…The More Things Stay the Same - Part I

Part One of a new fiction serial from debut author Stephen M. Atherton, Jr.

An excerpt from this serial was featured in the Late Winter 2020 Monadnock Underground Quarterly.

I don’t know why I keep thinking that the place is going to be different each time I come here. Talk about stupid. Thing is, I can’t seem to help it.

I’ve been coming here now for two — no, wait…almost three months now. Not just once a week but two times, at least; sometimes three. Not because I want to. My days are usually Mondays and Wednesdays. Fridays as well, but only if I manage to get out of the shop in time to get here at a decent hour, like today. Each time I walk through that door, I hope the walls just might, you know, be painted a different color. A nice, loud orange, same color as my Uncle Arthur’s 1969 Camaro used to be (I think Chevrolet called it “Hugger Orange”); maybe, although I’m not really a fan, some shade of red. Anything with some life to it, not this impersonal, antiseptic white. How about a nice, warm pink? Ha!

Yeah, now there’s an idea. Pink. Dig it? Christ on a bike, could you imagine that? Most of the people who come here as visitors would probably have a coronary if they saw something like that, never mind the patients themselves (those who haven’t already had one, anyway).

Of course, then you got those things the management has the temerity to call “chairs”. Same deal here: each time I walk in, I pray for a surprise. Hey, you never know…maybe the chairs, those plastic horrors lacking even a token quarter-inch of cheap foam between your ass and the frame (for all the good that would do), might be in different places. Or spaced out a little further, so that you’re not elbow-to-elbow with a complete stranger who smells like either sweat or cheap perfume — or if God really hates you on that particular day, both — on top of having to sit in these fucking chairs that feel as though they’d be more at home in an Inquisitor’s dungeon than in a hospital waiting room. Then again, if they’re going to go out on a limb that far, why not just throw all caution to the wind and line them up against a different wall altogether?In for a penny, in for a pound, right?

The chairs suck, and although they’re not the worst part, they did give me quite a start when I first saw them. That was the day of my first visit to this place, and I spent weeks trying to think of what it was they reminded me of. As they tend to do, the weeks turned into months, but it wasn’t until a few days ago (no one’s ever accused me of being Jeopardy material) that it came to me. I had just gotten home from work and decided to have some of the relatively few beers I allow myself during the workweek (it was Tuesday, one of my “off” nights).When it hit me, I was right in the middle of practicing what my best friend calls a twelve-ounce curl, and it did so hard enough that I missed my mouth completely and poured what should have been a refreshing mouthful of Corona down the front of what had been an otherwise clean shirt.

School.

Fucking for chrissakes elementary school.

The chairs. The ones with colors that, although I didn’t — couldn’t — know it at that age, screamed leftover sixties and seventies furniture. The ones with the names and curse words and initials written upon them in permanent marker (or scrawled into them with permanent knife- or scissor-point). The ones I sat in when I was in the first grade, looking around me in wonder because I had never seen so many other kids my size all together in one place before, in the basement of that drafty, uninsulated old schoolhouse where you could draw pictures in the frost on the insides of the windowpanes no matter what the thermostat said the temperature was, the one where the pipes would bang behind the walls whenever the hot water heater turned on, the one where there was only one bathroom — not one for the boys and one for the girls, but one fucking bathroom, period — in the whole building. Not to put too fine a point on it.

That’s what they reminded me of. Damn near drove me nuts until everything clicked, but I finally got it ( I may not be Jeopardy material, but nobody has ever accused me of being a quitter, either). But the chairs, like the paint and walls, are again only a part of it.

