Recoveries... a KnightWATCH story

Chapter 7

         ”Come on, kiddo”, replied Stephanie. ”It’s after 9:00 a.m. on a sunny Monday morning. Since we both have the day off, we’re taking advantage of it.” All through this speech, Stephanie was bustling around the room straightening things. Melinda slowly sat up, then swung her feet out from under the covers.

         ”Steph... why did I sleep in my clothes?”

         ”By the time we turned in, it was damn late and I was feeling tired and lazy. So I just put you under the covers and turned out the light.” Melinda slowly stood up, and saw her robe and fresh clothing laid out for her.

         ”If you were so lazy last night, why is all of this stuff ready and waiting for me this morning?”

         ”Because, dear, that was last night.” Stephanie put her hand on Melinda’s shoulder. ”This morning, Mel, I’ve been ‘Little Miss Efficiency’. I woke up about 7:30, did some laundry, got your stuff ready and got myself cleaned up. Now, the shower is just down the hall. There’s fresh towels in there for you. While you’re getting cleaned up, I’ll be down in the kitchen getting breakfast ready. How many eggs do you want?”

         ”No eggs this morning, thanks,” replied Melinda. ”Just make sure there is a LARGE cup of coffee waiting for me. I’m not very hungry, but I need my caffeine.”

         ”We’ll see about that, Mel.” Stephanie left as Melinda slipped out of her clothes and into her robe. Pulling a small toiletry bag out of her duffel, she walked down the hall to the shower. It wasn’t until she started the water and tried to remove it that Melinda realized she wasn’t wearing her necklace. She ran back to the bedroom in a half-panic, and only relaxed when she found it, and Jeremy’s engagement ring, sitting on the bedside table.

         Showered, dressed and feeling a little more human, Melinda walked downstairs to drink her coffee. She found a lot more.

         ”Have a seat, Mel,” intoned Stephanie, ”and eat up. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

         ”And just what do you have up your sleeve, Madame Organizer?”

         ”Plenty of surprises, Mel, so eat up. You’ll need your energy to keep up with me.” Stephanie dug into her own breakfast, and pointed Melinda to the seat next to her. Melinda had no intention of eating, but the plate of bacon, scrambled eggs, fresh fruit and pancakes proved too tempting.

         ”Good grief, Stephanie.” Melinda spoke between bites. ”I hardly ever eat this much for breakfast. I’ll turn into a damn cow at this rate!!” Melinda ate several mouthfuls. ”God, this is delicious. How long have you been awake?”

         ”Oh, about two hours now. Besides, with my two boys, one age 15, one age 43, I’m used to fixing big breakfasts in a hurry. Not too bad for someone who’s a ‘Bitch’, eh?” Melinda looked up in shock to see Stephanie smiling over her coffee cup.

         ”Huh? Steph, when did I ever call you that?”

         ”Last night, not long before you nodded off. Actually, I think your exact words were ‘Screw you, you bitch’. Some of the guys in Mike’s Reserve unit would be proud of you.” Having met some of them at various parties, Melinda blushed deep red, knowing they would have congratulated her for being so coarse. ”Look, you were pretty worked up after all our talking about Jeremy. Not to mention more than a little inebriated. I’m certainly not going to take it personally.”

         ”Steph, I have to ask. Did you expect me to get over Jeremy in one night?”

         ”Not hardly, Mel. Any grieving is a long-term process. I just thought you needed a kick-start. That, and a crack in your shell. Honey, you need to get out and live. The best way to honor Jeremy’s memory is to get on with your own life. All you’re doing now is perpetuating your hurt. What would Jeremy say to you now if he had the chance?”

         Melinda put her fork down, then put her head in her hands. She thought to herself for several minutes, sometimes shaking her head. Then she started softly crying.

