A Penny's Worth (8 page)

She broke in with barely controlled
anger, “Dolores has made me feel like I have no chance in hell of having a normal
life. I deserve what every other person that struggles through each day has,
what you have.” Her voice broke. She swallowed hard as she continued, “A little
bit of joy and happiness once in a damn while isn’t too much to ask. Dolores
has been spoonfeeding me inferiority since infancy.”

He sighed. “Penny, I’m so sorry.”

“Right.” She bent down and picked up her
bags. She singsonged at him: “Poor Penny, if only she had friends, if only she
had a boyfriend, oh, if only Penny had a life.”

“No, no,” he protested, “you’ve got it
all wrong. I’m sorry because I should have known you were this unhappy a long
time ago and I’m ashamed. I was just watching out for myself.”

Stumbling into her apartment in tears,
she threw the bags on the kitchen counter, flipped the cell phone off, sat down
and covered her face in her hands.

“What’s wrong with me?” she sobbed out
loud, “Why am I so mad?” She sat at the kitchen table and continued to sob loudly.
Bob and Winston sat close, bewildered, heads tilted.

Finally standing up, she smoothed down
her nurse’s uniform and thought: I can’t help it, I’m pissed off, and until I
get it all out of my system, I probably will flip out again until everyone
realizes I am worth so much more than that.

The next few weeks pulled her around like a whirlwind.
She’d been amazed that she could work at Fernfair for so many years and leave
without making a blip on anyone’s radar screen. The school staff purchased a
cake and said their goodbyes, and some of the children brought in homemade
cards with
Good luck, we’ll miss you
written in crayon.

Mr Adams gave her an awkward hug and
said, “We’ll miss you. Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

She didn’t feel that he would miss her at
all, but the requisite farewells had been performed and her papers were all in
order. Still, she couldn’t help feeling an emptiness inside. Watching Mr Adams
shut the front door of the school firmly, she felt that she had not mattered to
anyone at Fernfair.

On her first day of work at Wayside, she
stepped gingerly into the revolving door in the front of the hospital. People
were jumping in and out of it like jackrabbits. She became engulfed by a mass
of people and ushered along as they jostled in through the doors. A huge man
with a nose that could knock buses over slammed into her and sent her reeling
against the glass. She was pushed roughly from behind by someone heading for
the exit.

“Please watch where you’re going,” she
snapped, turning to find the culprit. Instead, she found a few people watching
her with curiosity. Turning on her heels, she walked briskly toward the
elevator. This was not the way to start a first day.

Entering the elevator, she pressed the
fourth floor button. She was to report to Nurse Reins first thing this Monday
morning. She felt queasy. Stepping out onto the fourth floor, she felt like her
insides were a revolving door.

Nurse Reins was standing by the main
desk, resembling a dragon guarding its treasure.
She saw Penny and
glanced pointedly at her watch. Panicking, she glanced at the wall
clock just above her head. A sense of relief flowed through her when she saw
that it was five minutes to nine.

As if reading her mind, Nurse Reins
declared rather sharply, “That clock is seven minutes slow.”

“Oh,” Penny sputtered, quickly dredging
up something to say. “That… revolving door is a killer.”

Nurse Reins adopted an amused expression
and said with exaggerated clarity, “Nobody uses the revolving doors except for
patients or salespeople. You should be using the side entrance. Oh, and there
are two huge doors on either side of the revolving door.”

“Oh yeah, I never thought of that.”

She didn’t reply, but Penny could have
sworn she saw the beginning of a smirk form at the corners of her mouth. She
straightened up as if uncurling slowly from around her treasure, turned around
and called over her shoulder, “Follow me.”

I’m making a good impression my first day
on the job, she thought ruefully. Running after her scaly mentor, she noticed a
group of nurses standing behind the central desk. They all looked away. She
knew by their expressions they were doing everything possible not to break out
in laughter. She glanced around looking for a hole in the ground to fling
herself into.

