No Ordinary Love (22 page)

“No,” Trina said. “A friend bought me the ones I’m wearing, but he didn’t know my size. He bought three pairs to make sure one pair fit me.”

“A friend?” Naini smiled. “Who have you been hiding from me and does he have a well-paid brother who wants to satisfy a sexy Bengali woman?”

“I’ll have to tell you about him and his brother later,” Trina said. “I really need that book.”

“Why?” Naini asked.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Trina said.

“I might,” Naini said.

Trina pulled Naini to a window overlooking Bush Street and pointed down to the bus bench. “There’s a man under the roof of that bench.” She squinted. “You can just see his hiking boots.”

“He has big feet,” Naini said.

“Naini,” Trina said, “that man is the composer Art E.”

“Oh yes, and I am the goddess Lakshmi,” Naini said. “Bow down and worship me. Shower me with lotus flowers.”

“Nice to meet you, goddess Lakshmi, because that
is
Art E.” Trina bowed once. “I don’t have any lotus flowers. The shoes will have to do.”

Naini peered down. “Some random man with big feet gives you shoes, and that makes you think he’s Art E.”

“There’s more to it than that,” Trina said. “I gotta go find Tina.”

“She always seems to prowl around X-ray,” Naini said. “She has asked me out twice there.”

“I can’t believe you turned her down,” Trina said.

“She is not my type,” Naini said. “She is far too clingy and tall.”

“I’ll go to X-ray first,” Trina said. “Thanks.”

“Thank you for the shoes,” Naini said.

“Thank the man on the bench.”

“I will open a window and shout, ‘Thank you, Art E.’,” Naini said. “No, I will not. They will send me back to India.” She turned to Mr. Lewis. “Rest time is over, Mr. Lewis. Time to climb.”

Mr. Lewis moaned.

She winked at Trina. “Go find Tina. I know you will make her day.”

Trina took a series of stairs to X-ray and found Tina talking up an LPN, whose eyes seemed to be searching for an exit.

“Hey, Tina.”
Please don’t hit on me.

Tina left the LPN in a flash, and the LPN hurried away. “Hey, Trina.”

Tina and Trina. Maybe she wants my body so we can rhyme together.
“Do you have that Art E. book Naini loaned you?”

“Yes,” Tina said in a husky voice. “I’ve been meaning to return it to her. That Sponge guy is a trip.”

I know. I think I’ve met him. He’s on the bus bench outside.
“You have it with you?”

“It’s up in my locker,” Tina said.

Yes!
“Could I get it? Naini knows I want to borrow it.”

“Sure,” Tina said.

She’s making eyes at me.
“Could I get it now?”

“Sure,” Tina said, leaning closer and raising a hand.

Tina wants to pet me now.
Trina backed away to the wall.
I’m touchy-feely. Tina is strictly feely, and that makes me touchy.
“Could we go get it now, please?”

“I’ll meet you at my locker in ten minutes,” Tina said. “As soon as I unload the old cow in there who broke her hip doing Tai Chi in the park this morning. Can you believe it? Tai Chi.”

Though I want to know how someone could break a hip doing Tai Chi, I will not get into a conversation with this person.
“I’ll be waiting.”

Tina raised her eyebrows. “I’ll hurry.”

Trina sat on the bench in front of Tina’s locker for only five minutes before Tina crept into the locker room.

“I told you I would hurry.” Tina opened her locker and held out the book. “So are you and Naini . . . a couple?”

Naini is extremely sexy, but I’m not built that way.
“No.”

Tina licked her lower lip. “Are you doing anything tonight? I’ve been hoping to take someone to this little intimate bar—”

Trina snatched the book. “I have a date.”

Tina blinked. “Yeah? Who with?”

The subject of the book I’m holding.
“
His
name is Tony. Thanks for the book.”

Trina headed straight for the first stall in the nearest staff bathroom, closed the door, and began reading. She skimmed through Tony’s childhood, howled with laughter at Tony’s encounter with Jasmine, skimmed through Tony’s involvement with Naomi Stringer—
she is so overexposed—
and focused on the last two chapters.

