The Graceview Patient By Caitlin Starling - 10

I couldn’t go to the garden that day.

At every turn, something stopped me. Dr. Santos was delayed, and I had to sit and wait for him to round. Then there was the day’s infusion, a lengthy one that, while not as disorienting as the first, kept me tethered to my bed by more than my IV tubing. Even once I was unhooked, dinner took over an hour to arrive, and before I knew it, it was shift change again. The sun was setting. A whole day, wasted.

Were they intentionally keeping me busy? Or was it just how SWAIL worked, part of the reason it required such a lengthy hospital admission and such close nurse supervision?

Or maybe it was a side effect of Veronica’s decline. Maybe they were all dealing with her.

Isobel was brusque when she took over. Not unkind, but entirely businesslike, minimizing her time in my room. I appreciated it. You should consider leaving the trial still haunted me, sandpaper-rough in the back of my brain. So at odds with what Veronica had told me, and shouldn’t she know better?

But then I’d think about how Veronica had looked, seizing in her bed, or before that, frightened by something only she could hear. How reliable of an observer was she, so deep in it? Maybe Isobel was right. Maybe—

And around and around I went.

So I got up, got dressed. It was night, yes, and I was exhausted, yes, but nobody was there to stop me anymore, and Veronica wanted those flowers.

And I wanted out and away from everything that made me think of the great unknown I was hurtling toward. No amount of ASMR-y auger restoration videos had done the job while the sun was up, but maybe some unsanctioned horticulture would.

Isobel did see me leave, I think. I have a vague memory of her sitting at the nurses’ station. Somebody else buzzed me out, but she was there, head in her hands. Tired already?

Or something else?

At the time, I didn’t think about it. I walked out of the ward, to the elevator bank, and hit DOWN . The mistake I’d made last time, I figured, was not looking like I knew where I was going. Like I didn’t belong there, because, of course, I hadn’t. But now I had a motivating, organizing purpose: get to the garden, see if the door was unlocked, and if it was, get the flowers.

It felt good, having a purpose again. Having a simple purpose. One task. One metric I could pass or fail by.

I did my best to ignore the fatigue trailing me. I felt like I was leaving scraps of myself behind, bits of momentum lost like flakes from my itching scalp. But the animating force of striding , not skulking, helped. Here was the lobby; here was the door. It moved under my hand. I wouldn’t even have to prop it open to make sure I could get back in.

I was going to get Veronica her flowers. I was going to be useful.

Useful.

Maybe that was it. It had been so long since I’d been anything but a burden on anybody in my life. At least I could cut some flowers.

The garden wasn’t illuminated at night. Nothing overhead, and no path lights, either. The only light was from the moon (far off), ambient light pollution largely blocked out by the hulk of the main hospital building, and faint beams cast down from lit windows above. Not pitch-dark by any means, but it took thought to navigate.

I remember being cold. Chilly, really, nothing extreme, but I hugged my arms tight to me. I couldn’t tell if the weather was unseasonably cool or if I was feverish. I ignored either answer. The paths were winding, probably designed for the illusion of privacy in a densely populated place. I imagined others who had walked those paths, pre-grieving for seriously ill patients, or chasing after kids who didn’t know that dad was in surgery.

It was a nice garden, for their sakes.

Tended regularly, I think. I didn’t see any weeds in between the pavers or along the path. And for a moment, even in the dark, even on my mission, I felt it: the soothing remove from the everyday, the relaxation that comes from being in an orderly, curated space.

A space like my room. Like the whole ward. That thought sounded discordant, though, and I couldn’t figure out why. Something was wrong, even then. Something wasn’t adding up.

But there was the bed of purple flowers.

The color wasn’t obvious, with the evening low and dark over them. Some of the flowers had closed up, while others were just barely visible, no sheen to their petals or leaves. But there were all sorts of purples as my eyes adjusted, as my brain became willing to tease out the subtle differences. Placards named them: monarda, monardella, borage. A pollinator’s garden.

I have never been a gardener, but I’ve cleaned up a few gardening books.

I had no knife, no scissors. Nothing but my brittle nails. They’d notice the damage in the morning, if I didn’t pick carefully, so I took my time. Full blooms, not nascent ones, not dying ones; I pinched them off, ignoring the prickle of the borage’s spiny stems into my fingertips, smelling the riot of perfume that erupted as I beheaded each one.

It was so good, so perfect, so beautiful—up until the second it wasn’t. I didn’t count and couldn’t tell you how big of a bouquet I’d gathered before I needed a break, but it wasn’t much. I was just so unaccountably tired. Not in pain, no more than usual, but tired. Heavy. Stooping over that flower bed was just too much. I sat down on a bench, and I wasn’t immediately sure I was going to be able to get up again.

No nurse CALL button in a garden. I hunched forward over my lap and counted breaths. My meager fistful was probably enough, wasn’t it? Veronica would understand. When I thought I could manage it, I made myself get back up again and started walking toward the door, but slower this time. Trying to pay attention to how it felt, how I felt.

Like shit. I felt like shit.

But I didn’t want to give up. I wasn’t ready to go back.

