No Place to Keep Children

When I awoke, I was reclined.

The strange, ethe­re­al spot­light that made Grace’s unbound­ed office look like the stage of a col­lege audi­to­ri­um on per­for­mance night was gone. Its illu­mi­na­tion had been replaced by the warm flick­er of tiny votives rest­ing on gold­en wax plat­ters no big­ger than a Kennedy half-dol­lar. Dozens of these fire­fly-sized flick­ers nes­tled in geo­met­ric arrays on the end tables bor­der­ing the couch. More still sat on an ornate­ly inscribed curio tray atop the ottoman I had been fac­ing moments ago when I had been seated.

Shelves high­er up, in posi­tions that would sug­gest walls, held more of the vast col­lec­tion of fiery pin­pricks. They seemed to float at dis­tances far beyond what walls could con­tain. The votives arranged on the desk made the white-maple equine glow in ambers and reds, as if the venge­ful mare were leap­ing from the mouth of Hell.

The nuclear light­ning cours­ing pain ran through my every cell before Grace’s injec­tion had abat­ed to glow­ing embers, which shift­ed across my unmov­ing form. My head was cush­ioned by Grace’s sup­ple thigh, the fab­ric of her ivory skirt soft against the back of my neck. She brushed a damp cloth cooly across my fore­head and cheeks.

“It is so much eas­i­er to pro­vide com­fort with a body, I think. I can see the relief as it relax­es the mus­cles across your face. I can feel the ten­sion in your neck release as you are soothed. I can see your breath­ing slow and deep­en. The creas­es around your eyes and lips fade. You look younger as the pain and fear drop away. Sometimes, when we are ‘here,’ I for­get how much com­mu­ni­ca­tion with you is lost with­out bod­ies to express it.

“There is a man after you, Jack. He is an unimag­in­ably bad man, a pro­found­ly pow­er­ful man, with many, many, very pow­er­ful friends. He is a very old man, very experienced—almost as old as you.”

Grace’s voice is less bells as she gives me this news. It is bag­pipes play­ing a sad dirge behind a litany of bad tidings.

“In truth, Jack, he is not after you; he is after what you are car­ry­ing. What you car­ry is pre­cious in a way I’m afraid you are cur­rent­ly inca­pable of under­stand­ing. The bad news is that this has always been true. He has always been chas­ing you because you are always car­ry­ing some­thing precious.

“The process we began, the process of con­nect­ing your mem­o­ries, has drawn his atten­tion. The mem­o­ries you expe­ri­enced are some of Jack’s deep­est lim­bic imprints, his fail­ures if you will. They are sit­u­a­tions he could not alter, tragedies unavoid­able by any­one, even him. Then there is the farm, which rep­re­sents his fam­i­ly, and the fear of the cost of his per­ceived failures.

“The ener­getic out­put of re-expe­ri­enc­ing those events is like a bea­con to a sadist such as the one who chas­es Jack, par­tic­u­lar­ly when such suf­fer­ing is pre­cise­ly what he is lis­ten­ing for. When I put you out, your pain van­ished, and so did you, as far as he was concerned.

“And yet, with such pre­cious car­go at stake, we must pro­ceed. So pro­ceed we will, but down a dif­fer­ent path with soft­er foot­ing for qui­eter steps.

“I am going to tell you a sto­ry, Jack. When I am fin­ished, if all remains qui­et, you will tell me what you thought of dur­ing the sto­ry. I will ask you ques­tions, and you will rumi­nate on the answers. In this way, we will pick up the pieces of you as we exam­ine the pieces of when. Are you ready to proceed?”

I was still unable to speak. This body that Grace kept refer­ring to as if it was a car I was dri­ving, or worse yet, the illu­sion of a car for me to dri­ve, was more exhaust­ed mush than man­age­able mus­cle. I clenched my teeth into a Cheshire grin and waved a mea­ger “thumbs up” with the dig­it of my left hand; then Grace began…

“This is no place to keep children.”

That’s what Godiya thought every time she had to enter this hos­pi­tal sec­tion. Something seemed to hap­pen to the kids as they were moved out of the intake ICU, or more cor­rect­ly, some­thing decayed in her own per­cep­tion of them when, upon exit­ing the floor, they were either moved into the recov­ery wing or rolled into the LTW on noisy, flick­er­ing cast­ers to the fur­thest cor­ner from intake.

On intake, every shat­tered body and blood­ied ban­dage was the cen­ter of a web of care­tak­ing where fam­i­ly, friends, doc­tors, nurs­es, and author­i­ties formed a bee­hive of life-sav­ing activ­i­ty around a child that was entire­ly fueled by hope. The nurs­es used that flur­ry of hope to pro­pel their own sacred pro­jec­tion that out of all the death sur­round­ing them, this child could be saved. In the cas­es where that mis­sion fal­tered, it was eas­i­er for every­one when the client ter­mi­nat­ed. At least then the par­ents could move swift­ly into focus on a new kind of hope, the kind cen­tered on the ques­tion, “What comes next?”  This was exact­ly the cor­rect ques­tion to ask at such a time, in Godiya’s opinion.

