The Judge
Starbucks is almost as prevalent as cancer, each new green-embroidered building cropping up like another tumor in a dying patient. This one isn’t so new, but it operates in the same parasitic way the one being built just up the highway will. Age doesn’t seem to slow these fuckers down.
She tries to stop thinking about it, waiting for her coffee as she is. What’s the point in complaining about something you willingly take part in? And she can’t disregard what this shitty little building has done for the patients and their families. It allows them to get out of the hospital, what with it nestled nearly in the parking lot.
Still, it feels wrong to have paid $2.99 for a cup of black coffee when she could have just poured herself a cup of sludge back inside. Even nurses have to escape that place every now and again. You don’t easily get over a shift like her last one.
“Coffee for Giselle,” the male barista announces, his call to action keeping the newly created memories from getting to her. His nametag reads Ricky. She smiles in thanks, afraid she might say everything on her mind if she opens her mouth.
Taking her caffeinated heat, she turns to leave. She wants to get out of her scrubs, wash the hospital-smell from her bones, down a bottle of wine while waiting for the fresh wounds to become scar tissue.
Another patron opens the door, bringing the chilled wind from outside in with him. It blows her brown hair into her face, and she turns back around, swiping the strands away from her forehead. That’s when she notices the man staring at her. Not the surgeon who just walked inside, but a man seated at the table closest to the bar.
He’s wearing a dark suit, a black shirt under a black vest, with a slate grey tie wrapped around his pale neck. One foot is crossed over the other, scuffed dress shoes hiding near-translucent socks. There’s almost no hair on his scalp, just a silver halo clinging to the sides and back of his head. His sunken-in face is clean shaven, and the scowl plastered to it looks to be as much a part of his suit as his tie.
The details of his appearance are of secondary concern to Giselle, however. It’s his eyes that have her pinned to the floor, unable to flee back into the world. They’re as grey as his tie, hateful steel set into his gaunt face. Liquid rings the edges of those eyes, though, softening that hard stare.
He’s too thin, she notices, as he stands, pulling his suit jacket from off the back of his chair, sliding into it with subdued grace. She watches him slip a black leather notebook into the inside pocket of the jacket, knocking his full coffee cup over in the process. He rushes passed her, aiming for the still open door, the storms of his eyes only looking away from her when he reaches the exit.
Nobody comes to clean up the spilled coffee.
The weekend didn’t help. Several bottles of wine, a sad book, her favorite album—nothing eased her pain. She had cried until there was nothing left after leaving Starbucks, her face awkwardly scrunched even though were eyes were now dry. Giselle hadn’t even been able to sleep, to rest at all. It normally didn’t hurt this much to lose a patient.
“How are you today, Giselle?” Dr. Hale asks. The doctor is a little heavier than Giselle, with kind brown eyes and a smile that assures even the most terminal patient that they have a fighting chance. Still, the nurse knows her boss is just making small talk and doesn’t really give a damn how she is.
“I’m fine,” she lies to the other woman. “How are you?”
Hale begins to explain everything going on in her life, a torrent of details Giselle can’t even begin to listen to. Something about a bad PTA meeting and her husband’s extended hunting trip in Washington. All the while, the doctor is scanning patient charts, sporadically giving orders to Giselle in between her stories. She just couldn’t handle this. Not today.
“Katie, I’m going to go ahead and get to work,” Giselle says, knowing her tone is haughty and short. She doesn’t wait for Hale’s response before grabbing the charts and leaving the nurse’s station.
Her work is mechanical, her bedside manner is stiff, her mood is some mixture of stressed and angry with enough depressed sprinkled in that tears prick her eyes more than once. She makes sure her patients are alive, but only stays in their rooms or next to their beds long enough to administer necessary care. Conversation is not a priority.
She sees him halfway through her day, checking the IV of an elderly woman who is almost out the door. Would she cry when this patient kicked it too? This woman, Mrs. Corrigan, has a bacterial infection in her brain. She came to the hospital, to Dr. Hale, to Giselle for help. Some help she’s gotten.
