38 S The new patient wanted to talk, I could tell, but I avoided him. I came up with something each time he began to say, When I was over there… I’d wait for him to pause and take a breath, which he had to often, pained, and then I’d say, Oh, and your commode—anything to shut him up. He would stare at the ceiling tiles, I wondered that there was no trace there of the path his eyes took again and again. He had been in a fight, brought into the hospital from the street, then to us. I’m no priest, I want to tell them all. I’m no place to put your confessions. These perverse urges. The only one I had wanted to talk to me was the attempted suicide, who left months ago. But she of all people said the least. Leave us a way to check with you, I urged her, maybe sounding too anxious. After all, I was no one she’d chosen. She smiled. Put a message in a bottle for me, she said, and float it down the river. Use one from those juices you’re always drinking, and I’ll know it’s from you. 39 A phone number? I asked, a family? But she offered nothing . I didn’t want her story. Not something that would end with: and then the razor, out in the open because that was my only place. Though maybe that’s better, I thought—maybe if we die communally we break down faster, back into the stuff that makes us all up. No, I wanted something of her, not her story. Friendship, you could call it. I refuse to be a nurse about everything. Just something of her dry wit, so much like V’s, and her hunched stance over the checkerboard, where she played anyone in the shelter who asked, even the lewdest mumbling drunks, who would come forth from their corners and daytime soaps to take her on. She watched the board as though it were the only thing in the world worth her attention. But she was gone, the new patient was in her room. It’s not our fault, I wanted to say when he kicked in his sleep, jerking so he’d hit his monitor, set off his alarm—these things you’ve seen, it’s not our fault. You have nightmares—one of the older nurses said to him, fixing his pillow. We increased the dose of his nightly sedative. His mouth twisted. It would have been a smile, sardonic and masculine, if it weren’t for the state of his face. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve seen, he said. I wanted to say, You don’t know what I believe. • Can I get some more water, miss? he asked me, the next time I checked on him. Sure, I said. We also have juice. That’d be great. He looked back up at the ceiling. [18.218.184.214] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 21:16 GMT) 40 There’s nothing there, I should have told him. You’ll always have the nightmares, they all do. I’ve seen that same look grow old. Men come in after fights like yours, limbs bruised, slit open, thinner than you’d ever think beneath all their layers. There’s nothing there. He told his stories to anyone who’d listen. The old man who drew closest claimed to have Gulf War Syndrome, but I’d heard that man claim just about everything. The new patient shook his hand and I said nothing. I talked to the VA for him. Purple Heart, they told me, which he’d said too. How bad’s it looking for my face? he asked me. There will be scarring, I said, the doctors have done everything and now we just wait and see. What about my vision? Will that come back? His left eye had lost close to half. No. But you won’t lose any more. You don’t soften things, do you? I like to think I don’t give false hope. I slipped a thermometer under his tongue. When I pulled it out he said, You look like a tough one. You’ve seen worse than this. I nodded, adjusted his pillows, his sheets. It’s too late, I wanted to say, but just marked his chart. Whatever anyone could have done, it’s nothing...