A Fly on the Wall

From The Archives

Originally Written: November 2015

I reach for the last few gulps of my tea on the table, the rim already rolled a loser. It’s a half past four in the morning and my break is over at five. I hate the night shift. I hate everything about it. There’s a reason humans sleep at night and walk around during the day; four in the morning sucks.

My tea is cold and I drink it anyway. The last gulp is always the best, milk and sugar mostly. It’s my fifth cup since I started at eleven and it won’t be my last. I could try and resist but as they say ‘resistance is futile’. Especially when there’s five Tim Horton’s in the hospital. It’s basically just another tax on the worker as far as I’m concerned.

You see a lot when you’re a professional fly on the wall. You hear even more. I have never really gotten used to it but I’m learning to compartmentalize things better. I had been a patient porter for almost five years, green and wet behind the ears when I arrived my first shift. Now I’m callous and numb like my colleagues. I make jokes about dead bodies farting in the morgue and drunk people shitting themselves. I hear screams from raw, grieving loved ones and walk on by. A compassionate, hardened, health care veteran.

I lean back in my faux-leather recliner and stretch my arms up towards the eighty foot ceilings in the lobby. I love this spot on the graveyard shift. Surrounded by big ferns and the sound of running water from the ‘Healing Fountain’, it almost drowns out the sound of the security guard snoring across the lobby. It is as close to calm and relaxed as I can get in this shithole.

Usually I can get through a whole hour here undisturbed too. The hospital is asleep for the most part, including patients, nurses, visitors, Lloyd the security guard. It’s a place where I can read the news or a book and escape the immediate bullshit that is my working life. Technically I’m getting paid right now but that doesn’t mean I’m on the clock. Four until five is my time usually, and I like it that way. I’m not being lunged at by addicts or puked on by flu patients. It’s nice.

My phone dings and I lean forward to the little table in front of me to look at it. It’s a news update about the Trump campaign. I don’t even bother picking it up.

I lean back into my chair and kick my feet up onto the table. There’s a murmur coming from one of the conjoining hallways, voices echoing down and emptying into the lobby. I could tell there were multiple voices approaching, a few tones were easily distinguishable. I hope it’s just a couple of EMTs or ER nurses passing through but who knows.

The voices become clear and I see a middle aged man and woman emerge into the lobby, visitors of some sort. They point to a seating area just in front of me near the fountain and work themselves towards the couches. They look concerned but not quite distraught, as though they were here for a complicated pregnancy as opposed to a late night car accident. What do I know though? It’s late, I’m tired and they could be here for a million and one reasons. I snatch my phone off the table and open up that news update, trying to look occupied. They flop down on a couch in front of mine and take off their jackets. They must have seen me, I’m only fifteen feet away. Maybe not though, why sit so close when there’s a bunch of couches on the other side of the lobby?

“I don’t know Megs, I’m not sure why I even bothered to come down here. This is so stupid.”

I can hear their conversation clearly, it’s as though I’m involved in it now. I figure they didn’t see me, and annoyed, I get ready to leave. I want no part of this, I just want to hear nothing but the water behind me and the faint snores of Lloyd for the next twenty minutes.

“Because, he’s still our father. I won’t pretend to know exactly how you feel, but I just want to say goodbye. It’s not for me. It’s for him.”

I’m uncomfortable. This is the type of stuff I drown out all night, purposely. I don’t like letting this shit into my head. I feel trapped now though, like we’ve come too far in just two sentences to turn back. I feel like if I just stand up and leave right now, being so close to them, they’ll be embarrassed that I heard even that much. I bury my face in my screen and thumb aimlessly, hoping to go unnoticed.

“Father? That’s debatable Megan. Where the fuck was he from, oh I dunno, 1977 until about last Monday?”

I hear her let out a long sigh. Not to signal her level of exhaustion because it was twenty to five in the morning, but to concede his point. There was a silence between them, the rushing water filling the void. A few snorts from Lloyd for good measure.

“I agree, you owe him nothing. If you got up and left right now without ever stepping foot in that room, I wouldn’t blame you. And he couldn’t either. That’s your decision, Tom. To me, he’s an old man on his deathbed who wants to see us, I feel like I can give him at least that much.”

There’s a pit in my stomach. Death doesn’t scare me as much as regret and finality.

“No, I owe him shit. Where was he when I was a kid? Where was he when mom died? Or when you got married? Or when I had Patrick and Tabby? He was drinking whisky and living the good life with his other family. You do what you need to do Megan, I’m leaving. And you know why? Because he’s not worth the extra twelve dollars it’s going to cost to extend my parking meter by another hour.”

The man stands up and grabs his jacket, swinging it over his shoulders.

“I love ya Megan, call me next week.”