Hey, Florence Nightingale

The following is a less-truncated version of a story that I submitted to NPR’s Three-Minute Fiction contest. This one is better.

The nurse left work at five o’clock.

Originally, the plan was to wait until the end of his shift at the nursing home and then snatch him up on his way to the parking lot. Then, using the usual method, I would determine exactly how much he knows, and after, pitch the leftovers into the rapids just above Titan Falls.

But, that’s before he skipped out of work early.

The receptionist at the home said that he was supposed to work until eight, but I knew that already. He left without changing out of his requisite red scrubs and was carrying a blue and grey backpack. On his way out, he had stopped to give her a hasty excuse about a sick relative but she didn’t really buy it. And neither do I.

While I am contemplating this new development, one of the patients, an elderly woman, quietly rolls up behind me in a wheel chair and begins tugging on my satin windbreaker.

“So…soft..,” she purrs as she rubs the material between her gnarled, old fingers.

As I edge away from her groping, my jacket splays open and the receptionist notices my hardware tucked into the waist of my blue jeans. A concerned expression creeps across her face.

I begin closing the snaps.

“So, If he happens to come back,” I say, “tell him Detective…Malone from the…police department…would like to have a chat with him.”

It was the best I could come up with on the quick but it seemed adequate enough to set her fears to rest.

I’m about to scuttle out the door when, almost as an afterthought, I inquire about one patient in particular.

“Is this also police business?” she asks.

“Of course.”

He is dozing by himself in the smoking room. Black and white war footage plays on the TV but someone has muted the sound. There’s a burnt butt between his thin, yellow fingers; a small heap of ashes on the floor. I kneel beside him and gently touch his knee.

“Hello, Dad.”

He coughs several times before opening his eyes. Even after, I’m unsure if he knows I’m there.

“I’m not deaf, you know,” he says at last. I smile and nod.

He proceeds to give me hell for not ever visiting and letting him rot in this toilet and I take it. After he has spent his venom I shake it off and get to business.

“Dad, did you talk to the nurse today? You know the one.”

-

My dad was once a key fixture in the Organization and so he had called me personally after he overheard his roommate make a surprising deathbed confession to the nurse in question. My dad had been pretending to sleep in the next bed. His second favorite pastime after actually sleeping.

I’d rather not recount our conversation nor mention how long it took to figure what on Earth he was talking about, but, it turns out that the dying man was once briefly an associate of my dad and had since, like my dad, moved away from the city with a new identity. The two old men had been living in the same room for weeks and neither recognized the other.

The confession was specifically in regard to the man’s role in a certain unsolved and high-profile murder however many decades ago. Certain venerated members of the Organization, including my dad, were mentioned. Also mentioned was a tell-all tape-recording that the man said he had made- location currently unknown.

At the end, my dad said that the man beckoned the nurse closer, whispered something and then handed him a key that had been clutched in his hand. And so great was the man’s relief that he died instantly afterward.

-

“The queer?” my dad blurted out, meaning that no straight male would ever be a nurse. “I told him my ingrate son was coming to kill him. “

I consider telling him how much that complicates things but I get hung up on the idea that my dad, in his current state, could convincingly intimidate anyone. If I were in the nurse’s position, I wouldn’t believe a word my dad said. But that would be my mistake, I guess.

Instead, I just say, “I read somewhere that, through much of history, nursing was a strictly male profession. Since the ancient Romans.”

He narrows his eyes at the TV and says, “I saw that movie once, Caligula? Disgusting.” After a pronounced silence, I take it to mean that the conversation is over. But, as I am leaving , he says to my back, “Be sure to give Florence Nightingale my regards.”

-

Back in my car I eat a Fiber One bar and ponder the next step. If the nurse went home he probably wouldn’t stick around after seeing the state that I left it. The keys that I dug out from the coin dish and the junk drawer are most likely useless but I grabbed them just in case. They are now in a paper sandwich bag in my glove box. My best guess is that the old man’s key is to a safe deposit box and that the nurse has it on his person. There is only one bank for several miles in any direction and it has been closed since four. Unless he has already been there- which I doubt- that places him at the front door at nine a.m.

That means I have to wait.

I stake out the bank from the parking lot of the drug store across the street. I set the alarm on my digital watch and I lay my seat back to watch the stars through my moonroof until I doze off around midnight. Around six-thirty I drift awake and notice a lone car outside the bank- an old, white Volvo- basking, dreamlike, in the pastel radiance of early morning. I retrieve the paper bag from the glove box and fish out a car key. Imprinted into the hard plastic grip is the word, VOLVO.

I have no trouble falling back asleep.

-

My alarm wakes me at eight and I see that the Volvo hasn’t moved and that other cars are parked beside it. I blow the hour in the drug store where I breakfast on a carton of iced tea and a package of oatmeal raisin cookies. After, I use the employee restroom where I have a leisurely BM while skimming a celebrity tabloid. I even have time enough to finish a medium difficulty sudoku puzzle.

At nine o’clock, I leave the store and walk across the street.

I peek into the Volvo and I am not too surprised to see a blue and grey backpack amid the clutter in the back. The key works as well as I had hoped and, in an instant, I’m sitting on the backseat with the open backpack between my legs. I am a little surprised with what I find inside- a buffet of pills, liquids, and miscellaneous hospital grade paraphernalia; all in tidy, individual packages and no doubt missing from the nursing home dispensary.