Can’t forget the pictures on the wall. Or, in the case of this fine establishment, the picture. The one on the wall opposite me. Same story, although I wasn’t reminded of anything. Just fed up, bored and frustrated with the repetition. I’ve gotten sick of sitting in the same so-called chair, smelling the same sweat and perfume, of looking up and seeing that same. Fucking. Sailboat. On the same. Fucking. Lake. Or pond. Or puddle. Whatever it is, I’m over it. As an old sailor friend of mine with a very healthy diet once said, “That’s alls I can stands and I can’t stands nummore!” There must be another generic copy of another generic painting that they could display. Why not rotate them in intervals? Shit, places like this must have their own private catalog that they order those lousy excuses for art out of. Here, folks, we have your basic Seascape. Over here is your basic New England Meetinghouse with Fall Foliage. Here (and this is on sale today, folks) we have our ever-popular Field with Barn in the Background. And for the truly daring among you, we have your slightly more risqué (but still safely non-representational) 19th Century Mother with Child in Her Arms. A different one for every month of the year. Or at least every season. Alas, no.

Same stupid boat.

Same water.

Same “chair”.

Same godforsaken place.

Could be I’m being too needy. Three months isn’t exactly a very long time in the grand scheme of things. Maybe they do in fact change the chairs and the pictures around now and then. Maybe one just has to be unfortunate enough to have been coming here for six months or eight or ten in order to have noticed. Sorry, but even less than three months is plenty.

Thing is, plenty isn’t the word for it; it feels like an eternity. An eternity in which I’ve had the time to a) start getting upset, mostly with the pill-pushers; to start getting mad, mad even at my Daddy for getting sick and making me have to be here in the first place, then b) start feeling terrible and ashamed for being mad at Daddy at all; it’s not as though it’s his fault he’s here, it’s the Big C’s fault, the fucking Big C’s and the pencil-necked, Mercedes-driving, Big Pharma-ass-kissing, legal dope-pushing sons of bitches that hooked Daddy through the bag and back around again in the first place, and then finally c) get back around to feeling victimized, mad and put-upon all over again. Vicious cycle, that. Round and round and round we go, where she stops nobody knows.

Of all of it, the magazines are the worst. It’s October now, almost November in fact. Once here, I shuffle through the fine, scholarly selection of periodicals that the sign (and, by default, the urine sample who made said sign) has the balls to refer to as “Reading Materials” for almost two minutes before I find something that was published within the last six months. I settle — grudgingly — for April’s People. I’ve read all the Popular Mechanics issues they’ve got around here at least twice by now. I am quite conversant, should you wonder, on how cellular phones, stealth technology, and GPSs function, you can bet your watch and chain on that.

A few yards down the hall, on the wall next to the door to the shitter, is a very strange thing. Not strange in general, but strange for a place such as this. It is a small metal box, and it has a hinged cover which is locked with a key. There is a slot in the lid, and above the slot are the words “Sugestions Welcome”. And yes, you read that correctly. Some feeb forgot a “g” in the first word, and Feeb Two, the editor or QC person, the one who should have been looking over Feeb One’s shoulder, actually allowed it to be displayed prominently in a public place. Bad grammar in public places is a gigantic, gnawing pet peeve of mine.

Sure, I’ll play along, gang (he says, smiling a predatory smile and briskly rubbing his palms together). I’ll make a “Sugestion”.

I could take a pen and piece of scrap paper and write something like “ I know it’s certainly not as though this place (and every other hospital for that matter) charges an exorbitant amount of money for any and all of its services, so I understand why we have to sit in chairs that look as though they came from either my first-grade classroom or a liquidation sale of some two-bit private detective’s office while we stare at the same cheap, shitty dime-store reprints on the walls. That’s all well and good. I get it. Times are tough. The economy and all that jazz.But could you people please please at least UPGRADE YOUR SONOFABITCHING MAGAZINES? Thank you.” Fun and gratifying? For sure. Productive? Doubtful.

I flip through my People — my old-ass, outdated People — comforted solely by the knowledge that none of this is going to matter anymore. Not after today.