         ”He talked to me last night, Steph. Or, at least I dreamed he was talking to me. It’s so confusing. We were on a black-sand beach.” Melinda took a deep breath and wiped her eyes. ”It was near sunset. Jeremy and I were walking along the beach, holding hands, the surf splashing across our feet. But, as we’re walking, we’re moving apart. Then he lets go of my hand and turns to his left, out into the ocean. The surf is washing away his footprints where we’ve walked, but mine are still there in the sand.” Melinda grabbed tissue and blew her nose before continuing. “An empty boat came up to him. He turned to me and said, ‘My walk has ended. I’m grateful I could share the last steps with you, Melinda. But you must walk without me now. Good-bye, my love.’ Then he climbed into the boat, and it started moving away, out into the ocean. I tried to run through the surf after him, but he held up his hand and I was stopped cold. It was like an invisible wall went up in front of me. I fell back in the water, crying, while the boat continued out to sea. Then it was gone over the horizon, and Jeremy with it.

         “Then this deep booming voice surrounded me, saying ‘you will not be alone, so long as you walk. But you must walk on. Do not stay here, for you will drown in your own sorrow. There are paths for you to choose. One is to stay, one is to move on. Only you can decide what to do’.

         ”Even now, Steph, this whole thing is freaky. Jeremy and I never walked on any beaches. Never even talked about places with beaches. Steph... what the Hell does all this mean?”

         ”What does it mean to you?”

         ”I don’t know!!! None of this makes any sense to me.”

         ”Okay, just a second.” Stephanie mimicked putting on a hat. ”Okay, now I’ve got my thinking cap on, with attendant 10-second psychology degree.” Melinda giggled slightly. ”First things first. Somebody, whether it be Jeremy, God, The Great Pumpkin, or some other deity currently unknown to me, is telling you to move on with your life. Of course, I’m telling you the same thing, so my interpretation may be a little biased. Now, if I understood right, Jeremy went to the boat alone. Also, as you two walked on the beach, your footprints remained while his were washed away in the surf. Is that correct?”

         ”Yeah, and hearing it from someone else, it sounds even more screwy.”

         ”Mel, dreams are always screwy, no matter who discusses them. Remember, the conscious and subconscious minds don’t always communicate easily.”

         ”Look, Steph,” Melinda yawned. ”You keep up with all this fancy-schmancy analysis, you’ll be talking to my subconscious mind. Or rather, my unconscious mind. This is making me incredibly drowsy!!”

         ”Okay,” Stephanie chuckled. ”The difference in the footprints, and him in the boat, that represents to me the fact that you’re alive and he’s not. Also, did he not tell you that you had to walk on with out him?”

         ”Something like that.” Melinda closed her eyes, trying to remember. ”He said his walk was over, and that he was glad I could share the last part. He also said I had to keep walking without him. Steph... I’m not sure I can. He meant so much to me, and losing him was so painful. I’m not sure I can go through that kind of pain again.”

         ”Honey, I won’t insult your intelligence by saying I know what you feel, because we both know I haven’t been there. All I can do is try my best to help you through this. Even if you may not always want the help.”

         ”You’ve been giving me some tough questions. Now, I have one for you. What do you gain from all of this?”

         ”Yes, that’s a tough question, but a very fair one. Especially considering all the pain this is causing you. The truth is, I gain several things. One, the satisfaction of simply helping someone.

         “The second thing I gain is knowing the spark of life in you won’t go out. You may not believe it, Melinda Renee Bradley, but I still see it in your eyes. You may have tried to hide it or even deny it over the months, but it’s still there. I’m just making sure you realize it, and that others get the chance to see it as well.

         “The third thing I gain? Honey,” she said, crossing her arms as she leaned back in her kitchen chair, “I’ve been worried about you for the last year, waiting for you to come out of your shell. I’m not the only one; most of the ER nursing staff has the same concern. I’m just nosey enough to butt in and say something.”

         ”Steph, I know you care, and I do appreciate it, in spite of any drunken ramblings I may spout off. Just don’t push me too much, okay? I need to take this at my own pace.”

