The NightShift

I come through the employee entrance at one forty-five on a Saturday afternoon with four grocery bags cutting red half-moons into my fingers and my badge already clipped to my scrub top because that's just what Baylor weekends do to you eventually you stop arriving to work and start showing up like you never really left.

Same pink-and-blue cartoon scrub top with little smiling moons on it, same busted white sneakers, same gas station coffee I forgot in the cupholder and had to double back for like an idiot.

I'm carrying Little Debbie cakes, peanut butter crackers, two bags of pretzels, three packs of instant ramen, and enough Diet Coke to get half this building through a hurricane or an emotional breakdown, whichever shows up first.

The break room door sticks unless you hip-check it exactly right, so I do, and Crystal looks up from the table like she's been personally waiting all day to evaluate my choices.

"Girl." She stares at the grocery bags. "Are we surviving a storm or opening a corner store?"

"We're surviving my double shift. The storm can tag along if it wants."

Tiffany is at the old microwave peeling plastic off somebody's forgotten plate with the specific disgust of a woman who has already had enough of humanity and we haven't even hit two o'clock yet. "Kitchen left dirty pans in the employee sink again."

Melissa doesn't look up from her clipboard.

She's got that expression she always has, like she's quietly cataloguing everyone's blood type and favorite pudding flavor simultaneously. "Because dietary thinks Jesus is coming back to wash their dishes."

Crystal snorts. "No, for real though they left a whole hotel pan soaking on the handwashing side. Who does that?"

"Same people who steal our good spatulas," Tiffany says, then points a fork at me. "Tell her. You're lead this weekend."

"Lead CNA does not mean kitchen police." I drop the bags on the table and start unloading like I'm stocking a bunker. "It means I get paid six dollars more to be stressed prettier than y'all."

That gets the laugh I wanted, and for a second it's just us in here the hum of the vending machine, the industrial coffee smell cooked permanently into the walls, the old recliner everyone fights over on night shift, the half-finished puzzle on the card table missing three pieces because Mr. Hank Mouton steals puzzle pieces when he's bored and then acts genuinely shocked every single time we bring it up.

Magnolia Ridge smells like bleach and stale toast and lavender lotion and old people perfume, and I love it in a way I couldn't explain to someone who hasn't done this job.

Maybe even to someone who has.

Tiffany leans over the groceries. "Please tell me you got the strawberry shortcake rolls."

I hold one up.

She presses a hand to her chest. "Okay. I take back what I said about you."

"You didn't say anything about me."

"I was thinking it."

I clock in, take one swallow of coffee that tastes like regret and gas station ambition, and that's when I feel it the AC kicks on overhead and the air that comes out is thick.

Heavy. Not broken-unit heavy, just wrong in that specific way Louisiana air gets when something big is pressing down from the outside. I've worked enough storm weekends to know this feeling.

Magnolia Ridge breathes different before a bad one.

The building knows before the Weather Channel does.

"Crystal." I'm already moving toward the linen shelf. "Marcus get those south windows taped?"

She makes a face. "Was supposed to be done by one. Haven't seen him."

"He's probably in the mechanical room."

"Probably," she says, in a tone that means she doesn't actually think that.

I grab a clean linen stack and nod at Tiffany. "Come with me. Mrs. Carraway's ready to be turned, and if I find wrinkles under her hips again I'm calling the state my own self."

Tiffany sucks her teeth loud enough to echo off the lockers. "I did not leave wrinkles."

"You left the kind of sheet bunching that starts arguments with wound care nurses."

She follows me out grinning because she knows I'm mostly messing with her, and because she also knows I'm not.

The hall is still daytime-bright, sun making long gold squares on the floor through the front windows, call-light board blinking steady at the nurses' station.

Clarence Whitmore is in his usual spot by the fish tank with his head bent and a tune moving soft in his throat some slow, smoky jazz line that makes the whole west wing feel like it's exhaling.

I tap his shoulder gently on the way past.

"Saving the concert for later, Mr. Clarence?"

He looks up with those soft, unreadable eyes and hums a little louder for exactly three seconds. That's Clarence for you. That's his whole language.

Room 209 smells like baby powder and lemon lotion. Marge Carraway has her mouth set in the precise line that means she's in a mood, which honestly, same.

The stroke took half her body and most of her easy speech but not one single ounce of her ability to make you feel assessed.

"Well, good afternoon," I tell her.

She hits me with a sound that lives somewhere between a grunt and a curse word.

Tiffany laughs under her breath.

"This," I say, snapping my gloves on, "is why you never judge a patient by how much they can say. Ms. Marge can still hurt your feelings with one eyebrow."

We roll her carefully and I talk the whole time because that's how you do it you don't move people around like furniture and then act surprised when they get scared or mad. "Okay, Ms. Marge, turning you toward me, fresh sheet under your hip, nice and easy. Tiffany, watch my hands. Don't yank support the shoulder first. Smooth the draw sheet flat. Flat, flat, flat. You leave wrinkles under somebody who can't reposition themselves, you're basically writing a pressure injury into existence."

