Chapter 28

I awoke early in the morning again, well before regular hospital time. By that I mean that the staff didn't get the chance to awaken me by coming around and jolting me awake just to take my temperature and blood pressure. In fact I had a chance to think about things in peace for a while.

Of course one of my thoughts was about the question that had been on my mind when I fell asleep the night before; was I actually Silas's bastard son? My subconscious mind must have worked on that problem during the night, because I found that I almost instantly came to a decision on the subject.

I decided it didn't matter to me, not in the least.

Oh sure, I was tremendously curious, but knowing for certain wasn't going to make any life altering differences. It wasn't about to change any of my relationships with my family or with my friends and it certainly would provide me with any advantage. The only people in the world who might deserve to know the truth were Mom, Dad, and Uncle Silas, if he had still been alive. I didn't include myself in that group because Mom and Dad had always treated me as their son. They certainly didn't deserve to have me act as if there was any chance that Dad wasn't my biological father. That would have hurt them both and I wasn't about to do that to people I loved.

There was one other result of my decision that was definitely going to affect someone close to me though, since I wanted the subject dropped I was going to have to speak to Fran about it. Because she had been so close to Uncle Silas, the fact that she was asking questions might stir rumours if anyone heard her suspicions. If those rumours got to my family, they could be hurtful to them, so I was going to have to ask her to please keep her surmises to herself, or at least between the two of us.

With that decision firmly made, I stretched and shifted, thinking about getting out of bed. Once I'd thought about it, I found I simply had to get up. Normal bodily functions had begun to operate. I was actually in the tiny bathroom of the ward when the nurse came in to awaken me. That seemed to annoy her, amongst other things she'd wanted a urine sample that morning and I was no longer able to provide one.

I received a minor chewing out about that, but took the nurse's annoyance stoically, simply shrugging my shoulders and apologizing. As I explained, it was a matter of habit. I awoke. I got out of bed. I peed. I'd followed that schedule for twenty years and being in the hospital for a few days wasn't going to change that habit, nor did I want to. I suppose she'd heard the same thing before because she simply sighed and carried on, collecting a small blood sample, then taking my blood pressure and temperature. Since she wasn't talkative, neither was I. The way she treated me didn't help the sober mood I was in.

I was surprised by the fact that shortly after the first nurse had left, another nurse showed up. The second one was the antithesis of my first visitor of the day and the opposite of the fearsome foursome as well. She was there to give me a light sponge bathe and to change my bandages, but all the time she was there, she was talking a mile a minute. She was as gentle and careful as she could be, even though she was quite efficient at what she was doing and wasted no time doing it. Her bright and bouncy mood might have been contagious under normal circumstances, but by the time my mood had started to lighten, she was done her job and gone.

She had hardly left the ward when I was served my breakfast. One glance at the meal that was brought and my mood sank again. Breakfast consisted of cold porridge, skim milk, bitter orange juice, an unripe hunk of grapefruit, weak tea and soggy toast.

Yuck!

Altogether an unappetising way to start the day, however, my stomach was demanding food, so I ate what I had been given, hoping that it would at least calm the nerves in my body that insisted I was starving.

Then I sat in my bed, feeling bored.

I considered taking out my books and studying, but since no one had been around to collect the dishes from breakfast, I had nowhere to lay them out. Instead, I lay back in the bed and considered the problems that I knew I was going to face when I went back to the farm. From the hints I'd received from the doctors that could happen today and it wouldn't hurt to consider what I needed to do in the near future.

The first fact I was going to have to face was the reality that I wasn't going to be able to be as physically energetic as I'd been before, at least not until the wound in my gut had a chance to heal. By the time I was able to move around much, I knew I'd have lost some muscle tone. I frowned at that, wondering just what I could do to reduce that problem. At the moment I couldn't think of anything I could do to combat that fact, other than the idea that I needed to stay mobile so I was going to have to refuse to be coddled too much.

Of course the thought of being coddled immediately brought to mind the women in my life. At least Lisa-Marie and Andy were going to be away for another day or two since Andy was taking the paramedic course in Edmonton. However, Fran and Mai Lin were going to be there. I thought I could sidestep Mai Lin and soft peddle Fran, well, at least I hoped I could. If necessary, I was going to have to be stubborn and recalcitrant, but I wasn't about to have anyone forcing me to be too darn lazy and lackadaisical. Since Fran had been told what the restrictions I was going to be under, I knew I was going to have some discussions with her on those, but I planned on stretching them as quickly as I could. After all, I trusted the way my body healed and reacted.

It wasn't as if I was about to force myself far enough to cause injuries, but I wasn't about to let the women around my home turn me into a total invalid either. I already knew I wasn't going to be able to climb the stairs for a few days, so one of the first things I planned on doing was to have a bed set up in the new office downstairs. At least the fact that the guys had finished the bathroom on the ground floor helped out in that respect. I wasn't going to have to climb the stairs to go to the can.