         ”I understand. But I can’t promise to totally butt out. You know me; if I think something needs done, I’ll do it.”

         ”That’s why I said ‘don’t push me too much’ instead of ‘don’t push me’. I know, one way or another, you’ll step in if you see the need. Part of me is even counting on you doing that. Now, something tells me you want to talk more about my weird dream. Go ahead, analyze away.”

         ”I certainly will, Mel. By the way, that’s something you need to do more often.”

         ”What?”

         ”Smile, dag-nabbit!!” Melinda blushed beet red, realizing that she did tend to frown a lot. ”Okay, change of direction here. Tell me about the beach. You said it was black sand, and the time of day was sunset. Was the sunset at sea, along the beach, or inland? What was the weather like? How deep was the water? Do you know if it was high or low tide?”

         ”Well, let me think.” Melinda looked down and studied her twiddling thumbs. ”Like I said it was a black-sand beach. There was a slight breeze, blowing in from the sea. In fact, the breeze was becoming cooler as we walked along. What else?”

         ”Where was the sun setting? In the ocean? Down the beach? Inland?”

         ”Hmm…. it was along the beach. In fact, we were walking towards the sunset as we walked in the sand. The surf was curling around our feet, a little more than ankle deep. I already told you what was happening to our footprints. The water seemed to stay shallow as we both went out into the surf. But when I fell back, after hitting that invisible wall, it was above my waist as I was sitting down. The surf wasn’t very strong, it didn’t try to drag me along.”

         ”Could you tell if it was low or high tide? Wait, was there a little smooth beach over which you walked, or a lot?”

         ”There was a lot of open smooth beach where we walked, like some of it was underwater at other times, before you got to the totally dry sand.”

         ”Okay, you were sitting in the surf at low tide, and it came above your waist as you sat. Let me have a minute to digest all of this.” Stephanie sat looking at a note pad, drinking her coffee, and making an occasional doodle. ”Now, here we go. Be ready to hear more strange stuff.

         “The beach, and your various footprints, is your guys’ lives. You were walking into the sunset; I think that was also the end of your time together. Jeremy walking out to the boat is his dying and moving on to the afterlife. The ‘invisible wall’ that threw you back is simply the fact that it’s not your time to die, Mel. Also, Jeremy said, ‘you must walk without me now’. You can’t follow him, no matter how much you may want to. The voice? That’s God, in whatever form you choose to believe in His or Her existence. God is telling you to move on. The sea is your sorrow. Right now, it’s at low tide. But if you stay in the water while the tide comes in, you’ll drown in your own sorrow.

         “Now, here’s the big choice you have to make. You can stay sitting in the surf, letting the tide come in and drown you and wash you away. Or you can get back to the beach, keep walking, keep living and move on in your life. I can’t tell you what to do on that one. The answer to that is inside your heart. You already know what I think you should do. But you have to make the big decision, whether or not to take that first step, then the second, and so on.”

         ”What is that first step? Steph, I have no idea what to do, where to go, how to do it. I’m more than a bit lost here.”

         ”Well, I can tell you what I think. Get over your fear of reaching out emotionally. Be willing to talk to guys who want to take you to a movie. Spend a little time relearning what you did for fun before you met Jeremy. Get back to your roots, so to speak. See who Melinda Bradley is, then let others find out. I know, simple words for complex actions. You have to give yourself time. But I’ll be right there, to push you as you need it.” Stephanie placed her hand on Melinda’s.

         ”Well, Steph, I know you won’t push me over any cliffs. Push me to the edge, force a decision, yeah, you’ll do that in a heartbeat. But over the edge? Hell, you’ll be there with the big hook to yank me back. And I may need it.”

         ”Mel, you said something last night about pouring out a bunch of alcohol after Jeremy died. Is that true?”

