Nobody bothered The Nurse.
Nobody noticed as she picked her way across one street, over empty crack vials, spent condoms, used hypodermics, broken bottles and whatever other waste, sometimes human, the residents of this neighborhood in the South Bronx strew in her path.
Nobody bothered The Nurse, because they knew why she was here. She came to the bedridden, the chronically ill or the injured, the mothers, wives, aunts, children of the men and women who let her pass on the street, unnoticed and unmolested.
Or perhaps one day, she would come for them.
So her car went unvandalized, nobody rushed up on her in dark corners intent on robbery or worse. No cat calls followed her as she entered the four story walk-up on Third Avenue, no cries of “Yo Baby, Mira Mami, Hey Honey,” or a thousand other varieties, no propositions or promises of masculine prowess. Well, not many.
But then the only time she ventured into this alien territory was after eight o’clock in the morning, when most of the real predators that ravaged the neighborhood had finally gone to bed, and before three, when they went back on the prowl.
Every day she spent in this place preceded a night she thanked God for her own humble home in Mount Vernon, a northern suburb of New York City. And now she had something else to look forward to. In exactly one day, she’d board a plane to Paradise Island to take the first real vacation she’d had in years. She owed herself that vacation, for all the years she’d spent looking after an ailing mother while she was alive and raising her younger brother after she’d passed away.
She’d promised herself that after Tim graduated from high school, she’d treat herself to somewhere nice and warm and sunny, even if it were for only a few days. The trip hadn’t become real to her until this past Thursday, when she’d attended Cardinal O’Hallorran’s Commencement Ceremony to watch her brother receive his diploma. Now anticipation flooded her nervous system, as well as anxiety that something would happen to make her cancel her trip.
She walked the three flights of stairs to her client’s apartment and knocked on the door. The bell had long since expired, and like everything else that broke in this apartment building, it went unfixed.
“Who?” a masculine voice called.
She was tempted to answer “The goddamn Avon Lady.” Who else would be showing up in this godforsaken neighborhood at nine o’clock on a Friday morning? She decided better of it and gave her standard answer. “Dana Molloy from At-Home Health.”
A few moments later, the door was pulled open to the extent the chain allowed. Wesley Evans, her patient’s grandson appeared at the door. She gave him a quick up and down through the thin opening. He wore a black do-rag on his head and a pair of jeans low enough on his hips to expose the waistband of a pair of red boxers. His bare chest sported the type of muscles earned from running the streets instead of running to the gym. He was tall, probably six-three or better. If it weren’t for the sour expression, he would remind her of her own brother. Wesley sucked his teeth. “Hold on.”
As he shut the door to take the chain off, she caught a flash of a dull black object in his hand. Some sort of handgun, she assumed–just the fashion accessory every young thug needed.
Dana shifted the strap of the bag that housed the heavy laptop provided by the company. On it, she would record the patient information obtained from this and her other visits. The only reason she carried it was that if it were stolen and not on her person at the time At-Home Health would deduct the cost of it from her salary. And even the junkies knew not to bother. The laptop could only be programmed to record medical information. There wasn’t even a game or two on the damn thing to make it worth the theft.
When Wesley pulled the door open, an oversize football jersey had been added to his ensemble and the gun was nowhere in sight. Rather than hold the door for her, he let it swing closed so that she had to either dash inside or let the door hit her to keep from getting closed out.
Dana settled for the latter, muttering under her breath, watching as he sauntered toward the decrepit item at the center of the living room that had once been a couch. He propped his feet up on the scarred and chipped coffee table. “Granny’s in back.”
No shit. Considering that Granny was a bed-ridden diabetic, there weren’t many places Granny might be. She stepped out of the way, letting the door close behind her. Despite the foolhardiness of antagonizing a teenager with a firearm, she said, “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
His eyes narrowed and his mouth drew into a tight line. “I would be if that home care lady had shown up today.” His implication being that the other woman’s absence was her fault. In a way it was, as the nurse on her grandmother’s case, it was her responsibility to coordinate all services, which included making sure the home health aide arrived on time and didn’t take anything.
