Elizabeth Lynn - The White King's Dream

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The White King

The White King's Dream

by Elizabeth A. Lynn

The straps across her shoulders were cutting through the thin cloth gown. I'm cold, she thought. "Okay,

Louise, time to wake up now," said a voice warm as honey—but I am awake, Luisa thought, and

wondered why she could not see the light that she could feel falling on her eyes.

"Baby, I'll move you into the sun while I change those dirty sheets. You messed the bed again, Louise. I

know you can't help it, but I sure wish you wouldn't do it." At least I can hear, Luisa thought. She heard

the voice, and a crying sound, quite close. The sheets were clammy under her. She smelled a stale and

sour smell. The straps fell away. Something lifted her.

She was afraid.

She was set in a hard chair. The straps came back. The chair was metal and cold. Now she was sitting in

the sunlight. She wanted to say thank you but her mouth would not move. The close crying sound

increased. It was herself; she was crying. The stale sour scent was her own. Helen. Day shift. Every day

began like this, except the days when it rained. Helen still came, then, to change her bedclothes, wash

her, feed her, shove pills down her shriveled throat; but there was no sunlight to sit in when it rained,

and they would never open the windows so that she could smell the rain. All she smelled was her own

melting flesh. In Lord Byron there was a fat man crying to get out, and in me there is a skeleton wailing

for release.

"Baby, why you screwing up your face like that? Are you too hot?" No, Luisa wanted to scream, no, but

Helen's inexorable hands pulled her out of the warmth and dumped her into her cold, barren bed.

"Breakfast in a while, Louise. You just put your head back into the pillow and dream, now."

Even dreams are dreams, Luisa thought. Y los sueños, sueños son. Dreams no longer meant sleep, and

what good was sleep when she had to wake from it again? Sleep just meant the night shift, and then the

day shift, the sun looking through the windows, busy old fool, unruly sun. Breakfast, she thought with

loathing. They fed her with a tube down her throat. Sometimes they put a tube like an arm into her and

pumped air through her, making her breathe. She hated tubes. Is that Freudian, she wondered, to hate

tubes? She wanted to be back in the sunlight, in the warm. She began to cry again, a cat-mewl of sound.

Helen might hear it; Helen listened, sometimes, and might understand; and might put her back into the

sun.

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The White King

· · · · ·

"They just like babies," Helen said. "They're over ninety, most of them, and they can't hardly talk, but

they can cry. If you watch their eyes you can figure out what it is they want—I can, anyways. You'll get

the hang of it."

I don't give a damn, thought Mark Wald. But he nodded. The odors of feces and ammonia fought in the

halls. He hated the geriatrics homes, but it was the only place he could get work anymore; the hospitals

wouldn't hire him. The best thing about this place is that the lockers are in the basement and I can go

down there to do my drinking in private, the way a man should drink. Unhurried snorts. He would read—

he had the latest paperback thriller in his locker now—and drink, slowly, decently. No one would notice

on the graveyard shift. During the day there were five aides, three orderlies, two RNs on duty.

Graveyard shift there were two orderlies, two aides, one RN, no baths to give or beds to make or people

to feed. Stay up all night riding herd on a bunch of whimpering zombies—then go home and sleep till

way past noon. Helen was still talking about the patients as if it mattered what they had once done or

been. They were zombies now. This one had been a doctor. This one a lawyer. He pretended to listen as

she stuck her head into every room.

"Honey, what is it?"

The old lady in the bed had a blind, wrinkled face like a sun-struck turtle. She whimpered. "You wet?

No, you not wet. Straps too tight?" She loosened the posey straps that held the thin gawk of a woman in

bed. "This is Louise; she was a teacher in a college." The sounds went on. Helen laid a broad black hand

on the woman's forehead and reached for her pulse with the other. "Your pulse's okay. You cold? I could

put you back in the sun."

The crying stopped.

"That's it, right? Okay, baby, we'll put you in the chair. This is Mark, here, he's a new night shift

worker." She was taking off the cloth restraints as she talked. Mark pulled the wheelchair over to the

bed. Together they let down the high sides of the bed, helped Luisa to a sitting position, picked her up,

and put her in the chair. Her long fingernails scratched lightly against Mark's neck. He shuddered.

I won't get old, he thought. Blind, half-dead, a piece of meat in a bed for others to haul around. I'll die

decently. Pills, or gas, or maybe I'll jump off the bridge. The alcohol will do it for me. He saw himself in

an alcoholic stupor, staggering along the road … getting hit by a car and dying instantly, no pain, no

bedpans or tubes up his arms and in his ass and down his throat.

It was an old vision. Usually it waited till he was decently asleep. It was always night or early morning

in the dream, and the car was always a red car. "Excuse me," he said to Helen. He ran downstairs. Let

her think he had to piss. He twirled the dial of the combination lock on his locker, got it wrong, did it

again, got it right, uncapped the bottle, and took a swallow. The bourbon eased down warmly—that was

better. Sometimes he felt it was the only warm thing in the world. He screwed the cap on the bottle,

locked it up, and sauntered up the stairs. They would know, of course. That Helen would smell it on

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The White King

him. What the hell, they wouldn't fire him unless he made a mistake. He wouldn't make a mistake.

Helen was waiting for him at the nursing station. "Let's hope he doesn't end up like Harold," he heard

her say. Who the hell was Harold? The nurse at the desk was old and stringy, on her way to looking like

that senile crock down the hall.

"Hi," he said, smiling. "I'm Mark Wald, the new night shift orderly."

· · · · ·

Graveyard shift was a breeze. The old crocks wheezed and cried and slept. The aides took turns sleeping

in the bed in the back room. Mark read paperbacks and sucked on his bottle of bourbon. The other night

orderly was an old fag named Morton. He liked playing cards. Mark preferred to read. Morton sulked

and played solitaire at the nursing station desk.

"Who was Harold?"

Morton looked up from putting a red queen on a black king. "Oh, it's you."

"Who the hell else would it be?"

"Harold was the dude before you. Black and built. Younger than you."

"He was a fag, too?"

"The word is faggot, sweetie. No. Straight as they come, if you'll excuse the phrase."

"What happened to him—he get tired of this dump?"

Morton looked up again. "No, sweetie. He ripped off dope from the narcotics box and OD'd on it.

Morphine, I think."

Now why should that Helen even think he would be like some blood who needled himself to death? He

hated drugs.

"Su-i-cide, they called it," said Morton.

"Huh."

"They come and go. I've been working here five years, you know that? Only Helen's been here longer

than I have." His hands kept placing the cards. He had soft, pudgy hands.

"Helen said this place is a rich people's dump."

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