         ”Yeah. It was the night of the funeral. I got well and truly toasted on Jack Daniels. I didn’t have to worry about work. Corina Lundgren was the head ER nurse back then. She told me not to come in to work for three days, and juggled the shifts around to cover me. I woke up the next evening with a hellacious hangover... and the pain of the funeral was still there.

         “When I looked in the bathroom mirror, I saw Jenny Kirkpatrick’s face instead of mine. That told me I was headed down the same path if I didn’t do something. So, I took every bottle of booze I had and poured them all down the kitchen sink.”

         ”What made you see Jenny Kirkpatrick in the mirror?”

         ”Steph, I saw Jenny crawl into a bottle after her divorce. I saw her drinking more and more at the bar after the softball games. Her reactions at work were getting clumsy. When I confronted her about it, she me told to take a flying leap.”

         ”A flying leap? I can’t believe Jenny would have said that.”

         ”That’s the polite version. I left out words like ‘cunt’, ‘bitch’, ‘jealous whore’, etc. And no, I have no clue where the ‘jealous whore’ came from.”

         ”THOSE words I can believe. She always had a sharp tongue. And the sharp words did get more frequent after the divorce.”

         ”Yeah, her tongue got sharper, her drinking more prevalent. One day, I saw her pull a bottle of gin out of her locker in the staff lounge. She looked at me, took another drink and walked out to her car. I followed her out to the parking lot, but she was already gone.”

         ”What did you do?”

         ”Jenny was drinking on the hospital grounds. I didn’t have a choice. I went and told Corina, and she bucked it up the chain. I was called on the carpet by several folks in management, and gave my testimony each time. One person actually asked if I was getting back at Jenny for something, said I was imagining things and that I ‘had no right to file specious charges against a coworker’. I was also told that if I said another word to anyone, it was my job.”

         ”Wait, they can’t threaten that!! That’s what the system is supposed to prevent!”

         ”That’s what I thought. So I went ahead and took it to the next level on my own. I waited an hour or so to calm down, then I went to Jerzy Polnoccny’s office.”

         ”The chief administrator? Girl, I always knew you were stubborn, and a little crazy. You know why they call him ‘Jerry The Hammer’, don’t you?”

         ”Yes, because he’ll hammer folks who don’t know what they are doing or talking about. But like you just said, I can be damn stubborn. That day, Jerzy Polnoccny learned just how stubborn I am. I’m sure you heard about the lady who went in and sat down on his desk, right on his fiscal reports, and refused to budge until she was listened to.”

         “Yes… that was you?”

         “Yup, little ol’ me.”

         ”How did you not end up banished to the laundry service?”

         ”Because of my stubbornness. And by doing so without screaming and creating a ruckus outside his office. I simply told him I wasn’t leaving until he heard me out, and that was that.”

         ”Did he?”

         ”He decided that someone who could be so quiet, yet so insistent, deserved to be listened to. Once he heard what I had to say, he not only didn’t throw me out, he had me write down everything that had happened, from the parking lot through my meeting with the chief of nursing. He then tried to verify it with the various people I had talked to.”

         ”Tried to verify?”

         ”Tried. Corina came in from home and told what she knew. Human Resources gave him all the stuff I had given them. But the Chief of Nursing, Carol Bradshaw, couldn’t be found. Wasn’t in her office, wasn’t responding to her pager.

         “Then security called. They had a request from the Chief of Nursing to open a locker in the ER staff lounge because an off-duty nurse needed medications from inside, but they needed Mr. Polnoccny’s permission to do so. He said he’d be right down, then had me go with him.”

         ”Wait, I think I remember the rest. When security returned to the lounge, Carol Bradshaw was nowhere to be found. And when ‘The Hammer’ arrived, he thought that really strange. But I never saw you there.”

         ”Mr. Polnoccny told me to stay in the shadows, in case Carol tried to make a scene. When she left before he got there, Mr. Polnoccny became suspicious and had security open Jenny’s locker.”