Taking a deep breath, I slipped out of bed again, having decided that simply standing on my own two feet and walking around was probably the first step in getting back into shape. Rather than just stand or walk around, I wanted to accomplish something though, with that in mind, I moved over to the window and looked out. I wasn't just looking at the scenery; I wanted an idea what the weather was like. Although the sky looked blue, it was that weak, washed out blue that the prairie sky becomes on during an intensely cold day in midwinter, in other words the weather didn't appear very inviting. When I saw the clouds of steamy vapour surrounding the head of a man out walking to his car, I knew my guess had been correct. It was definitely cold as blazes outside. In fact I could feel the cold as I leaned near the window; the hospital gown I was wearing was definitely not meant to keep anyone warm. It didn't bother me much, but for some it might have been a problem.

That thought reminded me of the main problem I had with the hospital and the fearsome foursome. I sighed deeply, now that I wasn't hurting so much, I wasn't feeling as angry over my treatment. I wandered back to the bed, slipping back under the covers to warm up again. I lay there quietly, deciding what I was going to do and say when I signed out of the hospital. I had to take into account the fact that I usually was nowhere near as vindictive as I'd felt just after the incident. All I really wanted to see was an improvement of procedures so what had happened to me wouldn't happen to anyone else.

At the same time as feeling that those four biddies needed to be disciplined, I felt even more strongly that they really needed to understand that what they had done was wrong. In fact what they had done was asinine, completely stupid. They'd taken pleasure out of giving me pain, but if I hurt them because of what they'd done, wasn't I being just as bad? I really wasn't a believer in the old tenet that said 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.'

I simply felt the hospital needed to find a way to stop them from doing the same thing to some other innocent victim. I certainly wasn't angry at the hospital itself and I wasn't upset with the way any of the rest of the staff had treated me. I decided that what would satisfy me was really quite simple. All I really wanted was for nonsense of the kind that I had gone through to stop. I really didn't have any great faith in retraining the group women who'd hurt me, after all, people resisted change and being vindictive seemed to be in that bunches' nature. No matter what training they had, I felt sure they would treat those they liked better than they'd treat those they disliked.

Suddenly I had a thought about somewhat similar personalities and about something that had happened to an uncle, one of Mom's brothers. I'd actually talked to Uncle Charlie about it and understood what had gone on behind the scenes, not just what had shown up in public. I had to chuckle because of what I remembered had happened and the end result

Uncle Charlie was a well-educated man who had owned and operated a printing business in a small prairie town. The situation I was thinking about was a direct result of the fact that Uncle Charlie also printed the local weekly newspaper. It wasn't a huge paper, but it did satisfy the needs of the small town where he lived and allowed the local businesses to advertise their various goods as well as carrying news of strictly local interest. That paper also gave Uncle Charlie a chance to write an editorial expressing his opinions.

Now the one key point in understanding Uncle Charlie was the fact that he was very liberal, which meant that the views in his editorials were liberal as well. Since the town where he lived was 'Biblebeltville, ' Alberta, it had many ultraconservative and evangelical citizens. There were many times when his editorials didn't go over well. In fact he used to receive a tremendous number of letters to the editor over many of them, simply because of the viewpoint his editorials wound take.

Some of the most vicious letters weren't over anything political or religious though. One series, which I remember in particular, happened because of the way some local farmers delivered their grain to the local grain elevator in order to sell it. Actually, the whole thing developed because of a strange competition that had grown amongst a few of the local farmers.

For some reason the company that owned the grain elevator had installed a prominent display board at the local elevator that listed the names of the farmers who had delivered grain that week. It displayed the grade they got for their grain and the total number of bushels they'd delivered, which was actually interesting to anyone who really understood farming. However, for some strange reason, the number of truck loads of grain that had actually been dropped off at the elevator governed where your name sat on that stupid list.

Because of that fact, farmers who delivered one large truckload with two hundred and fifty bushels of 'Number One Northern Wheat' might actually be on the bottom of the list. Meanwhile some old coot who dropped off five or ten bushels of 'Feed Grade Oats' with his pickup truck, but made seven or eight trips a week, would have his name displayed at the top of the list.

I was at the elevator with Uncle Charlie one day when we happened to notice that silly board and its dumb statistics. That set off a whole landslide of events, because we thought it was funny and laughed about it. Unfortunately the old fart, whose name was on top of the board at that moment, was also in the elevator at the time and demanded to know what was so funny.

Now I've described Uncle Charlie's point of view, so I suppose I should describe the old geezer's views as well; he was one of the ultraconservative locals, but he was known mostly for being crotchety and opinionated. One of his favourite sayings was that he 'called a spade a spade' and was 'honest as the day was long, ' in other words he considered himself to be 'the salt of the earth' and didn't see any humour in what we found funny.

Unfortunately, that day he didn't like the fact that Uncle Charlie also 'called a spade a spade.' You see, Uncle Charlie pointed out the fact that his six loads of feed grain that week had only earned him a fraction of what was made in one of the loads delivered by a larger truck. It didn't help that the elevator operator offered the opinion that if he had his way, the board would be scrapped because it was causing lineups and made more work for him in other ways. Unfortunately he had to display the board and update the list after each delivery because he had to follow company policy.

