Bishop Seymour Memorial Hospital

The Bishop Seymour Memorial Hospital in Fort Wayne, Indiana is a two hundred and fifty bed medical center. It employs 112 doctors, 401 nurses, 273 orderlies, 108 emergency responders, 52 janitors and fifteen receptionists. Only a few of them are happy.

One of the 401 nurses on staff, Nurse Bradley, guides Nancy Peters across a two thousand square foot parking lot. In the morning, the lot is a sardine tin, but when visiting hours are over, the cars thin out, refusing adjacency. Right now, as the sun pulls behind the flat crimson roof (known affectionately as “Death’s Landing” by the Medevac pilots), every car has a golden crust, and Nancy’s eyes glisten as she scans them.

“What kind of car is it?” Bradley says.

“It’s my husband’s car.” Nancy says, her hand sinking closer to Bradley’s wrist.

“I know that Mrs. Peters.” Bradley looks at his watch. It’s a Mickey Mouse Timex, which he hates, given to him by his eldest daughter, who he loves. Mickey’s fat-fingered glove inches towards five. “Do you remember where he parked it?”

“No.” She shakes her head, and the white curls tighten around her face. “It was so long ago,” she adds, “that he was able to drive here.”

“Ah,” Bradley says, and remembers something, a clue from the fourth story window where they met. She was wearing a sequence green dress on a Tuesday afternoon, clutching Mr. Peters limp, liver-spotted hand. When Bradley inquired about the formality, Nancy answered without breaking her smile: “It was always his favorite color.”

“Is it that one?” Bradley points. Twenty feet on their left is a Rover Mini Coop, dusty and alone, shining like a scarab. It’s painted greener than summer, greener than spring, perhaps, and Bradley thinks he can identify the exact tone: Willie Oak, camping with his pregnant wife, touching the veins of each leaf as if they were running inside her. Nancy’s hand forms a bracelet at his wrist.

“Yes. That’s the one.”

Five feet away, Nancy stops, and pulls her free hand against her hair, exposing her lips, her sunken eyes. For her age, she should look chapped and overrun, but flush against the decaying sun, Bradley sees she is gaining years right in front of him. The light pours youth across her dimples and turns her hair blond. In a quiet voice, barely perceptible above the oncoming shriek of an ambulance, Nancy whispers.

“He was a good man, you know.”

Bradley looks over at her, his Hippocratic oath dissolving in his gaze. No one in the hospital matters in this moment- only Nancy Peters, the woman in the sequence dress. The woman who waited for the day when her husband could drive himself home. A true smile appears on his lips.

“I know, Nancy. It was obvious.”

---

On the first floor, Dr. Schroeder is catching up to a rattling wheelchair. His knees lock and click as he jogs, a brutish reminder of his college basketball days. His mother never attended those games; wouldn’t even watch them on TV. She was always stuck on “Wheel of Fortune” and those silly little word puzzles.

As the doctor approaches the patient, the noise in his knees slows down, and he imagines the ticker smacking against the pegs of her favorite wheel, nearing towards Bankruptcy.  

“What’s going on here?”

Nurse Sheila has a bag of ice in her hand, and she gives it to Dr. Schroeder. Inside is a nub of bloody white flesh, and a few wet lawn clippings. Dr. Schroeder looks at the boy.

“What were you doing?”

The teenager opens his eyes, teeth clenched. “We were playing a game.”

“What game?”

“It’s on the iPhone. Fruit Ninja?”

Dr. Schroeder raises his eyebrows. “You cut your finger on an iPhone?”

“No, sir. We used to play the game on the phone, but today we went to the grocery store and bought a bunch of produce. We wanted to see…” The teen blushes, “how realistic the game was.”

Dr. Schroeder doesn’t feel the laugh building in his chest and is shocked when it parts from his lips. The doctor is lucky to have been blessed with a good laugh, though- the kind that brings others in on the joke. Nurse Sheila smiles, and some color comes back to the boy’s face.

“So,” the doctor says, “it was pretty realistic, huh?”

And then they all begin to laugh.

---

Three floors above, in the cluttered corner office of the cancer unit, Dr. Crosby gestures to a middle-aged couple to take a seat at his desk. They are corn-fed people, the only type of patient that exists in Fort Wayne, and sometimes Dr. Crosby believes they all look like ghosts, pale and dead from the news he’s tasked with giving them.

“Your results are in, Mrs. Loftman” Dr. Crosby says. The room goes quieter than it should be, as if the electronics and AC units want to hear what he has to say. Mr. Loftman grabs for his wife’s hand, and Mrs. Loftman grabs for the cross around her neck.

“It’s good news. Ductal carcinoma in situ. We caught it very early.”

The man deflates, not understanding Crosby’s language. Tears populate his cheeks. But the woman is silent, dissecting every word. Dr. Crosby speaks for her now.

