Chapter 6: Nights

I didn't call my father.

I called the bank and told them I wasn't missing, I was at a pancake house on Roosevelt, and I'd like my money.

They said they'd look into it.

They're still looking.

Peg said, "Fine. You'll earn it again."

So I did.

My license had lapsed while I was in the basement.

Getting it back took eleven days, two hundred dollars of Peg's bowling money and one long call to Springfield.

The day it came through, Peg made a cake and wrote RN on top in green frosting.

The parrot ate the R.

The job was nights at a hospital on the West Side.

The waiting room there has bolted-down chairs and a sign in four languages about weapons.

The charge nurse was a big bald man in his fifties with Marine tattoos on both forearms.

He read my resume.

He looked at my face.

He looked at my leg.

"Gary?" he said.

"Four years."

"Gary's worse than here."

"Gary's worse than everywhere."

"Can you run on that knee?"

"No. But I can get there."

He put the resume down.

"You start Thursday. Don't park in the doctors' lot, they tow."

Peg drove me in every night that first week.

She'd pull up at the ambulance bay at ten to seven with the radio on.

She'd hand me a lunch bag with a sandwich and an apple.

"Don't let anyone die," she'd say.

"That's not how it works, Peg."

"Then don't let anyone die rude."

The night crew took about four hours to decide about me.

There was the charge nurse.

There was a tech with a koi tattooed on his neck who called everybody "boss."

Two of the nurses had been on nights so long they ate dinner at three in the morning.

The resident was so young I checked his badge twice.

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