Night Shift(44)

Manfred thought, Oh, no. Please tell me she’s not . . .

“She wants to walk down the highway, get me? Walk, to Midnight!” Tommy was scared and furious.

“Why does she want to go back to Midnight so bad? Has she told you?” Manfred tried to sound casual, but he didn’t fool Tommy.

“I can tell this isn’t a total surprise to you,” Tommy snarled. “We read the papers here, you know! We’re not total ignoramuses!”

“Did she say why?” Manfred was equally persistent.

“She’s gonna kill herself there, she told us.” Tommy regarded Manfred with a cold eye. “Now, you got something to tell me?”

“You know about the suicides,” Manfred said, because that much was public knowledge. “We don’t know why they’re happening, but we think there’s some weird influence going on.”

“Woo-woo stuff,” Tommy said.

Manfred nodded.

“Can you get Mamie to quit this?” Tommy asked. “Suzie and me are going nuts, getting no sleep, trying to make sure she don’t get out of here. They were already talking about moving her to the nursing home wing.”

Manfred knew that for the residents, moving to the nursing home wing was the last step before the graveyard. Sometimes residents recovered from a fall and got to go back to the assisted-living wing, but that was rare. “Could she really get out? Aren’t the doors locked at night?”

“Yeah, except when one of the staff goes outside to smoke and forgets to lock up. That’s happened twice. And a few times, one of us walks out as visitors walk in, and no one notices. One of the Alzheimer’s ladies was out in the parking lot trying to break into a car! Chet Allen was halfway to his ranch before they caught him.”

“Do the nurses know what Mamie is trying to do?”

Tommy shook his head. “They just know Mamie’s getting worse. They’re talking about tying her to the bed.”

Manfred recoiled, imagining ropes or handcuffs.

Tommy noticed. “Naw, you idiot, they use these soft restraints. But we hate to see that happen to Mamie. When she gets back to being okay it’ll embarrass her something awful.”

“So what do you want me to do?” Manfred felt totally at a loss.

“Do some mojo on her. Make her quit thinking about this.”

“I need to send for Fiji. She’s better at that kind of stuff. I’m just a two-bitpsychic.”

“Well, Mr. Two-Bit, you get in there and try.” Tommy got up slowly, stiffly. He and Manfred made their way to the room next door, Mamie and Suzie’s room.

The two women were dressed and sitting in matching armchairs identical to those in Tommy’s room, and the television was turned to a game show. Mamie’s curly white hair was flattened on one side, which would have mortified her if she’d been aware of it. Suzie, whose parents had immigrated to the States from Hong Kong, was carefully combed and made up, as usual. But she looked as exhausted as Tommy.

“I like the hair, Suzie,” Manfred said, when she turned to the door. In the weeks since he’d seen her, Suzie had dyed her steel-gray hair its original black.

“Thank you,” she said. “And how are you and that pretty Estella?”

“Hey, we traded phone numbers,” he said, not at all surprised that Suzie had picked up on his admiration for the nurse’s aide.

“That’s good,” she said. “Now, let’s see if you can help Mamie, here.”

At the sound of her name, Mamie opened her pale blue eyes. She turned slowly and painfully to look at Manfred.

“Hey, honey,” she said, her voice wispy. “I didn’t hear you come in. Hey, Manfred, give me a ride back to Midnight? I need to . . . do something there.” She looked sly.

“No, Mamie,” he said. He sat on the bed closest to her and reached over to hold her thin hand. “I can’t do that. It’s not healthy for you there right now.”

“I don’t have anything to live for,” she said, tears running down the fine pale skin of her cheeks. “I’ll just go there, to the roads, where they cross, and I can put an end to this.”

“Miss Mamie, what would Tommy and Suzie do without you?”

She smiled faintly. “Oh, they’d manage, same as always. Come on, Manfred, put me in that car of yours and let me go home with you.”

He had seldom felt more at a loss.

“I can’t. There’s stuff going on in Midnight that’s bad. We have to clear it up before you come back for a visit.”

Mamie said, “All right.” She’d suddenly lost the thread of the conversation. She glanced over at Tommy. “Tommy? Is it time for lunch yet?”