Loving Time

forty-four

Bobbie’s day off was on Wednesday. On the Wednesday after the death of Harold Dickey, he walked back and forth through the underground corridors in the Medical Center complex—from building to building and back—looking as if he had important business to do. As always, he seemed to belong there. As far as he was concerned, he did belong there.

He had become attached like a plant in a garden and didn’t intend ever to leave. Before last year the wards in the Psychiatric Centre had been the garden where Bobbie thought he’d stay forever. Some years he’d worked the day shift, some years the night shift. Always he’d been available to fill in whenever needed, to help the damaged people in the wards. He didn’t like regular people. He lived for his work.

Bobbie saw his patients as sacred victims of the vicious world that systematically destroyed them—made them sick, incarcerated them, made them sicker, then spewed the lost souls out onto the street again where they couldn’t possibly survive. He believed it was the same kind of destruction done to him in the Army. He took comfort in the crazy. He felt God sent him there to the crazies, to be the one in control of them. He told the patients what to do. He gave them what was good for them. They got it when he said so and not before. If they had to go into restraints, he was the one to put them there. He was the one to release them. Every cigarette, every privilege they had and couldn’t have was up to him. It was his job to protect the crazies from their doctors and from the world. Bobbie gave them their medicine with love. He mourned their loss when they were tossed back into the unspeakable life outside.

After that patient jumped off the terrace last year and Bobbie was blamed for it, he’d felt even worse than when he had been transferred out of his first MASH unit and over the next years was systematically demoted from one nursing job after another until he was no longer doing any procedures at all, was forbidden to touch the patients—even to bathe them or change their dressings. Demoted and demoted again for no reason but pure mean spite until all he could do was carry the bedpans and mop up the blood. Bag the corpses of all those medical fuck-ups. He’d bagged a lot of corpses before he left the Army.

But now he felt good again. One vicious bastard who didn’t deserve to be a doctor, much less breathe the air of the living, was gone from this earth. Bobbie felt real good seeing Dickey as a dead man, rushed down the street on a gurney with all those asshole paramedics trying so hard to keep a dead man alive. God surely had a hand in putting Bobbie out on the street at that exact moment to serve as witness to the punishment of true evil

God was surely good to give him a death he could see again and again. He played it over and over in his mind, particularly the part with the bitch Treadwell hurrying back to the Centre alone, probably going back for the bottle. Bobbie had been interested to see that Clara Treadwell’s face had not been white with shock. Nor had it been gray with grief. Treadwell had completely forgotten the man who’d died just minutes before. She was preoccupied, busy with what she had to do next. Bobbie laughed at the panic the bitch Treadwell must have felt when she saw that Dickey’s scotch bottle was missing from his office. Now the bitch would know she wasn’t safe. Bobbie had been there: He knew what she had done.

Monday Bobbie felt good. Tuesday he felt good. Wednesday he felt good enough to travel up to the third floor and pay a visit to the old bag. He wanted to see Gunn’s fat face get all red, wanted to hear her protest and complain, get all scared about what would happen, what would happen. And what the hell happened since the good doctor was just fine when I saw him and gave him the files on Friday? He wanted to hear her whine about all the trouble they’d get in. And ask again and again what had he done, what had he done, what had he done? Blah, blah, blah. Gunn didn’t know he was in control of this. For once he knew what was going on and Gunn didn’t. It made him feel good to think about it.

Bobbie arrived at Gunn’s office soon after five. She was sitting at her desk, still as a stone. He was disappointed that her face didn’t get red with embarrassment and fear when she saw him. She sat there staring straight ahead of her as if she’d been turned to stone. She looked beaten, looked old. He wondered how he’d gotten involved with such an old woman.

“Hi.” He pulled on the brim of his baseball cap.

She shook her head.

Malika, her dim-witted associate, walked by and didn’t even say hi. “I’m goin’ now” was all she said. Then she left.

“What’s up?” Bobbie asked Gunn. “You look funny.”

“Something’s wrong. Some guy from the FBI was here.”

“Huh?” Bobbie was startled. “What’d he want?”

“Take a guess, Bobbie.”

“Don’t fuck with me, woman. What’d the asshole want?”

“He wanted to know why friends of Dr. Treadwell’s were suddenly dying here.”

Bobbie almost laughed. A bubble of air rose from his gut. He belched loudly, tasted the meatball from his meatball-hero lunch. “What friends?” he asked innocently. “I didn’t know the bitch had any friends.”

“Oh, come on, Bobbie. You know what I mean. Two people died. Not only poor Dr. Dickey—but a patient, too. Another patient died.”

“Another one since last week?”

“No, the same one from last week. Isn’t one enough?”

Bobbie shrugged. “Is the FBI here to nail the bitch for her crimes?”

Gunn shook her head. “Bobbie, you worry me to death. You really do.”

“Why should I worry you to death?” He almost laughed in her fat face.

“Because you don’t always think about the consequences of doing things … of people dying.”

“The shit I don’t.” Now he was getting angry. He didn’t have anything to do with anybody’s dying. Gunn had no idea what was going on. She was pissing in the wind again, going off on some crazy suspicions that were as far from the truth as falseness could get.

“I don’t even work here,” he protested. “I don’t even know the guy. You told me it was a private patient I don’t even know the guy’s name. How could I have anything to do with it?”

“Well, you know Dr. Dickey’s name, Bobbie,” she said haughtily. “And the police were here, too. The police and the FBI. What am I supposed to tell them?”

“Right, the fucking FBI. Let me tell you something—when the fucking FBI investigate things, they don’t tell you they’re fucking FBI. So you’re imagining things. You’re in cuckoo-land. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She nodded. “Oh, yes, they do. I told this guy to go away if he didn’t have proper authority to ask me questions, so he showed me this FBI thing.” So there.

“So what do you want me to do about it? I haven’t done anything wrong. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Dickey had a heart attack and croaked. I don’t know about the other guy. I never even heard of him.”

Now she got agitated. She started crying. “Poor Dr. Dickey. And now they won’t release my files. I’m just so upset, Bobbie.”

“Don’t worry. I didn’t have nothing to do with it. I didn’t even know the guy.”

Gunn blew her nose. “That’s what you say. But you’re not supposed to be here. What are you doing here? You knew the police were here, didn’t you?”

She was crazy. He made a noise with his mouth. Who said he couldn’t be there? No one said he couldn’t be there. Only she said he couldn’t be there. It pissed him off. He had to be smart about this, couldn’t fly off the handle at her. He shook his head.

“No, I didn’t know nothing. I just stopped by to see you. Don’t try to make something of it.”

“Let’s go, Bobbie.” Gunn’s face was mad. “After everything I’ve done for you,” she muttered. “I don’t know why I put up with this. I don’t want you ever coming over here again, you hear me?”

“What do you want me to do, leave town?”

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea. Then you’d be safe.” She waved her short, fat arms at him, shooing him away. “You go first. I don’t want us seen together.”

She was nuts. Bobbie made another noise and walked out.