He’s watching her work in the room, staring in through the window. Giselle knows it’s the same guy from Starbucks, recognizes that dark suit. Maybe he gets off on women in scrubs. Pervert. She must have missed his flushed face, the stretched-too-thin skin red from exertion, or the deep tear lines. Her pervert has been crying, baby-snot-bubble kind of crying. Focused as she is on Mrs. Corrigan’s stubborn IV, she can’t see the acute pain in his stormy eyes, the same pain lurking deep in her own eyes.
Jotting some notes down in his book, the man leaves with Giselle still fiddling with the dying woman.
Death is a daily part of working in a hospital. It isn’t some skulking beast, some monster hiding around the corner. It’s a permanent fixture, like the sanitary smell and crying relatives. There are moments of joy, people that beat their early expiration dates, families becoming whole because a new child has been sentenced to life on this planet. Giselle can’t find those moments, hasn’t been able to in a long time. All she sees is death.
Mrs. Corrigan stopped breathing less than an hour ago. One second she was asleep, chest rising and falling; the next there was nothing but a flatlined tone in her room. Dr. Hale called it a minute later, not even bothering to try to resuscitate the old woman.
Giselle had sleepwalked through the rest of her shift, counting down seconds till she is off more than working with her patients. First that little boy—Sam—two days ago, now Mrs. Corrigan. Wasn’t her job to save lives?
Closing time came and went, and she leaves the hospital no stronger than when she had entered it. Crying wouldn’t help so her tear ducts clock out when she does. Her pervert is waiting outside the building, a cigarette between his fingers. She doesn’t like having a stalker, so she walks right up to him, needing to let loose on something.
“You shouldn’t smoke,” she begins, intending to take the moral high ground before letting the bastard have it. He takes a drag, exhaling the smoke out of his nostrils, seeming to ignore her. When he doesn’t respond, Giselle shakes her head, giving up. “Would you mind leaving me the fuck alone?”
She storms off, knowing he’s probably staring at her ass. Hopefully all he does is stare. She doesn’t make it far before his words stop her more assuredly than his eyes had before the weekend.
“You shouldn’t be able to see me,” those words say, his voice higher pitched than she expected and gravelly. He takes another drag, savoring the smoke.
“What-what did you say?” she asks after turning back around, reaching into her purse discreetly for her can of pepper spray. He turns those steel eyes onto her finally. They’re cold, but not frozen. She sees the pain, the sorrow and agony, there.
“You aren’t supposed to see me,” smoke comes with his words, making them even rougher. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”
Clutching the can, hand still in her bag, she nods her head.
The same male barista is working the till at Starbucks. He takes Giselle’s order of black coffee, but fails to acknowledge the man in the dark suit next to her. The man doesn’t seem to mind, his eyes never leaving Giselle.
“It’s on the house, ma’am,” Ricky says, getting her drink to her much quicker than a few days ago.
They sit at the same table he had been sitting at when she first saw him. There’s a cup of coffee in his hand. She hadn’t seen him order anything, but his eyes tell her she won’t like the answer to that question. Somehow, Giselle knows he knows.
“What’s your name?” she asks instead, looking away from the storms in his face. She doesn’t expect an answer and takes a sip of coffee to avoid the silence.
“Tom,” he replies, much to her surprise. He looks like a Doug to her. “My name is Tom.”
“Tom, why am I not supposed to see you?”
“Ask me what I do.” He looks away from her, neglecting his coffee. She breathes deep, not wanting to show signs of fear. His words were insistent, a command. It’s that urgency that makes her ask.
“What do you do, Tom?”
“I’m a judge, Giselle,” he says, turning those eyes back on her. “I’m sorry about the kid, Sam. And Ursula Corrigan, the old woman from today.”
“What? How do you—“ is all she’s able to say before her voice cuts out, suddenly mute. Giselle’s head lands on the table hard, the rupturing aneurysm ending her ability to speak. The stroke kills her instantly.
“And you,” Tom whispers, pulling his notebook out of his jacket. He crosses out another name on the page, Giselle Monaghan, trying to ignore the next name in line before getting up and leaving the Starbucks.
The barista is yelling for help, running out from behind the counter, as the judge walks away. Tom turns around once, getting a better look at Ricardo Martinez. He’ll have to be back in three days for Ricky.
