Love is a Candied Parsnip

Odd? Miss Marcie didn’t have children of her own and was the last one to put out a cup of peppermint candies, the way that they remind orphans of Christmas Spirit, swirls of candy that had been cleaved from their canes – the Righteous... No, the appetite of a win. And it must be said that more than one boy took a stray punch in the yard to come to her office ready to confess, “Yes. It hurts.”

(and I love you. I love you. Forever)

“Yes, it hurts, right there. That hurts.” 

(Your hands make me tremble.)

A boy had to play as if he didn’t know if he was socked in the face or in the chest and she would gently touch around without needing to press. The human x-ray-fingers and the candy. The way that gums and hard candies stimulate the salivatory flow of ninety-eight percent antimicrobials, the way she slowly blew on the leg as she withdrew a Big Bird Band-Aid and peered down at the infection. 

“Am I gonna die?”

(Let me get ready.)

No one cares if they die in Miss Marcie’s arms, on her padded desk, she withdrawals the pebbles of asphalt with long tweezer that had pink stocking coverings. No one else cares for medical tools like this lady and she keeps them warm and sews each item a very personal and intimate dustcover made out of wool that had traveled mountains. 

After a few moments of blissful reunion, Miss Marcie has to stand, reach over for the business chart, and diplomatically describe the situation for the school board, and the Governor – some of her prognoses are so good they will be argued by Medical Experts for decades. She is their early explorer into the physiology of the eight-year-old teaming to come forward, the comfort whisperer, the wide lens of their deepest consolations. She is the warmth that derives from a closet of clothes, the security of a heavy blanket over the eyes, the way that creatures never come to eat you at night with a dress featuring white daisy buttons because they don’t care like Miss Marcie cares. 

Her hands are used for holding bubbles, the bubbles reflect a hundred colors in their curves and she puts these on her tray, and apologizes that there is no placemat or ceremony but the bubbles must rise for a time. “Ok. Miss Marcie.” 

Then she must be very very serious and lounges her hand down on his shoulder, lightly; it sends jolts of electricity and renewed hope in the boy. She drops to her knees so that the plane of their eyes can be mutually unobstructed. It’s time to speak of these feeling the two have between them. How they both know that she has to heal and he must get scraped and bruised and battered so they can be together again. 

“Are you being bullied, Thomas?” 

(Would you like me to get bullied, Alice?)

It’s too much. No. Miss Marcie is not used to hearing her own name in his head. She must stand up, confused, pacing to the cabinet of potions and pills – maybe she needs a Perkoset. Yes, right there, a Percocet found on the adult shelf while the children only get multivitamins. Tommy removes his belt. 

The junior Jordache jeans fall straight to the floor and it’s time for the forbidden love that only Phil Collins dared to sing about. Miss Marcie, (Alice), glances only for a moment in that direction and returns to her cabinet of pain relief. It’s too much. She fans her core passions astray with fingers near her face, and then feverishly ransacked all of the cabinets, where are her pills? The flask the Principal left is still closed since their brief holiday stint and she knows it's not right to bring the hooch of another man to her perfect lips. 

“Misssss Alice,” it sounds like a brass triangle stuck once, and the note drifts through the room, the call to service. The sole charter of the nurses since the time of Betsy Ross and Margaret Corbin who won the Revolutionary War, they must pack that cannon with a ten-foot rod, jamming the ballistic deep into the chamber. Just a little spark. Come on and light it…

Oral toxicity has a latency of nearly eighteen minutes and Alice Marcie can taste the vapors of the isopropyl alcohol but they have no real effect on her bloodstream. The patient has been hiding a self-sabotage with a number 2 pencil deep inside his crotch. There’s still forensic evidence to show the angle of penetration, and how the graphite tip must have been burnt or frozen because graphite has been chosen by all the schools of the world for its safety. So many beautiful teachers become crushes, there's too much loving in the attention, and you might as well give children switchblade knives if the number 2 pencil becomes their modus of attentive need.

(Look at me! Look what I can do...)

He sings in the Anglican high liturgy notes, “I-m bLEed’n” and she has a natural duty and magnetic desire to swoop right down and remove the pencil stump. The little yellow stick with the rubber eraser at the top. No, no. It’s too personal. Technically a surgery; she cannot. 

I mean… was it really really about the saving of a life? Tommy is bouncing his legs and smiling like he just caught a comet in his baseball mitt, saved the world, perma-grinned. There’s something endearing about researching the scope and function of each public employee, how they can write to Elon Musk next week and say, “I saved a life, once.” Yes. It would sound much better if she could write DOGE and say, “I saved a President’s life, once” but little Tommy hadn’t started the Alice Marcie Fan club as he had intended. He had not filled out the 501(c)(3) forms and really wasn’t a President in name but maybe in spirit and the two of them had woken up, brushed their teeth, and tended their clothing for this moment. Cars were invented to bring them together. It was time. 

—-

Ms. Marcie was the real McCoy, a loyalist to the extreme educational health and all of the policies that were required of her service. Hadn’t Mr. Marsack (the school Principal) accommodated her over Christmas Break with the Spirit of Education Award and gifted his grandfather’s flask with a 92% rubbing alcohol solution? Because he placed such great trust in the process of hygiene and administration. 

