NURSE EMMA

“Mr. Sumner, you forgot to fill in the line for your emergency contact.” The admitting nurse stared at Phillip over her granny glasses and frowned.

He felt improperly scolded. “I didn’t forget. I don’t know of anyone that would be responsible.”

“Your wife? Siblings? Children? Good friends?”

“No, none of the above.” Phillip continued to squirm in his chair, knees jouncing.

The nurse jotted something on the form before her.

“What did you write?” Phillip asked.

“Our hospital’s chaplain. Do you have an advanced directive on file with us?”

“Yes.”

“Good. At least the chaplain will know your wishes. You sure there isn’t someone—”

“Asked and answered.”

“Are you an attorney, Mr. Sumner?”

“Yes. Why? Does that matter?”

“It doesn’t, just curious. Your forms don’t list a work phone or employer.”

“I work for myself, from home. Cuts down on overhead.”

“A lot more people are doing that since the pandemic. Seems a lonely way to go, to me, but—”

“Just tell me when my surgery is scheduled, please.”

“Well, your insurance has pre-approved your triple-bypass procedure. Financially, you’re all set. You are tentatively scheduled for next Wednesday, bright and early. All the pre-surgery procedures are explained in the packet I gave you.”

“Thank you.”

“Afterward, you’ll be referred to a rehabilitation program.”

“What? Like drug rehab?”

For the first time the nurse managed a weak smile. “No. It’s transitional care before you go home and then outpatient physical therapy and counseling after that. We want to make sure that you are stable and can take care of yourself.”

“Yes, that’s smart . . . I guess. I just want all of this over with!”

“I understand, Mr. Sumner, I understand.”

Did she? Even after weeks of tests and consultation with his primary care physician, cardiologist, and most recently his surgeon, Phillip felt stunned. This was REALLY happening. He shuffled down the hospital’s polished hallway in a daze, wondering if he could manage by himself, still angry at his beautiful wife for dying and leaving him alone, at his daughter for fleeing to the opposite end of the earth with her husband, at himself for his sedentary workaholic life.

Phillip climbed the stairs to his third-floor apartment, stopping at each landing to catch his breath. Black spots with yellow centers floated in his eyes. Most days the climb was the only exercise he got. Once inside, he collapsed at his computer desk and waited for his breathing to calm. He checked his email then stared at his computer desktop, crowded with folders, one for each of his clients. They would just have to wait for his work on wills, contracts, family trusts, and other small-potatoes projects. Phillip mixed himself a margarita made with mezcal, turned on the TV and stared at the screen with the sound muted. His cell buzzed but he let the call go to voice mail.

It had been five years since Sheryl passed, swept away by cervical cancer, detected too late for anything to be done. Phillip had clung to their relationship as his lifeline, saving him from total isolation and anonymity. She had been the public face of their household, with Phillip acting as her emotionally stunted yet once-handsome escort. He still marveled that she had married him, loved him and wanted to be with him forever. She was his one lucky gift – but his luck had disappeared into the grayness of widowerhood.

The morning of the surgery, Phillip took an Uber to the hospital and wound his way along quiet corridors to the check-in station. On the way, he passed a set of swinging doors. In the hallway, a man lay on a gurney, surrounded by what looked like his family. They wished him safe travel into the world of surgery where lives were saved or lost on a stainless steel table with lights blazing.

“Thank you for arriving on time,” the young Latina behind the check-in counter said. She asked for his wrist and affixed a plastic ID bracelet with his name, birthdate and a bar code as if he were a grocery item to be scanned at the checkout stand.

“Just have a seat and you’ll be called shortly.”

Phillip nodded and sat in the waiting room, empty except for two old guys and their wives. He fingered his sweatpants, and clutched his wallet, his breathing roaring in his ears. He flipped through a dog-eared magazine and stared blankly at its pages, slowly realizing that it was a three-year-old edition of Modern Bride. One of the wives in the room smiled at him and he grinned sheepishly and set the magazine down.

Every room in the hospital seemed to include a wall clock. He gazed at its second hand sweeping the dial and tried to control his breathing. Twenty minutes after arriving a male nurse entered and called his name.

“Mr. Sumner, please follow me.”

Phillip nodded. Outside in the polished hallway, they walked toward a door signed “Pre-Op 1,” entered and moved to one of several curtained stalls. The nurse inspected his wristband.

“What is your name and date of birth?”

“Phillip Sumner, August 16th, 1965.”

The nurse nodded and made entries at the portable computer cart just outside the stall.

“Please undress and put all of your clothes and belongings in this bag. A gown is on the bed. Do you need any help?”

“No . . . no thank you.”

Phillip disrobed, struggled with the hospital gown, then lay on the bed, eyes closed, concentrating on slowing his slamming heart. Nurses came and went, taking vitals, inserting IVs, shaving his chest and left leg, and then covering him with a toasty warm blanket. The anesthesiologist arrived, exchanged pleasantries, stared at the computer screen, and left.