Tony watches the Weather Channel, set in his routines, shy around women, pulls and twists on his fingers when he’s nervous—that’s Tony all right. “Flinches on contact with people he doesn’t know”—but he let me touch him. I guess he’s comfortable around me. Either that or he thinks he knows me. “Too polite and accepting of others.” That’s not a fault. It’s a virtue. Unlike so many of us, Tony has an open mind. Tony likes Hires Root Beer, memorizes map books, says inappropriate yet truthful things, has the worst handwriting on earth—

“Trina, are you in here?” Naini called out.

“Yes,” Trina said, opening the stall door and stepping out.

“ES and ES2 have been looking for you,” Naini said.

“How did you find me?” Trina asked.

“Tina told me,” Naini said. “It seems she was waiting for you to come out of the bathroom for a long time. She is quite a stalker.”

“I’ve been a little sick,” Trina said.

“I see,” Naini said. “Are you enjoying the book while you are being ‘sick’?”

I’d rather enjoy the Sponge in person.
“I am.” She handed the book to Naini. “I’m through with it.”

“You could not have read the entire book,” Naini said.

“I have been sick a long time,” Trina said.
And I’d rather read the man than the book any day.
“Where are ES and ES2 now?”

“On one of their many breaks between breaks,” Naini said. “They’re on two.”

“Good.”

Trina went to the nearest waiting area, bought a package of cheese crackers and a can of A&W Root Beer, and took them outside to Tony.

Tony stood. “We can go now.”

“Not yet.” She handed him the crackers and root beer. “I thought you might be hungry and thirsty.”

“I am,” Tony said. “Thank you.”

“I know it’s not Hires,” Trina said.

“It is okay,” Tony said. “I also like Doc’s Root Beer. It is made in the Bronx.”

“I’ll be out in about two hours,” Trina said.

“Okay.” Tony sat.

She put her hand on his shoulder. “How’s your writing coming?”

Tony showed her a notepad. “I have one notepad left.”

Trina turned her head to the side.
Is that written in English? Tony could be a doctor here.
“Do you need more paper? I could get you some.”

“I will be okay,” Tony said. “My hand is tired.”

She backed away from the bench. “See you soon.”

“Yes,” Tony said.

Instead of going by the nurse’s station on the second floor to check in and possibly run into ES and ES2, Trina stood at a hall phone inside the ER and called psych.

“Is this Doc Ramsey?” Trina asked.

“This is she,” Dr. Ramsey said.

“Hi, this is Trina Woods, and I’m working with an Asperger’s patient.”
Well, I am. Sort of.

“How do you know he has Asperger’s?” Dr. Ramsey asked.

“He told me,” Trina said.

“That’s a good sign,” Dr. Ramsey said. “He knows he’s different, and he may have already taken steps to function better socially. Is he high functioning?”

“Yes.”
He’s actually a genius. He has numerous hits and has won three Grammy Awards.

“What are his strengths as you see them?” Dr. Ramsey asked.

“Music, definitely.”

“And his weaknesses?”

“Shyness mostly,” Trina said. “Fear of physical contact, too.”
Talking to women, but that’s not a weakness as long as he only talks to me exclusively.

“That’s par for the course with Aspies,” Dr. Ramsey said.

Aspies? What a strange nickname.

“He sounds fairly well adjusted,” Dr. Ramsey said. “What is he in the hospital for?”

“Um, a routine checkup.”
To check up on me!
“Is there anything I should look out for?”

“Well, there’s stimming and perseverating,” Dr. Ramsey said.

Those can’t be real words.
“What are they?”

“Asperger’s sufferers use stimming to calm themselves down,” Dr. Ramsey said. “They might pace or rock or make noises that soothe them.”

“Or pull on their fingers?”

“Yes,” Dr. Ramsey said. “Does your patient do this?”

“I’ve seen him do it, yes,” Trina said.

“What calmed him down?” Dr. Ramsey asked.

Me!
“Soft words, I guess. I put my hand on his hand, too. What’s perseverating?”

“Talking about the same thing for a long time, sometimes all day, sometimes over a number of days,” Dr. Ramsey said. “It’s a form of fixation, and attempts to change the subject often fail.”

Tony has been fixating on Cielo Azul. Perseverating also sounds like something ES does daily and what Robert did every day for ten years.
“What do I do if that happens?”

“A change of scene sometimes works,” Dr. Ramsey said. “Remove the patient from
wherever
he’s perseverating, and sometimes he’ll snap out of it.”

I don’t want to ask this, but . . .
“Could he be dangerous?”

“There’s nothing in the medical literature to suggest AS sufferers are inherently dangerous to others,” Dr. Ramsey said. “Anything else?”