         ”And inside they found three gin bottles,” remembered Stephanie. ”They cleaned out her locker and called her in. Jenny was shown what they found and fired on the spot. She threatened to sue until they showed her several clauses in the job contract. One was immediate suspension and/or termination for the use of alcohol or other controlled substances on hospital grounds. The other was a little clause allowing for locker searches on the grounds because the lockers were hospital property, not owned by the employees. The hospital turned it over the State Board of Nursing, and Jenny was stripped of her nursing license. Three weeks later, Carol Bradshaw was fired for covering for her old friend Jenny. ‘Hammer’ did some checking and found she was blocking other reports about Jenny’s drinking.”

         ”And Bradshaw didn’t just resign unexpectedly,” Melinda added. ”Mr. Polnoccny flat out told the hospital, the media and the world that Bradshaw was fired for covering up a problem with a nurse drinking on the job.”

         ”That cemented his reputation as ‘The Hammer’. I was just glad he didn’t publicly name Jenny. She had enough problems.” Stephanie drank a sip of coffee. “Luckily, she got her wake up call from all of that. I’ve talked with her a few times since then. She put herself in counseling and Alcoholics Anonymous. She took part of the money from her divorce settlement and went back to college, and is now working as a Certified Public Accountant. She misses nursing, but she also realizes that she closed that door on her own nose.”

         ”Steph, I didn’t want to report her. But seeing her drink in the staff lounge was just too much to take. It honestly scared me.”

         ”Her drinking scared me too, Mel. I never saw her drink in the hospital, but I saw her at Swanson’s Bar and Magoo’s enough to be worried. I filed several reports through the anonymous system. I was losing faith in the system until I found out what Carol Bradshaw was doing.”

         ”Well, waking up the night after Jeremy’s funeral, knowing I had been massively drunk and slept through the day, that scared me. Maybe that’s why I saw Jenny’s face in the mirror. Somehow, something inside me said ‘you can’t crawl into a bottle’. I guess I just was able to listen.”

         ”Yes, you stayed out of the bottle, out of the bar. You knew your limits on the alcohol. But you crawled into a shell of grief instead. Now, hear me out.” Melinda tried to turn away, only to be held fast as Stephanie grabbed her arm. ”Steph, your ‘bottle’ is your grief and pain. You’ve become so afraid of being hurt that you’ve turned that fear into a shell against the future. Tell me I’m wrong.”

         ”You... you’re... I can’t. I’m afraid of being hurt, being left alone again. I guess I am hiding from the future. Whatever future there may be.”
         ”Well, kiddo,” smiled Stephanie, ”I personally think you’ve got a damn bright future ahead of you, if you’ll just reach out for it.”

         ”Does that future include the EMT who came through Trauma One yesterday?” Melinda smiled slightly, thinking she had caught Stephanie on one of her plans. Then she started whistling ”Matchmaker” from the musical ”Fiddler On The Roof”.

         ” ‘Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match’,” Stephanie sang along. ” ‘Find me a find... catch me a catch...’ No, Mel, I’m not trying to play matchmaker here. I just want you to realize there are possibilities out there. Besides, I am Nurse, not Nostradomus. I can’t see the future. I CAN see, though, that you’ll miss out on any future if you don’t open your eyes to it.” Stephanie looked up at the wall clock. ”Okay, enough of this for now. It’s 10:30 already. Help me rinse off the dishes and get them in the dishwasher, then we are out of here.”

         ”And where are we going?”

         ”When was the last time you went power shopping?”

         ”Last Christmas, and my plastic is just now recovered from the shock. Oh, no. I’m not about to buy the entire town!!!”

         ”No, no, don’t worry. Shop for as many windows as you like, there’s no minimum purchase required.” Melinda started laughing uproariously at the mail-order-shopping line. ”We’re just two friends getting out, spending a little money -- or a lot of it -- and simply wasting the day. Look out malls, here we come!!”