The Catch
When she was a child, Erin McCullough played nurse to her dolls and stuffed animals that were subject to any number of imaginary illnesses and injuries. Relying on a Fisher-Price medical kit that came with a toy thermometer, stethoscope, box of bandages, pill bottle, blood pressure cuff and hypodermic needle, she saw to her patients' needs with efficiency and compassion. While she eventually put aside her dolls and stuffed animals as she grew older, she never lost the desire to become a nurse.
Caring for humans, however, proved to be more difficult than tending to inanimate objects. Baby dolls and teddy bears did not suffer actual pain, and they never died. Sadly, the same could not be said of some of Erin's human patients. Although deaths were to be expected with the elderly, it was hard to maintain a professional detachment when faced with a terminally ill child. Mercifully, such heartrending cases were few and far between. Still, whenever confronted with the loss of a young patient, the soft-hearted nurse took it hard.
Pain and occasional death aside, a great deal of daily stress came with the job. True, she found nursing a rewarding endeavor, but the hours were long, some tasks could be physically demanding and people—both patients and doctors—were often difficult to deal with. To help alleviate the tension, Erin turned to yoga. She also relied on incense and "mood" music: recordings of natural sounds such as chirping birds, falling rain, ocean waves and thunderstorms. Unlike some of her fellow nurses, she refused to seek comfort from alcohol or pharmaceuticals. As a nurse, she saw firsthand the dangers both presented when taken in excess.
For fifteen years, Nurse McCullough was able to sail through life on a fairly even keel. During that time, there had been roughly two dozen patients whose deaths affected her emotionally.
"At least he"—or she—"is not in pain anymore," Erin would tell herself at these trying times.
Then she met Sabrina Libby, and her even-keeled boat was on the verge of capsizing. The seven-year-old was admitted to the hospital for a tonsillectomy, a common procedure for children. Tragically, the little girl had a severe allergic reaction to the anesthesia and passed away during surgery. All efforts to resuscitate her proved futile.
As Erin walked past the child's vacant hospital room, the full weight of the death hit her.
She was only seven! the nurse thought, nearly giving way to tears. She had her whole life ahead of her.
Somehow, Erin managed to get through the remainder of her shift without breaking down. She went off duty at four in the afternoon and, without bothering to eat dinner, immediately sought the comforts of her yoga mat when she returned to her apartment. Eight poses later, Erin crumbled to a heap on the floor, sobbing hysterically. As hard as she tried, she could not get Sabrina Libby out of her mind. Over and over again, she replayed their parting scene in the little girl's room.
"You have nothing to worry about," she had assured the young patient. "You'll be sound asleep and won't feel a thing. When you wake up, they'll bring you back to this room where I'll have a Popsicle waiting for you."
Stop it! she scolded herself. This maudlin behavior isn't helping anyone—least of all poor little Sabrina.
The grieving nurse wiped the tears from her eyes, turned off her CD player and headed to the kitchen where she forced herself to eat a microwaved frozen dinner.
Dipping into her arsenal of stress-relievers, she next tried a hot, relaxing bubble bath and aromatherapy candles. Again, however, she relived her final encounter with Sabrina Libby: "You have nothing to worry about. You'll be sound asleep and won't feel a thing. When you wake up, they'll bring you back to this room where I'll have a Popsicle waiting for you."
After getting out of the old clawfoot tub, she toweled herself off and put on a spa-quality terrycloth robe. Hoping television might distract her, she went to the living room, curled up on her sofa and reached for the remote. It was not yet eight o'clock—the hour when primetime shows began airing—and there were mostly news programs being shown on the network stations.
That's the last thing I need: more depressing news!
She finally chose a rerun of a baking contest on the Food Network.
Maybe I should have been a cake decorator, she thought as she watched a baker from Pennsylvania sculpt the Taj Mahal out of layers of red velvet cake and Rice Krispies treats, all covered in white fondant.
It was the first time she had ever regretted her choice of career.
When the competition was over—the Taj Mahal lost out to an elaborate Japanese pagoda complete with cherry blossoms and coy pond—she switched the channel and began watching an old black-and-white movie starring Bette Davis. Although she had missed the first half hour of the film, she had little difficulty following the gist of the story. Eventually, her mind drifted from the onscreen drama to thoughts of the deceased little girl. Erin felt her throat constrict, and soon the tears rolled down her cheeks.