“Do you have anyone with you this morning?”

Phillip opened his eyes and stared at a masked nurse of ambiguous gender. “With me?”

“Yes, did someone come with you to the hospital? They can visit here in pre-op before we take you to the OR.”

“No, I’m here by myself.”

“Okay then. It’ll be just a little while before they’re ready for you. Try and relax.”

Time passed like cold ketchup dripping from its bottle. Phillip wished he had kept ahold of Modern Bride to distract him ­–­ even staring at beautiful models dressed in angelic wedding dresses would be better than gazing at ceiling vents and thinking about his chest being split open while surrounded by a ghoulish squad of masked body mechanics and their machines.

“They’re ready for you.”

Jerked back from his frightening daydream, Phillip stared up at two masked and gloved nurses. They pushed handles and levers and wheeled his bed from its stall and out into the hallway, heading toward the two swinging doors. Without hesitation, they rolled him through into another corridor, then through a door into a room bright as the morning sun. He squeezed his eyes shut as they stopped the bed.

The nurses slid him onto a hard table, and stretched his arms out to attach lines extending to various bags of fluid. Someone placed a mask over his face and told him to breathe easy. His heart thundered as the world faded to black.

The light came back in smears, everything numb, someone speaking ­– "You're in recovery.” He slept. Then hands pushed and pulled his body, the soft feel of a warm blanket. The world swung wildly as his bed left the room full of masked people clad in scrubs, rolled down a corridor, and swung into a dark space. More pushing and pulling and then everything went still. He slept.

In darkness, the pain woke him. His chest and leg felt on fire. Phillip called out and in a few minutes, he heard the squeak of soft-soled shoes against the tile floor. A light flashed on and he squinted at the woman standing over him.

“The pain . . .”

“I’ll adjust your meds.”

“Thanks. How did it go?”

“The doctors will see you in the morning.”

“Where . . . where am I.”

“In the acute rehab center. You’ll be with us for several days.”

“Who are . . .”

“I’m Emma, a night shift nurse. I also work outpatient rehab.”

The pain began to fade. Phillip’s eyes grew heavy. “Thank you, Emma.”

“You’re welcome, Mr. Sumner.”

Days passed. Phillip knew this because the nurses posted the day and date just below the ubiquitous clock on the far wall. Unremarkable meals arrived and were whisked away, largely untouched. Cheery doctors came and went, promising full recovery and a positive outcome. Nurses held his arms and walked him slowly up and down too-bright corridors, his chest heaving, muscles weak, his left leg throbbing from where the surgeons had harvested the veins.

But the nights proved the worst. Phillip tried to sleep but frequently woke, in pain, disoriented as if stuck in a fever dream. Nurse Emma came to him without his use of the call button. She adjusted his meds and then sat by his bed, her far-beyond-Rubenesque body precariously planted on a metal folding chair.

“What do you do, Mr. Sumner?” she asked.

“I’m an attorney – contract, and estate work, sometimes tax stuff, nothing sexy.”

“Still important.”

“Yes, I suppose.”

Emma sighed. “Like my job, recovery, and rehab work is quite a ways down from surgical nursing.”

“Is that what you want to do?” Phillip asked.

“No, not really, too much stress. I like to help people on the other side of the trauma.”

“But some don’t . . . don’t make it.”

“Yes, some don’t. Can I get you anything else tonight?”

“I’d like to read something, to take my mind off all of this. But my eyes won’t focus and the TV just makes noise.”

“I’m reading this book of O’Henry prize short stories. Do you want me to read a little?”

“That’d be great. My wife used to . . . she . . . she died years ago.”

“I’m sorry for your loss. I’ll be back in a minute. Now don’t fall asleep on me.”

For the following two weeks Emma would visit him when on shift and read a story, clasping the paperback book in beautifully delicate hands. She had a pleasant modulating voice that added drama to her recitation at just the right places, warmth at the intimate places, and fear and loathing at the scary parts. He stared at Emma’s face as the words poured forth, a large face framed with straight red hair pulled back into a thick braid that extended down her back. There was something soothing and sensual about her reading. Afterward, they would talk about the story, laugh at the stupid parts and commiserate over the dilemmas, and the tragedies that heroes and heroines faced. Before leaving to tend to her other patients, Emma would sometimes touch his bare arm, her fingers warm and comforting. Phillip slept well afterward.

The doctors declared him fit enough to go home. They also enrolled him in outpatient physical therapy ­– seventy-two sessions.

“Why so many sessions?” he asked Emma before leaving the hospital.

“You’re out of shape, Mr. Sumner, and need to develop a program for improving your heart health and overall fitness.”

“Great. Do you work in the outpatient section?”

“Yes, the first hours of my shift.”

“Maybe I’ll see you there.”

