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Seven
The Becketts have taken a liking to me. On the days that I don’t work, another nurse is assigned to Caitlin, but on the days that I do, they ask for me. Today for example, I wasn’t assigned to Caitlin. I was given other patients, but when visiting hours began and the Becketts found Luke in Caitlin’s room, they made a request to the charge nurse, who obliged.
“They must really like you,” Luke said as we passed in the hall. He’s incredible at what he does. He’s compassionate, he has the world’s best smile and a sense of humor to boot. A patient would be lucky to get to work with him.
“Don’t take it personally. They’re just used to me, I think,” I said, trying not to read too much into it. They like talking to me. Mrs. Beckett and I have a bond, because we’re both mothers. That’s all.
“There’s something strange about them,” he said then, his words running down my spine, especially in light of the conversation I had with Mr. Beckett the other day where he played that voice mail for me.
I was walking away when he said it, toward Caitlin’s room. I stopped and turned back. “Like what?” Luke stood three feet from me in pale blue scrubs with a white T-shirt beneath, a partial tattoo of a snake visible beneath one of the short sleeves. He’s told me about the tattoo once before, a remnant from his wild youth, getting it when he was sixteen with a fake ID. By his own admission, Luke was a holy terror as a teenager. His parents were mostly absent, though his father was an alcoholic with a temper. He hit him and Luke’s mom, not all the time, but sometimes, and then he would go on a bender and disappear. Luke told me about his past when I complained about something Sienna did—blowing her curfew or something relatively benign like that. He said, It could be so much worse, Meghan. She’s a good kid. As a child, he told me, he drank, did drugs and some petty theft. When I asked why, he said he loved the rush of it, the thrill of taking something that wasn’t his, and because no one could stop him, no one could tell him no. It gave him power and a sense of control that he didn’t have in his own family, I think, where he felt powerless. Now Luke is the salt of the earth. He did a short stint in juvie, before eventually outgrowing that phase of his life. He went to college and became a nurse.
In the hall, Luke’s arms were crossed, his stethoscope slung around his neck. He cocked his head. “I don’t know. It’s just a hunch. But something seems off,” he said, about the Becketts.
I couldn’t let it go. “How?”
He gave some thought to it. “The mom doesn’t make eye contact when she speaks. And earlier, when she first came in, she cried or seemed to cry. But there were no tears.”
The bruises and the lacerations on Caitlin Beckett’s face are hard to look at. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to them. There are smash fractures and soft tissue injuries on her skull and face. Her nose and jaw are broken and she has two black eyes. She’s missing teeth. The rest of her body is worse, a medley of broken bones, torn ligaments, contusions. Her limbs are deadweight. I can maneuver them any which way I’d like and they would fall when I lift them, if I were to let go.
Many of her injuries are overt. But there are things the doctors don’t know yet, like whether there is nerve damage and, if she wakes up, if she’ll be able to do things like blink, chew, smile. She may need surgery to repair the damage, to restore whatever function is lost and to improve her appearance, should she live, so that someday she looks like some version of herself.
In the afternoon, the nursing assistant Marianne comes and I ask the Becketts to leave us so that we can give Caitlin a bath. I pull the curtain for privacy. I avoid looking at Caitlin’s face as I remove her gown. I cover her with a blanket while Marianne and I wash, careful not to expose any more of her than I need to. Bathing a patient is an intimate experience. It can be uncomfortable for everyone. When I give bed baths to patients who are conscious, we talk or I talk, if they’re nonverbal. I ramble on about nothing, about anything, to avoid the awkwardness. But with someone who is unconscious, it’s quiet. Marianne and I stand on opposite sides of the bed, working from the head down. It’s not always a job for RNs. We don’t always have time to bathe our own patients, but when I can, I do.
We roll Caitlin onto her side to wash her back. I check her skin at the same time, looking for bedsores, and then we change the sheets, which, on an occupied bed with a patient who can’t assist, is a challenge. When we’re done, we place the soiled bedding in a bag and then I take it away to be washed. Marianne offers to do it for me but I say no thanks, that I need to check on another patient and will take it on the way.
The other patient is a woman named Marin Layley, who’s seventy-one years old, being treated for a stroke, though she has a number of comorbid conditions too like high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes. She’s lucky to be alive, though she’s not out of the woods yet. She’s in the ICU for close monitoring and frequent neuro checks. She also requires insulin four times a day, which she’s due for. In the room, I find her insulin pen on the medical cart, where I last left it, and give her a dose. In theory, insulin pens shouldn’t be left out in the open like this—where anyone could conceivably come in and take it if they wanted—but we don’t always have time to put them back into patient specific bins in the medication room after each use. Sometimes it’s more efficient to just leave them out.
On my way back to Caitlin’s room, I round a corner to find a man in the room with her. I stop in the middle of the hall, taking him in. He stands with his back to the door so that I can’t see his face; I only see him from behind, the tufts of dark hair that appear from beneath the back closure of a hat.
But even from behind, I know who he is. He’s the same man who was here in the hospital a few days ago, standing in the hall just outside Caitlin’s room, looking in.
A feeling of unease washes over me.
Who is he and what does he want?
He stares down at Caitlin in bed and there is something about the way he stands, his body language or the way he looks down at her, that makes me uncomfortable. There is nothing affectionate or benevolent about it. He doesn’t touch her. He doesn’t stroke her arm or her hair. He just stares, as if looking down on a dead body in a casket. The man is tall and slender. His presence, him turning up like this, takes me by surprise, because I didn’t see him arrive and because, in the time that she’s been here, no one has been in that room to visit except for Mr. and Mrs. Beckett.
“Meghan,” a voice says, and I tear my eyes away from the man to find Luke sitting at the nurses’ station beside me, studying me from over the computer screen.
“Sorry,” I say. “Did you say something?”
“I asked if you were okay.”
I don’t answer because I don’t know if I’m okay. Instead I ask, “Did you see that man come in?”
“What man?” he asks, and I nod toward Caitlin’s room.
“Him,” I breathe.
Luke’s gaze follows the direction of mine and he takes him in, letting his eyes run over the jeans and the black thermal shirt, a lightweight jacket that lies at the end of the bed. He shakes his head. “No, but I was on a call just now,” he says and, as I watch, he reaches forward to set the phone back in its cradle. “Maybe ask Anna.”
“I will. Thanks.”
Visitors are supposed to report to the nurses’ station when they arrive. There are signs all over the ICU, which are hard to miss. That said, during visiting hours, the unit is unlocked; anyone could enter without consent, unlike overnight, when employees have to swipe a badge to get in.
I slide down the long desk to Anna, who sits on the other side of it. “Hey,” I say, and she glances up from another computer screen. “The man in 214,” I say, leaning in to whisper, and she looks over my shoulder and into the room, which is directly behind me now. “Did you see him come in?”
“No. Is everything okay?”
