A Long Time Between Yesterday and Tomorrow by J Bradley Minnick

Mr. Overalls comes into Old Da’s room at Henrytown Home for the Elderly and Infirm at night—not each night—but often—and pisses in the radiator. This is particularly problematic in winter. She tells Nurse Bee that she hears the hiss, which, she says, makes her queasy and uneasy, and she says she worries that if she can get used to the smell, she might be able to get used to anything, and she says she fears what it is she may have already gotten used to.

The nurses at Henrytown don’t like the smell either, but because they are not used to it, they avoid Old Da’s room more than they should. They try to keep Mr. Overalls away by stretching a cord across the door—as if they are sealing off a crime scene.

Nurse Bee, is determined to talk to Mr. Overall’s family about his behavior—that is, if his family would ever show up for visiting hours again. 

Mr. Overalls has a son, David, and a daughter, Dory. Nurse Bee has met them in a series of yesterdays.  

David and Dory used to show up bringing candy or holding flowers. David once told Nurse Bee that he felt terribly guilty that he had—and David’s voice underlined the second had—”to put his father in a home—nothing against Henrytown—but it’s just that, it’s just that . . .” and Dory finished his sentence . . . “we made him—we made Eugene”—and for a moment Nurse Bee didn’t know who Eugene was—“we promised Eugene that he could live with one of us”— Dory corrected—“that we would never put him in a home, no matter how bad it got, and it got. . . it got. . .” and David finished her sentence. . . “really bad—so bad you can’t imagine what it’s like to live. . .”—and then David realized right away how silly this was to say because Nurse Bee didn’t have to imagine—she lived it every day.

She lived with having to change diapers; she lived with having to massage throats so that pills went down properly; she lived with having to treat bed sores—although Henrytown had strict protocols that immobile patients had to be turned over thrice daily; she lived with catheter tubes and bed pans and the terrible digestive smells that accompanied meals; she lived with pressing on bladders and wiping bottoms; she lived with carrying patients to and from the tub and drying them off and putting them into bed and coming back in the middle of the night to carry them to the toilet and turn them over one final time.

Dory said, “It’s just that, it’s just that we both”—she pointed to her half-brother—“promised Eugene so many times. He made each of us promise separately and together and we, we. . .” Dory looked off in a distant direction through the big glass conference room windows as the train to Emory passed by and drowned out her words—shook the Nurse’s Station, rattled the windows, stopped her words suddenly, cut them off. After the train had passed, David did not pick them up immediately, although he looked like he wanted to.

“It’s like, like he knew and knows that we. . .” Dory murmured as a kind of finale after the train said the last of its rumblings—“Its little chug-a-lugs,” Nurse Bee interrupted to allow David to reset. “We, we both”—David pointed accusingly to himself and left his finger stranded there—“have irrevocably broken our promises, betrayed him and, and. .  .” tears burst from his eyes and spotted his cheeks. Dory’s ever-moving hands picked up David’s words that like his tears had collected in his fists, which covered his eyes. “Since we put Eugene here,” and Dory’s hands pointed in all directions at once, “each of our universes has gone akimbo.” Dory sighed—let it sink in that this was not only about her father, her half-brother’s guilt, or even the breaking of promises or the bad karma they had brought upon themselves.  

David said, “I lost my job and have not been able to find one where I make enough to cover my bills and find it very difficult to cut back. Although I know I have to, I just can’t seem to find my priorities. And Dory, and Dory, she doesn’t, she doesn’t”— David paused and Dory picked up his sentence—“I don’t know what to do with my hands.” David continued—“And since she has brought this particular subject up—it’s true. Just look at them. They are lost, out of control,” and he refused to meet his half-sister’s gaze. “I prefer to believe they have a mind of their own,” Dory said looking directly at him.

All along Nurse Bee had noticed Dory’s hands—the way they fluttered and flit about aimlessly, without attachment to her words. And, Dory’s hands picked up whatever was near, and, so, by the end of her sentences, she had a hold of pens, clipboards, specimen cups, tongue depressors, toilet seat covers, and when her hands could hold nothing more, she stopped speaking in mid-sentence and said while holding Mrs. Tateniza’s most recent X-Ray, “It was. It is all I can do to keep them out of harm’s way but, but sometimes. . .” At the same time, Nurse Bee realized the implications of the confession—the guilt about putting loved ones in this place. And David said, “Sometimes Dory picks up sharp objects, and we fear, I fear that. . .”

“You will harm, Eugene!” Nurse Bee’s tongue got ahead of her, and she regretted having said it immediately. What had her own father always repeated? “Carol-Anne, be sure to put your mind in gear before you put your mouth in motion.” And her father, for all of his heroic qualities, was always so damned correct that any advice made her feel doubly bad about herself, so she was steadfast in her stubborn defiance of most anything he said. Still, Nurse Bee had said what she had said and couldn’t take it back.

Afterwards, they had all stood at the Nurse’s Station until silence over-whelmed them. Dory left that day holding more pens than Nurse Bee thought hands could handle. David left his half-sister’s sentences forever unfinished and said one last thing, “Dory and I, Dory and I. . . feel terrible all the time, thank you very much.”

No Nurse Bee couldn’t take it back: not now, maybe in some distant future but David and Dory had not been back to visit their father, Eugene, Mr. Overalls, since. Now and then they called and left cryptic, concerned messages with the administration or with other nurses, never with her.

If David and Dory were ever to come back to visit Eugene again, how would she broach the subject of pissing in radiators? How could she say that, to a very real extent, Mr. Overalls “is pissed—really pissed—full of spleen and venom and bile,” as her father used to say—and has found a way to direct his anger. 

“Poor Old Da,” Nurse Bee thinks, “she doesn’t deserve this.” And, it is not even about being literal in a symbolic way anymore. Mr. Overall’s continual pissing has become a health hazard, and no matter the cleaning—Mr. Kim, the janitor has had the radiator apart and soaked the parts in alcohol and put it back together too many times to count—when it gets cold, when it really gets cold. . .No, a talk was not going to work with David or with Dory if they ever returned for a visit. . .and Nurse Bee realized that among the options there was nothing left. . . and it didn’t matter anyway.

They know, they know their daddy, their father, Eugene is pissed—really pissed—really, really pissed.

As the 12:15 train rumbles past and vibrates her soul, Nurse Bee studies on it—the cord across the door has been ineffective, cleaning the radiator only seems to enhance the smell. Mr. Overalls is full of piss that smells like vinegar. And she has made David and Dory feel doubly bad about themselves and their return is doubtful. “Doubly-doubtful,” she says to herself.

They could move Mr. Overalls into Old Da’s room, but, undoubtedly, he would find other radiators to piss in. She could call David and Dory, apologize, suffer through the silence.

What would her daddy do? What would he say?

The only solution, the only solution. . .

“Can’t they just move Old Da and leave her room empty?” her father’s dispossessed voice rolled over her. “Carol-Anne, Carol-Anne are you listening to me? Have you heard a word I am saying?”

J Bradley Minnick

Image: Sahaib, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons – White radiator against the wall.