles mentioned the names of the relevant parties. I was stunned, and felt my chest sink into my stomach.

“Is everything Ok Jim?”

I looked up at Page suddenly.

“Is Spencer downstairs?”

“He was just switching with Carl when I came in.”

“I’ll be right back.”

I got up and power-walked out the door faster than I had power-walked in. I ran down the stairs, and when I got to the front entrance I saw Carl settling into his chair behind the security desk.

“Is Spencer still here?”

“Just left.”

“Oh.”

“Something I can help with?” I had clearly been in a hurry.

“Oh, no thanks. Just wanted to talk to Spencer.” I tried to make it sound like a natural thing for a panting person to say.

“He’ll be back tomorrow night.”
I never had a really natural conversation with Spencer again. I didn’t say anything to him, but I think he could tell that I was treating him differently. He stopped coming up to my station at night. His greetings became shorter, and eventually he talked to me as little as possible. I began to understand Colin’s guilt, but also that it was probably for the best that he never saw Dave again.