No Smoking
By: Sofiya Pasternack
Tags: Relationships, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Family, Medical

Photo by Andres Siimon on Unsplash

I’ve been on shift for four hours and I’m tired of arguing about cigarettes.

“Elaine,” I say in my most serious night nurse tone with my fists planted on my hips, “You may not go outside to smoke.”

Elaine narrows her eyes. She’s restrained to the bed by her illness and my frown. If she wanted to get up, she could. She’d immediately fall. She’d also rip out the ventricular drain that rests its tip in the middle of her brain. Elaine had a stroke, and if she pulls it out in a mad dash to smoke, I’m going to have an irate neurosurgeon to answer to.

“Just one,” she says. “I need it.”

“You have a nicotine patch.”

“No I don’t!”

She does. I can see it. But the stroke was a bad one, and she forgets what I tell her.

“You can’t smoke, Elaine. Smoking is what caused that stroke in the first place.”

She scoffs, incredulous. “Are you stupid? Smoking can’t cause brain attacks. Your lungs aren’t connected to your brain.”

I stare at her, my exasperation at being called stupid rising. She’s been here for two days and hasn’t had any visitors. Our unit only allows immediate family, and she loudly declared to the intake nurse that she has no family. Ungrateful kids, she says. Piece of shit ex-husband. No siblings near enough to visit her. I wonder if she called all of them stupid, too. Before I can decide whether to argue or to walk away, the door cracks open and the nurse with the rooms next to mine pokes his head in. Past him, the shriek of an ECG lead alarm can be heard.

“Hey,” he says. “Fifteen is alarming.”

Of course he is.

“Thanks,” I say, and he leaves. I give Elaine a warning glance. “No smoking.”

She glares. “I’m gonna smoke.”

“Elaine — ” I sigh. The alarm is still shrieking. “Just . . . just wait, okay?”

“No,” she says, and I leave. The patient in the next room is more critically ill than Elaine, but the alarm isn’t anything serious. One of his leads came off his chest and the ECG interprets that as a heart attack. I apply a new lead and the machine returns to soft boops in the darkness.

I hurry back to Elaine’s room.

The door is cracked open and the lights are off. My nurse senses tell me she’s sleeping. In the dimness of the room, lit by the soft glow of the monitor over the bed, I can see her asleep in bed.

“Good,” I whisper to myself, glad I’ll have time to get work done before Elaine decides it’s time for a cigarette. I sit down at my computer and chart until it’s eleven and time for checks on patients. Elaine is still asleep. I’m afraid if I wake her, she’ll try to escape. The patient in fifteen requires more care, so I spend time with him. By the time I make it back to Elaine, it’s past midnight.

I need to do more invasive checks on her now. The output from the drain in her head needs to be measured every three hours. So in I go, on quiet feet, trying my best not to wake her.

She’s not alone.

There’s a man sitting by her bedside, looking apprehensive, and he stands when I walk in like he’s just been caught stealing.

I do not say What the fuck even though that’s what I think. Instead, I say, “Visiting hours end at nine.” I don’t know how he even got onto the unit.

“Oh. Yes, ma’am,” he says, quickly, softly. He glances back at Elaine, then at me. “I just wanted to make sure she was okay.”

He’s holding her hand.

“Who are you?”

“Randy.” He seems to be about Elaine’s age, and I can tell from the smell in the room that he’s a smoker, too.

“Are you her brother, or — ”

“Friend,” he says. “I heard she was in the hospital and she don’t got any family, so I thought I’d come check on her.”

“That’s very sweet, Randy,” I say. “But this is a locked unit, and we only allow immediate family. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

He looks crestfallen, but he nods. “Yes, ma’am. I understand.”

Randy leaves, and I remain in Elaine’s room. Her drain is emptying appropriately. She’s peaceful.

I wake her up.

She awakens with a deep, phlegmy intake of breath, and before she can yell at me about a cigarette, I say, “Do you want to see Randy?”

She looks confused for a moment, then her eyes brighten. Her mouth is still curled into a frown. “He’d never visit me.”

“If he did visit, would you want to see him?”

Her face softens but she still sounds grumpy when she says, “Sure I would. But he’d never visit.”

I leave her. I speed-walk down the hall and catch Randy before he steps off the unit.

“Come here,” I tell him.

He looks surprised but he comes. Back in Elaine’s room, she’s thrown her blankets off, ready to escape, as I bring Randy into the room. Elaine beholds him with wide, wet eyes.

“Can he stay?”

Elaine speaks, but not to me. “I didn’t think anyone cared.”

Randy sits at her bedside and holds her hand again. I leave, and for the next six hours, Randy sits by Elaine’s bedside, holding her hand, and they both sleep. When the day nurse comes in to take my patients, she looks inside and says, “Who’s that guy?”

“Randy.”

She squints. “I didn’t think she had any family.”

I yawn. “Oh, yeah. Her brother.”

The nurse looks at me with a raised eyebrow. “Brother?”

“Yep. Elaine’s brother. Randy.”

The nurse’s eyebrow returns to its normal level, and she says, “Oh. Yeah. Her brother. I remember that.”

I go home and sleep all day, vampiric, and return to the hospital that evening. Randy is still there, and the day nurse says Elaine hasn’t asked once to go outside to smoke.