Cheapskate in Love

chapter 34





The next day, Bill was stirred from sleep by an irritation on his toes.

“Ah, the mummy rises from the dead,” said the doctor when he saw Bill’s eyelids begin to lift. “Or would you prefer to be known as a zombie? Those creatures seem to hold more popularity nowadays, although I can’t tell you why. It might have something to do with people not knowing how to live anymore. Or being afraid of life. Or maybe the economy is so rotten for so many, that living is like an endless nightmare. I don’t know. I don’t know why the problems of today seem so much greater than those of the past, as if time is running out, and something has to be done, although no one knows what that should be. Maybe that’s how humans always need to view life, as a problem to be solved. Were you trying to solve a problem, when you had your accident, or were you just being reckless?”

There was a purpose behind Dr. Drighteers’s rambling monologue. He was a clever-looking man in his sixties, with a pitiless bedside manner, and he wanted to test Bill’s mental state for any signs of brain damage from his fall. All the while he talked, he repeatedly hit Bill’s toes with a small rubber hammer. “Can you feel any of that?” he asked.

“A little,” Bill replied groggily, coming to his senses after his traumatic injury. Gradually, he became aware that he lay in a hospital bed, nearly flat on his back, wearing a spinal brace, with his entire torso extending to the top of his neck, wrapped in a cast. He looked like a mummy, who was waiting for the rest of his body to be covered.

The doctor hit Bill’s fingers on one hand several times with the small hammer. “Can you feel that?”

“The same,” Bill responded. “A little.”

Dr. Drighteers wrote something on the chart at the foot of the bed. “You’ll be in bed at least six months,” he told Bill, “before your spine and nerves heal, and you can move normally. I’m sending you to a nursing home. Do you have any preference for one?”

“I don’t want to go to a nursing home,” Bill objected, although he was in no condition to disagree.

“Is there someone who can take care of you at home or in their home?” Really what Dr. Drighteers wanted to know is if Bill knew a saint, because someone who would take care of an almost totally incapacitated man would have to be a saint. But the doctor thought that Bill would understand his situation soon enough and accept going to a nursing home.

As Bill thought hard, his toes and fingers wiggled slightly but rapidly. “My sister will do it,” he said, more optimistic than certain. “I’ll ask her.”

“Let me know when she agrees, so I can explain what she’ll have to do. I’ll send in a nurse to help you make that call.” Confident that Bill would soon be on his way to a nursing home, Dr. Drighteers left the room.

Bill was soon connected to his sister, Marie, via his Blackberry, which a nurse held for him. Marie refused to take care of him for six months, or even one day. She didn’t even sound that sorry about his injury. She reminded him about his unwillingness to help their uncle, and she suggested that maybe he was being properly rewarded for his previous lack of charity. It was a short call.

After Bill had been jilted by his sister, he had the nurse call his friend Stan, and within the hour Stan was sitting next to him. He didn’t expect Stan and his wife to volunteer to care for him, although if Stan offered to do that, he wouldn’t refuse. Instead, he wanted to see if Stan had any suggestions for finding free home healthcare. Bill knew that his insurance wouldn’t cover the expense for a home attendant, and the thought of paying for such services out of pocket was more terrifying to him than going to a nursing home, which is saying a lot, because the latter pressed on his mind with the dread of a grave gaping at his feet. Stan, however, was no help at all, and he magnified Bill’s misery by making light of his desperate plight.

“Just think,” Stan said cheerfully, giving Bill’s cast a friendly smack, “the women won’t be able to get away. They’ll be lining up and down the corridor, whenever you pass. Women always outnumber men in nursing homes. They’ll be fighting over you. You’ll have to recover quickly. Otherwise they’ll take advantage of your situation. Men can be raped too, you know.”

“They’re all old,” Bill remarked with a low, sullen voice.

“Maybe it’s time you raised your standards,” answered Stan, remaining upbeat, trying to help Bill accept the inevitable.

“I’m not old,” Bill replied glumly, trying to look away from Stan, as much as his condition allowed.

