The nurse left work at five o’clock. My father said she would. He said to call her before five o’clock because that’s what time she left the hospital where his father, my grandfather, was asleep in a private room facing the ocean, slowly dying.
“Your grandfather is refusing care,” my father explained. My father spoke in terse, finite statements like he was reading to me a recipe for baked cavatelli he’d just found in an old issue of Good Housekeeping magazine, an issue that had been saved for one reason or another since the early 1960s in the preferred fire-hazard fashion next to the furnace in our basement.
“The blood transfusion helped stabilize him, but it’s not looking good.” Preheat oven to 400 degrees, and heat a large pot of water to boiling. “He is refusing any further treatment and the hospital will release him to hospice care in three days.” Add pasta to boiling water; stir in asparagus tips and cook 2 minutes. “They don’t expect him to make it through the weekend.” Whisk cornstarch into milk; combine with tofu mixture and heat to boiling in a skillet. “If you want to call the nurse who is treating him, she will be with him until five o’clock.” Add cheese and bake in a large casserole dish for 15 minutes until the top is golden brown and the center is hot.
Then he gave me the main number at the hospital, as well as the nurse’s cell phone number.
***
The nurse took lunch late. She was sure to grab her purse – not just her wallet as she did when she ate with Vicky – so that she had her cell phone near.
The cafeteria was quiet, which was not unusual even around lunch time; people at the small hospital ate at odd, inconsistent hours. The nurse took a bowl of fruit and a tuna salad. She paid for the food, glancing at her phone while the cashier counted out her change.
The nurse walked outside to a gathering of picnic tables. The tables were vacant and she sat at the one farthest from the building, the only one in the shade. But not only that: at this particular table, if she concentrated, and if the wind was strong, she could smell the salty mist from the gulf.
She placed her tray down on the table and set her purse on the bench. She found an Us Weekly magazine and her cell phone in the purse; she looked at the face of the phone before placing phone and magazine on either side of the tuna salad.
The salad was under-spiced, but the fruit was fresh and she chewed it slowly as she flipped past pages of celebrities.
Colorful photos of beautiful people reminded her of Saturday evening mass at St. Ann, the service to which her aunt had brought the nurse every week until she was fifteen. There was something hopeful, or more likely, she thought, something expectant about mass at St. Ann Church. Distractedly, she looked across the parking lot, in the direction of the ocean, trying one more time to remember why she had stopped going.
***
The nurse gave up trying to remember. She spotted her Volkswagen Jetta parked in the distance and for a moment dreaded how hot the inside of the car was going to be when she left work at five o’clock. Shaded spaces were impossible in the hospital employees’ lot.
She shook her head and looked over at the silent phone and turned another page in her magazine.