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The Other Toe

In room 315, the additional two balloons had been tied to the headrail of the bed. The book of jokes about bodily functions was within Butch’s reach, on the nightstand with the flower arrangement.

Although the pizza and beer had yet to be delivered, he was eating the candy, guided by the diagram on the inner face of the box lid, which identified the flavor of each piece.

For some reason she couldn’t understand, Rebecca felt a need to mother Butch, perhaps because of his unfortunate head or because he looked somewhat like a huge baby, except for being so exceptionally hairy. Perched on a stool provided to lift a sitting visitor to eye level with the patient, she said, “Don’t eat so many that you spoil your dinner when it gets here.”

“Angel, don’t you worry about me. I never have taken my meals in any particular order. Sometimes, I’ll start with the potatoes, follow them with the dessert, then move on to the meat. Sometimes I make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich by eating the peanut butter out of its jar, then eating the jelly out of another jar, and then eating the bread with nothing on it. I’ve always been an independent thinker about many, many things. If someone tells me I can’t have mud pie and chicken wings and coleslaw on the same plate—by God, I will, with gravy. Anyhow, this is diabetic candy. It doesn’t have calories.”

“It has calories,” Rebecca said. “It just doesn’t have sugar.”

“Whatever,” Butch said. “It’s not filling, and I have a big appetite. I’ve been in this place for three days. Considering how bland the food is, it’s a wonder I haven’t shrunk away to nothing.”

“You said you’re here because of your toe.”

“That’s right.”

“What’s wrong with your toe?”

“If you don’t mind, I’d rather not go there.”

“I didn’t mean to pry,” Rebecca said.

“It shames me even to let the doctor look at it.”

“Then we’ll talk about something else.”

“I will tell you it’s the big toe, and it’s the one on my right foot. But that’s all I’m saying, so don’t ask to look at it.”

“What you’ve said is more than enough to satisfy my curiosity,” Rebecca lied. “That was very sharing of you.” The look she shot Bobby was meant to say, Help me with conversation here.

The Sham stood with his back to the window, leaning against the sill, backlighted by the dazzling orange radiance of the late-day sun. “I’ve been wondering how many of those helium balloons would have to be tied to Butch to lift him off the bed.”

Butch beamed. “So happens I have the calculations. A friend did research. One balloon lifts three ounces. I weigh two hundred fifty pounds. That’s four thousand ounces. Assuming every balloon lifts the same, you need one thousand three hundred thirty-three balloons. It would be kind of fun, but I don’t think it’s worth the cost.”

To Rebecca, Bobby said, “That’s all I’ve got.”

She was spared from having to pick up the conversational ball when Spencer threw open the door. He bounded into the room and declared, “I found it! It’s at the end of the southeast wing.”

Bobby put a finger to his lips, and Rebecca covered her mouth with one hand, and Butch said, “Found what?”

“Uh,” Spencer said. “Well. Found. You know. The bathroom. The public restroom.”

“There’s a bathroom right here,” Butch said, indicating a door at the far end of the room.

“Well, but that’s your bathroom.”

“They don’t want me on my toe, so I have to use a bed potty.”

“Well, but it’s still your roommate’s bathroom.”

“He’s dead,” said Butch.

Determined not to give up his looking-for-a-restroom alibi, Spencer said, “It’s still his bathroom.”

“What’s a dead guy need a bathroom for?”

Looking as if he had walked into a tar pit, Spencer stood in silence, and everyone watched him expectantly, and at last he said, “It’s a religious thing with me. During the month the person died, I’m forbidden to use the bathroom where the death occurred.”

“He died in that bed,” Butch said.

“Then I’m forbidden to use that bed during this month or any bathroom within seventy feet of it.”

Rebecca waited for Butch to ask the name of this religion, but the big guy had a soft spot for people of faith. “Everybody’s got a right to believe what he thinks God wants him to believe.”

Bobby appeared to be disappointed that the issue had been resolved while it still had a lot of potential entertainment value. He said, “I’m going downstairs to meet the Adorno guy, make sure he doesn’t deliver the pizza to the wrong room.”

no admittance / credentialed personnel only

Bobby had lied about going downstairs to look for the pizza-delivery guy. It wasn’t such a significant lie that he feared being condemned to Hell for it, but he was about to engage in even further deception. From end to end, Maple Grove seemed to be a terrible lie that concealed a sinister purpose. He regretted participating in that dissimulation even by telling little falsehoods in order to find and expose the truth. Some of you might feel his sensitivity in this matter is excessive. However, when it comes to abhorrence of lies and a profound desire always to tell the truth, that’s just how novelists are.

With an anxious expression, Bobby paced back and forth at the end of the southeast wing, as if a loved one somewhere here on the third floor must be in critical condition. When none of the staff was in sight, he drew from his jacket the lock-release gun that he had used at the church the previous night. He stepped to the fire-rated extra-wide door, slipped the automatic pick into the keyway, and pulled the trigger four times until the deadbolt disengaged. He opened the door. An empty room.

He crossed the threshold and closed the door behind him. He had the curious feeling that this room was a machine of some kind, that it currently wasn’t turned on, that it might be a security vestibule where visitors were held until their identity could be verified, and that it would be a very different and frightening space if someone threw the switch to activate it. He could only suppose that his uneasiness arose from an experience he’d endured here years earlier.

He opened another door and crossed the threshold. The chamber in which he stood was large, windowless, and white. Maybe forty feet on a side. The glossy white-tile floor featured four drains, each six inches in diameter, placed like four dots on dice. White tile wainscoting to a height of about four feet. White plasterboard above. Light panels inlaid in the white ceiling. In the far wall, another extra-wide closed door stood directly opposite the one by which he’d entered. As bland a chamber as could be imagined, the place appeared to be a surgery not yet equipped.

