told the other nurses at University Hospital that she would not join their betting pool to predict who would get married first, Patty or Edwina. She told them about the black and white hairs and all Nurse Holloway did was clomp her pumps—as if she was too good for the standard orthopedically correct shoes—down the green tiles of the hall and shout behind her back, “Somebody sure needs to get laid.” Oh, how the other RNs tittered in their gossipy way.
Now everyone applauded when Pastor Everett announced that Sister Nina would be getting married to Harold, one of the Brothers from Broadway Tongues of Spirit Church. Then Pastor Everett said, “Sister Nina will be holding a Council so we can get husbands for the rest of you hardworking Sisters.” Like Sister Clareese, is what he meant. The congregation laughed at the joke. Ha ha. And perhaps the joke was on her. If she’d been married, Deacon Mc-Creedy wouldn’t have dared do what he did; if she’d been married perhaps she’d also be working fewer shifts at the hospital, perhaps she would have never met that patient—that man—who’d almost gotten her fired! And at exactly that moment, it hit her, right below the gut, a sharp pain, and she imagined her uterus, that Texas-shaped organ, the Rio Grande of her monthly womanly troubles flushing out to the Gulf.
Pastor Everett had finished the announcements. Now it was time for testimony service. She tried to distract herself by thinking of suitable testimonies. Usually she testified about work. Last week, she’d testified about the poor man with a platelet count of seven, meaning he was a goner, and how Nurse Holloway had told him, “We’re bringing you more platelets,” and how he’d said, “That’s all right. God sent me more.” No one at the nurses’ station—to say nothing of those atheist doctors—believed him. But when Nurse Holloway checked, sure enough, Glory be to God, he had a count of sixteen. Clareese told the congregation how she knelt on the cold tiled floor of University Hospital’s corridor, right then and there, arms outstretched to Glory. And what could the other nurses say to that? Nothing, that’s what.
She remembered her testimony from a month ago, how she’d been working the hotline, and a mother had called to say that her son had eaten ants, and Sister Clareese had assured the woman that ants were God’s creatures, and though disturbing, they wouldn’t harm the boy. But the Lord told Clareese to stay on the line with the mother, not to rush the way other nurses often did, so Clareese stayed on the line. And Glory be to God that she did! Once the mother had calmed down she’d said, “Thank goodness. The insecticide I gave Kevin must have worked.” Sister Clareese had stayed after her shift to make sure the woman brought her boy into Emergency. Afterward she told the woman to hold hands with Kevin and give God the Praise he deserved.
But she had told these stories already. As she fidgeted in her choirmistress’s chair, she tried to think of new ones. The congregation wouldn’t care about how she had to stay on top of codes, or how she had to triple-check patients’ charts. The only patients who stuck in her mind were Mrs. Geneva Bosma, whose toe was rotting off, and Mr. Toomey, who had prostate cancer. And, of course, Mr. Cleophus Sanders, the cause of all her current problems. Cleophus was an amputee who liked to turn the volume of his television up so high that his channel-surfing sounded as if someone were being electrocuted, repeatedly. At the nurses’ station she’d overheard that Cleophus Sanders was once a musician who in his heyday went by the nickname “Delta Sweetmeat.” But he’d gone in and out of the music business, sometimes taking construction jobs. A crane had fallen on his leg and he’d been amputated from the below the knee. No, none of these cases was Edifying in God’s sight. Her run-in with Cleophus had been downright un-Edifying.
When Mr. Sanders had been moved into Mr. Toomey’s room last Monday, she’d told them both, “I hope everyone has a blessed day!” She’d made sure to say this only after she was safely inside with the door closed behind her. She had to make sure she didn’t mention God until the door was closed behind her, because Nurse Holloway was always clomping about, trying to say that this was a university hospital, as well as a research hospital, one at the very forefront of medicine, and didn’t Registered Nurse Clareese Mitchell recognize and respect that not everyone shared her beliefs? That the hospital catered not only to Christians, but to people of the Jewish faith? To Muslims, Hindus, and agnostics? Atheists, even?