Finally, a hundred years or so after I start flipping through the pages, I hear my name. Spoken in the tones reserved strictly for those people who are simply Doing Their Job (said Job being not necessarily one they enjoy), I almost don’t hear it because the droning, uninflected voice blends effortlessly with the droning, uninflected background noise and the droning, uninspired walls, furniture, pictures, and people. As difficult and heartbreaking as it is to tear myself away from reading about how hard Prince William has it now because not only is he going to be bald as a fucking cue ball by the time he’s forty but on top of that, he has to listen to a Royal Baby cry, I somehow manage to disengage.

“Yes? That’s me,” I say, looking up.

At the sound of my voice, the nurse looks up herself, though she from a clipboard rather than a tabloid in a silk hat. Instantly, I recognize her expression. It’s the one people paste on their mugs when they realize that a name they do not recognize goes with a face that they do. “Oh, I’m sorry Mr…” –another quick peek down at her clipboard — “…Fredericks. I know you by sight, not by name, sir.”

Bingo. Told you, didn’t I?

She gives me a timid smile. I offer one of my own — wan, utterly devoid of emotion, but a seventeen-muscle special nonetheless, although held for the absolute minimum amount of time politeness would allow. As I stand up, I slide People back into the same slot on the rack that I had pulled it out of. I want to make sure it’s ready at the drop of a hat to bore the ever-loving shit out of someone else.

“Come with me, Mr. Fredericks.”

Autopilot kicks in just then, and I do as I’m told, thinking I oughta have my own chair and a plaque with my name above it by now. Walking towards her, I pat myself down, frightened for a moment that I had forgotten it somehow.

Nope, it’s right there, in my jacket’s left inside pocket.

Turns out “Sharon”, as her badge declares, is quite the multitasker: she scribbles on her clipboard, turns to lead me down the hall and — using her detached and emotionless voice — articulates my last thought all in one deft move: “You’ve become quite a regular around here, Mr. Fredericks.” Another timid smile. More scritchetyscratch on the clipboard.

“A dubious distinction,” a voice that kind of sounds like mine says.

“Indeed, sir. Sorry, no offense.”

Briefest of pauses, then: “None taken.” I surprise myself by actually meaning it.

We walk.

I’m aware that our footsteps seem louder than they should; that my clothes feel too small, too tight. God, I’m so hot, too. My hands are restless at first, smoothing the creases in my jeans, brushing the hair out of my face, constantly moving. Then one of them, like a wavering compass needle that’s finally located true north, finds the object in my jacket pocket and closes convulsively around it. My palms are suddenly slick with sweat.

We walk.

We pass the same signs, the same doorways, the same rooms, and a lot of the same orderlies as I’ve seen here before. I could do this in my sleep by now. Unbidden, Cheech ( in his accent but with far more inflection that my guide), sardonically whispers we don’t need no steenkeeng nurses in my head. I smother a giggle with the hand that does not have the thing in my pocket in a death-grip. I feel more sweat, hot as that pouring out of my palms, as it breaks out mercilessly on my forehead and my upper lip.

We walk.

Repetition, where is thy sting? I jokingly misquote to myself, not quite smiling. After a moment, I realize the answer to that — all over the fucking place, dude — isn’t all that funny, so “not quite” becomes “nowhere near”.

“Just down here, Mr. Fredericks,” the Incredible Multitasking Nurse says, as if this were my first trip down this hallway. “His room is at the end.”

It’s not The Last House on the Left, but the last room on the left. Thing is, to me it isn’t even the room anymore, not at this point. After close to three months, proper noun status has taken effect, making it The Room. My Daddy’s Room, ugly baby-shit green door, number 302. “Sharon” is very sharp, very on-the-ball, I don’t care what anybody says — his room is indeed Just Down Here, as she said — right where it’s always been.

Just then I’m overcome by an almost-ungovernable urge to grab her by the shoulders and shake her till that stupid paper hat falls off her head and her teeth rattle in her gums and scream NO SHIT, SHERLOCK! I KNOW!!! I’VE BEEN COMING HERE FOR MONTHS, YOU IGNORANT BITCH, REMEMBER??!!

But I don’t.

Instead, I smile and nod. The sweat on my face has cooled, but not that on my palms. I force myself to let go of what’s in my pocket. I do so only with great difficulty.

We reach the door and she opens it, leans in. Says something I can’t for the life of me make out, not that I was trying very hard anyway. Something gets murmured back to her. She straightens up, turns to me, and gives me that timid little smile again. By now I’m convinced its timid appearance is at least in part calculated.

Just then, Autopilot kicks off. I reach out and slap her — hard. A big roundhouse slap that stings my palm and sends a jolt up my arm as it rocks the Incredible Multitasking Nurse on her crepe-soled heels. She falls to the floor, clutching the reddening side of her face, which is quickly becoming a ghastly rictus of shock, confusion, and pain. Before she can do anything but stare at me, I begin — slow at first but steadily increasing in speed and ferocity as my brain pours adrenalin into my system and the drug, in turn, starts to do that wonderful trick it does — to stomp the life out of her. I feel light and gleeful, a child starting the egg hunt on Easter morning; exuberant, untethered, free, a teenager out of school for the summer with driver’s license in hand and car at the ready. I think to myself that this must be what Mr. Hyde felt like as the little girl’s bones were ground beneath his feet. I start screaming about all of it, holding nothing back: how sick and tired I am of this place, of the magazines that are out of date and the shitty chairs and the shitty pictures on the wall, how sick and tired I am of not being recognized after coming in here two or three times a week for months, of having a Daddy that’s so sick and hooked on pain pills he has to be here in the first place, how sick and tired I am of being sick and tired of everything, and how –

“ — ight, Mr. Fredericks?”

My tirade is cut off, strangely, by “Sharon”. She’s not on the ground. Rather, she’s standing there talking to me about Daddy, which I find perplexing because last thing I knew I was watching oatmeal-colored globs of her brains squirt out her ears because I had just stomped her skull as flat as the Boston Herald. I blink once.

Twice.

A third time.

I feel a blush creep its way up out of my shirt collar an instant after I realize that, once again, I’ve let my anger, my pent-up frustration with the realities and bullshit injustices of this world, get the better of me. Good one, Calvin. Go me. I am unceremoniously slammed back into my right mind, back into reality, with what, to me anyway, feels like an almost audible THUD!

“Sir? Are you quite alright?”

Another couple blinks. I must have looked like a fucking owl. “Yes. I’m sorry. It’s just…” I trail off and give her a sheepish look which I hope says something along the lines of so sorry for being weird, I’m just poor stressed-out Daddy’s-sick-and-dying me. Aren’t I just pathetic? This whole business has me so overwhelmed, nurse.

“Hard. I know, Mr. Fredericks.” She favors me with what I call the “Medical Professional Look” — a self-righteous mash-up of pity and condescension — that I hope I never see again as long as I live, at least not coming from someone who sounds like the voice on an answering machine that came from the Good Shed at the local recycling center. “Your father is ready to see you now, though. Go right on in.” With that she folds her clipboard smartly under her left arm, and, back straight as a signpost, looks at me. I half-expect her to snap a salute first (at which point I would have started stomping her), but she only begins walking back in the direction we had come. It is a prissy bit of business that reminds me of how, in the movies, Nazi underlings conduct themselves after having reported some news or other to one of their superiors.

“Thank you so much, Sharon. Have a great day,” I call out to her receding form, sounding exactly as if I gave Fuck One whether she lives or dies. Turning to that baby-shit green door, I grab the handle and twist it, feeling it slip in my hand, feeling the sweat on my palms squelch as it slipped. I wipe both palms (by now my other hand had come out of my jacket pocket) on the seat of my jeans and try again. It’s a gaudy, trumpery-trash gold color, that handle, and cold as a well-digger’s asshole to boot. It looks tacky against the green of the door, too. Cold and gold. How priceless. Daddy hates gold, so do I. I once had a forest-green car that had gold emblems on it. Guess what? I ripped those things off and replaced them with the chrome-colored emblems that were also available. It looked much better.

I step inside.