In this moment, I’m her nurse. When the whole of her draws back into her bed, I know I don’t belong in her hospital room, should’ve asked the charge nurse to change assignments. But I was curious. “How have you been?” I ask while taking in how time has changed her. “Fine,” she says with a mild smile, except if her mattress were a portal she’d fall in, slip away from me standing before her in my scrubs.
Eight years ago, she was my new neighbor. She’d welcomed me as I settled into the duplex beside hers, a rickety wooden fence separating our dirt yards. She had searing red hair, a wide smile, two dogs she let bark outside like deep-throated sirens jammed on repeat day after day, and over twelve indoor cats—the exact number was never clear. Early gossip about her came from the older blonde neighbor across the street: She put a dead cat in her freezer. “Can you imagine?” the blonde asked.
I couldn’t, while also understanding the blonde was offering me this tidbit so we could form an alliance. If we were on Survivor: Island in Suburbia, my role was to encourage the blonde by being shocked, asking why.
“She said she wasn’t ready to let it go.”
I pictured the stiff cat wrapped carefully in tinfoil, tucked far back behind the frozen peas or chicken—an image I couldn’t shake. In my five years beside my redheaded neighbor, I kept wondering if the cat remained frozen in her freezer.
In this moment, as her nurse, I still think of that once-loved, frozen cat. “Are you having any pain?” I ask while assessing her skin color, thinking, God, she’s pale. Was she always this pale?
“A little,” she says, pulling her white sheet up, anchoring it under her chin, sinking, sinking into the bed, away from me, reminding me of a child recoiling from a shot.
“Is the pain medicine working okay?”
“Yes,” she says, glancing at the door like a feral horse looking to bolt.
We make relevant small talk: She wants to go home, will drop off her prescription, knows when her next dose is due. She’ll take a cab home, something us nurses call, “being discharged without a ride.” It’s code for, they have no one. It’s code for, aloneness. It’s code for, distressing circumstances.
I ask her about her father, who, she says, isn’t doing well. I offer an apology. She shrugs.
We were cordial neighbors for four years, waving to each other, exchanging awkward prattle through forced smiles—“You home from work?” “Yup.” “Well, enjoy.” “You, too.” I knew her dogs’ names, that she and her father were close, that she dated at least once. All else came from my talkative blonde neighbor: She couldn’t afford kitty litter for her fourteen or more cats, had pulled up all the carpet to live on bare concrete floors in the hope of easing the cat piss stench, which still wafted out from her open windows and washed into my yard, into others’ yards on windy days. We lived in the mountains, had a lot of wind.
More than once, the blonde said, “She told me that her co-workers complained about the way she smells. One day, her boss even asked her to go home, bathe, change her clothes, and then return. Can you imagine?”
I could. I imagined how, if it were me, it’d be hard to face my co-workers and boss for a long time after. How could I meet their eyes or stop wondering if I smelled badly again? If her home smelled like cat urine, permeating her clothes, how could she know if she smelled? Was anything wearable? It must be like cigarette smoke, I decided, with nonsmokers smelling what smokers couldn’t.
“You’d think she’d know her clothes smelled that bad, don’t you think?” The blonde neighbor asked and asked and asked.
“I don’t know,” I said one day, questioning our alliance.
“Can you imagine having to work with her all day? Being around that smell?”
“I don’t know,” I said, thinking about the money I’d wasted building a second-story deck to enjoy the Coconino National Forest my lot bordered. I’d planned to spend mornings and evenings staring out at the southern side of Mount Elden, a lava dome dotted with ponderosa pine giants and shrubby pinyon and junipers, before boulder fields and ledges steeply rose 2,400 feet. At night, I planned to lie on my back, staring up at the stars near Pluto’s discovery. But the reek of cat urine wafting over from her open windows made my plans unbearable. I’d try breathing through my mouth, tell myself it wasn’t that bad, then another breeze would send over a fresh blast, and I’d feel sick, go inside, close the door.
Three years ago, from inside my home, I was her mute neighbor while a third neighbor filed complaints against her with local animal control and the health department. While he campaigned to have her cats and dogs removed, I grew complicit in my silence. Now, as her nurse, my physical assessment shifts to listening. Heart thumps, breath sounds. My fingers take hold of her blanket, her sheet, so I can pull her coverings down. She stays quiet, trapped in her bed, in this room, on this post-surgical unit, with me. My stethoscope is between us, but it is not enough.
I listen to her bowel sounds gurgling, low grumbles and long, high-pitched whistles as her hands fall away from her coverings to make way for my stethoscope moving over her abdomen. I wasn’t a good neighbor. “Sounds good,” I say.
When I move to lift her gown, her hands flick up quick like one of the hummingbirds that used to dart around our yards each spring. She grasps her blanket, pulls it up again. I pause, look into her eyes. “I have to look.” I can’t discharge her unless her surgical wounds are dry with well-approximated edges, without any signs of infection. If mattresses were portals, I think.
We hold each other’s gaze. Her reddish-orange hair is growing out. Silver and grey roots land at her ears, the colored part past her shoulders. There is a deflated, vulnerable look about her, but also a defiant posturing. “I have to make sure your puncture sites look okay,” I say. There are five. One for each year we were neighbors. The fifth year was the worst. That’s when she lost her animals.
Her hands relax. She allows me this: pulling down her blanket, then inching up her gown, uncovering the parts I need to see. Her skin is so pale. Not an unhealthy pallor, but the milky, doesn’t-get-sun pale that takes me back to being her neighbor, to how she rarely went outside. “Oh, these look really good,” I say, sounding cheerful, as if my best-news-ever-tone will break the discomfort between us.
When her animals were taken away, I was relieved. I could open my side windows again, enjoy my deck view of the pines and rocky ledges rising to the blue-domed sky. I wouldn’t need to hear her barking dogs barking and barking because she never asked them to stop, though I called my dogs in as soon as they started. I could sell the property without worrying about urine odor affecting its sale.
She pulls her gown back down, leaves both hands over her belly: There will be no more looking or touching, her hands say. I tell her the signs and symptoms of infection, how to bathe, how to care for her surgical wounds. She nods politely. I was not a good neighbor. By that fifth year, in summer, I kept my doors closed and windows clamped shut so that the smell, her smell, didn’t get inside my home. The male neighbor told me about each call to Animal Protection Services, to Health Services, and I never offered help to my red-headed neighbor with too many cats; I had my own vet bills and new baby expenses—all the excuses. I never gave my condolences for the loss of her animals, though I knew she loved them so.
“Do you have anyone to help you when you get home?” I ask, concerned about her ability to fill her prescription.
She smiles, plays this game of concerned nurse against competent patient ready for discharge. “Oh, I’ll have the driver wait while it’s being filled. It’ll be fine,” she says.
“You shouldn’t go up and down your stairs more than twice a day,” I say, thinking she needs a good neighbor to check in on her, to make sure she’s okay. To let her know she’s cared for, that she’s not alone. I remember the cat in the freezer, imagine it’s still here. I realize it would’ve been her only pet left when the others were taken away.
“Oh, I have everything I need. I stocked up on easy foods before I came in here.” She’s smiling wider, using all her facial muscles to reassure me she’s got this. Really, she does. I need not be concerned.
I return the smile, conceding she’s fine. The atmosphere lightens between us. She talks to me the way I remember—the same inflections and facial expressions. I won’t need to touch her anymore. All that’s left is the paperwork, the call for the cab.
What remains is the memory: dyed red hair clashing against silver roots, her body tensing against her wide smile, the pallid color of her skin save for the five puncture marks across her soft belly, one for each year we were neighbors.
Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash