Gone

Forever..... 38

When I woke up it was a little after midnight and Kennedy was gone. Her crib was gone, and my curtains pulled back. It was past visiting hours, so no one was in here. I pressed the nurse button, expecting it to be a while, except she was in the room within minutes. “Anything wrong, Ms. McDonald?” She slouched against the doorway, her head slightly resting on a bulge in the wood. She looked tired.

“Uh, I was just wondering where my daughter was.” My daughter? She smiled happily, tired still evident in her eyes, and answered, “As a hospital rule the night before patients are released the baby stays in the infirmery.”

“Oh, I’m leaving tomorrow?” I tilted my head. This meant a plane ride back home and maybe one more night in a hotel. A lovely, lovely hotel. Something I usually wouldn’t stay in.

“Yessiree. Or at least your papers say so.” She walked to the orientation board and looked at the clipboard of papers the other nurse left the other day. She flipped through pages with an average smile upon her face, and nodded slowly. “Yep. Says here.” She pointed at a paragraph with long, pink fingernails. I wondered how she worked here on the baby floor taking care of babies with long, fake nails. As if she knew what I was saying she said, “I work on the 1st floor. Registration ... emergency ... filing mostly. Sometimes on this floor doing the birth certificate stuff.” She did a ‘Its-OK’ look and shrugged with one shoulder tilting her head to the right, which was the shoulder that came up. “Someone called off tonight on this floor cause their own kid was sick.” She chcukled. “Considering they work in a hospital they don’t know what to do when their own kid gets sick.” She turned to leave, but stopped at the doorway. “Are you feeling OK?” She bit her lip and pouted, as if she’d said something wrong. “I mean, we’re supposed to ask that. Espeically with the young mothers and the depression. Honestly ... you seem like the most responsible young woman to come in here and give birth to a baby. I think you’ll succeed. But stop the stupid quoteful shiz. Are you feeling fine?”

Laughing, I nodded. “I’m alright? You? You seem so tired.”

“Well I have to work full time. I see all the things in here. Nothing here is unusual and it gets boring. I have to go home at like 6 AM, and I stay up an extra hour to get my kiddos to school. Driving is hard in the morning, ya know? Anyway, enough about me.” She almost yawned but bit it back. She looked like she was 25, and had brown hair that seemed to be as young as 3. She had brown eyes to go with it, and pink lips, settling her facial features. I was just some fake blonde with blue eyes. She had a kid, too. “You should get back to bed.”

I half faced a smile, and probably looked like I was having a stroke. “Nah.” I squeezed the nose part between my eyes, pressing it, pressure filling it. “I have gotten enough sleep for tonight. I fell asleep at like 5.” Shrugging I laughed at myself. “What do you do when you work in the middle of the night? I’m sure no one’s really pressing nurse’s button.” She had a thick Spanish accent.

“Of course there’s people like you, who ARE awake and confused, ya know. Then the people who roll over and press call. And the others are asleep. The mom’s usually don’t want the kids in the room while they sleep. First time mother’s want them, but second time moms pass.” She shrugged again, brushing a strand of hair not long enough to fit in her high ponytail off to the side. “Otherwise we do paperwork,” she smiled, using finger quotes on ‘paperwork’, “which actually means playing solitare on our phones or the computers.”

“It seems nice to work here,” I mumbled, lifting a shoulder. Leaning up, I turned and fixed my pillow to adjust my lower back. “So how many kids you have?”