On the Inside

3. The Goldbergs

Today was the day for my one and only date with Darlene Smith, and boy, was I ready for it. My only collared dress shirt was ironed and hanging at home. My pants had been hand-washed to remove the ketchup stains from last Christmas, the only other time I had worn them. 

I had the discount coupons for the 6 pm movie and had dipped into my savings to take out cash for the fancy restaurant around the corner from the movie theater—the only one I could afford and that would be somewhat worthy of her.

I even had my buddy Mustafa, an Uber driver, agree to provide a free ride from Darlene's house to the movie.

In short, I wasn't just ready. I was READY!

Now, all I needed to do was keep my head down, get my work done and get the hell out of here. 

The pager rang, while I pushed a cleaning cart down the 9th floor hallway. It was my supervisor. 1134, 1214, and 1513 need to be cleaned asap. The ER is backing up.

Nothing special about the ER backing up, I thought to myself. That was an everyday problem in this place. No matter the season, the ER was always overflowing, and their patients were always waiting for the previous ones to move out of their inpatient rooms so they could move up to the hospital floors, and the ER docs could see more patients. The faster we cleaned, the faster everyone else got to do their jobs.

Turn over rate. That's what they called it. Measured by the minute, the best among us had the shortest turnover rate, which unfortunately also meant that we ended up doing more rooms than everybody else. Ordinarily I wouldn't mind, at least I excelled at something in my life. But, today being a victim of my own success was not an option.  

Darlene Smith was waiting for me. 

"Hey William, could you get Eileen to clean those rooms? I got a girl waiting for me, man. I just can't be late today," I told my supervisor over the phone. 

"You got a girl?" he scoffed. "Deion, if you're going to come up with an excuse, at least make it a believable one."

I shook my head in amusement. This was my moment to gloat. "Let me make it even less believable then," I replied. "I don't just have a date with a girl. I have a date with the girl."

A small gasp reached me through the phone, "You have a date with Darlene Smith? The lawyer chick?"

How did he know about Darlene, you might ask? Well, I hadn't shut up about her since the day I joined this hospital. She told me to make something of myself, so I first went and went and got my high school diploma, and now here I was excelling at cleaning rooms. All so that in my hypothetical world, I was worthy of that beautiful girl who lived across my teenage home. 

Long story short, I stayed on the 9th floor and Eileen was assigned the rooms that needed to be readied for the ER patients. The rest of the rooms assigned to me all had patients who were not ready for discharge. Sucked for them, obviously, but was great for me because it meant I just needed to do basic cleaning, not the deep one before new patients could use the same room safely.

The second-last room on my list was 909, the one where the Karans were. Their room was always tidy, which made my job a whole lot easier. That day was no different. Except that instead of Ms. Karan simply nodding in acknowledgement like she usually did, today she gave me a wide smile as soon as I entered the room. 

"I have something for you," she said and handed me a round Tupperware. I took the lid off, and my mouth fell open. 

There in the container lay a whole darn apple pie. 

"Its not your mother's apple pie, but it is an apple pie made by a mother," she said softly. "I hope you like it."

Needless to say, I wiped my tears and thanked her profusely before leaving the room. I was still rubbing my eyes, trying to calm the swelling sea of gratitude for a stranger when I reached my last assigned room for the day - room 926, where a teenage patient had been hospitalized for many weeks.