Free Natural Order by Brian Francis

I know she wasn’t contagious? I’d had a tickle in my throat for two days but no one paid me any attention.
    “Try sucking on a peppermint,” the Filipina nurse suggested.
    “You should’ve been a brain surgeon,” I said.
    I sat in my wheelchair and watched Ruth trying to pull air down into her lungs. She’d open her eyes from time to time and I could tell she was disoriented. I’d wheel over and wrap my hand around the cool metal bedrail.
    “YOUR NAME IS RUTH SCHUELLER,” I’d yell over the hissing machine. “YOU LIVE AT CHESTNUT PARK IN BALSDEN. YOU ARE SICK.”
    She’d blink back at me, her mouth opening and closing under her mask. Was she trying to tell me something? Sometimes she’d try to take the mask off, but I’d clamp my hand over it, holding it firmly in place.
    “IF YOU TAKE THE MASK OFF, YOU WILL DIE.”
    I wasn’t sure how true that was, but figured the strong-arm approach was the best one to take.
    Other times, her eyes would meet mine and I’d see her fear, pure as the white in her hair. My hand would move from the bedrail to her forearm. Her skin was loose sand beneath my palm.
    “YOU’RE IN GOOD HANDS.”
    I don’t think either one of us believed that one.
    After dinner the other night, two orderlies marched into the room with a stretcher.
    “You are being taken to the hospital,” one of them told Ruth in a robotic voice. “Your doctor has been notified.”
    I watched as they lifted her from her bed, her tiny purple-spotted feet dangling.
    “Which hospital?” I asked.
    “We’re not allowed to say, ma’am,” one of the orderlies said as he draped a blanket over Ruth. “Patient confidentiality.”
    “What if her family calls?” I knew this wouldn’t happen. Ruth’s phone had yet to ring once in the year we’d been sharing a room. But still. It was a matter of principle. I was her roommate, after all.
    “The family can call the nurses’ station, ma’am.”
    I watched them wheel Ruth out. I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye. They took the oxygen machine with them. The room was suddenly silent. I stared at the wrinkled sheets of her empty bed, the indent on her pillow. The walls around me seemed to nudge closer. I wheeled myself into the tight space between the wall and my bed and traced the crooked veins of my hands.
    “I-23! I-23!”
    I massage my temples.
    “G-49! G-49!”
    Bingo Friday. The recreation room is next door to mine. The racket wouldn’t be so bad if Hilda didn’t use that damn microphone to call the numbers. There’s no escaping it. I turn up the volume on my TV, but it’s no use. I can’t concentrate. The only thing I can do is hope someone gets lucky soon. These games can go on for hours.
    I’m supposed to go for my shower this morning and I’m not looking forward to it. They hose you down like a farm animal and the chemicals in the cheap soap turn my skin to crackled mud. They don’t even take the time to blow-dry my hair. No wonder Ruth came down with pneumonia. That’s what one of the nurses told me yesterday. I think her name is Mary. Or Marjorie.
    “Apparently, she’s had it for some time,” she said under her breath. “It’s lucky they caught it in time.”
    “She’ll pull through?” I asked, incredulous. I almost felt myself rise out of my wheelchair.
    “I suspect so,” Mary/Marjorie said. “If all goes well, she’ll be back in a week.”
    “N-35! N-35!”
    “For god’s sake,” I mutter as I press the volume button on my remote control. “Somebody win already.”
    There isn’t much television worth watching at this time of the day, but I settle for my soap opera, even though I don’t have a clue what’s going on most of the time. The dialogue is so fast and I can’t remember who did what to whom or which twin sister ran off with the other one’s husband or who robbed the bank to pay for the kidney transplant. So much life packed into a single hour. I wheel myself closer to the set, squinting at the screen.