To her knowledge, the aide assigned to Wesley’s grandmother was a conscientious woman, but there were enough who weren’t to give the profession a bad name. Then again, how much could you expect from people given a demanding job that paid barely over minimum wage? To Dana’s thinking, it was a set-up that almost demanded failure.
“I’ll speak to the aide about being here every day.”
“Yeah, you go Ohead and do Odat.” He turned up the sound on the large screen TV that sat against the wall next to her.
With a sigh of resignation, she headed toward the back of the apartment. The smell of fetid flesh reached Dana’s nostrils before she reached the open door. Nadine Evans, though nearly seventy and morbidly obese, had once been a handsome woman. It was evident in the old woman’s lined and wrinkled face and the framed photographed scattered around the cluttered room.
“Hi Nadine,” Dana said, trying to inject a note of cheer into her voice.
“Dana. Come in.” Nadine waved her forward with a meaty arm. “It’s so good to see you.”
Like many of Dana’s homebound patients, the visit from the nurse was the only one they could count on. “How are you doing today?”
“More of the same.”
Dana got the chair from the corner of the room and placed it by the foot of the bed. “I’ll change your dressing first, then I’ll test your blood sugar.”
“However you want, honey. I’m not going anywhere.”
After rolling on a pair of surgical gloves, Dana rolled back the covers to expose Nadine’s right foot. Dry gangrene claimed the smallest toe. The stench of it was worse than wet garbage rotting in the can for a week during an August heat wave. The smell got in Dana’s nose and stayed all day. Dana suffered through it only minutes at a time, but how did Nadine stand it hour after hour. If it were Dana, she’d tell the doctor to cut the damn thing off rather than waiting for nature to take its own course.
Then again, Dana wouldn’t complicate her own medical condition by refusing to follow the diet prescribed for her by her doctor, either.
Dana gently unwrapped the toe and removed the old gauze, damp with straw-colored mucous. The toe was black and crusty, resembling a Brazil nut more than a human digit. One day soon she’d probably find the toe in the bandage as well, but she was glad today was not that day.
“How’s she healing?” Nadine asked.
“She isn’t.” Nadine chose to believe that all this fuss was about making her toe better, the same way she chose to believe that eating Ho-Hos for dinner wouldn’t affect her blood sugar level. Dana rewrapped it in sterile gauze, and secured it with paper tape. “How have you been doing with your diet?”
“Real good. No sweets.”
Dana cast the old woman a skeptical look. “How long ago did you last eat?”
“I had a couple of eggs around seven.”
“Good.” Two hours after eating was optimum time for checking blood sugar. By then whatever had been consumed had made its way into the blood stream. Dana moved the chair to the side of the bed next to Nadine. She got a lancet, a test strip and an alcohol swab from her bag. “Come on,” she urged.
“I hate them little needles,” Nadine protested, but she stuck out her hand.
“I don’t blame you.” She swabbed the pad of Nadine’s thumb, pricked it with the lancet and caught the droplet of blood that appeared on the test strip. She fed it into the blood glucose monitor Nadine kept on her ancient nightstand. They would have the verdict in a moment. In the meantime, Dana asked, “How is Wesley treating you?”
“He’s a good boy. In his heart he’s a good boy.”
Dana didn’t comment. In the nine months Nadine Evans had been her patient, the old lady had filled her ears with stories of her grandson. Stories about a sweet young boy whose mother lost herself in crack and the arms of the wrong man. Nadine hadn’t heard from her daughter in years, and didn’t expect to. She was grateful that he remained in school and somehow managed to maintain an A average while dealing crack and without study.
Although she knew about his activities, she was powerless to stop him. Not only did she lack the influence, but the money that bought the food and the big screen TV and the medical supplies Medicaid did not cover came from selling drugs. It wasn’t an unusual arrangement, but it galled Dana to see a young man with such potential sucked up into what this neighborhood could do to a person, rob them of any life other than perpetuating what had gone before.
She glanced down at the monitor, then over at Nadine. Normal blood sugar level was between 70 and 120. “Two sixty-five. Tell me you didn’t wash down those eggs with a glass of juice.”