"Like that?" Tiffany asks.

"Closer. Tuck with your palm, not your fingers." I fix it, smooth the linen under Marge's hip, pull the top sheet up. "There. Dignity and pressure relief. We love both."

Marge watches me with that one sharp eye and then reaches for the letter board clipped to her rail.

Her left hand moves slow but determined. M. A. D.

"Tiffany made you mad?"

Marge just stares at me.

"Okay. Me, then."

She taps again. C. O. L. D.

"Oh, you're cold." I tuck the blanket tighter around her legs. "See, this is why we ask."

Tiffany rubs lotion into Marge's good hand while I finish the bed, and Marge's face softens by maybe two percent. For her, that's basically a standing ovation.

Down the hall, Tommy Pierce has managed to knot his oxygen tubing around his side rail, his water pitcher, and one plastic fishing lure he insists on clipping to the line because apparently living with COPD is no reason not to accessorize.

"Mr. Tommy." I stop in his doorway. "What fresh hell is this."

He grins around the cannula. "Custom rigging."

"This looks like your concentrator filed for divorce."

Tiffany cracks up. Tommy wheezes out a laugh and points at me like I'm the funny one. I kneel and start untangling the line while he tells her about the biggest redfish he ever pulled out of Grand Isle, which based on the size of his hands when he describes it was either prehistoric or a complete lie, and I genuinely do not care which because the man's face lights up like a kid when he tells it.

"Storm comes in hard tonight," I say, checking the backup tank gauge.

He shrugs the way men who've lived long enough shrug at weather. "Y'all got my spare?"

"Got your spare, your extension, your battery lantern, and your hideous lucky fish lure."

"That lure ain't ugly."

"It is profoundly ugly."

He beams. "Caught things, though."

"That's what I say about half the men in Louisiana."

He cough-laughs until I tell him not to waste his air, and I mean it affectionately and he knows it.

The east wing linen cart is parked outside room 110 when I come around the corner, which means Ashley has been in with Mr. Gerald Trosclair for at least twenty minutes. I move the cart so nobody clips it with a wheelchair and knock twice before pushing the door open.

Good day. Definitely a good day.

Mr. Gerald is in his recliner with the remote balanced on his knee and the Weather Channel on at a volume suggesting he believes everyone in this building wants to participate.

He's got his LSU blanket across his lap, reading glasses pushed up on his forehead with nothing to read, and the expression of a man who has been talking for a while and is nowhere near done.

Ashley is perched on the visitor chair arm with her second Little Debbie of the shift, nodding in a way that means she stopped processing actual words about ten minutes ago but her face hasn't caught up.

"Jenny." Mr. Gerald points at me like I've been summoned. "Come look at this cone."

I look. The cone sits more or less directly over us, which isn't new information but looks worse on his TV than it did on mine this morning.

Probably the contrast.

"We're prepared, Mr. Gerald."

"Generator tested this week?"

"Maintenance handles that."

"When, though."

"Recently."

He gives me the look that says recently is not a number. I tell him I'll ask Pat and he accepts this while reserving the right to circle back. "My daughter called. Wanted me to evacuate." He says it like she suggested something genuinely unreasonable. "I told her I've ridden out worse in a house with a tin roof and three feet of water in the yard." He looks around the room his LSU blanket, his reading glasses, the photo of his late wife Louise on the nightstand with the little silk flower Ashley tucked into the frame last Valentine's Day. "Besides. Everything I got left is right here."

The way he says it doesn't make me sad exactly. It makes me feel the weight of what I'm responsible for, which is a different thing entirely.

Ashley is studying her Little Debbie wrapper like it's a document.

I clear my throat. "Need anything before the meeting?"

His face shifts immediately. "What kind of supplies you bring?"

"Strawberry shortcake rolls."

He holds out one hand like a man expecting tribute. I promise delivery after the meeting and he grants this with full dignity.

I'm almost out the door.

"Jenny."

I turn. He's looking at the window, not at me, with an expression I can't quite read from here. "Somebody was standing in the parking lot last night. Not walking to a car, not smoking just standing. Looking at the building. Two, maybe two-thirty."

I process that for a second. "Probably overnight staff on break."

"Probably." He nods slowly. "Didn't move the whole time I watched, though."

I tell him I'll mention it and I mean it when I say it, because I genuinely do mean it, because there are a hundred explanations for a person standing in a parking lot at two in the morning that have nothing to do with anything at all.

Ashley falls into step beside me in the hall. "He told me about the parking lot thing too. When I first came in."

"He doesn't sleep well."

"Yeah." She takes a bite of her Little Debbie and then just holds it. Doesn't finish it.

For Ashley, that's basically a distress signal. I notice it and don't say so.