I return the backpack to how I found it and I hunker down on the floor with my head just behind the driver’s seat. I cover my head with an old, piss-smelling jacket that I find, pretty confident that I will not be seen.

-

Another hour later and the heat and the stink are beyond all comprehension. I am seriously considering shooting out the windows when I hear footsteps and then the rattle of keys. I blot my sweaty palms on my jeans and take my .45 from where it was resting on my stomach. I switch off the safety and discreetly chamber a round before the door opens. Comparatively fresh air wafts past my nose- for which I am grateful- and the car sways as someone climbs into the driver’s seat.  Through the narrow gap where the cushions meet, I see the pasty flesh of a man’s ass just above the draw-string waist of a pair of red scrub bottoms- the nurse.

In situations like this, it is usually best to wait until you’re out on the main road to announce your presence to a mark. It minimizes the flight risk and there are fewer bystanders. It is also best not to wait for the mark to pick up too much speed. The drawbacks of suprising a driver with a gun while you’re traveling at seventy plus are more obvious.

The nurse coaxes the engine to life and opens the power windows- I am, again, grateful- and we idle away from the lot. At the traffic light, I hear him eject a cassette tape from the player and replace it with another.  Then, the voice of an old man comes through the speakers.

I’m probably not meant to hear this, but there’s little I can do at this point so I just relax. I’m immediately taken by the speaker’s voice- frail, but also full of warmth and intelligence and so utterly distinct from that of my father, my closest comparison.  I get the story pretty much as I know it- a local political figure, a union rep, a dirty deal, betrayal, revenge, et cetera-  but with a new perspective that compels me to listen more closely. He laments abandoning his family in the pursuant cover-up, specifically his young son, now a man about my age.

I try to think back to my earliest memories and wonder, how certain am I that my dad is actually my dad?  I imagine a scenario where this old man was my real father, forced to abandon me at an early age for my own protection, that the man that I grew up thinking was my father was merely appointed by the Organization. Then I recalled an argument that took place in front of my high-chair as I ate my Cheerios with chubby, little fingers; my irate, young father resolved that my young mother would have her tubes tied. The spell is officially broken.

When I come back to my senses, I realize that I’ve completely lost my bearings. From my hiding spot, I can no longer hear the recording, drowned out by the rush of the open air and the clatter of the engine. Judging by our speed, I’d say we are on the freeway- southbound, for the way the sun stays hot against my back.  In a another few miles will be the exit to Titan Falls.

Suddenly, I really don’t feel like killing anybody.

I look again and the bare ass peeking at me through the cushions and inspiration strikes me. I drag the backpack into my lap and casually root through it again until I find something I can use. And there they are- two 50 ml vials of ketamine, special K. 

With practiced hands, I load up two hypodermic syringes. I position myself to make a delivery as I try not to dwell on the homosexual innuendo. I steady the syringes, carefully directing each toward an ass cheek. The quivering tips hover closer and closer to the naked skin, almost scraping it. I think about the word, innuendo and wonder if  the person who invented it intended it to sound so provocative, In-you-end-o?

I take a big breath and hold it.

I deliver both barrels, driving my thumbs hard into the plungers. The driver howls and I feel the car pitch rapidly to the left. Someone in the next lane lays on their horn and stays on it until they are out of earshot. The Volvo slows and I briefly see the top of the driver’s head as he attempts to peek over the seat behind him. The car then pitches hard to the right and gravel kicks up and pinballs around the undercarriage.

The car skids to a halt on the shoulder and the nurse turns back around to find me sitting up with my .45 in his distressed and tear-streaked face.

Sissy, I can’t help but think, then I notice that the old man’s voice continues to play over the car stereo. His tone is sentimental.  He speaks of love and regret. Then, he asks for forgiveness and there is a noticeable warble in his voice when he addresses the listener as his own dear son.

In the stunned silence that follows, I watch the nurse’s  face soften and his eyes get lazy. Soon, he slumps with his back to the door and continues down until he is nearly horizontal.

-

I stand next to the Volvo on an old, iron bridge that crosses the river at the bottom of a deep gorge. Far above is the bridge where the freeway spans the gorge at its height. It’s an impressive sight from this angle, but easily missed from above; most people drive by too fast to notice. The mist and the shade combine to make it twenty degrees cooler down here. It is too close to the falls to allow recreation and too remote to allow a decent view, which makes it ideal for my needs. 

In my hand is the cassette tape, the only tangible thing connecting the former lives of an old man and, until recently, his unknown son. Unfortunately, it is also what my father feared- a confession implicating him and the entire Organization.

Today, I didn’t come here to throw anything in the water. It just seemed like the best place to think.

In my inventory of the car, I found a mini Phillips-head screwdriver- ideal for dissecting audio cassettes. Later, I will swap the actual tape inside with that from another, less-incriminating cassette; I found an old Jesus Jones cassette that will do perfectly. I will send back the mangled and unplayable remains to the office and the actual tape will live on in a new body and will be returned to the nurse.

The nurse still lays unconscious in the passenger seat using the piss jacket for a pillow.  The backpack of drugs tells me very clearly that he has little intention of returning to the nursing home. It was likely his escape plan all along. If all else goes to shit, he’s got about a thousand dollars in that bag, if he knows how to collect.

When he finally wakes up, that’s the best I can offer- to equip him as he embarks on a new life in the criminal underworld, to help him disappear. If there is anything that I’m good at that I can bestow on anyone else, it is how to properly burn your bridges so I can’t find you. 

He probably won’t like my second offer.