“I’m no pushover, Phil. If you become one of my charges you’ll have to work.”

“I’ll bet.”

It was the first time she called him by his first name. He watched her walk toward the nurses’ station and wondered how someone as voluminous as she could be a physical therapy coach. But it didn’t matter. That surprised him.

Three times a week Phillip arrived at the cardiac rehab center, located in the hospital’s basement. He had tried to sync his workout schedule with Emma’s time in rehab therapy and succeeded for two out of three sessions. On arriving, she’d take his vitals and he’d start on the stationary bicycle, peddling slowly to warm himself. She checked on him often, making sure the heart monitor remained attached and that the newly repaired system was working properly. The first sessions proved agonizing, and afterward Phillip would pull himself up the stairs to his apartment and soak in a hot bath until it turned cold.

The weeks painfully flowed by, Emma was always kind, encouraging, and supportive. Every day she asked questions of his past and present and he answered without hesitating, trusting her discretion almost as much as he had his wife’s.

She brought an MP3 player and let Phillip listen to audiobooks as he plodded along on the treadmill. The burning in his lungs and muscles gradually dissipated. He began dreaming of Emma – both the asleep and waking types – floating fantasies where he’d come to with an erection and a fleeting glimpse at what lay beyond her kindness. At first he pictured her on top and feared that she might break him in two. And as a missionary, he doubted he could reach her.

One day in the nearly-empty rehab center she asked him, “What are you thinking?”

He stopped pedaling the bicycle and opened his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“It looks like you’re far away and . . .” She pointed to his sweatpants stretched by an erection.”

“Ah Jeez.” He grabbed a towel and dumped it over his lap.

“It’s okay. It shows that your mind and body are functioning well.”

“Yeah, but that can get a person in trouble in public.”

Emma smiled. “Don’t worry about it. I won’t tell.” Her smile faded. “What were you thinking about?”

“Well, ah . . . you.”

“Huh . . . was it one of . . . of those kind of dreams?”

Phillip felt his face grow warm. “Yeah, I guess.”

“That’s all right. You do realize they’re dreams, right?”

“Right, right. I guess your . . . your kindness reminds me of my wife . . . she was always kind.”

“Well, I try to be kind with my patients . . . and with you it’s easy. You’re a nice person.”

Phillip pulled his feet from the stirrups, sat up and swiveled toward Emma. “Do you think . . . think we could go out for coffee sometimes and talk . . . more than we can here?”

Emma’s smile faded. “Phil, I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

She sighed. “When I first became a nurse, I dated a patient. It didn’t work out.”

“Why?”

“I think she felt that my kindness was something more . . . affection . . . love even. And when we started seeing each other outside of this,” Emma waved her heavy arms toward the walls, “it all fell apart.”

“Did it have to?”

“I don’t know. But after that I decided to keep more separation between work and my personal life.”

“How has that worked out?”

Emma laughed. “Well, I’m still alone.”

“So am I.”

“I’m sure that’s why many nurses have a more stand-offish demeanor toward their patients, a more ‘professional’ approach. When we show kindness to men or women it can be taken as an invitation to flirt.”

Phillip frowned. “I suppose you’re describing me.”

“Probably.”

“I’d be satisfied if we were just friends.”

“Probably not possible. Once you leave here you’ll have to . . . to find what you’re looking for somewhere else.”

A patient called from across the room. Emma turned and ambled toward him, her thighs rubbing together in a quiet rustle.

Phillip finished his sessions, determined to get in shape, to get out there among the throngs, to get closer to life. He stopped worrying about his erotic dreams, encouraged that he could still have them.

Seven years later Phillip Sumner filled out the hospital’s admissions paperwork for implanting a heart pacemaker. When he came to the line asking for an emergency contact, he wrote “Nurse Emma.”

The admissions nurse stared at the forms. “Do you mean Emma Mathews?”

“Yes.”

“This Emma?” the nurse swiveled in her chair and pointed to a framed picture of Emma with words engraved on a brass plaque: “In memory of Emma Mathews, a kind and gentle caregiver.”

“Yes . . . yes that’s her.”

“Do you have someone else that you want to list?”

“No, not really. Just list the chaplain.”

The nurse nodded and smiled in sympathy. Phillip stared at the middle-aged Latina and smiled back. It didn’t hurt to try. And even if it did, it was worth it.

Terry Sanville lives in San Luis Obispo, California with his artist-poet wife (his in-house editor) and two plump cats (his in-house critics). He writes full time, producing short stories, essays, poems, and novels. Since 2005, his short stories have been accepted more than 370 times by commercial and academic journals, magazines, and anthologies including The Potomac Review, The Bryant Literary Review, and Shenandoah. He was nominated twice for Pushcart Prizes and once for inclusion in Best of the Net anthology. Terry is a retired urban planner and an accomplished jazz and blues guitarist – who once played with a symphony orchestra backing up jazz legend George Shearing.