What have I done? she asked herself as
panic took hold. My mother was right; I have made a huge mistake.

“In here please,” Reins called with a
hint of impatience. She stood by a door at the end of the corridor. Penny ran
to her side breathing heavily, fighting the urge to flee down to the main lobby
and through the stupid revolving doors right back to the safe haven of
Fernfair.

Following her mentor through the door,
she found three women and a man, slumped in overgrown easy chairs. Each patient
was hooked up to an IV that was administrating chemotherapy. The man was
reading a newspaper; one of the women was staring blankly into space, and the
other two ladies were staring directly at her.

“I would like you to monitor these
patients, and make sure none of them experience lightheadedness or vomiting.”
Nurse Reins peered at her over her reading glasses. “You know the drill. Let me
take you to your locker so you can put your jacket and pocketbook away and get
settled in.”

The four patients appeared to have lost
interest in her. The man looked weary and disgusted.

Nurse Reins announced, “I would like to
introduce you to Penny Marins; this is her first day on staff. She will be
taking care of you as we administer your chemo today. If you need anything at
all, please don’t hesitate to buzz her.”

The man scrunched the newspaper into his
lap and harrumphed, “Oh great, a newbie nurse. I feel so safe and cared for.”

A withered lady in the far corner began
to chuckle, then shrugged. “This is my second time around with chemo, so what’s
to feel safe about anyway?”

Penny did not have a retort at the tip of
her tongue, nor did she feel the need to defend herself. She was so nervous and
upset that all she could think about was how to hold it together as best she
could.

*

Blessedly, after visiting her patients, Reins left Penny
alone in the locker area. Penny used this opportunity to compose herself. “I
can so do this; no problem,” she whispered out loud as she leaned her head
against the coolness of her tarnished locker. Stuffing her things into the
narrow space, she slammed it shut. Pulling her shoulders back, she headed out
into the corridor.

Walking briskly with a purpose to her
stride, she almost bumped into someone as she turned a corner. To her great
surprise she found herself face-to-face with Dr Bruck. She remembered gaping at
him at Fernfair just the same as she was gaping up at him now.

Dr Bruck smiled down at her. “Excuse me,
but we just about had a collision.” His voice was just as she remembered: deep,
smooth, sensual. She could smell his aftershave. She gobbled him up with her
stare: he was even more handsome than she remembered. The words she had wanted
to say just wouldn’t come out of her mouth. She wanted a witty comeback, but
all she could manage was to continue staring up at him with her mouth agape.

“Sorry,” she sputtered.

“What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?”
Nurse Reins asked with a sarcastic grin. Standing between them, she had
appeared out of nowhere.

Just my luck, Penny thought miserably,
leave it to the good nurse to materialise like a preying vampire and make me
look more foolish than I already do.

Dr Bruck was still looking down at her,
presuming that a New Improved response was on the way. She snapped her gaping
mouth shut and tried again. “Good thing we both stopped at the same moment or
there could have been an accident.”

He put his head back and laughed. It was
a deep, rich sound that sent her warm all over. “Well if there was an accident,”
he said, resting his hand upon Nurse Reins’ shoulder, “not only are we in the
right place, we would also be in the best of hands.”

Reins rolled her eyes. “Right, I would
have acted in a flash. The stretchers would have been here before you blinked.”

Laughing again, Dr Bruck put his hand out
for Penny to shake. “Are you new at Wayside?”

“Yes, this is Penny Marins’ first day and
I’m training her.”

He didn’t appear to acknowledge Nurse
Reins’ declaration. Instead he addressed Penny as she tentatively put her hand
into his. “Welcome to Wayside,” he said warmly. “You’ll be working on the
oncology floor.” It was said as a statement, as if he already knew the answer.