Stan let Bill sulk. Stan expected this behavior, because it was the first time that Bill’s delusion of eternal youth was deeply damaged, if not altogether destroyed. Stan hoped that a period of adjustment would follow and Bill’s interests in women would mature. To plant the seed that in the future Bill would look for someone compatible and compassionate, rather than another stark, indifferent contrast, no matter how attractive and young-appearing she may be, he said, “If you had gone after Helen, as I told you to, this wouldn’t have happened. And if something bad had happened to you, while you were seeing her, she’d probably help you out. After all, she lives right in your building. But you blew that chance.”

Bill was silent. He wasn’t glad to hear that name again, but a tiny, tiny thought began to whisper very softly in his head, although it took a while to enter his consciousness.

Stan proceeded to deliver more opinions that Bill had no pleasure in receiving, and the longer Stan offered such pestering advice, the more visibly morose Bill became. Flashes of anger started showing in his eyes. Eventually, Stan decided that he had administered enough good medicine for the day, and it was time to go. He told Bill he would come to visit him, as soon as he moved to the nursing home. “I’ll bring a box of candy,” he said, “which you can share with all of your new friends-to-be.”

After Stan left his room, Bill asked the nurse to call his sister again. He had a wild, frantic delusion that she had relented or could be softened up with a second plea. Surely, she wouldn’t let her nearest blood relation in the whole world whither away in one of those places, with the decrepit and the dying. He wasn’t like them. Although he could barely move at the moment, he felt as if he was still in his twenties. There were decades of life before him. He would soon be what he was before. He only needed her help for a while. Then he would be on his own feet again, free to live as he pleased.

Marie and their uncle Joe were chain-smoking in her kitchen, when the nurse reached them the second time. Uncle Joe was a short, thin, animated man, who didn’t seem much affected by his stroke. There was the slightest stiffness in his right arm and leg.

“No. I will say it again, no. That is your answer, your final answer,” said Marie. She was not softened in the least from the previous conversation with her brother. “Don’t bother asking anymore. Your uncle Joe has something to say to you.”

She handed the receiver to uncle Joe.

“Billy boy,” uncle Joe’s lively voice crackled into the phone. “I heard you had a little accident. You should be more careful. You’re not so young anymore. An old stallion like you doesn’t belong on a racetrack with the fillies.”

That call, which ended soon after his uncle’s unwanted pearl of wisdom, was a crushing blow to Bill and left him literally flat on his back. When he was alone in the hospital room again, as much as he could, which wasn’t very much at all, he tossed and turned in his cast, trying to think of a way out of a six-month stay at a nursing home. He didn’t belong there. He didn’t want to go there. He wouldn’t go there.

His fingers almost clenched into a fist, as he cursed Donna’s boyfriend for pushing him off the porch. That cretin, he raged. “Calling me pops,” he said to himself. “I should have popped him. I would have popped him, if I was feeling better.” Although the idea that he could have defended himself against Frank some other day was satisfying to think, it was not believable to him after a moment’s reflection. So instead, he excoriated Donna for dating such a mentally challenged muscle head. “What does she see in that moron?” he asked, roiling in anger at her. “As good as she looks, she must be a nitwit. That guy’s a zero. The only thing he has going for him is his age.” Bill broke off this train of thought, because he was suddenly mindful of someone else, who had always wanted to date younger people. Unintentionally, he might be incriminating himself, which was intolerable, so he changed the subject.

Madder than ever, because of all the money he had wasted, he railed against Donna and all the other women he had ever dated, including the one he had been married to decades ago. Flowers, candy, clothing, dinners, shows, vacations, all of those he had lavished upon them—within a budget, of course—and where had that brought him? To a hospital bed. He denounced their greed and selfishness, their self-interest and pickiness, their inconsideration. They had only wanted to use him and then toss him aside. Again, he seemed to be venturing down a path of self-indictment, because his past behavior fell short of an exemplary generosity. Now that he thought about it, they might have treated him that way, because they saw that’s how he was treating them.

He switched his reflections to those women who had been grateful, as far as he could tell, who had accepted his gifts with the goodwill that was his intention, before they had turned against him. It was a short list, a very short list. There was only one woman he could recall, who had truly seemed to appreciate a gift from him. There was only one, who had come to his help before. And he couldn’t say he had actually had goodwill toward her. He remembered how he had treated her on different occasions, since her husband died. He couldn’t repress the flood of accusing thoughts that poured forth now, and tears began to well within his eyes.

