Watchers

Chapter 10: The best thing we can do is go on with our daily routine.

Daniel spends the morning in the great room. The nun that led Sasha away had been right - it's far too cold outside to stay in the garden for long, so he goes back to the only other part of the shelter he feels comfortable in. He thinks about leaving, but he's afraid that if he goes back out on the street right now, he'll fall right back into his old vices. He hasn't been clean long enough to trust himself, so he stays put.

The old man with all the strange catchphrases is sitting at one of the folding tables when Daniel gets back to the great room, along with a little old lady whose head is bowed and her back hunched. There aren't many other people without jobs here, so Daniel goes over to them and asks, "Can I join you?"

"The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds," the man says, and Daniel isn't really sure why he expected anything more.

He takes a seat, and to his surprise, the old woman finishes the man's thought, saying quietly, "The pessimist fears it is true."

Daniel recognizes this one - it's Oppenheimer - and he wonders how many more of the man's disjointed ramblings are quotes from the last century.

"Indeed," Daniel says, simply because he can't think of anything better to add to the conversation, and then the old man repeats the line.

Daniel wonders if Father Gary gives out work pardons for those at the shelter who have lost track of reality, or if the old man and his companion contribute to this place in other ways. He also wonders what Father Gary will have for him to do if he stays long enough to get a job, but he doesn't get a chance to ponder it for too long.

A nun - Sister Therese - comes into the room and walks straight to Daniel. She ignores the other people at his table as she says, "Nurse Benedict would like to see you."

"I'm feeling fine," Daniel objects, but Sister Therese just smiles serenely at him and insists.

"You probably don't remember her because you were feverish for quite a while, but Nurse Benedict was the one who oversaw your care for the first few days that you were here," she says. "She just wants to check in with you."

"Okay," Daniel says, getting up and following Sister Therese out of the great room. She takes him down the hall to a small infirmary, where there are two empty hospital beds, a couple of locked cabinets mounted to the wall, and not much else.

"Have a seat," she says, gesturing toward one of the beds. "Nurse Benedict will be in momentarily."

She leaves Daniel alone, and a cold sweat washes over him at the idea of sitting down on one of those beds. He doesn't like to think about the people who have occupied those beds before him, or how close he came to succumbing to his addiction. He also hates the way this room reminds him of the hospital after his surgeries, the smell of antiseptic and the nausea of swimming up from anesthesia. The undisguised judgment and prying looks from the hospital staff...

He stands in the center of the room, refusing to sit, and the next time the door opens, it's Nurse Benedict. She's wearing a habit like the other nuns, but she also has a white apron with a red cross stitched across the bib.

"Do you remember me, Daniel?" she asks as she goes over to one of the cabinets and uses a key hanging from a chain on her neck to unlock it.

"No," he says.

"That's alright," Nurse Benedict says with a smile. She takes a thermometer, a flashlight, and a stethoscope from a shelf full of medical supplies, then points Daniel to one of the hospital beds. "Can you please take a seat for me? I would like to check your vitals and ask you a few questions about how you're feeling."

Daniel feels dread rising in his chest, but it's not worth raising a stink over. He goes over to the nearest bed and tries to keep himself distracted with Nurse Benedict's questions as he sits down. She asks him how he's feeling, how long he's been using heroin, and how he's doing at the shelter.

While he rattles off the answers to each of these - okay, three months if you don't count the years of prescription painkillers, and fine - she checks his pupils. She puts the thermometer beneath his tongue, then she inserts the ends of the stethoscope into her ears.

"I'm just going to listen to your heartbeat for a minute, dear," she says, sliding the cold metal chest piece beneath his shirt.

He feels it inching up his stomach, then bumping over his chest. He watches Nurse Benedict's brow furrow ever so slightly, and then she corrects the stethoscope's course and settles it on his sternum. Daniel wants to scream, to leap off the hospital bed and take big, gulping breaths. He's not comfortable in his own skin, and he can blame the creeping feeling on the withdrawal as long as he can avoid thinking about it, but not at this moment.

"Your heart rate is elevated," Nurse Benedict says.

It's awful feeling the nurse's hand up his shirt, the heel of her hand resting on his chest and reminding him of what he has done to himself by running away from his father.

He flinches and she notices, taking the stethoscope away and studying him. She asks, "Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"A shot of T would be great," he says with a strained laugh. It's becoming more and more apparent, now that he doesn't have the drugs to hide behind anymore, that what he needs to do is crawl home and beg for his father's forgiveness. Daniel needs to get his life back on track, and that's the only way.

"Testosterone?" Nurse Benedict asks. Of course she would know Daniel's medical history if the priest knew his identity, and she would have noticed the scars on his chest while he was in the throes of withdrawal and she was caring for him.

"It was a joke," Daniel says.

But then the nurse surprises him and says, "I'll see what we can do. It might take a few days, though."

"Oh, I was-" he begins to repeat the fact that it had been a joke, but if she can get it for him then he won't argue with her about it. If it means delaying his inevitable journey home, he's willing to put his faith in her.

"Anything else?" Nurse Benedict asks, taking the medical supplies back to the cabinet.

Daniel rubs his chest,trying to erase the sensation of the cold stethoscope on his skin. "No."