For some reason having the elevator operator agree with Uncle Charlie was just too much for the old fart. He went ballistic.

Of course even knowing that it would drive the old nut crazy, Uncle Charlie wrote an editorial about the whole asinine practise and published it in the paper. You see it affected all the farmers who delivered grain to that elevator, as well as the elevator operator and the efficiency of the whole operation. Multiple small trips were simply a lot less efficient and much more costly for all the people involved. As well as that the sheer number of small pickup trucks that lined up daily to dump their tiny loads made the lives of those delivering larger loads difficult. Uncle Charlie pointed out all the costs and all the problems in his editorial and although he didn't actually call the whole business idiotic, anyone reading the editorial got the point.

Uncle Charlie knew he was going to get letters to the editor because of that editorial, he just didn't expect them to be so numerous or so vehement. It seemed that the old fart and all his buddies wrote in, not just one letter from each farmer either. During the next week Uncle Charlie got as many as ten or twelve letters from several individuals. Most of the letters didn't make any sense or even stay on the subject. Instead most of the letters simply railed against Uncle Charlie's views and often used vulgar terms and obscenities which couldn't be reprinted in a family oriented newspaper. So, instead of censoring those, or even trying to print all the letters, he chose several examples, then in an additional blurb he described what the rest had said or implied.

However, what infuriated a few of those who'd written in the most letters was the fact that he printed a list of the names and the number of letters he received from each individual. Right beside that he printed a list of the names that had appeared at the elevator for the previous week. Since he had printed them in descending numerical order, the first twenty odd names were identical, they even matched name for name on both lists.

Of course, for Uncle Charlie, the matter was over and done with. He'd written his editorial, expressed his opinion and had moved on to another subject in the next weeks editorial, but that wasn't the case for the others involved. For one thing, the elevator operator clipped out the editorial, added the statistics of his costs in handling the various sizes of loads and added a few snapshots of the lineups of trucks, then sent the whole lot off to the grain elevator company's main office. Meanwhile, those old farmers whose only visible accomplishment in life appeared to have been to have their names on the top of that list were still furious. He might not print their letters, but that didn't stop them from shouting the same obscenities at him on the streets as he walked past.

I was walking with him one day when that was happening and asked him why he didn't respond. He just smiled at me and said "It's not worthwhile. You see, most of those old farmers are barely scratching by. Almost all of them have an inferiority complex and unfortunately I've ridiculed the only thing in the world that they've ever done that has featured them on the top of any list. Even though they realise in their hearts that their actions are childish and irrational, they aren't about to change or accept a more realistic view of the world."

"But, you run the paper, you could write another editorial and make them stop doing it." I'd said, illustrating my innocent view of the world as seen by a ten-year-old.

"No, life doesn't work that way." Uncle Charlie had laughed as he'd ruffled the hair on my head with one hand. "There's an old saying that 'You can't change the spots on a leopard or the stripes on a tiger.' What that saying means is that if they don't want to change their own minds, then nothing I can say or do will change anything in the least. No, Tommy, it's best for me to just ignore the ignorant old fools and go on with my life as if they hadn't said a word or done a thing."

I remember at the time I puzzled over what he'd meant, but Uncle Charlie had been right. Eventually things calmed down so he could again walk the streets and not be met by irrational imprecations.

Of course the situation didn't remain static. The report that the elevator operator sent to his bosses caused an investigation and in no time at all the board along with its list of names simply disappeared. That caused a minor stir, but since the order had come from the main office of the company, nothing major was said about the fact that it was gone.

That lesson had sunk in, but I'd forgotten about it earlier when I was hurting from the treatment I'd received. Luckily I remembered it that morning and I sighed as I realized that the best way to treat Phillipa and her cronies was to leave any form of admonishment to the hospital. I resolved that I would take no personal action in the matter, at least not for the time being.

Instead I made up my mind that I'd tell Mr. Souza that I'd be keeping an eye on hospital developments and would advise my lawyer to do the same thing. I knew that the idea that the hospital and the four furies were being watched would be more of a threat to force good behaviour than any actual legal action would. Somehow peoples' imaginations always create more fearful possibilities than any real threat can ever manage to do.

I was still chuckling about that when the young woman came to pick up my food tray. We had a short chat and then she left to carry on her job. After she left, I was about to dig out my books and do some studying, but Dr. Franklin chose that moment to appear at my bedside.

"Hello, Tom." He smiled. "I've had reports that your operation is healing very well, but how do you feel? Do you think you can behave yourself if I let Fran Lowther take you home?"

"Oh, I think so." I grinned at him. "I'm not sure she'll behave though."

That seemed to tickle him and he was still laughing softly as he checked my blood pressure and pulse, then looked at the bandage on my belly.

"I should have that opened to see how you're healing, but it seems that our new bed care nurse has just replace it. At least she checked and according to her it was healing well, what do you think?"