The dining hall had white floors and walls, with tall windows letting in the June sunlight. A dozen square tables, each set for four. A man with a visible dent in his head the size of a coaster sat with a nurse at one table by the window, slowly eating soup. He gave me a hard, sharp look as I came in.
I looked him in the eye and gave him a respectful nod. His eyebrows shot up, then he pursed his lips with a grunt and went back to his soup.
A plump lady in a white chef’s coat stood behind a small case of pastries and salads. Coffee brewed behind her in tall silver canisters. She was talking to an older black man, who looked to be in his sixties, his hair gone gray. He wore a white, short-sleeved shirt tucked into white trousers. Black belt, black boots. A huge ring of keys jingled on his waist.
I drew closer and the lunch lady jerked her chin at me. “Can I help you?”
The man turned around. “You must be Jim Whelan,” he said.
I nodded and offered my hand.
“Alonzo Waters,” he said, sizing me up. “Want to be an orderly, do you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Got a résumé?”
I pulled two pieces of paper folded into fours from my jacket pocket. “Yes, sir.”
“Sir,” Alonzo said with a chuckle. “You hear that, Margery?”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Come on, let’s sit and talk.” Alonzo led me to an empty table for four and sat across from me. “Coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
“Trying to cut down, myself.” Alonzo perused my résumé. “Twenty-four years old. Graduated from Webster High, South Carolina. Straight to work at the Richmond Rehab Clinic for… six years?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why’d you quit? Or did you get fired?”
“It shut down.” I cleared my throat and indicated my résumé. “There’s a letter of recommendation on the back, there.”
“Oh yes, here it is.” Alonzo leaned back and read the letter from my former supervisor. “Wow. Says here you were an ‘exemplary employee’ and that he wishes he’d had ten just like you.” He folded his hands on his stomach and looked at me. “Not bad, not bad. RRC was for drug addicts. How’d that go for you?”
“Good.”
“Care to elaborate?”
Don’t fuck this up. Just talk.
“I showed up on time,” I said. “Never missed a day.”
I let out a breath. No stutter on a sentence that had three of my worst consonants. D, n, m, s, and f were my nemeses, but d was the King Dick of them all. My stuttering over Doris’ name drove her batshit crazy, so she’d smack me on the back of my head. “Spit it out, you big d-d-dummy.”
“What about patient interaction?”
“Not much,” I said. “I did my job.”
“You ever deal with brain injury cases?”
I shook my head.
“I worked in all kinds of facilities, myself,” he said. “Drug rehab too. And I can tell you these brain injuries are a whole different ball of wax. Drug addicts, for one thing, are still themselves. That ain’t always the case here. We have twenty-seven residents at Blue Ridge and some of them ain’t all there anymore.” He tapped his forehead. “You have to learn their case histories. How to talk to them properly. The slightest wrong words could set them off or confuse them. Can you handle that?”
“I think so.”
I hardly had to speak at all at RRC, which was why I liked the job. But the idea of participating in the patients’ care at Blue Ridge tried to reawaken a distant dream of mine—to help kids like me with speech impairments. Kids who felt stupid and frustrated every damn minute of their life. It was a dream born of my stutter but that died with it too.
Who wanted their stuttering kid to be treated by a stuttering therapist?
No one, that’s who, you big dummy, Doris offered.
“Contrary to local rumor,” Alonzo was saying, “this isn’t a psychiatric hospital. None of the residents—residents, not patients—are here for emotional issues. They’re all here because of injury. Accidents, mostly. But everyone here is suffering from permanent brain damage. Our job is to help them adjust to their new reality.”
“Okay.”
Alonzo leaned back in his chair, folded his hands over his stomach. “Why do you want to work here, son?”
A thousand professional-sounding, bullshit answers rose to my mouth and tangled up.
I inhaled slowly and exhaled the truth.
“I want to help.”
Alonzo studied me through narrowed eyes, then glanced down at my résumé. “You settled in pretty deep at RRC. Made yourself at home, did you?”
Made myself a home.
“Why not go to college? You want to clean up after sick people for the rest of your life?”
I shrugged.
He pursed his lips. “Don’t say much do you?”
“Not much.”
“Lucky you, workers standing around yapping is one of my biggest gripes.” He extended his hand. “All kidding aside, this letter of rec makes it clear I’d be an idiot not to take you. Jim Whelan, you’re hired.”
I eased a sigh of relief and shook his hand. “Thank you, sir.”
“Only call me sir in front of Margery,” he said with a wink. “Otherwise just Alonzo. I’m friendly, but I run a tight ship. This place has rules on top of rules to keep the residents safe and comfortable. Breaking them is a one-way ticket out the door. You got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right then.” Alonzo rose to his feet, and I did the same. “Let’s go sign some paperwork, then you be here Monday morning. Seven a.m. sharp. That work for you?”
I nodded. “I lined up a place in Boones Mill. I’ll get moved in this weekend.”
“Good,” Alonzo said. “I’ll be needing you to cover breakfast, lunch, exercise, and afternoon recreation. You’ll be trained on the duties as you go. We lost two fellas at the same time, so I’m going to need you to think on your feet.”
“I’ll do my best.”
I signed the paperwork then we said our goodbyes.
“Monday, seven a.m.,” Alonzo said. “Sharp.”
I headed back toward the foyer. Jules had left the front desk, but the room wasn’t empty.
A young woman with wavy blond hair stood by the wall, studying the oil painting next to the AC unit. She was shorter than my six feet by a good five inches. Slender. Dressed in shapeless khaki pants, a plain beige shirt, and loafers.
She looked around as my booted steps echoed around the foyer. Large blue eyes in a heart-shaped face watched me approach. A full-lipped smile lit up her delicate features and my goddamn pulse quickened.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she asked, nodding her head at the painting. “The way the light falls over the curve of the apple. How it gives the grapes that shine.”
I moved to stand beside her. “Looks like fruit to me.”
She laughed. “It is fruit. It’s the essence of the fruit. A gorgeous rendering of something so simple. The light revealing the life within.”