Nadine huffed. “Just a little.”
“Even a little is too much. Come on, Nadine, you know the drill. No cake, no cookies, no pudding, no pie, no juice.”
“No fun.”
“And losing your baby toe is a real laugh?” Annoyed, Dana threw the test strip in the trash and snapped off her gloves. Sometimes it wore on her that many of her patients refused to follow medical advice yet somehow expected to improve. Kids, she could understand, but a sixty-nine year old woman ought to know better. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she told Nadine.
Out in the living room, she paused by the TV. Wesley sat sprawled in the same position she’d left him. “I need to talk to you about your grandmother.”
Wesley stared straight ahead, his focus on the screen. “So talk.”
She stepped in front of the picture. “Someone has to do a better job of monitoring your grandmother’s sugar intake.”
He shrugged and continued watching, as if she weren’t there. “She’s an old lady. She should be able to eat what she wants.”
“She might live a while longer if you didn’t indulge her sweet tooth.”
He fastened a cold, menacing stare on her. “Why do you care so much, anyway?”
“Because it’s my job,” she answered, but it was also in her nature to care, to nurture. Most of the time, she considered it a blessing, but sometimes, like now, it was a curse, since she directed her regard toward people who would not help themselves.
“One a these days I’ma get tired of you bein’ all up in my face.”
If she had a dollar for every time she pissed someone off by asking a question they didn’t want to answer she could retire. “Being all up in people’s faces” was often part of the job, especially with clients or relatives that refused to follow the plan of treatment prescribed for them.
Dana glared at him, refusing to back down. “Do what you’re supposed to and you won’t hear a word out of me.”
Dana let herself out of the apartment and descended the stairs to the first floor. She pulled open the front door of the building. As she stepped out into the brilliant June sunlight, she noticed a tall, white woman, perhaps the only true blonde for miles, getting into the passenger side of a dark sedan parked by the curb. Dressed in a white blouse, black pants and high-heeled black pumps, she had a black and white scarf tied around the strap of her shoulder bag.
Dana snorted. Probably a social worker or some other do gooder who hadn’t figured out you don’t wear your Bergdorf’s Best in the neighborhood if you didn’t plan on getting mugged. At least she was smart enough to catch a ride out of this place.
As the woman pulled the door closed, Dana caught a glimpse of the dark-haired man in a short-sleeved black shirt behind the steering wheel. Oh goodie, matching yuppies.
Dana turned in the direction of her car to see a man in filthy, tattered clothes urinating against the side of the building.
She shook her head contemplating the dichotomy of rich and poor in the neighborhood and walked back to her car. “One more day,” she told herself. “One more day.
###
At two thirty, Dana walked into the offices of At-Home Healthcare. Her supervisor, Joanna Haynes, also happened to be her best friend. Joanna was almost nine months pregnant with her first child by her new husband, Ray. As Dana entered her office, Joanna waddled from the file cabinet to the chair and sat down, bringing a smile to both women’s faces. “It’s a good thing I don’t have much longer to go, or I wouldn’t make it.”
“Seems like you’re going on leave just in time.”
“I know. Speaking of which, where is everybody? I wanted to say good bye to some of the girls.”
Dana shrugged. “Maybe it’s been one of those rough days where no one gets out of the field before four.” Dana nodded toward the bag of presents leaning against the other side of the desk, a few token gifts, given so that Joanna wouldn’t get suspicious. “Who’s picking you up today?” Joanna had given up driving in her seventh month, since she no longer fit behind the steering wheel.
“My brother, Jonathan. I just called him. He should be here in about an hour.”
“Which one is that?” Joanna had three brothers, all taciturn, somber-faced men, all cops in one form or another. The lot of them gave her the willies. Dealing with cops was like dealing with doctors: both had delusions of grandeur. Doctors thought they were GOD; cops thought they were THE LAW. Of the two she preferred doctors. Doctors didn’t carry guns.
“The baby.”
