The Sound of Raindrops
The old man sat in an easy chair beside the window with a copy of The New York Times lying open on his lap.
"What's the matter, Mr. Pittman? Can't sleep again?" Nurse Erma Gillette asked when she entered the room to turn off his light.
"What time is it?" he replied dully, like a man in a trance.
Nurse Gillette looked at her watch.
"Almost 2:00 a.m. Time for you to be in bed."
"It doesn't matter if I lie down on the bed, sit in this chair or stand on my head in the middle of Times Square. If I can't sleep, I can't sleep."
"Now, let's not get so cranky. We don't want to get ourselves all worked up, do we?"
"There's no need for you to use the plural pronoun. I'm the cranky one, not you."
Nurse Gillette's cheerful demeanor did not falter. She had more than twenty years of experience dealing with the elderly. She was not about to be perturbed by one cantankerous octogenarian, even if he did come from one of the oldest and wealthiest families in the country.
"I'm not about to play games with you, Mr. Pittman. You know the rules: lights out at eleven o'clock. Now, you either get up and get in that bed of your own accord or I'll ring for one of the orderlies to pick you up and carry you. Which is it?"
As Rupert H. Pittman III shuffled across the carpeted floor toward his bed, he grumbled none-too-softly, "If Hitler had you in his army, he would be having tea and crumpets in London tomorrow afternoon."
"You worry too much about that wily little German. That's probably why you can't sleep at night."
"For one thing, my dear Nurse Gillette, Adolf Hitler is not German; he is Austrian. And another thing, it's not Hitler, you or any other Nazi that keeps me awake at night."
Once in his bed, beneath his blankets, Rupert seemed less the troublesome old man and more a frightened little boy.
"Not all the monsters in this world wear swastikas on their arms," he mumbled as Nurse Gillette turned off the light and walked out of the room.
* * *
Kaye Van Dyke, only twenty-four years old and just out of nursing school, was extremely fortunate to have been accepted on the nursing staff of the prestigious New Amsterdam Home for the Aged. It had not hurt that her father was a prominent New York physician whose patients included some of the most influential men on Wall Street as well as Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. However, it would take more than nepotism alone for Kaye to keep her job.
"Most of the patients take their medication without any coaxing," Nurse Gillette instructed Kaye, as she gave her an orientation tour of the old age home. "Mrs. Trumble in Room 303 is the only one who'll give you a hard time about it. But just do what I do, and you won't have any trouble with her."
"What's that, Nurse Gillette?"
"I threaten to take her radio privileges away if she doesn't cooperate. Mrs. Trumble couldn't make it through the day without hearing Walter Winchell."
The two nurses walked down the hall and entered Room 122.
"Our next guest"—in the prestigious and overpriced New Amsterdam Home, the elderly were never referred to as patients—"is Rupert Pittman, age eighty-seven. No major health problems; no diet restrictions. Mental faculties intact ...."
"How the hell would you know?" Rupert interrupted brusquely. "Are you a friend of Freud as well as Hitler? I'll bet you studied nursing in Vienna."
"As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, mental faculties are intact although the patient suffers from recurring bouts of insomnia, not to mention acute insectus rectumus."
Kaye looked perplexed.
"I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that condition, Nurse Gillette."
Pittman howled with laughter.
"It's a Latin term, young lady. Insectus rectumus, roughly translated, means I've got a bug up my ass. I'll bet you won't find that one in your medical dictionary."
Kaye, accustomed to the genteel manners of refined society, blushed, embarrassed by the crude joke.
"Pay no attention to him," Nurse Gillette advised. "He's harmless. I promise you."
"Of course, I'm harmless, you old spinster! I'm eighty-seven years old." Then he turned from Gillette to the pretty, young nurse and added, "Alas, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."
"Come on, Van Dyke," the senior nurse ordered. "We've got a lot to do. We don't have time to waste on this senile old fool."
"Yes, run along, Gillette. Oh, and give my regards to Adolph and to the Fatherland."
