Chapter 4

I awakened in my apartment in Eureka, alarm clock going off, knowing I had another ER nursing shift coming up. I got around, grabbed my scrubs, and noticed that they fit better than they did “yesterday”. I looked in the mirror, and I sure looked for all the world as if I was 30 again. I hunted up my badge, and there I was, Mark McFee RN, BSN, CEN. I grabbed my wallet, looked for my cell phone. Panicked for a bit, because No Cell Phone, but there was the POTS phone I remembered from years ago, and my driver license showed that it was going to have to be renewed in 1993.

I looked on my dining room table, picked up the paper from Monday March 23 1992. Huh? The paper looked relatively new, the apartment looked like the apartment I had when I met the ex. WTF, dude?

WTF, indeed! Yesterday I was a 50-ish, divorced, NP in an urgent care in Fly Over Country. Today it looked as if I was a staff nurse in the ER at Eureka Community Hospital. That had been my job around 20-25 years ago. It was there that I had met The Plaintiff, and we had started out life together. Initially, we were good, very good, together. She brought two kids to the relationship, we rapidly had two more, and, well, I had only thought I had been living, before I became a dad.

I hunted for, and found, the calendar I kept on the frig. Sure enough, it was a Wednesday, and the calendar told me I had to work days, which meant that my present (whatever that meant!) employer expected my thirty year old smiling face on deck and ready to work in about 45 minutes. As I packed my lunch, and stuffed everything into my truck, I reflected upon the presumptively “new” me. I seemed to drive on auto pilot, parking in a once accustomed spot, walking through once familiar doors. I waved to Janey, to Miranda, to Bobby and Dr. Elkhart, as I turned into the break room, stowing my coat and things, and entered the nursing station, sleep walking after a fashion, almost as if I was watching myself from afar.

Bobby was night shift, and eager to be on his way. “Hey, let’s count!” was his greeting to me, and we opened the narcotic cabinet and accounted for everything. I signed for the inventory, pocketed the keys, and Bobby gave me report on his remaining patient.

It was another relatively boring day. Well, for the staff. I’m pretty sure that, for the guy who reports that “It feels as if the front of my face will simply pop off!”, his sinus infection is pretty much the center of his world right around that point in his life. Similarly, for the kid who had dumped his BMX bike, and wrenched his leg pretty thoroughly, his tibial fracture was a pretty big deal. On the other hand, from a “Gotta get on this RFQ, or somebody might die” perspective, ho-hum.

I got relief for lunch, and wandered down to the cafeteria. I had brought my own lunch, since years and years of working emergency services had taught me that, should I assume that I’d be able to break free, to eat, and do that while the cafeteria was still serving food, it was likely that I’d, hungrily, learn to not assume. I, indeed, had learned from many hungry “lunch” breaks!

I settled in, unwrapped my sandwich and began to read American Rifleman. From time to time I’d finish an article, or finish one half of my sandwich, and I’d idly look around the lunchroom. Things were familiar, with a surreal, out-of-body quality to the experience. I nodded to other nurses, who stole away for their own meals. One, or another would sit with me, and we’d converse.

I had just been joined by Cathy Sanborn, who worked the med-surg floor. We had had an occasional friends-with-benefits arrangement, and she was providing me with an after action report, in a whisper, from our own last weekend together. While I was happy that she had enjoyed herself, my recollection of things was from something like 25 subjective years ago. Honestly, the prospect of happy fun times with the youthful, cute, smart Cathy was pretty attractive, so I listened as well as I could, and tried to refresh my catalog of Cathy’s favorite moves. And, hoped that her review of our next match would be as glowing.

She paused in her “Greatest Hits!” review, and nudged me. “You see that new girl, over by the freezer?”

I looked over as directed, and saw a pretty, petite, red haired woman, slim and alive, engaged in conversation with other employees. “Uh, yeah?”

“She’s Annie Evans. She started today, she’s our new aide. She’s going to Oshtemo Community College, just finishing up her first semester. She wants to write the LPN boards, and then finish up and write the boards for RN after that.”

