A Penny's Worth (18 page)

“Oh, and your worth so much?” Sarah
screamed, not taking kindly to being slighted so offhandedly. Her fists
clenched at her sides, she resembled a posturing barbarian from
Braveheart
.

A smile spread across Penny’s face. Sarah
would probably stand in the same spot all her life, whereas Penny was walking
the other way already. She said over her shoulder, ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I
am.”

“You think you’re better than me but
you’re not,” Sarah frothed. She tried again to rile her. “Since I bored you so
much, I thought James would be more your speed.”

Penny chuckled. She could walk away, but
she stopped for a moment and turned back to face the unpleasant Sarah. There
was something she had to know. “You told me that I helped you change the rut
you were in. You actually thanked me for making you look at your life in a new
way. I had no idea you hated me so much. You don’t even know me that well. How
could you have so much venom toward me?”

“Why? I’ll tell you why. You think you’re
so great, and you’re only a nurse for God’s sake.”

Sarah’s light blue coat the only contrast
in the blackness of the night. Penny was astonished that this woman had put so
much time into the manipulation and planning of this date just to harm her. How
pathetic, she thought.

“Bye Sarah,” she said quietly. “I don’t
have any more time to spend with you. I have a great day to look forward to
when I wake up, and I don’t want to miss it.”

“Fuck you!”

From an adjacent townhouse, someone
banged on their window in annoyance. Sarah was still standing in a ridiculous
battle stance, arms folded across her chest. Penny walked away. She had neither
the energy to deal with her, nor the desire. She was tired of battles.

Penny had been signed up for a three-day orientation
lecture on the topic of new procedures, along with medical and legal implications
in the field of medicine.

Day one. Walking into the lecture room,
she saw the new nurse Michelle Nicola sitting up in front. Penny put a hand on
her shoulder and said, “Hi, my name is Penny. Welcome to Wayside.” She could
not believe how outgoing she’d become. Just months ago she would never have
been the one to approach someone new. But when she wasn’t around family
gatherings, she was so much more at ease.

Turning around, the new nurse looked up
with a huge smile on her face. “Hi, I’m Michelle.”

Michelle was beautiful. She had blond
shoulder-length hair, light blue eyes, and a sexy pout. Her skin was flawless
and her high cheekbones gave her the Milan catwalk look. Dr Bruck, standing
next to the podium, was staring at Michelle too. Penny felt a stab of envy.

Bruck hadn’t approached Penny about
getting together for quite some time. When he looked away, she couldn’t help
stealing a glance in his direction. Stop it, she told herself sternly. The knowledge
of Dr Bruck’s ‘love them and leave them’ attitude had definitely put a damper
on her thoughts toward him.

She almost jumped as her phone vibrated
in her pocket, pulsating against her knee. Pulling the phone out of her pocket
book, she drew in a deep breath when she saw her parent’s number. The lecture
wasn’t even close to starting; she decided to play it safe and answer it. God
forbid something is wrong, she thought, I’ll never forgive myself.

She whispered a timid “Hello” into the
mouthpiece.

Dolores’ voice boomed into her ear.
“Penny is that you?”

Her mother’s angry voice froze her into
her seat. Her face must have turned white because Michelle glanced at her curiously.

“Are you there?” Dolores pressed.

She couldn’t speak for a moment. Finally,
she managed to answer, “I’m here.” She walked quickly to the back of the room
and out into the hallway.

Dolores snapped, ‘It’s about time that
I’ve gotten a hold of you. I’ve been calling you at home but you never answer.
I figured there was no sense leaving a message, you probably wouldn’t call me
back.”

She didn’t protest; her mother was right.

“This is ridiculous already, Penny.
You’re the one that’s wrong, so why are you trying to turn the tables to
finagle your way out of it? You owe your family an apology and then we can all
get past this.”

Penny responded tersely, “Number one, I
did nothing wrong.”

