“441B North to X-ray,” Mr. McKee called out, hanging up the phone and turning to us who were sitting around, a bit cramped in the office/mailroom that was our base. It was a slow morning so most of us were there. Mr. McKee was great, a career Army noncom, retired after decades serving. Among ourselves, we called him Sarge. He was infallibly fair, almost unflappable, and when he did get frustrated, he was careful not to direct it at anyone (in the room, anyway) and came up with some creative, colorful, expressions to express his displeasure that were always acceptable in mixed company.

“I’ll take it,” I spoke up. Normally Mr. McKee would distribute the calls, but sometimes when one of us had gotten to know a patient who’d been there a while, he wouldn’t mind us volunteering. It made them comfortable seeing a familiar face. 

I hopped across the hall to the green-doored staff elevator, more utilitarian than the ones visitors and the administrators used. On our floor, a second set of doors could open to the operating and emergency room hallway. The elevator smelled like antiseptic, pine-scented cleaner, and the remnants of odors the latter was supposed to hide. 

241B North, the window bed, was occupied by Marsha Cleary, alone in a double room, who I guessed to be in either her late 20s or early thirties, a good bit older than me at the time. There were always a couple of books on the bedside table and some aging flowers in an arrangement accented by pussy willows on the windowsill beside a stack of get-well cards sent by her students. She was smart, good natured and always had something to talk about. I had just acquired my degree in English, and she had been a teacher, so we both loved talking about books and authors. Of late, we were on Dickens. 

But recently, she had been having some bad days. She was trying to keep up appearances, as well as her own spirits, but I could sense that was becoming a struggle for her. We never knew what a patient’s diagnosis was, though some of them told us, and a few seemed to feel that it gave them bragging rights. Marsha wasn’t at all like that. It felt like she was doing all she could to normalize things and mentally escape the fact that she was hospitalized. It seemed that our conversations helped. 

A nurse’s aide went into the room with me; that was something new. And we helped Marsha into the chair. She looked my way, but in place of her usual smiling greeting, she was working hard to sit up, squeezing her eyes shut with the effort. The aide stepped in, firmly telling Marsha to don’t try to get up herself and then assisted her to move onto the edge of the bed and into the wheelchair. I wheeled her out of the room and, as was policy, confirmed her destination with the nurse’s station and picked up Marsha’s chart, a blue, two-inch flexible plastic binder with her name and room number written neatly on a piece of white tape along its spine. It had grown fat with records.

In the elevator down, with Marsha not having said a word, I stupidly asked if she was okay. 

“No, I’m not okay! What does it look like?” 

It was a tone of voice I’d never heard from her. Angry, in spite of her weak state, frustrated and discouraged, as well. I half-stammered an apology and said nothing else. When I left her at X-ray, there were no goodbyes. Here eyes were shut, not squeezed, but not restfully, either. I handed her chart to the reception desk and looked back. Her eyes were still closed.

Near the end of the week, there was one more trip to X-ray, but this time they had called for a stretcher and two of us went. The nurse’s aide along with an RN helped move her. There was an IV that went with her. I attached the pole, and the RN moved the bottle, as was protocol. As we moved her onto the stretcher, Marsha’s eyes were open but looking at nothing in particular. There was a new furrow in her brow when she closed them again. Not a word was said.

That was on a Friday, and I didn’t get a call on Four North again until later the following week. I walked by her room, and I glanced in. Both beds were now empty, the books and flowers gone, the whiteboard that held daily information for the patent and attending staff was wiped clean. I couldn’t understand how everyone else there could handle that kind of thing so easily. Thirty years later, that morning still haunts me.