“How nice”, I replied. “Is there some reason you’re pointing her out to me?”

Cathy grinned. “Yep. I know you’re thinking about grad school, and everybody knows that you are getting ready to look for an ICU job, so you can broaden your resume. Annie is unattached, she has plans of her own, and she might be a good match for you.”

“Uh, and, you would not?”

Cathy smiled, again. “Oh, you already know how well you and I are matched. You also know how I grew up in this town, my parents live here, all my family is here or in the next county. I’m just a farm girl, from a farm town, with farm family. When you get into grad school in some big city somewhere, how likely is it that I’ll follow you wherever, and simply pull up all my roots? I’m really enjoying having you as a friend with extras, but I simply do not see myself leaving everything I have ever known, and moving God alone knows where, with you as my boyfriend. Can you see that?”

“Well, with a woman who was inclined to do so, yeah. You make a good point about yourself as a home body. So, I don’t know. The entire thing about having one woman looking around for my next girlfriend, is kind of peculiar, you know.”

“Oh, and having no commitment sex with a guy, is not?”

A wise man knows when to shut up, and nod, when the woman who is gracing him with her company (and romantic charms) delivers a stinging rejoinder. Occasionally, I act as if I might be wise. This was one of those times. I nodded. “I get your point.”

Cathy brought up the subject of Annie from time to time, no doubt seeing herself as some kind of matchmaker. I, of course, was considering things from the perspective of a cynical nearly sixty year old, who had been burned by the very object of Cathy’s deliberations, so I attempted to skirt the topic, without showing my cards.

Finally, Cathy sat me down, and let me have it. “I just do not understand you! Here, I’ve been talking you up to Annie, and letting on that you are the best thing for a woman since Oprah and romance novels, and you cannot be bothered to even ask the girl out to coffee! What is up with you? Every time we have a weekend together, you act as if you just discovered sex, and was afraid they’d take it away from you or something. Here I’m practically throwing this girl at you, and you act like you couldn’t be bothered. What kind of man would pass up the chance at some outside nookie, with a free pass from his regular squeeze?”

Fortunately, I had devoted no small amount of consideration to this very thought, and was prepared (in contrast to my usual encounters with scheming women!). “So, you have talked to her, in some depth, right?”

“Right. That’s how I know you are just right for each other. Hell, I even found out that she is itching to move somewhere else, as soon as she gets her RN license!”

“Okay. So, you do know that she has two children, right?”

“And? I don’t see where this is going.”

This was the part where I started to lie my ass off. I could already see how Adam was starting to grow into the fine young man I would later see him become, in another life. Brenda was sweet, and smart, and pretty as any other 3 year old I had ever met. I wanted so much to enter their lives, to make Annie’s work-school-sleep-kids-work-etcetera grind a little less grueling. I remembered how a second parent would allow her to sleep in on weekends, after a week of 4 hour nights. I remembered how I glowed, when the kids came to me, trustingly as only small children can do, with a problem that they didn’t want to bother their mother with, “because mommy is so tired all the time, and she needs to rest!”

I also recalled the threats, the icy glares, the drama of the divorce. So, since this was my chance to do it all over, differently, I lied through my teeth. “Well, Cathy, where this is going is that I do not see myself as daddy material. You know full well that she has those two children. She’s working her ass off, school full time, job full time, mommy full time. Selfishly, I don’t want to share. I’m happy with what you and I have. If and when I move away, I’ll miss you, but you are a grown woman, and you will move on, even as I will in this example. Can you look me in the eyes and tell me a child can do so, as easily as you can?”

She looked at me dubiously. I continued. “Ha! I though not! Me neither. Is that fair to those kids? And, what about me? How might we, she and I, have a weekend of monkey love when she has papers to write, or kids to mother, or studying to do? No, I don’t think I is fair to her, fair to those kids, fair to me.”

Cathy started to protest, and I bade her wait. “I really do appreciate all that you have invested in this project, but I am not sure that you have thought it through. Gotta admit, neither had I, until I started to consider it, once you pushed me into thinking of it.”