I wish I could just turn my brain off, if only for a little while.
Periodically, Miss Davis's Oscar-nominated performance was interrupted by words from the program's sponsors. Commercials by Otezla, Target, Progressive and Burger King were followed by an ad for an all-natural stress reducer. Vic Walken—no relation to Christopher—a middle-aged actor who left a blasé Hollywood career to star in a soap opera in New York, promised amazing results.
This must be an old commercial. Vic Walken died about a month ago.
"Just call the toll-free number at the bottom of the screen," the late actor announced. "You won't regret it."
Another supplement, Erin assumed. She was already taking valerian and licorice root and an alphabet soup of vitamins. She was not eager to add another one. However, during the next commercial break—some ten to fifteen minutes later—Vic Walken was back.
"This is not a vitamin supplement," he said. "This is a fast, effective method to ease stress and anxiety. Furthermore, it's absolutely free. Just call the toll-free number at the bottom of the screen. You won't regret it."
Free? I don't get it. What's the catch?
She got an answer to her question during the next string of commercials.
"Yes, this is a free service," Walken assured viewers. "There are no strings attached, no hidden fees. There will be no attempts to sell you something later on. There's no catch, so why not give it a try? Just call the toll-free number at the bottom of the screen. You won't regret it."
Her curiosity piqued, Erin reached for her cell phone and called the one-eight-hundred number. She had expected to hear either an overly friendly telemarketer or a robot-sounding answering machine, but no voice answered at all, only music. At least it resembled music. What it sounded like was the metal wind chimes her mother had hung on the back porch where the slightest breeze would create an eerie tinkling sound.
Oh, this is a great stress reliever. I'm put on hold already.
As she waited for someone to come on the line, however, the soft chimes lulled her into a state of complete relaxation. From that point, she must have fallen asleep because she was no longer in her apartment.
"You were right," she heard a faint voice say.
Erin turned and saw Sabrina Libby lying on her hospital bed.
"I didn't feel anything. The doctor asked me to count backward to ten, but I only got to seven before I fell asleep."
The nurse was too stunned to speak. The rational part of her brain told her it was all a dream, but it was so real. She could smell the disinfectant cleaners used at the hospital and feel the cool air coming from the room's air conditioning vent. Everything looked as it should. There were no bizarre aspects in the room as there would be in a dream. She could even hear the sounds of a busy hospital outside the door.
"Nurse McCullough," the little girl called in a soft, post-op voice. "Can you hear me?"
"Yes, I can," she replied, still struggling with reality.
"You said I can have an ice pop."
"You sure can. What flavor would you like?"
"Cherry."
"One cherry Popsicle coming right up."
* * *
Early the following morning, Erin woke on the couch with the television playing and her cell phone by her side.
What a weird dream!
After drinking two cups of strong coffee, she went through her yoga poses; but she could not shake off the melancholy she felt. Perhaps more strenuous exercise was needed.
"Good morning," she greeted her associates at the nurse's station, as she secured her purse in a locked drawer.
"Dr. Peralta is sending up a new patient," her supervisor announced. "Could you prepare Room 302?"
Erin stiffened. That had been Sabrina Libby's room.
I'm being silly, she berated herself as she approached the doorway. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people have used this room during my tenure here. I can't allow myself to continue to think of it as her room.
When she crossed the threshold, the first thing she saw was the baby doll on the visitor's chair beside the bed. Sabrina had slept with it the night before her surgery. No amount of professional detachment could hold back Erin's tears at the sight of it.
I've got to pull myself together. There's work to be done.
Still gently sobbing, she pulled back the top sheet to strip the bed. Beside the pillow was a wooden Popsicle stick stained red from the artificial food coloring in the cherry ice. Yet the patient had eaten nothing prior to surgery.
"Where did the stick come from?"
There was a light knock on the door. Erin turned and saw Mrs. Libby standing on the threshold. The red eyes and stained face were testament to the mother's deep grief.
"Excuse me," she said. "I was looking for my daughter's doll. The last she ...."
The bereaved parent could not go on.
"I'm so sorry," the nurse said, knowing her words of sympathy were pitifully inadequate. "The doll is right here."