Dana shook her head. The way she spoke made him sound like some angelic cherub, when from what she remembered of “the baby” he was six-foot-three, rock-solid and mean. Joanna claimed his lousy disposition came from being the youngest and always having to prove himself. Dana thought he was just plain crazy. While other cops were doing their damndest to get transferred out of the Forty-Fourth precinct, he’d transferred in. If that didn’t speak for a profound lack of judgment, she didn’t know what did.
Joanna must have read her thoughts from her expression, because she added. “I know. He’s arrogant, he’s a pain in the ass, but he’s my brother. I’m stuck with him.”
Dana snorted. “I know what you mean. Sometimes I could gladly take a bat to Tim, but then they’d get me for child abuse.”
Joanna laughed. “Some kid. He’s a foot taller than you are.”
“And still growing. I’ve got the food bills to prove it.”
Joanna shifted in her seat. “Why do you want to know who’s picking me up?”
Dana lifted her shoulders. I was going to pick up something for dinner from across the street. Tim’s leaving tonight to spend the week with the family of one of his friends. They’re heading down to Florida and I hate cooking just for me.” She gestured over her shoulder toward the door with her thumb. “Why don’t you come with me? We can hang out in more comfortable surroundings until he shows up.”
“Sounds like a plan. This chair and my back do not get along.”
Dana helped Joanna gather her things and tape an unnecessary note on the glass outer door of the office. Dana had already told Ray about the party in the hopes he’d pass that information on to whoever came for Joanna that night.
As they crossed the street, Dana hid a smile. She only hoped the women assembled inside the Italian restaurant didn’t send Joanna into premature labor when they yelled, “surprise!” Joanna had worked for At-Home for twelve years in one capacity or another and was one of the few supervisors the nurses respected. Over thirty women had responded to the invitation saying they were coming, but the number who turned up could actually be higher.
Fiorello’s had been selected as the party spot for three reasons: the food was divine, it was large enough to seat 50 diners in the front room, and its tinted glass allowed diners to look out but not passersby to look in. Dana pulled open the door to let Joanna enter ahead of her. A second later, a roar of “Surprise” hit them like a wave.
Joanna staggered back a step, but Dana pushed her forward. “Surprise,” Dana echoed.
Joanna pursed her lips and sent Dana an evil glare. “I’m going to get you for this later.”
Dana stuck her tongue. “Promises, promises.”
A couple of the nurses rushed forward to help Joanna into a white wicker chair at the center of the room, decorated with pink and blue ribbons. Dana took a seat at one of the tables. She’d served as chief organizer of the event, but being one of the few childless women present, she had no gruesome childbirth stories to share, no tales of late night feedings or lactation woes. She had raised her brother alone for the past ten years, but it wasn’t the same. So she was content to remain on the perimeter and let the moms have their day.
Joanna said her brother would come for her, but it was her husband Ray who walked in the door a half-hour later to collect her. Although Ray was tall, handsome and a doctor, the product of a privileged upbringing–every mother’s wet dream for her female offspring–Dana had never liked him. Something about him seemed disingenuous, too slick, though she couldn’t say what. She also did her best to disguise her dislike, as expressing it would only form a rift between her and Joanna. Joanna might be clueless, but Dana was certain Ray knew, and made her pay for it at every opportunity.
“Good evening ladies,” he said, letting the door close on its own steam behind him.
The other women greeted him warmly with jokes and laughter and demands that he make sure to take care of their friend during her maternity leave. Dana got up and busied herself getting Joanna’s things together to take them out to Ray’s SUV. She didn’t look up until she noticed Ray standing in front of her.
He smiled one of his slick smiles. “Don’t worry about all this. I’ll get it.”
She forced a smile to her lips. “It’s no problem.” She hefted the bag she’d packed against her hip. “I’ll take this stuff out to the car. Is it open?” She didn’t wait for his answer before starting toward the door. She made it outside to the Navigator parked at the curb before she felt Ray come up beside her.
He beeped the trunk open “What did I ever do to make you hate me?”