“Um, no,” Trina said. “Thank you, Dr. Ramsey.”
You’ve calmed me down about my date.

Trina worked the last ninety minutes of her shift on the fourth floor, helping with a new admittance and watching the nearest clock when she could. At four, she rushed to her locker, collected her jacket and purse, and burst out into the hallway—to be stopped by ES and ES2.

“Where do you think you’re going, Woods?” Nurse Sprouse asked.

On a real date!
“Home. My shift’s over.” She slipped into her jacket.

“I haven’t seen you all afternoon,” Nurse Sprouse said.

I know. Was it good for you, too?
“I’ve been here.”

“Tina Gonzalez said you were in the bathroom for most of the afternoon,” Nurse Sprouse said. “Is that true?”

Tina is a stalking bitch.
“Yes,” Trina said. “Well, for about an hour or so.”

“Then you should have clocked out and gone home,” Nurse Sprouse said. “This hospital is
not
paying you to sit on the toilet all day.”

Just to take patients to and from the toilet when I could be flawlessly managing and charting half a dozen patients.
“I know it isn’t.”
And this gives me an idea.
“Nurse Sprouse, I’m still not feeling that good. I should probably take the rest of the week off to be sure whatever I have is out of my system.”

“Time-off requests must be made—”

“I know the rule, Nurse Sprouse,” Trina interrupted.
I helped rewrite that rule six years ago before your anal ass got here.
“But I came down with this today, and you don’t want a sick nurse around patients, do you?”

“Of course not, Woods,” Nurse Sprouse said.

“I’ll be back bright and early on Monday,” Trina said, moving around Inez and Danica. “Bye.”

“I will remember this during your evaluation,” Nurse Sprouse said. “Make a note of it, Martinez.”

Inez wrote something down.

Trina stopped. “Remember what? That I got sick?”

“That you, as a nurse, didn’t take better care of your health,” Nurse Sprouse said. “Trumbo, sign Woods up for a refresher seminar in blood-borne pathogens.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Danica said with a smile.

“That’s not necessary,” Trina said. “I just took that course—”

“You’re right, Woods,” Nurse Sprouse interrupted. “It
isn’t
necessary. For a
professional
nurse. For
you
, it is.”

Inez and Danica snickered.

Just you wait, ES2,
Trina thought as she walked out the ER entrance.
In the original
Cinderella
, pigeons pecked out the eyes of Cinderella’s evil stepsisters.

Trina approached the bus bench. “Tony,” she whispered.

Tony looked up. “Hi, Trina. It is time to go.”

“Yes,” Trina said. “It’s not a long walk. I live on O’Farrell.”

“We will take Hyde Street then,” Tony said as he stood. “It is quickest.”

She grasped his elbow lightly. “Is it okay if I hold on to your arm as we walk?”

“Yes,” Tony said.

A bus pulled up, and a crowd filed around them to get on and off.

“I have written six songs,” Tony said as they walked through the throng at a leisurely pace. “I wrote five about you and one about the bus.”

“You wrote a song about the bus,” Trina said.

“A bus has music,” Tony said. “I hear music everywhere. I listened to people walking all around me today. Each person had a different rhythm.”

“What’s my rhythm?” Trina asked.

“
Vivace,
” Tony said. “You are lively and spirited.”

“What’s your rhythm?” Trina asked.

“I am
adagio,
slow,” Tony said.

“I don’t think you’re slow at all,” Trina said. “You asked me out the first time you met me.”

“I did not speak to you the first time I met you,” Tony said.

“Because you were sponging me, right?” Trina said.

“Yes,” Tony said. “I like to sponge.”

“Did you see anything you liked while you were sponging me?” Trina asked.

“Yes,” Tony said. “I liked everything.”

I’d ask him to be more specific, but I just met him,
Trina thought.
Oh, it is so nice to be walking with a man.

Tony’s eyes never stayed still during the short walk to Trina’s apartment. He stared at a graffiti-covered gray Dumpster and made several notes. He looked up at ancient fire escapes. He seemed to count the metal supports on some scaffolding. He mumbled rhymes as they passed “House of Fans.” He turned his head to listen to the swaying leaves of the trees sprouting from the sidewalk. He tried to step only on the darker-colored concrete squares as they turned onto O’Farrell. He counted the windows on her apartment building.