He stepped to the nearest drain. Instead of a standard grid strainer, a solid plate covered the mouth of the opening. Yet he knew these four holes must be drains, because he clearly recalled that no coverings like this one had capped them twenty-one years earlier. There had not been grid strainers, either. On that long-forgotten night, they were just openings to ...

Openings to what?

For several minutes, Bobby stood in the center of the room, each hole equidistant from him. He turned slowly, staring at one drain and then at the next—if they were drains. He strained to recall more of what he had seen back in the day. He was deeply frustrated, as are we all, that his memory remained locked tight. The far door offered further penetration of the institute but also the chance that he would disappear into its depths, never to be seen again. The longer he lingered, the greater the risk. He stepped out of the chamber and let the door close behind him.

Rebecca watched with interest as Spencer avoided going near the bed where a man had died, which he’d claimed that his faith required of him. He perched on the second stool, however, which was intended for a visitor to Butch’s former roommate. He and Rebecca were at eye level with Butch, but on different sides of his bed. She wondered what Spencer would say if Butch asked why he was permitted to sit on the dead man’s stool but not on the edge of the dead man’s bed.

Spencer said, “There seems to be at least a mini epidemic of toe disease. I just met a fellow in your condition.”

Butch took mild offense. “I don’t have a disease. What I have is a condition.”

“A toe condition,” Spencer said.

“That’s right.”

“What did you do?”

“There’s nothing you do that causes such a condition. It just happens to you. Like a meteor slams into you or a python falls onto you from out of a tree and strangles you. You didn’t go asking for it to happen to you.”

“What are the symptoms?” Spencer asked.

“You’ll know what the symptoms are if it happens to you. God forbid. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Of course. Thoughtless of me. What shall we talk about?”

He looked at Rebecca, but she only shrugged.

Butch said, “What if you’re where there’s only one bathroom, they hauled a dead guy out an hour ago, and you’ve got to pee bad?”

“I’d leave that place and go somewhere else.”

“What if you couldn’t hold it, you had to go right now ?”

“Well ... I guess I’d pee out the window.”

“We’re on the third floor. What if there were a lot of people below, having dinner?”

“Why would there be people having dinner?”

“Maybe it’s a restaurant patio.”

“Then I’d pee in a bottle.”

“Where are you gonna get a bottle so quick?”

“There are bottles everywhere.”

“There’s not one in this room,” Butch observed.

“There’s the water carafe on your nightstand.”

“What’re you going to do with the water in it?”

“I guess I’d have to pour it on the folks having dinner below.”

“They’ll be happy it wasn’t pee.”

“Exactly.”

To Rebecca, Butch said, “Do you go to the same church he does?”

“No.”

Butch nodded with what seemed like approval. “I keep thinking I know you from someplace.”

Bobby was taking forever. An eternity.

“Where might I know you from?” Butch asked.

Rebecca smiled. “Maybe I look like someone on TV.”

“No, that’s not it.”

The pizza-delivery guy entered room 315, followed by Bobby. Rebecca and Spencer spun off their stools. The three amigos sprang into action. In no time, the wheeled table projected over the bed railing, and the aromatic pizza was on the table, and one beer was open. The second bottle waited within reach of Butch, safe in the insulated delivery bag. Rebecca had paid the check with cash. Goodbyes were said. An invitation to visit again was extended. No one was crying, though Butch appeared to be close to tears.

In the corridor, a new shift of third-floor nurses, in white uniforms with pale-blue trim, were making their way east toward the nurse’s station, virtually radiating compassion and dedication to the work ahead.

The amigos moved westward against the tide. When they reached the elevator alcove, all the cabs were descending to the lobby. As they waited for an elevator, they could not help but overhear two nurses who stood nearby in conversation, one from the departing shift and the other newly arrived.

“How’s Travis dealing with you being on nights?”

“He likes it too much.”

“Dipping his willy in some tart?”

“He would if he wasn’t too tired to tomcat.”

“Losin’ his pep, is he?”

“He eats my dinners and sleeps from six o’clock till dawn.”

“He doesn’t wonder why he sleeps like an old dog?”

“It’s Travis, remember. Not a lot of wondering in him.”

“You got to protect the man from himself.”

“Exactly. So what’s the news of the day?”

“We lost Mr. Blomhoff in isolation.”

“Well, it was way beyond the toe with him.”

The amigos turned to the nurses. Rebecca said, “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. But did you say Mr. Blomhoff died, Aldous Blomhoff. Was he still the head of the institute after all these years?”

Everyone in town knew Blomhoff. He spoke at high school graduation most years and supported numerous Maple Grove charities.

“That’s him,” said the wife of Travis. “His brother, Pastor Turnbuckle, came to see him at last, but it was too late.”

“Pastor Larry was his brother?”

“Half brother. They were estranged for a long time.”

The nurse who wasn’t married to Travis said, “We shouldn’t say anything more. We shouldn’t even have said that much.”

“Patient privacy,” said the wife of Travis.

They turned from the amigos, exited the alcove, and disappeared around the corner into the main corridor.

Bobby quoted Travis’s wife. “‘It was way beyond the toe with him.’”

The doors opened on one of the six elevators. From within came a recorded voice: “Going down.”

The amigos stared into the empty cab. The cab was patient, but not infinitely so. A tone sounded— boing —and the doors closed.

Rebecca, Bobby, and Spencer hurried back to room 315.