I swing through to room 107, where Dot Bergeron has embroidery floss spread across her blanket like a tiny craft store detonated. She's got tears already balanced in her eyes because Dot lives approximately one inconvenience from crying at all times, but she lights up when she sees me.

"Jenny." She says my name like I'm a miracle and not a woman running on gas station coffee and stubbornness. "I made you one."

She holds up a little bracelet, yellow and white, still unfinished on one end.

"You're spoiling me." I sit on the edge of her bed just long enough for her to loop it over my wrist. "What are the colors for?"

"Sunshine," she says, and then starts crying for real.

"I know, baby."

"I don't know why I'm crying."

"Because it's Saturday and you're alive and the weatherman is being disrespectful on TV."

That gets a wet laugh out of her. I squeeze her hand and mean it completely when I tell her I love it.

I keep every bracelet she gives me four of them live in my locker because she forgets she already gave them and somehow that makes it sweeter, not less.

I'm passing the east corridor when I catch it a thin thread of cigarette smoke underneath the bleach and lavender. I look both ways.

Nobody.

I file it under mention at the meeting and then Harold Whitaker starts hollering from 204 and I forget it immediately.

On the way past the utility room, I notice the heavy fire exit door isn't quite latched there's a sliver at the bottom letting in storm air that smells like hot asphalt and something metallic. I nudge it closed with my hip until I hear the thunk. Probably Marcus taking a smoke break and not pulling it shut properly.

Room 106, Ms. Dee Fontenot smiles at me with her whole face lighting up.

"Maria," she breathes, reaching out. "You came."

I let it land. I always let it land.

"I came, Ms. Dee." I slide my hand into hers, warm and papery.

On her tray table, there's a framed photo of her and Earl forty years younger serious faces, Sunday clothes. Beside it, her plastic rosary and a folded cardigan even though the room's warm.

"You tell your mama I made the pie," she instructs me.

"I will."

"You don't let those boys track mud in my kitchen."

"Never."

Her fingers curl around mine, grip surprisingly strong for someone who sometimes forgets where she is. For a second, the hall noise drops away no TVs, no carts, no Crystal yelling and it's just me and Ms. Dee in whatever year she's living in today.

I'd meet her there every time if I could. It costs nothing to be Maria for thirty seconds. It buys her a whole world back.

"There you are."

Harold Whitaker is already halfway into his complaint before I even reach room 204.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Harold."

He's sitting up in bed with the TV too loud and his jaw set mean. Harold would file a complaint in heaven if the halo didn't fit right. "Somebody's been fooling around in here."

"Who?"

"If I knew who, I wouldn't be asking you."

The remote is on top of his crossword book, which he says is wrong because he put it in the drawer. I check the drawer anyway crossword book, reading glasses, Werther's from Hank.

No remote.

His blind has one slat kinked downward on the right side. I touch the sill and my fingers come away damp.

"Window probably leaked."

"It ain't raining."

He's right. Outside it's gray and heavy and mean-looking, but dry. I look closer. There's a muddy smear near the inside edge of the glass, not dramatic, just a dirty thumbprint of brown where clean should be.

I rub at it with my glove and it streaks.

"See?" Harold folds his arms. "Somebody messed with my window. And my shaving kit's out of line."

I glance toward the bathroom. His razor caddy is slightly turned.

Any reasonable person would call this old man, storm nerves, maybe maintenance checking the seal. That's what I tell myself. But not gonna lie the whole vibe in that room shifts while I'm standing there.

Not enough to panic me.

Not enough to do anything smart with. Just enough that I straighten the blind and wipe the mud and hear myself say I'll mention it.

"You do that."

"I'm doing it right now. Mentioning it to myself."

"That's not the same thing."

"No kidding."

His baseball bat is half-tucked under the bed frame where he always keeps it. Policy says no. Harold says policy can fight him. I've never once moved it.

Back in the hall, I pass Clarence by the nurses' station. He's still humming, but the tune has shifted something minor now, something I don't recognize, something that sits in a lower register and doesn't resolve the way the earlier one did.

I slow down for half a second without meaning to.

He doesn't look up.

Crystal passes me carrying bottled water against her chest. "Pat wants us in dining in five."

"Of course she does." I glance down at the muddy washcloth in my hand. "Crystal. Marcus ever show up?"

She shakes her head.

"Check the mechanical room?"

"Twice."

We look at each other for one second and then both look away, because you can't build a whole fear out of every tiny thing or this job will eat you alive.

A missing maintenance guy on a storm day means he made a judgment call and went home early, probably.

A muddy smear on a window means a bad seal, probably.

A man standing still in a parking lot at two in the morning means insomnia and a smoke break, probably.

Probably is doing a lot of work for me today.

I head toward the dining room with my cold coffee and Harold's muddy washcloth, and somewhere behind me Clarence's humming drifts down the hall in that new key, low and unresolved, and I don't know the song and I can't place why it bothers me.

I catch myself looking at the south-facing windows on the way.

Just once.

And I don't know why that feels like the beginning of something.