“Juice, maybe. Thank you.”
“I’ll send an aide with a cup. Orange or apple?”
He pouted. “Can’t you bring it yourself? I don’t see much of you these days.”
That was no accident.
My duties as nursing supervisor didn’t leave me much time for patient care, but I used to stop by once a day. As the biggest and strongest person in the building, I sometimes left my office to help speed up patient transfers from beds to chairs, and once I was out on the floor, I’d peek in on the residents. Or if the charge nurse on the schedule was out sick, like today, I’d get a little more hands-on time on the floors. But recently, I’d backed off with Mr. Vincent and started assigning him only female nurses and aides. No need to encourage his passes and endanger his family stability.
And yet, at the same time, I felt bad. I was the only out gay man in Mr. Vincent’s world these days. How would it feel to be alone, lost, the habits of a lifetime fading, and the only person who might understand refusing to appear?
“All right,” I told him. “But you’ll have to wait a while. I have other work to do first. An aide would bring it sooner.”
“I’m not that thirsty.” He winked. “Bring OJ, when you get the chance.”
Yeah, that’s what I thought.But if he drank the juice to keep me around, that was still calories and fresh vitamins the old guy needed. “Give me thirty minutes or so.”
My other duties took more like forty, but eventually I made my way to the ground floor, heading for the kitchen. From the common room, I could hear music, louder than normal and clearer than the TV speakers usually managed to produce. The song snagged at my heart. One of Griffin’s old standards. I remembered when he wrote the tune, sitting naked on the edge of his bed at two a.m., guitar in hand, while I lounged on the pillows beside him, fucked out and drifting.
“How the hell do you still have that much energy?” I’d mumbled.
He’d grinned at me, his blue eyes flashing, lips parted. He’d been clean-shaven then, showing off his gorgeous features. “You inspire me.”
And when I laughed, he’d set aside the guitar, tumbled toward me, and let me inspire him some more…
Water long under the bridge. At one point years back, the memory would’ve made me grit my teeth. Now, it made me smile. No one in my life had ever been like Griffin, before or after.
I was busy as hell since we were perennially short-staffed, but when I had Mr. Vincent’s cup of juice, I detoured by the common room for a moment. The concert was still playing, and I wondered which version of Griffin I’d see on the screen. My sexy, wild-haired man at thirty-six making love to the microphone on his climb to fame? The solid performer of the years after we split, his hair shorter, the first lines creasing beside his eyes, his fingers a blur on the strings? Or the recent Griffin, gray starting to touch his cropped beard and temples, still way too fucking good-looking for a guy who’d passed fifty?
Walking through the archway into the common room, I stopped short. The TV screen was blank. Seated the piano bench at the front of the room, Griffin coaxed a swift fall of notes from his guitar strings.
Griffin? Here? What the hell?His mother had passed four years ago, at the height of COVID. I’d caught her name in the obituaries, but if he’d come home then, I’d been deep in the bowels of that misery and he hadn’t contacted me.Why’s he here now?
A small piece of me that still ached from the way he’d left me raised a tendril of foolish hope.Is he here for me?Not that I’d take him back, but it would soothe my battered ego a tiny bit.
But when Griffin raised his head to scan the audience in their lounge chairs and wheelchairs and spotted me, the way his eyes widened and his mouth dropped open dashed that idea. He’d clearly had no idea I was around.
Before either of us could say or do something stupid, I ducked back out of sight. Behind me, I heard Griffin play the intro again before the first mellow words of “Iowa Sunset”followed me up the stairs. His tone and vocal control were always most stunning like this— acoustic guitar, simple mic, no backing band. Just Griffin and his art. People still paid damned good money to hear him. Now, here he was, giving a concert to folks half of whom had either never heard of him or had forgotten his name. Most of whom had no idea the privilege they were receiving. I hoped they enjoyed the hell out of it, though.
Our patients’ days tended to be mundane and filled with routine, despite the social director’s best efforts. Scoring Griffin Marsh was a triumph for Kashira. I’d have to congratulate her. After Griffin was gone, of course.
I slipped into Mr. Vincent’s room. The old guy leaned back on his pillows, eyes closed, snoring. Well, he was one of the folks whose nighttime sleep was restless, filled with confusion. He needed the nap as much as he needed the juice. I set the sealed cup at his bedside and scribbled,“I hope you had a good sleep. Here’s your juice. —Lee,”on the napkin so he’d realize I hadn’t blown him off, when he woke.
Just as well I was free to step out, as Anita called from down the hall, “Hey, Lee? Carol’s been sick again, made a mess of her wheelchair and the bed. Can you give me a hand?”
Ah, the glamorous life of nursing.But if I’d been squeamish, I’d never have made it through nursing school, let alone twenty years on the job. Other than in the ER, nursing was a lot less about dramatically saving lives, and a lot more about the tiny, grateful smile of an old lady once she was clean, comfortable, dressed in a fresh gown, and getting some ondansetron and fluids.
As the NP on duty, prescribing the meds and starting IVs were my job, basic patient care wasn’t. But once again— six-foot-two, two-hundred-sixty pounds, and I lifted weights on my days off. I could safely scoop up a frail old lady and move things along fast, or two aides could spend ten minutes maneuvering the lift into the room and working around it. After they managed to line up two free aides from our overworked staff, that is. I never let my title get in the way of patient comfort.
“There.” I tucked the thin blanket around Carol’s shoulders. “All set.”
“You’re a good boy, Joey.” She clung to my arm with a thin hand.
I had no idea who Joey was or had been, but I’d long ago stopped correcting her. I pressed her fingers, returning her hand to the bedclothes. “Thank you. Try to get some sleep now. You’ll feel better.”
In my closet of an office, I turned to the paperwork and charting that filled way too much of my day.I chose this.When I left the ER for this job years ago, quiet paperwork had felt like a reprieve from the stress. Now, I was needed at Wellhaven, and even though the office time had turned into a chore, I didn’t think I’d ever shake loose from this place. Oh, well. There were far worse things than being needed, somewhere I could make a real difference. I opened the daily charts on the screen.
My mind kept drifting to Griffin, though. I was pretty sure he’d seen me. Pretty sure he would’ve recognized me despite my beard, an added seventy pounds, and the beginnings of eye wrinkles. I wondered how long he was in town for and what random impulse had driven him to give an impromptu concert to folks who’d never again buy a ticket to one of his shows. Maybe one of the residents was someone he knew?
