Читать книгу Campbell Young Mysteries 3-Book Bundle - J.D. Carpenter - Страница 20

Young was becoming familiar with the various nurses who tended to him—not by name, but by action. The day nurses were talkative and laughed a lot and moved through his room like whirlwinds. The night nurses were silent and humourless and slow to respond when he rang for them. In the daytime the ward was a noisy, busy place, but at night it was like a museum after dark, with just the thin sound of the radio at the nurses’ station to suggest that anyone except Young was there. Young felt like a mummy, unable to move or speak. He couldn’t concentrate on anything for more than a few seconds and rarely turned on the television Debi had rented for him. Mostly, he just lay on his side in bed with his eyes closed, conscious of the tube through his nose and the irritation it was causing at the back of his throat. He hardly thought about anything at all, and he wasn’t aware of the passage of time. One night he was startled when he heard a nurse shriek and then in an angry voice say, “I don’t care what you do in the privacy of your own home, Mr. Christiani, but that sort of behaviour will not be tolerated here!”

One of the night nurses was especially nasty. She was a blonde woman whose face Young never clearly saw, but one night when he was suffering more than he thought he could bear and rang for more Demerol, she entered his room without a sound and, without warning and without even swabbing him down, stabbed him in the hip with a needle. Young howled in shock and pain, but when he turned to confront her, she was gone. When he began actively thinking again, he developed a theory that night nurses didn’t really like people; they were happiest when the halls of their wards were dark and gleaming and all their patients out cold.

“Where’s Jamal?”

“He’s at his friend Ryan’s house.”

“Oh.”

“I brought you tomorrow’s Form. I know how you like to keep up.” Debi put the Racing Form on the bed near Young’s hand.

“Is he really at Ryan’s?”

She looked at him. “Yes, he’s really at Ryan’s.”

“Did he know you were coming to visit me?”

She hesitated. “Yes.”

He nodded. “He didn’t want to come.”

“Daddy, you have to understand. When he saw you the other day, it was very frightening for him. It was frightening for me.”

“Do I look any better now?”

She looked at him critically. “A little, I guess.”

“Do you think he’s ... I don’t know ... traumatized? Maybe he’ll never want to see me again, if I scared him that much.”

She put her hand on his arm. “It wasn’t just the way you looked, it was that you didn’t seem to know him. You didn’t respond. That really affected him.”

“I tried to, but I couldn’t talk.”

“Anyway, I’ve told him you’re going to get better, and he’s praying for you.”

“He’s what?”

“He’s praying for you. As you may or may not be aware, Eldridge is very religious, and he’s got all three of us down on our knees in Jamal’s room at bedtime, and we pray. Eldridge has us pray for all sorts of things: that he won’t fall off a horse or be involved in a bad spill; that Jamaica will have a soccer team for the next World Cup; that Bob Marley will show up someday, not really dead after all. Right now, we’re praying for you. You should hear Jamal, Daddy, he’s so sweet. ‘Dear God, please make my Poppy better.’ It makes me cry.”

“It’s the tube up my nose that freaks him, right?”

“No, Daddy, it’s—”

“One of the nurses taught me how to disconnect it so I can go for a walk. Maybe if I’m out of bed the next time he comes, he won’t be so scared. We could go for a walk around the ward. Of course, I’ll still have the IV in my arm and the little trolley I have to drag around behind me. But the tube shouldn’t bother him. There’ll just be about six inches of it coming out of my nose, tied in a knot so nothing leaks out.”