Unfortunately, the staff was in a wrinkle over the new directives and Alice Marcie had not performed a gender reassignment surgery in many weeks. She was itchy. Now this flippant little tare was just begging, nearly pleading for the operation. It would take just a few moments of a scalpel and then she could use her training in flower arrangement, a tulip would look nice down there. It is important to do it all in one courageous swipe, like turning the sleeping bag into the protective cover, no ripcords to pull, just use the great hand strength from massage school and turn that lethal snake into a flower. 

She put the jasmine tea mint and vodka down. “Ok, Tommy.” 

He was smiling and would look very very pretty in a plaid skirt, maybe some hair clips and a little rouge. Hadn’t he obviously been coming to her office for the last six weeks just to ask? Little boys are very cryptic when they ask. One might say, “I don’t like to play baseball” and then she would rearrange their parts until they wanted to try ballet. 

One child might say, “The other kids are laughing at me…” and she knew this meant they needed to feel pretty. A five-hour bag of IV hormones, a little music by Cher, and the patients left her office with a new vibrancy and could be whoever they needed to be. 

Out came the plastic gloves. They are not necessary but some kids are real bleeders. Miss Marcie preferred the 10mm purples which could take minor syringe pricks. They were essential chain mail for the hands because some kids change their minds and begin to bite. After all these years, why are children still biters? 

There’s a rolling drawer with perfect wheels that always pulls out with the sound of a hermetic seal being popped. The heavy blades are sheathed in plastic and you don’t have to test their sharpness on the hair of the wrist. They are German steel and could prep cook for a large dinner party after using them on people for many hours. Alice liked to sing a lullaby while they waited for the mood which she succored. 

She began, “baa baa black sheep… Have you any wool?” 

—

“Yes sir, yes sir… three bags full.” 

Tommy liked this song as the beautiful nurse looked him over and designed all the ways to pleasure his person. He didn’t need to tell his friends because they weren’t important. Like Natalie Merchant chanted, ‘Because the night belongs to lovers… because the night… belongs to us.” 

Miss Marcie continued to sing her own song. It was sexy: 

One for the master, one for the dame

One for the little boy who lives down the lane

Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?

Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full

Because the night belongs to lovers… because the night...

Tommy kicked out his legs like he was wading in invisible water. Wool is obviously a euphemism for lady parts. It was time to become the young master…hehehe

—-

Now if little Thomasina was Jewish she would have to wait. There are parties and scrolls to read before advancing a boy child into womanhood and they must receive gifts in denominations of 8. They must choose between the Bat or the Bar Misvkahs, it was not for her to meddle. But the other faiths, primarily the Christian, the Mormon, and even the Catholic had a standing order of accountability around the age of 8. 

It was time to lay it down, to cover the eyes with a cool washcloth and offer local anesthesia because some children might not be aware that there could be a pain in their evolution. It is illegal on these occasions just to hand the patient a shot of Jack Danials but it is perfectly good and proper to ask them to turn around for a moment and throw needles at their bum like a dartboard 

“Oh, Tomma-see-na….” 

___

Yeah. She was done fighting the passions they held together. Six weeks of his bruising for their culmination in this moment, the way he wooed her with lacerations and she gave him cold cubes of ice. The way she always turned her head but left the upper buttons down on her dress (obviously challenging him to look. He looked). The way she put on perfume so that he couldn't think for the rest of the day. How she always signed his band-aids with her initials in black sharpie “A.M.” and he couldn’t wake up in the morning without her damn stamp on his day. AM, AM the alarm blaring: AM , AM. 

She asked him to turn over. 

Yeah. 

He knew what was coming and she would put hot breath on her fingers. 

AM!

AM!

Owwwwwwww

_____

It’s important to smoke a vape if your school does not allow the faculty to light a joint while the medicine is working. The windows are usually bolted since some kid decided to sneak out of the infirmary one day and didn't care that cutting class has a cost for extra options like art, music, and medical. 

There was a reason Alice Marcie didn’t have children of her own. She had always modified her plush dolls and pulled out the button eyes, ripping them in the middle to see if there was any heart inside. The small happy person in her person said, “It’s best not to be tempted.” The human experiment starts at home and DaVinci learned most of the anatomy of the eye from his dead mother before he had to hire any grave diggers. It’s really about expanding the boundaries of knowledge. The way old tombs can tell us about the people who bled before. 

The phone began to ring in her little dizzy. She was still steady of hand and waiting but the vibration of the school phone on the ringer was very distracting. With one last gasp, she picked up the receiver, 

“Nurse's Office.” 

‘Wah wah wahh wahh wahh’

“I understand.” 

There had been a mass poisoning, again, in the lunchroom. Mrs. Olivia, the Head Chef, had recently joined a cult and the kids wouldn’t pray before eating her Buffalo Styled chicken and gravy. It was very disappointing that she should make the school cafeteria part of her faith practices but people can’t be expected to deny their worldview for the bulk of the day, ever day. 

Miss Marcie put a lien and a linen over little Tommy’s exposed bottom and promised they should get together another time to help him fulfill all of his ambitions. 

___

Tommy dreamed with the gallant smile of the conquering hero, Lancelot returning the scarf to Gwenevere, prancing on a tall horse, triumphant in his love without words. 

His understanding was that after she touched his junk they had to get married.