It was worse when the trans­fer orders came back stamped “LTW,” which low­ered the thresh­old of hope as quick­ly as the val­ue of a new car when it dri­ves off the lot. The LTW was a place where par­ents stored their child-shaped dreams until they could learn how to say good­bye to the world they had built around them. Illusorily titled the “Long Term” wing, the LTW was a nest of clos­ets har­bor­ing short-term vis­i­tors and even short­er-term hope. It was a shad­owy hall in the far­thest cor­ner of the hos­pi­tal where insur­ance com­pa­nies fought against pay­ing to pump the hearts of the dying chil­dren whose par­ents strug­gled in a three-way tug of war between finances, the will of God, and the pain of let­ting go of the dream that was their child. The ameni­ties for these chil­dren dis­si­pat­ed as quick­ly as the hope that buoyed the financing.

“That’s how insur­ance com­pa­nies work,” thought the young nurse. “You get five days of ‘max­i­mum hope,’ ten days of ‘mod­er­ate’ hope, fol­lowed by five more days of ‘not much’ hope, con­clud­ing with two days of, ‘You should prob­a­bly give up,’ and on Day 23 you reach, ‘Well, folks, it’s time we made some deci­sions,’ from a guy in a blue suit with an office and a calculator.” 

Godiya nev­er let her care for the chil­dren wane as that buoy sank, but she couldn’t quite keep her smile in place when she had to make the jour­ney down this hall. It often slipped off and land­ed in the form of a tear on the pil­low of her lat­est lost angel. She was only 21 and hard­ly ready to face such pain at all, much less on a dai­ly basis.

“This is def­i­nite­ly no place to keep chil­dren,” she mut­tered and flicked on the lights.

At 6:30 am on November 22^nd,1986, the tooth­paste-green of the indus­tri­al tile in the LTW was as depress­ing as a class­room dur­ing sum­mer ses­sion to Godiya. The only thing that made her sad­der than being on the wing in the first place was her cur­rent client. Max would be her only client for this long Thanksgiving week­end if her prayers for sober and safe dri­ving by hol­i­day trav­el­ers were heard.

“I don’t think we could be a cou­ple Max. You drool too much in your sleep.”

Max had come in on his six­teenth birth­day. He was a lanky boy of five feet ten inch­es with a dirty blond asym­met­ri­cal hair­cut shaved to leave his right ear and scalp exposed while a jagged swath of his mane shroud­ed the left side of his face.

She wiped the drool from his chin, then pro­ceed­ed to open each of his eyes and drop gel lubri­cant into the low­er lids. Even with their blank expres­sion, his steel grey iris­es enchant­ed Godiya, and she didn’t mind flirt­ing with a guy who could only agree. She had found lit­tle time for dat­ing while study­ing for her bachelor’s as an RN and even less inter­est in has­sling with com­mu­nal per­son­al dra­ma; plus, the doc­tors sug­gest­ed that talk­ing to the boy might be keep­ing his brain active in ways they couldn’t yet mea­sure. So why not have an imag­i­nary fling with a cute guy who is also a yes-man? Seemed like a “win/ win” to Godiya.

“You’re pret­ty heavy, too,” she quipped to Max as she rolled the skin­ny teen onto his side to pre­vent bedsores.

“But you are very pret­ty, Max, and for that, you get a pass. So, Mr. Pretty-Yes-Man, do these scrubs make my butt look big? This is the wrong place to say “Yes,” Max. I’m test­ing your dis­cern­ment. If you’re not smart enough to fig­ure that one out, bud­dy, you’re sure not smart enough to date me.” 

Godiya mocked a scowl and flipped her nose up at the comatose sil­hou­ette. She had learned that feigned play­ful­ness was the most effec­tive defense against the sad­ness of cas­es like Max’s. It was her best tool to keep from drown­ing in the despair of oth­er people’s loss­es, and being in Mrs. Veihl’s field of despair might be enough to drown anyone.

Max’s mom just couldn’t under­stand the “why” of what had hap­pened, and nei­ther could Godiya, real­ly, because they both knew that, in actu­al­i­ty, Max was a very smart boy. Godiya imag­ined that may have been part of the prob­lem for him.

“I think you like me because I’m such a pro­gres­sive girl, Max. And I believe you decid­ed that because I told you I liked your ear­rings when you came in. And I always com­pli­ment­ed your make-up when your mom brought new pic­tures in.”

She brushed her fin­ger over the curl­ing Polaroids Mrs. Veihl had tacked to the cork­board above the telepa­thy ter­mi­nals built into the var­ie­gat­ed green tile wall.

“I’m your old­er woman, Max. Sophisticated enough to be intrigued by what the girls your age only find con­fus­ing. I bet your affec­ta­tions didn’t make you many friends in school, did they, honey?”

Godiya swept a damp cloth over Max’s fore­head, added anoth­er few gel drops to each eye, and then taped his lids back closed. She dunked the cloth in its basin and pro­ceed­ed to scrub the creas­es of the boy’s face with the ten­der thor­ough­ness of some­one new to her trade, still inno­cent enough to for­get she couldn’t love her patients, still unaware that it was not safe for her heart.

“I’m so sor­ry, Max. People are hideous­ly cruel.”

Godiya sniffed back an escaped tear as the words tripped, thick in her throat. Godiya turned from the bed, set the cloth in the stain­less steel basin atop Max’s bed stand, and picked up her clip­board. Slipping the ball­point from her pock­et, she cir­cled the room, record­ing bio­met­rics from the life sup­port equip­ment whose whis­pers and whines had come to invade her sleep most nights and woke her most morn­ings with stom­ach acid and anx­i­ety. It was nev­er sup­posed to be this hard, she con­sid­ered, regard­ing nurs­ing. It was nev­er sup­posed to be this sad try­ing to help children