You don’t have to care about people to be a doctor, but you do to be a nurse.
You don’t need a sense of humor as a doctor, but it helps as a nurse.
The days between Christmas and New Year are called the “perineum,” an older nurse told a younger one at the bay. You know what that means, don’t you?
From anatomy. The perineum: in males the pyramidal surface region between anus and scrotum; in females, between anus and vulva.
* * *
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DURING THE WEEK OF perineum, I found at my apartment door a Samsung television on a stand. I knocked on Mark’s door and told him through the wood that his stuff was again blocking my path and preventing me from going inside.
My TV? he said, coming out. Your TV. Surprise. The best holiday gifts are those we least expect! Or don’t think to ask for.
The Samsung had served him well until he recently bought himself a new one. Nothing was wrong with the old set, and he didn’t want to be one of those people who threw out electronics every year. It seemed wasteful to him when people upgraded phones whenever possible and he himself had an iPhone model so old it wasn’t even available anymore, the software inside no longer supported. He showed me his phone, which had a long crack down the screen and was very small. He looked incredibly proud, and I thought of my cousin who, when showing me her big-screen phone encased in plastic rhinestones and gold, looked equally proud. My father believed quite strongly that East and West would never get along, never see eye to eye. But maybe they could, I now thought, since Mark and my cousin would never fight over the same phone.
Long story short, he said, please take it.
The phone? I asked.
No, the TV. A TV could also help me unwind, and after that last visit, and sitting in that horrible little chair, he found my apartment too vacant. Had he not known I lived there, he would’ve assumed no one did. Then he started talking about voids and how no one should have to live in them or ever see that word in print. Void should be avoided, he said and because I was too tired to say otherwise, we moved my new-old television set inside during this speech. He told me to call the cable company tomorrow, he texted me a number. If I wasn’t home during any of their slots, he offered to oversee the installation process for me, for a small fee.
Sure, I said and he looked wide-eyed back at me and said that he was kidding. Why would there be a fee? We’ve been decent neighbors to each other, he’d hoped, possibly even friends?
I nodded and he smiled, running a hand through his hair, voluminous today, with height at the front.
I smiled too but nervously since Mark needed to leave so I could shower, eat, and prep for another shift tomorrow. Grime and sweat were rolling down my back, and under my coat, my scrubs were splattered with blood. I would have taken off my coat already but didn’t want the red streaks to freak my neighbor out and cause him to faint.
With the television and stand pushed up against my west-facing wall, Mark worried that the glare from the windows could shoot in and compromise my visibility. We should move the television to the other wall, he said, turn the Suede Chair around and try that. But then he noticed that my coaxial outlet was on the west-facing wall, so if we turned the entire setup around, cable lines would have to be discreetly run along the baseboards.
Right, I said.
But really, which wall do you prefer? He would have to tell the cable guy when he came.
Had I agreed to let Mark oversee the installation? I must have, but somehow, I couldn’t remember when and how that had gone. I said both walls seemed reasonable.
Neither of us moved or said anything after that. The room was dim, and Mark stood in the shadows, staring at the baseboard, as if waiting for something to appear. Then, instinctively, I knew. I went to my kitchen drawer and pulled from it the spare key to apartment 9A. I jingled it by the key ring like a tea bell. Was this it? The silver of the key was reflective and shiny, and once Mark saw what I was holding, his expression changed.
Pocketing the key, he said it would be an honor, and heading out the door, he expressed gratitude and enthusiasm that we had become, as he had hoped, true neighbors in the New York City sense of the word.
* * *
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I CALLED.
We’re having a limited time offer on two hundred channels, said a deep, male voice on the phone, for $49.99 a month your first three months, after which a slightly less discounted rate would resume, but you’re welcome to cancel at any time or call back to inquire about new offers.
While Mark was supervising the cable guy, I was supervising a resident on how to place a central line. A central line is a port inserted into the jugular to draw or infuse fluid, and as I was explaining this to my residents, in the span of ten or so minutes, Mark had sent me a series of texts, most of which were sentence fragments nested in their own little speech bubble that kept vibrating my phone.