agreeably.
Bela Szlawik, sweating from his labors, himself made change as they paid their checks, while Rose fluttered about and held the door for them.
As they collected on the sidewalk outside, Saul looked toward Franz and Cal and said, “How about drifting back with Gun to my room before you play chess? I’d sort of like to tell you that story.”
Franz nodded. Cal said, “Not me. Straight off to bed.” Saul nodded that he understood her.
Bonita had heard.’ “You’re going to tell him the story of the Invisible Nurse,” she said accusingly. “I want to hear that, too.”
“No, it is time for bed,” her mother asserted, not too commandingly or confidently. “See, Cal goes bed,”
“I don’t care,” Bonita said, pushing up against Saul closely, invading his space. “Please? Please?” she coaxed insistently.
Saul grabbed her suddenly, hugged her tight, and blew down her neck with a great raspberry sound. She squealed loudly and happily. Franz, glancing almost automatically toward Gun, saw him start to wince, then control it, but his lips were thin. Dorotea smiled almost as happily as if itwere her own neck being blown down. Fernando frowned slightly and held himself with a somewhat military dignity.
As suddenly Saul held the girl away from him and said to her matter-of-factly, “Now look here, Bonny, this is another story I want to tell Franz—a very dull one of interest only to writers. There is no Story of the Invisible Nurse. I just made that up because I needed something to illustrate my point.”
“I don’t believe you,” Bonita said, looking him straight in the eye.
“Okay, you’re right,” he said abruptly, dropping his hands away from her and standing back. “There is a Story of the Invisible Nurse Who Terrorized the Locked Ward at St. Luke’s, and the reason I didn’t tell it was not that it’s too long—it’s quite short—but simply too horrible. But now you’ve brought it down upon yourself and all these other good people. So gather round, all of you.”
As he stood in the dark street with the light of the gibbous moon shining on his flashing eyes, sallow face, and elf-locked, long dark hair, he looked very much like a gypsy, Franz thought.
“Her name was Wortly,” Saul began, dropping his voice. “Olga Wortly, R.N.—(Registered Nurse). That’s not her real name—this became a police case and they’re still looking for her—but it has the flavor of the real one. Well, Olga Wortly, R.N., was in charge of the swing shift (the four to midnight) in the locked ward at St. Luke’s. And there was no terror then. In fact, she ran what was in a way the happiest and certainly the quietest swing shift ever, because she was very generous with her sleeping potions, so that the graveyard shift never had any trouble with wakeful patients and the day shift sometimes had difficulty getting some of them waked up for lunch, let alone breakfast.
“She didn’t trust her L.V.N. (Licensed Vocational Nurse) to dispense her goodies. And she favored mixtures, whenever she could shade or stretch the doctor’s order to allow them, because she thought two drugs were always surer than one—Librium with the Thorazine (she doted on Tuinal because it’s two barbiturates: red Seconal with blue Amytal), chloral hydrate with the phenobarbit-al, paraldehyde with the yellow Nembutal—in fact, you could always tell when she was coming (our fairy snooze mother, our dark goddess of slumber) because the paralyzing stench of the paraldehyde always preceded her; she always managed to have at least one patient on paraldehyde. It’s a superaromatic, superalcohol, you know, that tickles the top of your sinuses, and it smells like God-knows-what—super banana oil; some nurses call it gasoline—and you give it with fruit juice for a chaser and you dispense it in a glass shot-glass because it’ll melt a plastic one, and its molecules travel through the air ahead of it faster than light!”
Saul had
Bela Szlawik, sweating from his labors, himself made change as they paid their checks, while Rose fluttered about and held the door for them.
As they collected on the sidewalk outside, Saul looked toward Franz and Cal and said, “How about drifting back with Gun to my room before you play chess? I’d sort of like to tell you that story.”
Franz nodded. Cal said, “Not me. Straight off to bed.” Saul nodded that he understood her.
Bonita had heard.’ “You’re going to tell him the story of the Invisible Nurse,” she said accusingly. “I want to hear that, too.”
“No, it is time for bed,” her mother asserted, not too commandingly or confidently. “See, Cal goes bed,”
“I don’t care,” Bonita said, pushing up against Saul closely, invading his space. “Please? Please?” she coaxed insistently.
Saul grabbed her suddenly, hugged her tight, and blew down her neck with a great raspberry sound. She squealed loudly and happily. Franz, glancing almost automatically toward Gun, saw him start to wince, then control it, but his lips were thin. Dorotea smiled almost as happily as if itwere her own neck being blown down. Fernando frowned slightly and held himself with a somewhat military dignity.
As suddenly Saul held the girl away from him and said to her matter-of-factly, “Now look here, Bonny, this is another story I want to tell Franz—a very dull one of interest only to writers. There is no Story of the Invisible Nurse. I just made that up because I needed something to illustrate my point.”
“I don’t believe you,” Bonita said, looking him straight in the eye.
“Okay, you’re right,” he said abruptly, dropping his hands away from her and standing back. “There is a Story of the Invisible Nurse Who Terrorized the Locked Ward at St. Luke’s, and the reason I didn’t tell it was not that it’s too long—it’s quite short—but simply too horrible. But now you’ve brought it down upon yourself and all these other good people. So gather round, all of you.”
As he stood in the dark street with the light of the gibbous moon shining on his flashing eyes, sallow face, and elf-locked, long dark hair, he looked very much like a gypsy, Franz thought.
“Her name was Wortly,” Saul began, dropping his voice. “Olga Wortly, R.N.—(Registered Nurse). That’s not her real name—this became a police case and they’re still looking for her—but it has the flavor of the real one. Well, Olga Wortly, R.N., was in charge of the swing shift (the four to midnight) in the locked ward at St. Luke’s. And there was no terror then. In fact, she ran what was in a way the happiest and certainly the quietest swing shift ever, because she was very generous with her sleeping potions, so that the graveyard shift never had any trouble with wakeful patients and the day shift sometimes had difficulty getting some of them waked up for lunch, let alone breakfast.
“She didn’t trust her L.V.N. (Licensed Vocational Nurse) to dispense her goodies. And she favored mixtures, whenever she could shade or stretch the doctor’s order to allow them, because she thought two drugs were always surer than one—Librium with the Thorazine (she doted on Tuinal because it’s two barbiturates: red Seconal with blue Amytal), chloral hydrate with the phenobarbit-al, paraldehyde with the yellow Nembutal—in fact, you could always tell when she was coming (our fairy snooze mother, our dark goddess of slumber) because the paralyzing stench of the paraldehyde always preceded her; she always managed to have at least one patient on paraldehyde. It’s a superaromatic, superalcohol, you know, that tickles the top of your sinuses, and it smells like God-knows-what—super banana oil; some nurses call it gasoline—and you give it with fruit juice for a chaser and you dispense it in a glass shot-glass because it’ll melt a plastic one, and its molecules travel through the air ahead of it faster than light!”
Saul had
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