Patient One by Leonard Goldberg

earlier, her mother started becoming forgetful, and a few times wandered off and got lost. With her mom’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, Carolyn could no longer be away erratically and for prolonged periods of time. So a year and a half earlier, she gave up flight nursing and took the position of head nurse on the Beaumont Pavilion.
    In this luxurious ward, which often felt to her like a boring prison, she worked a tedious eight hours a day, five days a week, on a regular schedule. The only good part was the generous salary that allowed her to hire a sitter to care for her mother during the time she was on duty at the hospital. That damned disease takes away so much from the patient and the patient’s family. It changed everything for everybody, destroying hopes and dreams and lives. A wave of sadness came over Carolyn as she thought about her mother withering away, now only a shell of the person she used to be.
    An alarm suddenly sounded behind Carolyn.
    She spun around and saw an intern trying to reattach a monitor wire to Diana Dunn’s chest. He was having a difficult time with it.
    “Do that when you get her into a room,” Carolyn called out. “Let’s keep this corridor clear.”
    “Mrs. Dunn won’t stop twisting and turning,” the intern called back. “I don’t think the wire will stay on.”
    “Then tape it down with double strips.”
    Carolyn hurried along as she turned for an open door, now thinking about the half-dozen things she still had to do before the President arrived on the ward. There just wasn’t enough time to do everything. And only God knew what else the Secret Service would want done.
    She entered Sol Simcha’s room and gave the small, thin man a stern look. “Why won’t you move?”
    “Oh, I’ll move,” Simcha said pleasantly, looking up from his chair. “I just wanted to talk with you first.”
    “About what?” Carolyn asked impatiently.
    “Anything,” Simcha said with a shrug. “You’re the only person who talks to me. And more importantly, you’re the only one who listens.”
    “And that makes me special, huh?” Carolyn asked.
    “Doubly special,” Simcha replied sincerely. “And besides, it’s not often that an old man like me gets to talk to a pretty girl like you. And there’s something else you should know.”
    “What?”
    “Whenever I see you, I automatically feel better.”
    Carolyn’s heart melted, as it always did in the presence of Sol Simcha. She wasn’t sure how he did it. Maybe it was his kind face, or maybe his gentle voice, or maybe the sweet disposition he had despite having lived through the hell of a Nazi concentration camp called Auschwitz. Her gaze drifted from his heavily lined face and thinning gray hair to his forearm, where a row of faded numbers were tattooed. “We’ll talk as we go. Now let’s get you in bed, and we’ll wheel you to—”
    “No,” Simcha interrupted. “If I’m to move, I’ll walk, like a mensch .”
    Carolyn groaned good-naturedly. Although she was in a hurry and short on time, she’d make time for Sol Simcha. She helped him up and waited while he steadied himself on legs damaged by an inflammatory muscle disease called polymyositis. “Okay, let’s go nice and easy.”
    Simcha shifted his feet, barely able to lift them off the floor, but somehow he managed to get them moving forward. They made slow progress out of the room and into the hall, with Simcha holding on tightly to the nurse.
    Carolyn noticed that the old man was breathing more heavily than usual. A progressive type of interstitial fibrosis was affecting his lungs. It was a rare complication seen in some patients with polymyositis. And it made the shopping mall magnate’s condition even more miserable, but he never complained about it. He figured it was minuscule compared to what he had already been through in life.
    “Your arms seem stronger,” Carolyn said.
    “They are,” Simcha agreed. “But my legs are still weak as a