She paused, considering what I had said. “So, you do not think you would get as much attention, as much happy fun times, as you want, should you connect with Annie?”

“Nope, I do not. In addition, given everything on her plate, I really think I’d have to be some kind of special jack-wagon, to get into that sort of a relationship, and expect her to be as attentive, as available for fun times, as you are. Is it really fair to distract her from school, particularly when school may give her a way to support her children, to provide for them, as well as she could? You yourself know how much better the pay for an RN is, over a nurse aid. Do you really think that I’m that sort of selfish asshole, to put her dreams at any sort of jeopardy?”

Cathy smiled at me. “No, I don’t think you are any sort of asshole. You always show me a good time, even when it means holding off on getting your own cookies. Aside from the don’t wanna commit thing, you are a pretty good catch!” She looked away, for a moment, and then turned her smile back on me. “You just proved why I hang around with you. Well, besides the great sex! How many other guys would have given that much thought to some morsel, whom their ever so devoted FWB was trying to hook them up with, simply so he could try to do the right thing? You are quite a guy!”

‘Aw, shucks’ is really the only proper answer to that sort of praise. “Just trying to be a nice guy, ma’am!”

Cathy appeared to have put THAT idea aside, but it appeared that Fate intended Annie and I to cross paths, repeatedly. By way of example, I was shopping one weekend, and encountered her in Bob’s Market, shopping with both her children. We chatted, and I asked her how school was going, simply to be pleasant.

She recounted the never ending stream of care plans, lecture after lecture, and all of that on short sleep and raising needy children (which is, after, pretty much a child’s ground state, right?) I made sympathetic noises.

She looked at me for a moment, and asked, “Didn’t I hear the other girls saying that you had worked your own way through nursing school? How did you manage it?”

“Well, I was on the fire department in Da City, and, when we weren’t on a run, I could study to my heart’s content. My partner slept while I studied, and, when I was too burned out to focus, well, I wouldn’t have made it if Doug hadn’t dragged me over the rough spots! Couple of times he made me give up the keys, after I had fallen asleep standing up on a scene! Of course, I wasn’t a parent. Isn’t that pretty much Job Number One?”

Annie grimaced, ruefully. “Yeah, it pretty much has to be. What with work, and school, and studying, I wonder if I’m giving my kids a fair shake. It sometime feels like I’m sort of ‘phoning it in’ as a mother, giving them my leftovers of time and attention, when they deserve my very best!”

I smiled. “They will not realize it anytime soon, but I can see all the sacrifices you are making for your kids. I’m familiar with weeks of short sleep. When it’s for your children, it is sorta worth it. You are positioning yourself to be able to support them throughout their childhood. It’s OK to examine your choices, and try to be certain that you have made the best you can of the options open to you. But, don’t beat yourself up. You are gonna make mistakes: that’s par for this course. I can see how hard you are working to try to do right by your kids. To me it’s admirable!”

We said our farewells, and parted.

Another time, I was meandering down the aisle of our small town hardware store, and nearly tripped over one of Annie’s children. Annie herself was part way down the aisle, with the other child in tow, apparently looking over the plumbing supplies.

I delivered the wandering child to his mother, and asked, “looking for something in particular, or simply compiling your Christmas list?”

She grimaced in return. “My apartment has a faucet that won’t stop dripping, and what with care plans, and studying, and all that, I finally hit my breaking point. I simply HAD to get out, and fixing that faucet was a good enough excuse. Only problem is, I don’t know what it is I need!”

I had been a landlord in my time in Da City, and had repaired my share of dripping faucets, showers, and suchlike. “What does your faucet look like? Does it have one lever, or two? Can you recall the brand name?”

She took a reflective moment. “Yeah, it has two levers. The good news, is that the dishes from supper, piled in that sink until I can get around to washing them, get pretty effectively rinsed out, before I get to it!”

I turned to the display. “How old would you guess your faucet is? Like, original to the building, or newer?”

She grimaced. “I guess it is as old as the building. I cannot see my landlord changing out anything that had any hope of working halfway!”