Dana shoved her bag into the back seat a little more forcefully than necessary. “I don’t hate you.” She stepped back and glanced at Ray. The smugness of his expression told her he didn’t believe her. “Look, Joanna had a hard time with her first husband. I hope she doesn’t have to go through that again.” She turned to walk away from him.
He pulled her back with a hand on her upper arm. “I love my wife, Dana. I’m adopting her kids. We’re about to have another one together. What more do you want from me?”
She bit her lip, contemplating him, their situation. She didn’t doubt the sincerity in his softly spoken words. But she wondered why he cared enough to try to change her mind about him. And what could she answer him? What did she want from him? She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Then cut me some slack, huh, Dana?”
She sighed. Refusing would serve no purpose except to be contentions. “I think I can manage that. As long as you make sure Joanna doesn’t go into labor while I’m gone. I want to be here when the baby’s born.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Finally, Dana let go a hint of a smile. They went back inside to finish packing up the truck.
###
Later that night, after Tim had gone, Dana sat alone in the white rocker she kept on her enclosed front porch and sipped from a glass of Chablis. She liked nights like these: quiet, sultry, when the wind that rattled her screens brought the scents of summer to her nose and stirred tendrils of her hair. Nights like these she felt a world away from the area in which she worked. She felt at peace with her life and what little she’d been able to accomplish with it.
Her father had disappeared almost the moment her mother had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Her mother had held on another ten years, becoming, in the end almost totally dependent on her daughter. It had taken her an extra year to finish her nursing degree while working full time as a clerk in the bursar’s office at Lehman College where she studied. She’d accepted the job with At-Home Health because it was the first one offered. The base pay alone afforded her the opportunity to save for a real house instead of the apartment in Co-op City where she’d lived since childhood.
What she had now belonged only to her, her and Tim. She’d managed to eke out a decent life for them. She’d survived what life had thrown at her and flourished. She was a survivor, always a survivor, never a victim. Life didn’t get her down.
But tonight was different. Thoughts of Wesley Evans intruded on her solitude. Thoughts of Wesley and the obvious comparison to her own brother. Neither teenager had really known their father and both had lost their mothers at an early age. But while Tim was getting ready to start Cornell Medical School in the fall, Wesley was headed for a life of crime, jail or worse. A scant ten miles separated their homes but their lives were worlds apart.
She thought of the Robert Frost poem. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood She was grateful she could offer Timothy the right one.
###
“I won’t be seeing you next week,” Dana told Nadine Evans the following morning.
Nadine pouted. “Why not?”
“I’ll be taking a much needed vacation. I’m leaving after my shift tonight.” God willing, anyway. Her bags were in the trunk of the car, which hopefully hadn’t been vandalized. Tonight she planned to eat freshly caught fish instead of frozen fish sticks. And a piña colada. She had to have at least one piña colada before she went to bed that night.
Nadine’s frown deepened. “I hope they don’t keep sending that girl that comes on weekends. I think she steals from me.”
Dana paused in her task of repacking her supplies into her bag. Anything worth stealing that had ever been in this apartment had either been pawned or left to rot away its value. Nadine was trying to guilt her for leaving her in someone else’s care, but Nadine wasn’t a heavy enough hitter in that department to faze Dana.
Dana zipped her bag closed. “I’ll see you when I get back.”
“If I’m still here.”
Dana sighed. So maybe Nadine wasn’t so bad at this after all. Dana patted her meaty shoulder. “You’ll be fine. And behave yourself while I’m gone. “You know I’ll hear all about what you’ve been doing with yourself when I get back.”
Nadine rolled her eyes. “I’ll try.”
Dana left the bedroom and walked out to the living room where the home health attendant was watching BET on the tube. Dana said nothing, but let herself out of the apartment. As she walked down the stairs to the first floor she saw a man standing outside the building, leaning against one of the faux pillars that decorated the building. Or rather, she saw a man-child, Wesley Evans, who had obviously skipped school again.
Wesley’s head swiveled around as she opened the door. He frowned, probably figuring she’d give him more of her usual harangue. Not this time. She figured if she got on his case when he didn’t do right by his grandmother she ought to be equally appreciative when he did.