This Clareese knew only too well, which was why it was all the more important for her to to Spread the Gospel. So she shut the door, and said to Mr. Toomey, louder this time, “I HOPE EVERYONE HAS A BLESSED DAY!”
Mr. Toomey grunted. Heavy and completely white, he reminded Sister Clareese of a walrus: everything about him drooped, his eyes like twin frowns, his nose, perhaps even his mouth, though it was hard to make out because of his frowning blond mustache. Well, Glory be to God, she expected something like a grunt from him, she couldn’t say she was surprised: junkies who detox scream and writhe before turning clean; the man with a hangover does not like to wake to the sun. So it was with sinners exposed to the harsh, curing Light of the Lord.
“Hey, sanctified lady!” Cleophus Sanders called from across the room. “He got cancer! Let the man alone.”
“I know what he has,” Sister Clareese said. “I’m his nurse.” This wasn’t how she wanted the patient—RN relationship to begin, but Cleophus had gotten the better of her. Yes, that was the problem, wasn’t it? He’d gotten the better of her. This was how Satan worked, throwing you off a little at a time. She would have to Persevere, put on the Strong Armor of God. She tried again.
“My name is Sister Clareese Mitchell, your assigned registered nurse. I can’t exactly say that I’m pleased to meet you, because that would be a lie and ‘lying lips are an abomination to the Lord.’ I will say that I am pleased to do my duty and help you recover.”
“Me oh my!” Cleophus Sanders said, and he laughed big and long, the kind of laughter that could go on and on, rising and rising, restarting itself if need be, like yeast. He slapped the knee of his amputated leg, the knee that would probably come off if his infection didn’t stop eating away at it. But Cleophus Sanders didn’t care. He just slapped that infected knee, hooting all the while in an ornery, backwoods kind of way that made Clareese want to hit him. But of course she would never, never do that.
She busied herself by changing Mr. Toomey’s catheter, then remaking his bed, rolling the walrus of him this way and that, with little help on his part. As soon as she was done with Mr. Toomey, he turned on the Knicks game. The whole time she’d changed Mr. Toomey’s catheter, however, Cleophus had watched her, laughing under his breath, then outright, a waxing and waning of hilarity as if her every gesture were laughably prim and proper.
“Look, Mr. Cleophus Sanders,” she said, glad for the chance to bite on the ridiculous name, “I am a professional. You may laugh at what I do, but in doing so you laugh at the Almighty who has given me the breath to do it!”
She’d steeled herself for a vulgar reply. But no. Mr. Toomey did the talking.
“I tell you what!” Mr. Toomey said, pointing his remote at Sister Clareese. “I’m going to sue this hospital for lack of peace and quiet. All your ‘Almighty this’ and ‘Oh Glory that’ is keeping me from watching the game!”
So Sister Clareese murmured her apologies to Mr. Toomey, the whole while Cleophus Sanders put on an act of restraining his amusement, body and bed quaking in seizure-like fits.
Now sunlight filtered through the yellow-tinted windows of Greater Christ Emmanuel Pentecostal Church of the Fire Baptized, lighting Brother Hopkins, the organist, with a halo-like glow. The rest of the congregation had given their testimonies, and it was now time for the choir members to testify, starting with Clareese. Was there any way she could possibly turn her incident with Cleophus Sanders into an edifying testimony experience? Just then, another hit, and she felt a cramping so hard she thought she might double over. It was her turn. Cleophus’s laughter and her cramping womb seemed one and the same; he’d inhabited her body like a demon, preventing her from thinking up a proper testimony. As she rose, unsteadily, to her feet, all she managed to say was, “Pray for me.”
IT WAS almost time for Pastor Everett to preach his sermon. To introduce it, Sister Clareese had the choir sing