* * *
In the days that followed, Nurse Van Dyke continued to accompany Nurse Gillette on her rounds. Only after she became familiar with the patients in her wing and with the rules and practices of the New Amsterdam Home, was she given an assigned shift in the nursing rotation. As was the case with most new hires, her first assignment was the midnight-to-six graveyard shift. While the late-night hours put a dent in Kaye's social life, they had their advantages, too. For one thing, the patients were normally asleep during those hours and needed little care—all, that is, except for Rupert Pittman, the nasty old man in Room 122.
While he had never been especially rude to her, Kaye found his comments to Nurse Gillette offensive. He was most definitely not the kind of man she would speak to under normal circumstances. Even as his nurse, she spoke to him only when absolutely necessary.
"Honestly, Erma," she told Nurse Gillette, "I don't know how you can tolerate his rudeness."
Erma waved her hand as if shooing away an annoying but harmless insect.
"Old Man Pittman doesn't bother me at all. When you've worked with the elderly as long as I have, Kaye, you'll find more often than not there's a soft center under their crusty exterior."
"That may apply to most people, but I doubt there's an ounce of softness in that mean old geezer."
Perhaps the reason Rupert did not heap verbal abuse on the young nurse was the fact that, unlike Nurse Gillette, she did not force him to comply with the home's rules governing bedtime. On those nights when Kaye spotted him awake, sitting in the easy chair in the early morning hours, she merely dimmed the light and shut his door. Nurse Van Dyke reasoned that if he did not make a fuss and keep the other guests awake, what harm did it do to let him sit in his chair?
Very late one night, she went into Room 122 to dim the lights. As she reached for the switch, Rupert spoke up.
"I'd appreciate it if you would leave the light on, young lady."
"Sorry, Mr. Pittman, I thought you were asleep," she apologized and turned to leave the room.
"Don't go running off. I haven't a soul to talk to around here except the nurses, and you sneak in and out of here like a scared rabbit. I don't know what that old battle-axe, Nurse Gillette, told you, but I promise I won't bite you."
"If you need someone to talk to, why don't you join in the socials with the other patients—I mean guests."
"All the other inhabitants of this place are in bed by ten o'clock."
"Then why don't you try to get some rest, too?"
He leaned his head back and replied, "If only I could sleep. I'd give every cent I own just to be able to close my eyes at night and slip into oblivion."
For the first time since she had met him, Kaye caught a brief glimpse of the inner Rupert Pittman. She walked over to the windows and pulled open the drapes.
"It's beginning to rain. There's nothing like the gentle patter of raindrops to help you sleep."
"Close those damned curtains!" he yelled, his eyes wide with terror.
But what could he possibly fear? Kaye wondered.
Then she remembered that, despite his apparent good health, he was an old man, and old men were prone to peculiar behavior at times.
* * *
The next night when Nurse Van Dyke entered his room, Rupert seemed to be a changed man. He was no longer the ill-tempered tyrant who traded sarcasm with Nurse Gillette. This Mr. Pittman was despondent, docile and on the point of exhaustion.
"Nurse Van Dyke," he called sleepily. "I must apologize for my behavior last night."
"There's no need for that, sir," Kaye responded coolly. "My job is to see to your care and well-being. It makes no difference to me how you behave."
"Nice try, young lady, but I can see right through that false bravado of yours. You took an instant dislike to me the first day we met, probably because of the way I teased Erma."
"Mr. Pittman, I'm only an employee here. There's no need ...."
"Stop being such a snob, Kaye. Admit it: you think I'm crude, ignorant, belligerent and obnoxious, that I'm not in your class. Isn't that right?"
Nurse Van Dyke raised an eyebrow. What he said was true. She had thought him beneath her.
"I may have made some false assumptions about you, it's true. But I ...."
"Your father's a doctor, isn't he?" he asked, taking her off-guard.
"Yes, but I don't see what that has to do with ...."
"A highly successful one, right? And he spends his off hours hobnobbing with the upper crust of New York society, doesn't he?"
He was firing his questions rapidly, giving her no chance to answer.