“Are you kidding me? You come late to an
important family function and then you have the audacity to not show up to the
party following the church. Do you have any idea how embarrassed I was? Do you
have any idea what a position you put me in? Everyone was asking where you were
and I had to outright lie and say you were sick. Not to mention you disappointed
your nephews something awful.”

Feeling dizzy, she had to lean up against
the wall. She hadn’t experienced one of her mother’s onslaughts for quite a
while and it hit her hard. She wondered how she had put up with her all these
years.

Nurse Reins was rapidly approaching and
she turned her back. She didn’t want her to hear this.

Penny calmly replied, “I can’t do this
right now.” She then said so softly she didn’t know if her mother could hear
her, “To be honest Mom, I don’t know if I can ever do this again.”

It was her mother’s turn to laugh, “What
are you saying Penny? Are you threatening me? Do you intend on cutting your
family out of your life? We’ve always been there for you. If it wasn’t for us,
you would have been alone all these years. We have always given you a place to
come to. Remember kiddo, you’ll be the one to suffer. I have friends and family
around me.” Her gloating voice floated glibly out of the phone.

Penny felt the inner confidence she had
worked on shrivel and vaporize into nothing. A despairing darkness seeped right
through her; she felt like collapsing on the hospital floor, head in hands, and
just giving up. Her mother was right, she would have been alone all these
years, but she was trying her best to etch out a life that was full and rich
and gloriously untidy just like everyone else’s.

She said through gritted teeth, “Look
Mom, I have a lecture to attend, we’ll have to talk later. Your daughter, the
charity case that does not have anyone except for you, is planning on coming
for dinner on Thanksgiving. We can talk about all this then.”

“Don’t do me any favors.”

“I won’t come if you don’t want me to.”

Nurse Reins drew level with her. She
pointed to her watch and cocked her head toward the conference room. Penny
mouthed she was coming and tried to appear as if an emergency was afoot. She
was so nervous and dizzy, she would have liked nothing more than to be admitted
to a hospital bed herself, preferably attached to a morphine drip. Between
Dolores’ tirade and Nurse Reins’ stern glance, it was enough to send her over
the edge.

Sighing, Dolores continued, “Are you
having some sort of mid life crisis, is that it? You leave a perfectly good job
for no good reason. You’re downright mean to your family. What the hell is
going on with you?”

To her enormous relief, Nurse Reins
continued down the corridor. She said quickly, “We’ll finish this later.” She
stabbed the Off button on her cell and walked back into the lecture room, her
head buzzing.

Her seat next to Michelle had been nabbed
by another nurse. Frazzled, Penny scurried over to a chair right at the back.
The sheen of sweat on her forehead made her blink, and her hair felt wet to the
touch. I must look a fright, she thought. Taking a compact out of her little
duffel bag, she almost gasped at her reflection. I look like I’m out
trick-or-treating, she thought as she hastily applied powder to her face. Her
lips and throat felt dry as parchment. She popped a throat lozenge and slicked
on a quick coat of lipgloss.

“Hello.”

Startled, she turned around to find Dr
Bruck sitting next to her. She felt grateful she’d slapped on the powder and
lipstick just in time. “I thought you were the one lecturing,” she said in
surprise. “I was told this talk was only for the new staff.”

Dr Bruck smiled, and she felt a rush of
heat rise up to the top of her head. He’s so sexy, she thought with a sigh, I
should just sleep with him already. She felt her face flush again and she
wished she had applied extra powder.

“Doctors must keep up-to-date just as
much as you nurses.” He held out a pack of gum. “Want some?”

She thought, Does my breath smell? She
grabbed a piece and popped it in her mouth. She whispered a thank-you as she
chewed the mint flavored gum.

She couldn’t concentrate on the lecture.
All these distractions had reduced the speaker to a droning voice at the podium.
She tried her best to appear attentive: she didn’t want Dr Bruck to see how
agitated she was.