"Thank you. I ...."
One look at her daughter's beloved toy, and Mrs. Libby could not finish her sentence. Instead, she took the doll from Erin and fled the room in tears.
Despite the third floor's being somewhat busier than normal, the nursing station was unusually quiet. There was no idle gossip or cheerful banter. Sabrina Libby's death the previous day had hit them all hard. For once, the nurses were grateful to have all the rooms occupied. The heavy workload helped to stop them from brooding.
There's a lot to be said for keeping busy, Erin thought.
When she returned to her apartment at the end of her shift, she did not slow down and relax. Pushing all thoughts of the dead child aside, she vacuumed the carpets, mopped the kitchen floor, dusted the furniture and scrubbed every surface in the bathroom. There was just so much cleaning she could do in a three-room apartment, though.
I could always reorganize the kitchen cabinets, she thought. Or clean out my bedroom closet and dresser drawers.
While these might be daunting tasks for some people, Erin was, by nature, an exceptionally neat person with an aversion to clutter. Her cabinets, closet and drawers required little cleaning and reorganizing. Besides, she had worked hard all day and was physically tired. Her mind, however, was still very active. When she sat down on her sofa and reached for the TV remote, the thoughts she had been keeping at bay all day struck with a vengeance. Her last words to the child played over and over again in her brain like a vicious mantra: "You have nothing to worry about. You'll be sound asleep and won't feel a thing. When you wake up, they'll bring you back to this room where I'll have a Popsicle waiting for you."
Tears were rolling down the nurse's cheeks as she mindlessly surfed through the available programming.
"I pay a fortune to have all these damned channels," she cried aloud, "and there's nothing worth watching on any of them."
She abruptly stopped her thumb from pressing the remote's forward channel button once more when she saw Vic Walken's face. The commercial was near its end, and the soap opera star delivered his final lines.
"Just call the toll-free number at the bottom of the screen. You won't regret it."
Although she was not sure exactly what Walken's amazing product was, she could not deny that it had been fast and effective, just as he promised. Hoping for the same speedy results, she called the toll-free number on her cell phone. Once again, she heard the eerie music that sounded like wind chimes. As had happened the previous night, reality was soon left behind, and Erin found herself in Room 302.
"Have you seen my doll?" Sabrina asked, her tongue and lips stained red from the cherry Popsicle. "I had it in bed with me last night."
"Your mother has it."
"Where is Mommy? She told me she'd be here when I woke up."
What could she tell the child? Certainly not the truth. Even if Sabrina was only a figment of Erin's imagination, nothing more than a character in a weird wind chime-induced dream, the nurse did not want to frighten her by revealing that she was dead.
"She had to go home for something. I'm sure she'll be here soon."
A lie. Not a good one, but it seemed to satisfy the little girl.
"Your eyes are red, like you've been crying. Is something wrong, Nurse McCullough?"
"No. Everything is fine. My eyes are irritated because I have hay fever."
Another lie.
"Why is ...?"
Fearing another difficult question, Erin said, "You should try to keep quiet for now. Your throat needs to heal."
"One more question," Sabrina insisted.
"All right. What is it?"
"Can I have another Popsicle?"
* * *
The following morning when she woke up—having fallen asleep a second time on the couch—the nurse noticed a definite improvement in her state of mind. The sharp pain brought about by Sabrina's sudden death had been dulled. Whatever Vic Walken's mysterious method of stress relief entailed, it worked. She felt better than she had in days.
It must be some form of hypnosis, she decided, remembering the eerie sound of wind chimes.
Still, she could not help wondering if there was a catch. In a capitalist society, there was no such thing as "absolutely free." There were always strings attached. Television air time was expensive. No one ran commercials without expecting a return on their investment.
Since it was her day off, Erin brought her laptop to the kitchen table and, while drinking her morning coffee, intended to search for more information. When she went to Google, however, she had no idea what to type in the search field, for she could not recall if the product Walken advertised had a brand name. At a loss, she finally typed in "Vic Walken + stress relief."
The search engine responded to her request with "Your search did not match any documents."
She then took her cell phone out of her handbag, found the toll-free number in her list of calls and typed it in the search field. Again, Google could find no matches. The number did not exist.