He shifted, standing a bit straighter. “How’s my granny?”
“Better. You must have gotten her to cut back on the juice.”
He shrugged. “I heard what you said. I’m not stupid.”
“I never said I thought you were stupid. I know how hard it is to get someone to stick to a diet they don’t want to follow.” Especially when you were the child and the grown-up ought to know better. “Thank you.”
He shrugged again, shoving his hands in his front pockets, and she suspected her simple words of praise embarrassed him. Dana shook her head. She knew plenty of kids like him, all hard edges on the outside, needy and scared on the inside
Sighing, Dana focused on his face, but he’d already turned away to watch the street where a black Oldsmobile with tinted windows rolled down the block. DMX blasted from the souped up automobile, drawing the attention of early morning passersby. The car moved with such deliberateness as to suggest its occupants were looking for a non-existent parking space or cruising for trouble.
Dana stepped farther out of the building to stand beside Wesley. The young man seemed not to notice her, he attention taken up by the trajectory of the car. “You could do something else.”
Only after the car turned right onto Sheridan Avenue did he look at her. His expression was distracted. “What?”
“You’re graduating from high school. You could get a decent job. Maybe something civil service. Get your grandmother out of here. Go to college at night.” It was how Dana had survived after her mother passed.
His face contorted in a mask of anger. “What do you know about it, lady? You ain’t never been poor. You ain’t never had nothing. You ain’t never had it that all that stood between you and the street was you. So don’t talk to me about getting no job. I put food on the table, so you got no right to judge me.”
She didn’t try to argue with him. He saw her now, not as she had been, barely older than he, charged with the care of her younger brother and no clear idea how to manage. He only saw the woman, who today could pay to live in a nice house and afford most of what her heart desired. Given that, she understood his outrage, especially considering the tiny bit of vulnerability he’d just shown her. He’d want to back her off, but she didn’t back down. “You could start your own business. Don’t tell me living in this place eats up all of the money you’ve made. Sell T-shirts. Anything where you don’t have to watch the block to make sure someone isn’t gunning for you.”
Wesley leaned down so that his face was almost in hers. “Yeah, well if they come for me, I’ma stand up like a man, not go running like some punk. Anybody wants me, I’m right here.”
He spoke in a quiet voice, his words made more chilling by his tone. One thing Dana had never felt was that her life was hopeless that dying was as viable an option as living. “Who will take care of your grandmother then?”
He straightened away from her, but she could tell she’d gotten to him just a little. “That was low, lady. That was–”His words were cut off by the squeal of tires coming from a car rounding the corner. Wesley’s head snapped up and his body stiffened. “Get inside.”
Alarm prickled at her nerve endings as she watched the same car head down the street, much faster this time. No one needed to tell her that the car’s driver and whatever occupants were up to no good. She fumbled to get the door open, and doing so, she turned to pull him inside with her. She didn’t want to find out if he’d do what he said he would. “Come on, Wesley,” she pleaded, grabbing at his arm.
“Get inside.” He shoved at her, a backhanded swat that caught her in the solar plexus, winding her. She gasped for air, watching the car speed closer to them. As if in slow motion, the rear driver’s side window rolled down and the barrel of a gun appeared in the window.
For a split second, she contemplated the unreality of her situation, the beauty of the cloudless day marred by the ugliness of the black gun pointed at her and the murderous intentions of the man who held it. She inhaled and air whooshed back into her lungs. She lunged forward, grabbing hold of Wesley’s arm. “Come on,” she shouted. Yanking as hard as she could, she drew him toward her.
But she froze as a bullet whizzed past her ear to shatter the glass door behind her. And then her shoulder was on fire. The force of the impact threw her backward, through the front door. She landed on her back, still clutching Wesley’s arm in a death grip. He bounced down of top of her, pushing her backward along the floor, his weight as dead as his eyes staring back at her. Her head snapped back, making contact with broken glass and a concrete floor covered in a thin layer of vinyl tile. As blinding pain and terrifying darkness claimed her, Dana’s last thought was that she wasn’t going to be getting on any airplane any time soon.