“Yes she is,” Reins answered for Penny
again. But this time she was grateful. When the doctor’s hand enclosed hers,
she actually felt weak at the knees. This sensation astonished her: she really thought
that weak knees only happened in romance novels, not in real life. She didn’t
want to let his hand go, but it was time to break contact.

A moment later she was on her own in an
empty corridor. She hurried back to her four chemo patients, shaking all images
of Dr Kildare-a-like from her mind. She couldn’t afford to make mistakes on her
first day.

She found everything and everybody just
the way she had left it. The withered lady still sat staring pensively out the
window, the man was back to the New York Times, and the other two women were
watching the TV that was up mounted on on a wall bracket that looked way too
small to support it.

Not one of them acknowledged her presence
when she walked in. She cleared her throat and asked, “Can I get anyone anything?”

A petite blond woman with watery blue
eyes turned away from the TV and addressed Penny, “I could use a little ginger
ale. I’m starting to feel a bit queasy.”

“Anyone else for ginger ale?” She looked
from one face to the next. Her patients either grunted or shook their heads.

When she returned with the drink, she
realised the dark haired woman’s chair was empty. In great alarm she called
out, “Where did she go?”

The withered lady turned away from the
window and pointed to the bathroom. “It was only a matter of time you know, she
did look a little green around the gills, or didn’t you notice?”

Walking briskly to the bathroom, Penny
knocked on the door. “It’s me miss, the nurse, are you okay?”

For a long moment she was met with
silence, until the latch clanged and the door swung slowly open. “I threw up,”
her patient announced.

She had missed the toilet some. Penny
looked at her patient and asked her name.

“Julia.”

“Well Julia, I bet you feel a lot better
now.”

She peered up at Penny with tears spilling
down her cheeks. “No, I don’t feel better. I am just plain sick, and I am just
plain tired.”

Gently taking Julia by the arm, she
steered her back to the chair. “Come on now; let’s get you settled with a magazine
so we can get this over with. Then you can go home and rest.”

Towing her IV apparatus behind her, Julia
glared weakly and snapped, “We can get this over with? Sorry, but I wasn’t
under the impression that we have cancer in common.”

Feeling her cheeks flush, Penny replied
meekly, “Of course we don’t and I’m sorry if I implied that.” She took a deep
breath and added, “But I think we both want the same thing. I want you to be as
comfortable as possible given the circumstances, right?” Penny knew she had
sounded wooden and fake but she didn’t know what her patients wanted to hear,
or needed to hear. Maybe they don’t want me to say anything at all, she
thought.

Julia sighed long and deep. “I’m sorry I
yelled. My family’s given up on me. The cancer’s come back and the doctors suspect
it may have spread to my liver. They have me as good as dead.”

“How do you know that?” Penny asked as
calmly as she could. “Did they tell you that?”

She shrugged.

Measuring her words carefully, Penny
crossed her fingers behind her back. She hoped she was saying the right thing
for once. “Couldn’t it be possible that you’ve decided to think that all on
your own? I mean,” she began to stammer, “no-one gave you that information. You
don’t have anything to base it on other than your feelings.” She waited for
Julia to bite her head off.

Taking a sip of ginger ale, Julia quietly
belched. “Sorry, but I feel better now. You could be right. Anyway,” she said
with a sweep of her hand, “All of the speculation on what my family or the
doctors think doesn’t really matter. You’re just trying to do your job.”

Penny said more sharply than she had
intended, “It does so matter.”

“What?”

She squeezed her patient’s arm and said
warmly, “You matter.”

“Yeah, well, I guess I could maybe matter
just a little bit to a few people.” Giving a weak laugh, she took another sip
of ginger ale. “I might as well stick this chemo out anyway. You never know how
things could turn out. Maybe I am being a little melodramatic. There’s a good
chance my children don’t have me six feet in the ground just yet, but it’s been
so hard on all of them. They’ll be lost for a long time if they lose me. But
having me here like this is almost as bad. I’ve always been the one to guide
them.”