She began to fidget. Her pocketbook slid
off her lap and fell to the floor with a loud clang, spilling the contents
around her feet. She glanced at Dr Bruck who appeared uninterested in the
mishap. Three beaten-up tampons had come to rest by her left foot.

Bending down to pick up her belongings,
she was suddenly irritated that the doctor had still never addressed her by
name. Nor did he offer to help her pick anything up off the floor. He had
simply leaned back in his chair and watched as she stuffed the items back into
her bag.

Finally, the lecture was over and Penny
came out of it without having learned a thing.

She walked down the corridor in a lumpen daze, and
trudged dejectedly through the rest of the day as best she could. She looked in
on Mr Bishop, helped Miss Havins into the shower and set up an IV for a new
patient who had just arrived in room 104: an elderly woman with advanced lung
cancer. As Penny looked at her chart, her heavy heart felt more burdensome than
ever. Mrs Jennings struggled with every breath she took.

Leaning down, she placed a hand on Mrs
Jennings and asked, “Is there anything you’d like? Maybe a cup of hot tea?”

Her new patient looked up and Penny was
struck by how big her luminous, brown eyes were. She sensed that those eyes
mirrored a beautiful soul. She decided immediately that she liked this woman;
she felt drawn to her.

“A cup of tea would be nice,” Mrs
Jennings replied gently.

“You got it. How are you feeling? Would
you like an oxygen tank brought in?”

She waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, no,
that won’t be necessary. It’s really not as bad as it seems. I’m managing to
draw the air into these old lungs of mine.” She laughed weakly. “Do you like
being a nurse?”

She answered without hesitation, “I love
it.”

“You like helping people,” Mrs Jennings
said emphatically.

She smiled as she finished up her work,
and shrugged. “This type of work comes naturally to me, and it feels right.”
She stepped away from the IV and asked, “What do you like to do?”

“Rest and read is about it these days. I
wrote a few novels to leave behind so I try to rest on my laurels.”

She had Penny’s interest. “What books
have you written?”

“Have you ever heard of
Days Gone By
?”

She gasped. “You’re
the
Phyllis
Jennings? I love that book. I read it three times when I was in high school.
Wasn’t it made into a movie?”

Laughing weakly she answered, “Yes it
was, but from what I recall it didn’t do very well at the box office. They
didn’t quite capture the book’s essence, and that just drove me crazy.”

Penny was starstruck. She had read
several of her books and loved them. Three of her novels had become NY Times
bestsellers.

Shaking her head in amazement, Penny
enthused, “I can’t believe I’m having the honor of meeting you. When did you
first start writing?”

Mrs Jennings’ breathing didn’t appear
quite as labored so she managed to sit up in bed. Leaning over, she poured
herself a glass of water. “I was a late bloomer really. I didn’t start writing
into well into my thirties. Then for some reason I felt compelled to write down
the stories that were running through my head. And that was that! It was pretty
much all I could do.” Her laugh was heartier now. “I never had the attention span
for office work. I was fired more times then I’d like to admit.” She sipped her
water and settled back down on the bed. “My thirties were a terrible time in my
life. I had no skills to speak of, barely any money left, and not a speck of
confidence, but I just felt compelled to keep writing. It became so painful
because at the end of each dismal day, I would find a mailbox full of rejection
letters.” She shuddered at the memory. “My love life was non-existent and I had
lost my mother at thirty-five.”

“I’m sorry.”

Mrs Jennings’ eyes filled with tears. “I
still miss her terribly if you can believe that. So here I was in the depths of
despair and I was so close to chucking all my manuscripts out the window. I was
so disillusioned. For all my hard work, all this writing business was giving
back was disappointment and grief.”

“But you didn’t quit.” She felt a light
glow spark in her heart.

“I was this close,” she held her right
thumb and index finger an inch apart, “to throwing in the towel. I felt like,
‘What am I doing? I can’t make this happen, it’s just too damn hard.’ Can you
understand?”