Hoping to solve the mystery, she called the toll-free number from her phone. Rather than hearing the eerie wind chime music, she received a recorded message: "The number you have dialed is not in service."
"This is ridiculous!" she cried out in exasperation. "I just called that number last night and got through."
Thinking she might have misdialed, she tried again, but got the same result. She supposed it was possible that the phone number had been taken out of service since the previous evening. However, that did not explain the product's complete lack of Internet presence.
Not one to dwell on unsolvable mysteries, she finished the last of her coffee and washed her cup and spoon. Since she had thoroughly cleaned her apartment the night before, the one housekeeping chore she had to do was make her bed. That left only the laundry and food shopping on her routine to-do list.
Normally, Erin would put her clothes into the washer and then go to the grocery store while they ran through the cycles. Since she had plenty of free time to kill, she decided a little rest and relaxation would do her good. So, she brought along her iPod, an old issue of National Geographic History magazine and a cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee. Earbuds in place, she sat back on one of the Laundromat's plastic-molded chairs, selected her playlist and opened the magazine to an article on Alexander Hamilton.
The feeling of serenity was promptly shattered when she heard not one of her favorite songs but rather the eerie sound of wind chimes.
How did this get on my iPod? she wondered.
There was no dream-like journey to hospital Room 302 this time. Although Erin remained in the Laundromat, her consciousness was by no means unaffected by the tinkling sounds. The hypnotic quality of the weird music was enhanced by the sight of her clothes tumbling in the soapy water of the front-load washing machine.
"There's no need to do your laundry."
As though trapped in a world that moved in slow motion, she managed to turn her head from the washer window to the man now sitting beside her. He was pleasant looking—not exactly handsome but by no means repulsive. Yet there was something in his face that struck fear in the nurse's heart.
"Don't be afraid of me," he said in a soothing voice.
"Go away!" she managed to cry.
"You have nothing to worry about. You'll be sound asleep and won't feel a thing."
His words struck a memory. They were the same words she spoke to Sabrina Libby before the little girl was taken to the operating room.
"It was you! You took that beautiful child away."
"No. Sabrina is fine. Right this minute, she's in her hospital room with her mother, eating a cherry Popsicle. You ...."
Terrified by what he was about to say, Erin pulled her earbuds out and dropped her iPod onto the floor as she made a frantic dash for the exit. Inexplicably, the door led not to the Laundromat parking lot but to her mother's back porch. A steady wind was blowing through the screens, and the ten metal wind chimes hanging from the window frames were playing in harmony. Sitting on the wicker lounge chair was Vic Walken, the soap opera star and TV spokesman.
"Just call the toll-free number at the bottom of the screen," he said. "You won't regret it. I didn't."
"No," the distraught woman pitifully whimpered.
She could barely hear her own voice over the increasingly loud sound of the wind chimes. They became so deafening that they drowned out her screams when Vic Walken vanished and the pleasant-looking man from the Laundromat appeared in the wicker lounge chair.
"Don't fight it, Erin. There's nothing to be afraid of."
With the strident sound of the wind chimes softening into a faint, tranquil melody, she descended into a state of calm acceptance.
"When will it happen?" she inquired.
"It already has," he replied. "You died here on your parents' porch the night before Sabrina Libby had her tonsillectomy. You choked on your food, and before help could arrive ...."
"I remember now. My poor mother was so upset! She was in the kitchen making coffee, and when she came back out on the porch, I was already gone. But I didn't know it. I believed I was still alive."
"People often refuse to acknowledge the truth at first."
"So, everything that has happened since then ...."
"None of it happened as you imagined it did. It's like I already told you. Sabrina Libby came through her surgery without any complications. She'll live a long, happy life and die in her sleep at the age of ninety-three."
"That's good to know."
"Are you ready to come with me now?" the Angel of Death asked.
"Yes," she replied without bothering to ask where they were going.
Before Erin McCullough took his hand, she glanced at the now-still wind chimes.
That was "the catch," she thought, feeling her suspicions regarding the toll-free number had been justified. All my stress, anxiety and fears are gone now but at the cost of my own earthly existence.
This wind chime does not make a soothing tinkling sound when a breeze blows, but it does make an annoying howling at dinnertime!
