The Graceview Patient By Caitlin Starling - 7

Description

Tomorrow, bright and early.

The first of my five a.m. blood draws, groggy and not entirely aware of the phlebotomist taking samples by a small work light. I think if they’d turned the overheads on, it would have felt more real. As it was, I have only snatches of memory, fuzzed and elided into dream: the dark blue scrubs, the soft voice, fingers on my arm, the reassurance that I didn’t have to do anything at all. That I could just keep sleeping.

And then shift change at seven, which I was truly awake for, anxious and sitting prim and proper in my bed. I’d made it, after I woke up. Showered, too. I’d tried to reset everything to perfection, as if to prove I was engaged in the process, that I was taking ownership. It felt important back then.

The litany went by; I dutifully weighed in on my pain level (a little better than the day before) and otherwise found nothing to correct. Louise had me described down to the marrow in a few efficient sentences. Penelope already knew me (and I know that it was Penelope this day, for certain; I even remember she was wearing bright teal scrubs, different from the standard-issue light blue that the nurses usually wore). It was just a safety precaution.

I expected Dr. Santos to stop by before Penelope started working on me, but he didn’t make an appearance. She didn’t seem surprised, so I didn’t ask. Instead, I watched as she placed a new IV cannula in my other arm.

“One for SWAIL, one for everything else,” she said.

“They don’t play nice?”

“Not always. Keep thinking about that PICC, it would make for a lot fewer needle sticks.” She wrote a date and her initials on the dressing, then checked my original site to make sure it still looked good. My skin beneath the tape was a little red, but it hadn’t gotten worse overnight.

Satisfied, she left the room for just a minute and returned with a cooler. I watched her prep and hang the first SWAIL bag: innocuously clear. They wouldn’t always be.

The tubing went through an infusion pump, then was connected to the brand-new cannula.

“What will it be like?” I asked as she hung another bag, this one attached to the original site.

“Hard to say. Sometimes it takes a few days to really start to feel it. But Dr. Santos okayed some pain medication for you, so just let me know if you want that. No reason for you to be uncomfortable. I’ve got an oral numbing gel, too, if it would help?”

Why was it so embarrassing, that she knew the canker sores were bothering me? I was there for her to take care of me, wasn’t I? But I was still sheepish as I nodded, and as I let her apply the gel with a few swipes of a cotton swab.

“You might not feel like eating much today, but you should put in a breakfast order,” she said, “before the kitchens close.”

No more sandwiches from the nurse stash, apparently. I called the cafeteria line the next time she left the room and put in an order for oatmeal, the pump clicking softly at my side. The person who took the order said I’d have it in half an hour. Forty minutes later, the restoration of an 1800s apple peeler playing on my phone screen, I was still waiting, and Penelope, who bustled into and out of the room a few times, gave me a juice cup out of sympathy.

A soft knock came from the doorway. I looked up, expecting somebody with a cart.

But it was Adam.

He looked much the same as he had the day before, polished smooth, and he carried a riot of flowers, a lopsided, selfaware smile on his face. “May I come in?” he asked. His voice tasted like honey. Tasted , yes—the combination of drugs dripping into my veins was doing something . My eyelids fluttered, but not with intention.

“Of course,” I said, listening out for slurring and not finding any.

He came all the way to my bedside, then proffered the floral arrangement for me to examine. I closed my eyes, inhaling a complex wash of scents that banished the sterility of the room despite not being overpoweringly strong. It wasn’t from the gift shop, I don’t think, or even from a standard florist’s stock. I didn’t recognize everything, but I could see sprays of yarrow, spikes of lupine and desert paintbrush, even some woody sprigs of sagebrush. A mountain meadow in a vase.

“Get well soon?” I asked, unable to help my smile.

“Get well,” he agreed, and, seemingly pleased with my reaction, he set them on the dresser close to my bed. “How are you feeling?”

“They’ve given me the good stuff,” I said, reaching over and lightly tapping the tubing. I hadn’t asked Penelope for any pain medicine, so it must have been something in the SWAIL mix itself. Whatever it was, the effect was similar: I didn’t care if it hurt, and I couldn’t think straight.

“I’m floating a little. I’d give myself a one right now.” At his perplexed look, I waved at the pain rating scale on the whiteboard.

He went over and erased the circle around 3.

I started forward. “You can— can you do that?”

“She left the marker in here,” he said with an impish smile.

I laughed, feeling almost drunk, but also unmoored, a little freaked out. It felt wrong, that he’d changed something on the board, even if he’d been making a correction. I’d come to learn that the board wasn’t sacrosanct, wasn’t infallible; sometimes it didn’t get updated for a day or two at a time, when there wasn’t much change, and I wouldn’t know who my nurse was. And sometimes—

Sometimes it told me impossible things.

But right then, right there, Adam changing it was so brazen, so confident, that it tilted me off my very uncertain axis and made me want to cling on tight. He was just a sales guy, but he’d brought me flowers, and he knew what was coming for me, better than I did. It was more intimacy than I’d had in years, I think. I pointed to a chair. “Sit, stay a while.” I hoped I didn’t sound like I was begging.

If I did, he was polite enough not to mention it. He drew the chair up to my bedside and sat down, hands clasped together loosely in front of him. And I just—looked at him, a little more closely than I’d looked at anybody in recent memory. I fell into him, a little.

He made it so easy.

Then he said, “I heard you made good use of your last night of freedom,” and I turned away, feeling my face heat up.

“The night nurse suggested it,” I said, a little too quickly, then stopped myself. He must have heard it from Louise herself, I realized. No chance of a pharma rep rubbing elbows with a random custodian, or a security guard on night shift. Of course he knew I’d had permission.

Why did I feel so caught out?

“Did you find anything interesting?”

I made myself relax into the bed and face him again. “No. I took my walk a little too late. No cafeteria, no gift shop, no gardens.” I felt out a sharp shard of vulnerability with my tongue, then added, “I did tour the downstairs restrooms, though.” Then I grimaced. Vulnerability was one thing, bodily functions another.

But he took it in stride. “How do they rate?”

“Five out of five.” The grimace faded. The medication haze tugged at me more strongly in the wake of my adrenaline spikes. Each one left me a little more exhausted. “Clean, unlocked, and private if you catch them at just the right time. A lot of room to stretch out.”

He laughed, the sound lapping against my eardrums. I was gazing at him again. His suit looked similar to the one he’d worn the morning before, but the tie was different. A geometric pattern, green and glossy, with small black details like eyes peeking out between the regular interlock of unnamable shapes.

The thought of his other suit made me think of the day before, of yogurt I would’ve killed for with my oatmeal still missing, and—

“How’s Veronica?”

At the time, I was sure it was the drugs I was on that made his response seem delayed. Now I’m not so sure. I don’t think he hesitated, hesitated isn’t the right word. I think it took him a beat to remember who I was even asking about.

“Oh, she’s doing well,” he said, resettling himself in his seat.

I think I almost asked about that moment when she’d been frightened. But it made no sense, not with how comfortable I felt around him. Everything had to be fine, didn’t it? And with that soft floating feeling, I could see how maybe a stray thought could have derailed him.

So I didn’t ask.

I don’t remember what else we talked about that day. Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with me, or him, or SWAIL, or Graceview. Maybe we talked about the weather. It was something light and surface-level, easy, as the medication stole more and more of my ability to pay attention. By the time my breakfast arrived, I didn’t even notice how bland and soggy the oatmeal must have been. And at some point, he left, and I dozed; or I dozed, and he left.

It all runs together, after a while.