It wasn’t an issue of failing. I hadn’t. The more I looked at that fistful of flowers, the larger it seemed. And yet it still felt like the tolling of some bell, to turn around.

Why couldn’t I decide when I was done for myself?

Distantly, I became aware of footsteps on the path. Sneakers on pavers. Somebody just around the bend, moving toward me. I expected a security officer, or maybe even the older guy from environmental services, like they were the only two people who existed down here at night.

It was Isobel.

She stopped a short distance from me. I stared in horror, shame, anger.

How? How had she found me? “I can explain,” I blurted, when what I really wanted to do was scream.

“Your next dose of Tylenol is available,” was all she said, waggling a little foil packet. She had a miniature water bottle in one of her scrubs pockets.

I stared at her, searching for any sign of irritation. I’d snuck out, after all. But here she was, right on schedule, so—what? Had she known where I was the whole time? Had somebody spotted me, called around the hospital asking for misplaced patients?

My eyes dropped to my wristband. It was just paper.

Right?

“Let’s go back to your room,” Isobel said, and in place of any anger was a deep weariness.

“I…” I didn’t think I could walk all the way back.

She looked at me, really looked at me, and I realized she’d been staring past me this whole time. Her gaze sharpened. “Sit down,” she said, and disappeared back into the hospital. I sank onto the closest bench, covering my face with my hands, trying not to cry. It was all too much: the narrowing of my life now dwindling to one hospital room; the realization that even if Veronica needed me, I was useless; the humiliation of how badly I needed the wheelchair that Isobel had returned with. I was nothing on my own, it seemed, or worse than nothing, and I couldn’t stop the sobs that broke from me as Isobel steered me back into Graceview, back to the elevator bank, back into Seven West.

Isobel didn’t comfort me; she politely ignored me all the way back to my room, until I’d run out of tears. She let me get into bed on my own, a small mercy, and I obediently took my medication after she scanned me in. She got a small cup to put the flowers in, and I didn’t tell her where to take them.

I slept through bedside report and was glad not to hear what she thought of me.

When I asked Penelope to deliver the flowers for me later that morning, her expression crumpled, just for a moment.

But she took them away all the same.

That night, Isobel was back. She was my main night nurse, reliably there each evening at seven sharp. By the fourth night of my stay, and her third on shift, I’d begun to expect her the way I expected Penelope in the morning.

Each day, I drifted a little more. I tried, at first, to hold fast. I made a show of setting up my laptop, but the Wi-Fi was terrible, and I didn’t have any active jobs. Updating my portfolio took ages, ages I couldn’t stay coherent for, and I gave up pretty quickly. If I couldn’t even focus long enough to get through a single chapter of my book, how could I do anything for myself?

I hated that drifting, but it was so much easier to let it carry me along.

The evenings were better. I wondered at that, why they didn’t give me the floaty stuff at night when I could sleep through it, but Isobel had a ready explanation when I finally, grudgingly, asked.

“You need recovery time,” she said. She was kinder after the garden, less snappish, but still distant. Tired, I came to realize.

“But I’m not doing anything during the day.”

“It may not feel like it, but you are. You’re being worn down.” She hesitated, then said, apologetically, “You’ll start to really feel it soon.”

I bristled, but she didn’t push it any further.

“Besides,” she added, “night is for sleeping. SWAIL doesn’t always allow for it. No sleep can get nasty. Sometimes, people get very disoriented. So try to rest, please.”

My fifth night, after shift change but before lights out, she was in and out of the room more frequently. I was feeling better than usual, and made progress on the book I was reading. I’d even started thinking about tackling my portfolio again when Isobel came back, this time with a cooler.

“Remember what I said about night being for sleeping?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Unfortunately, tonight we’re breaking the rules. Time for the next step.” She didn’t look happy about it.

It echoed there, unrepeated, between us: You may not be able to manage the next steps, even with medical support. I fought back a shudder. I would not flinch, not now, not in front of Isobel.

I glanced at my board, but there was no change there from the last few mornings: just a note that we were getting started, and a cheerful little smiley face. “Now?”

“Dr. Santos made an adjustment based on your afternoon labs.” She set the cooler down and popped the top open, pulling out the IV bag inside.

This bag’s fluid was an unsettling yellow-green color, slightly murky, and had no label except for a barcode. Isobel scanned it, then my wristband, and tapped a few keys on her computer station while I rattled off my name and date of birth, already well-trained. Then she hung the bag on the pole and started hitching its tubing into the infusion pump and my IV.

“What is it?”

“A SWAIL compound,” she said, not looking away from what she was doing. A few presses of the buttons and the pump started the new fluid moving. “I’m not really privy to the details, but in my experience, this one can hurt.”

I recoiled instinctively, but I was connected to that pump; I couldn’t do anything to halt the start-stop inch of green-tinged fluid up the line, closer and closer to my arm. I steeled myself for it instead. “What sort of hurt?” I asked. The not-knowing would only make it worse.

“Usually a mild stinging, but different patients react differently.” She glanced at me; our eyes met, and I hoped she couldn’t see how terrified I was.

Because I could manage a mild stinging. I knew I could.