His injury and helplessness gave him a different perspective. He remembered how she had called him a fool. Stan and his sister had called him one, too. And for the first time, he felt that they were right: He had been a fool. He deserved to be left at church without a ride. He deserved to lie practically immobile in a hospital bed, at the mercy of others. He had been chasing illusions, youthful follies, while the best opportunity he had ever stumbled upon had been in front of him, his for the taking. It was an error as great, he thought, as running by a twenty-dollar bill lying on the ground, in his haste to get to a final-reduction clothing sale, where nothing remained in his size. Yes, he had been a big fool!

The next action that Bill took may appear unsurprising. It would seem he was compelled to it by his circumstances. Dire need can force us to take a different course of action than we would have considered before, and to Bill, the risk of going to a nursing home was a dreadful danger indeed. The extremity of his dislike for spending six months in such a place would easily seem to alter his mind, so that he now greeted willingly an option that not long ago he would have held in the fiercest detestation.

But a deeper, surprising change had begun in Bill, spurred by Stan’s advice and his own reflections, which is as rare as it is wonderful. Although events may force us to take actions, which we would have previously avoided, our customary feelings are not so easily altered and seldom reversed. A change of heart, an opening of our feelings for others, who were not close before, may be the most difficult accomplishment for any person of any age, because it must come from within. It can’t be wrung or coaxed from us by powers outside, even when there is a mortal threat. As difficult as it was, Bill underwent the beginning of such a change now. His fears, his shame, his regret, and sadness so softened his heart, scarred with greed and stinginess and hurt, that a little seed of real affection sprouted.

A couple of tears glided down his cheeks, as he hoped there was still a chance that the twenty-dollar bill he had run past before was still lying on the ground for him to pick up.

He pressed the button to call for a nurse. After a few minutes of waiting, since there was a nursing station near his room, he called out rather quietly, “Nurse.”

A minute later, he called more loudly, “Nurse.”

After another minute, he howled, “Nurse!”

“I’m not deaf,” said the nurse, whose name was Gwen, bustling into his room. “No need to holler. It just so happens there are other patients here. You all seem to think this is some kind of fancy, five-star hotel, where I should come running every time you blink. But I ain’t ever seen one of you tip for room service. When that happens, it will be a blessing from the Lord! Now, how may I help you?” Despite the constant pressures of her job, Gwen, who was in her forties, tried to perform more than her duties demanded and was something of a busybody, although she always had her patients’ best interests in mind.

“I want to make another call.”

Gwen picked his Blackberry up off the nightstand and scrolled through the new messages. “There’s a message from Linda,” she said. That was the only new message that she thought worth mentioning. “‘Let’s go vacation in China. Hike Great Wall.’”

“Tell her I’m in a coma,” he grumbled. “No, don’t,” he said upon a second thought. “She might come to try and cure me. Delete it. Now dial the number for Helen in the contact list, with George in parentheses behind it.”

“I hope George doesn’t mind,” she said, with a whiff of suspicion.

“He’s dead.”

“Then he shouldn’t,” was her crisp reply. She felt much better about proceeding and held the phone next to Bill’s head, after dialing the number.

“Helen,” his voice wavered, caught with emotion, when she answered. “This is Bill.”

Helen briskly asked him what he wanted. Her feelings were not fluttering like his, and she wanted to end the call quickly. She thought he had little to say and nothing she wanted to hear.

“Helen, I...I,” he stuttered. “Can...Can you...” The chaos of his conflicting emotions and thoughts, as he struggled to act differently than he had in the past—his desire still caught in the vice of former habits and held back by his timidity—caused new tears to trickle from his eyes and snot to drip from his nose.

Gwen grabbed a tissue and clamped it down on his nose. “Blow,” she blared, and Bill complied.

Both of them heard Helen’s voice, wondering in alarm. “Bill, what’s wrong? Where are you?”

The situation required a professional’s expertise, Gwen thought, and she lifted the Blackberry to answer Helen herself. “Ma’am,” she said, in her most authoritative tone, “I hope you can come see this poor wretch. He’s in the hospital, helpless as a baby, and nowhere near as cute. Someone needs to care for him for a while. It’ll be a thankless task, I reckon. I should know. I’m a nurse and tend to the likes of him everyday. The headaches I have could kill an elephant. But somebody has to do it. He shouldn’t be too much trouble. Although he’s stiff as a log, I daresay he’s gentler than before.”