“Out of the five stages, you’ve got the best one. It means that even though the cells in your milk gland have become cancerous, they haven’t begun to spread yet. The procedure is a simple mastectomy with a 98% chance of 10 year survival.”

Mr. Loftman is confused- he looks to Mrs. Loftman for help. She is smiling now, a docile thing, sacred in an office like his. Her fingers keep stroking the little gold cross on her chest.

“She’s gonna be OK?” Mr. Loftman says, barely a GED to his name.

“Yes, sir. She might lose some flesh, but she’ll be OK.”

He turns and kisses her, the tears still shiny on his face, his hand grasping at her chin. It is a forceful embrace, and Dr. Crosby feels he is witnessing something rare. There may never be a kiss like this in his office ever again. So he doesn’t feel strange as he smiles and watches from across the desk.

---

Down at the other end of the hallway is a subsect of the hospital called the Pediatric Cancer wing. It is rarely visited because its contents are so harrowing. Kids fighting losing battles, parents grieving in the waiting rooms. The only janitor brave enough to clean those rooms is Travis Wayne, fifty-eight years old. Today he comes wielding a mop and a red package under his armpit.

Marcus Fillmore, thirteen, is waiting for him. When the door opens, he props himself in bed, shooing away the blankets and stuffed animals that are given to him by the dozen. He tries to look big, healthy, alive, but it’s a difficult task with two IV’s and a breathing tube. Travis smiles regardless.

“How we doin’ today, bud?” He turns to the television, where the First Take members are barking away. “Catch them Pacers last night?”

“Yeah,” Marcus says. “Haliburton went crazy.”

“Yeah, yup, I was thinking the same thing. That’s gonna be you someday, I believe it.” Travis fakes a fade-away, and a splash of water leaps from the mop bucket.

“Really? You think that?” Marcus crosses his arms. He’s used to fake promises, false hope.

“No doubt, no doubt.” Travis moves to his bedside, fishes the package from under his arm. “Not without this, though.”

Marcus doesn’t grab for it- he doesn’t know who it’s for. Only when Travis pushes the package in his hand does he hold on to it.

“Open it, bud.”

“Forreal?”

Travis grins, his right canine the rusty color of iodine.

Marcus peels the bow off and opens it. Inside is a mini basketball set, with a plush basketball the size of his palm. Marcus grabs it and laughs as it compresses in his hand.

“We gonna get you trained for the league while you’re in here. I’mma help you with your triples. No doubt.”

Marcus looks at Travis and wonders if there’s anyone that understands him better.

“Happy holidays, buddy.”

---

At the entrance of the first floor, Mary Ellen patiently does her job. It’s not difficult. She checks people in, checks people out. Checks insurance and payment and visiting hours. Mary Ellen is a checker, and she likes it that way.

Sometimes Mary Ellen wishes for more. These moments come rarely, when she has enough free time to scan the room and really look at the patients, who are indiscernible from the cracked brown leaves that are tracked in through the double doors. She doesn’t want to end up like them, the ones that come here without a hand to hold.

There’s a guy, Rodriquez. Mary Ellen thinks about him. He’s an EMT who is often in her lobby, usually sprinting around with an air of urgency and loud sirens. Short brown hair, stringy muscle under his gray uniform, fearless. They have never met before, except on a one-off case when he asked her for a pen. She grabbed it, a BIC Black Xtra-Life Ball Point, and brushed his thumb as she gave it to him. He never said thanks.

It’s this memory that she’s clung onto for eight months, often when she has trouble drifting off on a cold purple queen bed. It’s also the memory that bubbles up when she witnesses him racing in on New Years Day, his rubber soles squeaking on linoleum, his back perfectly cut under his collar. Mary Ellen almost does nothing- it’s all she knows, being a checker for so long. Checkers catch mistakes; they rarely make them.

But when she notices the BIC in her hand, notices it scribbling on the footer of an insurance registration form, she feels completely powerless to her desire. She rips the corner off the page and runs to the double doors. He is on his way out.

“Wait!” Mary Ellen shouts.

Rodriquez turns around. The man has the poise of a German Shepard- respectful, quiet, but fierce. She almost believes that he might bite her as she holds out the slip of paper.

“Call me,” she says.

Rodriquez looks at the paper without reaction. Then, he pulls it from her grip, and pockets it as he runs for the blaring ambulance. He never says thank you.

Mary Ellen bites her lip, and the dimples on her pale cheeks show themselves for the first time all winter.

---

A constant tempest brews above Bishop Seymour Memorial Hospital. All 961 employees feel it, and as they retreat to their homes and apartments and coat racks and closets, it gnaws at them. Feeds on them. As they fall asleep, they won’t know why they continue working at the house of death in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The house that saves so many.

But the chosen few will know why. The hoopers, the lovers, the Timex-wearers. And when they rise, donning their overcoats and chapstick for the morning freeze, they’ll grasp onto that feeling, and choke it til’ the next one comes along.