The drug reached the saline lock. I counted on an inhale, then an exhale. Nothing changed, except that I could feel the chill of the liquid; it had been kept very cold, and my skin pebbled into gooseflesh as it brought down the temperature of my arm. I stared down at it, imagining I could see into my veins as the medicine dispersed, flowing toward my heart and—

“Shit,” I hissed, because that’s when the pain hit. It burned at the IV site, bright and unrelenting, like a hundred slender needles had been threaded into my skin and were being pulled apart, spreading my nerve endings thin. My fingers clenched into a fist. Isobel’s hand dropped down to cover mine, and for a brief moment the pain receded behind the shock that she cared.

Then I realized she was just trying to ease my hand open, and that the burning was getting even worse.

“You’re increasing the pressure on the vein,” she said. “I know it’s hard, but you need to relax. I’m going to go grab a heat pack. Sometimes the counter-stimulation helps. Breathe, Margaret.”

“Meg,” I whispered.

“Meg,” she agreed, and then she was gone.

I counted every breath until she returned, taking them as slowly as I could. My face reddened, and I fought back tears. I wanted to thrash and scream and run away from the machine, but I sat there, hands pressed flat to my thighs, staring at the tubing. I couldn’t see the flow anymore, the color suffused through evenly now, but it was better than staring at the bag, wondering how long it would take for it to be a quarter empty, watching each drip make no visible impact on the volume remaining.

The door opened. Isobel didn’t rush over to my bedside, and I wanted to scream at her to hurry up, but I closed my eyes tight instead.

A snap as she cracked the heat pack, then pressed it to the IV site. She guided my free hand over it. “How does that feel?” she asked.

“Ow, shit, fuck ,” I replied, because the added heat just made everything that much more tender, more raw. I kept it in place, though, waiting, hoping, because she was the one with the experience.

“If that’s not working, you don’t have to force it,” she said, when my jaw didn’t relax. I was shaking. She moved my hand, and the heat pack dropped down onto the mattress, warm against my hip. I watched her go to the computer, swiping in and typing something. “I’ve asked the on-call doctor to approve some more pain medication,” she said, turning back to me. “But that could take a bit.”

My breath whistled through my clenched teeth, but I nodded.

“It’s going to be running for a little over two hours,” she continued. “And it’s not going to get better on its own.”

I groaned.

“Exactly. But I’m going to stay with you.”

My incredulity cut through the haze of pain for one brief, blessed moment I couldn’t pause to appreciate. “What?”

“I’m going to sit right here, and we can talk. Or not. But I’m not going to leave.” She let out a shaky breath. “Unless you ask me to.”

“Don’t you have other patients?” I snapped. I didn’t know what I was feeling. With one breath I was pissed, angry that she’d condescend to me, and in the next I was so desperately grateful that I didn’t trust her in the slightest.

Isobel stood her ground. “I let my charge nurse know that you were going to need some extra help for a while.”

Extra help. Moral support. I didn’t believe in moral support. But I didn’t want to be alone.

“There’s nothing you can do,” I said, my voice wavering. “No extra help to give .”

“Then tell me to go.”

I stared at her, desperate, and she stared right back. Challenging. Challenging, but asking, too, inquiring, whispering, What do you really want right now?

“I want you to make it stop,” I confessed, closing my eyes.

Adam had said I could stop at any time, hadn’t he? Isobel had pushed it, had insulted me with it instead of comforting me, but they both had told me the same thing: I could cry uncle, and this would all be over. I’d be able to think again. This searing agony would end, and I’d go back to just my normal ulcers and aching joints and twisting bowels. My slowly degrading liver. The ticking of a clock as I waited for some new symptom to throw my life even more off course.

I’d learned to live with it all, or near enough. I could do it again.

“Meg? What do you want me to stop? The drip?”

“I don’t know!” I shouted.

She recoiled.

“I don’t know,” I repeated, quieter this time, ashamed. How could there be so many ways to feel shame? To feel like a walking disaster? “I’m sorry,” I added. “You don’t have to put up with this, I don’t…”

“Tell me something.”

I made a helpless, confused sound.

“Anything,” she said. She pulled up a chair. “What you studied in school.” Her gaze flitted around the room. “About the book you’re reading. Anything a little less personal. Farther away from whatever you’re feeling now. Trust me.”

“I don’t have anything,” I whispered.

“You do,” she said, and she was so sure. “Tell me what you’re going to do when you’re better.”

Maybe it was the when that did it. A simple word choice, and I’m sure it was intentional, but it was like a magic trick. I breathed a little easier. “I, uh. I like watching these videos on old hand tool restorations,” I said, haltingly, because I didn’t have plans, but I at least still had interests. “The main guy I follow, he does two versions, with and without narration. I’ve watched the one on a cheese-cutting calculator like six times.” Either she was a great actress, or she was legitimately interested; she prompted me on when I started to trail off, she listened, she engaged , until one of her brief check-ins at the computer yielded gold: a morphine drip that she got started at my other IV site, that drowned out the pain I’d almost managed to ignore and sent me into a deadened sleep.

She was gone when I woke up, but there was a Post-it note on my bedside tray.

Keep an open mind. Strength can mean more than one thing. —Isobel