Free Acts of Love by Emily Listfield Page A

kindergarten, friends from Estelle’s own childhood in Buffalo, fell into a dreamy doze.
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    J UST ONCE , Sandy had said to Jonathon, “Don’t you think she should see someone? Don’t you think we should get her some help?” And he had reached out instantly and slapped her face. “The only thing your mother needs is me,” he said.
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    A FTER HER GRADUATION , Ann took a job in the neurosurgery unit of the hospital. It was not a happy place, and there was a high turnover of nurses, who quickly wearied of the insistent prevalence of death that no amount of studying Kübler-Ross had quite prepared them for. Except for a few patients with slipped discs, most had brain tumors, aneurysms, or strokes. Each morning, all through the floor, you could hear patients being asked, “Do you know what year it is? Do you know who’s President?” and the low, halting murmur of the disparate answers.
    After measuring the fluid that had drained overnight through the long tube from Mrs. DiLorenzo’s skull, Ann stood behind the desk in the center of the ICU and scribbled onto her charts. In the corner, two doctors were questioning David Lowenshon, a thirty-seven-year-old man who’d had a cyst in his head drained the night before. Two months ago, he’d had a malignant tumor removed, but it had already grown back. The doctors were telling him jokes, trying to get him to laugh, or at least smile. “I don’t remember how to smile,” he replied in a polite, unmodulated voice. In fact, the front side of his brain had been affected, and he did not remember the proper responses to emotions. When the doctors left, he called Ann over and asked for something to read, a book, a magazine, anything. It was an unusual request, few people in the room could hold their heads up much less read, and Ann promised that as soon as she had a free moment she would go in search of something for him. Before she had a chance, though, Mrs. DiLorenzo began crying loudly that she wanted to go home, “The doctor, he tell me to tell you, she’s a good girl, let her go,” and two orderlies wheeled in another postop and put him in the empty bed by the door. Then there was lunch to sort out, who got solid foods, who got only liquids, and charting how much they managed to eat. She was mildly aware of David Lowenshon’s increasing agitation, but there was nothing she could do. Finally, when she went to apologize, he erupted.
    â€œI asked two hours ago. Two hours ago! Is it too much to ask for, that I have something to read in this hellhole? Are you just lazy or what?”
    Ann, tears in her eyes, ran to the waiting room down the hall and found a year-old National Geographic.
    That night, over dinner, when she tried to explain to Ted how the outburst had upset her, he interrupted, “Just tell me one thing, Ann. Is he going to die?”
    â€œWell, yes, but…”
    â€œThen give him a break, why don’t you?”
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    M OST OF THE OTHER NURSES who remained in the unit were a hardy lot who had somehow made their peace with the symptoms, the deaths. They drank together at the local pub, slept with residents at whim. Why not? They knew it could be them in the next bed tomorrow. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we…
    When they transferred David Lowenshon downstairs to rehab, Ann visited him after her shift. His parents, a well-meaning, shell-shocked couple, stood mutely by his side, growing increasingly impatient with his inability to heal, as if the cancer growing beneath his skull were a willful rebuke to some flaw in their parenting from years ago that he had just now decided to punish them for. When he tried to talk to them of dying, they looked away and made quick remarks: “Don’t talk like that.” Or, “Don’t be silly, you’re going to be just fine.” And the doctors, when asked, clothed their discomfort in Latin and stressed the