"Where was he born? What school did he attend? Well?"
"Yes. Yes. Hackensack, New Jersey. New York Medical College," she said, proudly answering all his questions at once.
"I'll have you know that I was educated at Oxford. That's in England, in case you didn't know. After that, I studied law at Harvard but never took the bar exams because it was my duty to go into the family business."
"Which was?"
"Making and holding on to money, Nurse Van Dyke. And the Pittmans were very good at it. I grew up amidst wealth and privilege the likes of which you and your father can only imagine, so please don't look down your lovely nose at me, young woman."
"My father, Mr. Pittman, is the son of a street car driver. He didn't have his money handed to him on a silver platter. He earned every penny of it. He had to work his way through college and medical school."
Pittman put his hands together and applauded.
"Well done, Nurse Van Dyke. You've gone from a socially prominent snob to the daughter of a working-class hero in under a minute."
"At least I can sleep at night, which is more than I can say for you!"
Even if it meant losing her job, Kaye would at least have had the supreme pleasure of telling off Mr. Rupert H. Pittman III.
"Touché!" he said sadly. "I do pray for your sake that you will retain that gift."
"You're going to have me fired now, aren't you?" she asked, with no hint of apology or regret.
"Why? Because you spoke the truth? For that, I salute you!" he said, his humor improving.
From that night on, a strange friendship grew between the old man and the young nurse. They had many conversations, most of which were pleasant but others were not. Yet Kaye, like Nurse Gillette, no longer took offense at his verbal barbs.
* * *
Nurse Van Dyke reported to work shortly after midnight, relieving Nurse Landau, who had worked the evening shift.
"I'm sorry I'm late, Gladys. The traffic was murder tonight, even at this hour," she said, hanging her wet slicker in her locker.
"Don't worry about it, Kaye. I'm not too anxious to go out there in this downpour anyway." Nurse Landau headed for the exit and then turned back and said, "Oh, I better warn you. Your friend's been in rare form all evening."
"You mean Mr. Pittman? It must be the weather. I've noticed that every time it rains both his insomnia and his humor get worse."
When Kaye walked into Room 122, she had expected to find Rupert sitting in his chair with The New York Times on his lap. Instead, he was lying on the bed, holding his pillow tightly over his head.
"Mr. Pittman, you're going to suffocate yourself!" she warned, pulling the pillow away.
The old man looked like a small boy, huddled under his blankets, shivering at the flashes of lightning and the rumble of thunder. Her heart went out to him.
"Mr. Pittman," she asked gently, "what's the matter?"
"Make it stop, please."
"Make what stop? The rain?"
"We can't just sit back and watch. We have to do something."
"It's only rain. There's nothing to worry about, Mr. Pittman. We're perfectly safe."
"That's what he said."
"Who?"
"Never mind. It's too late. It doesn't matter now."
Rupert calmed down somewhat, but he was still deeply upset. Kaye was afraid to leave him in his present condition, so she pulled up a chair and sat beside the bed.
"What are you doing? Do you think I need a babysitter?"
"No. I just thought if we sat here and talked, it would help pass the night—for both of us."
"What do you want to talk about?" he asked warily.
"Tell me why you're so afraid of the rain."
"So, that's it! You're tired of emptying bedpans, and you want to try your hand at psychiatry."
"I'm no psychiatrist, and for tonight, let's forget I'm your nurse. I'd like to talk to you as a friend."
"I don't put much store in friendship, Nurse Van Dyke. I've never had a single friend that was worth a damn. They were all a bunch of heartless, greedy bastards, the whole lot of them. I never knew until that day how heartless they really were."
"What day?"
He did not answer; he merely shook his head in response.
"Now you listen to me, Rupert Pittman. I'm tired of seeing you sitting up all night until you eventually pass out from exhaustion. Something is eating you up inside, and I want to help you. But you have to talk to me."
"You want to help me by making me relive a nightmare?"
"You relive it every night anyway, don't you?"
Rupert could not deny the logic of her argument.
"I've never told anyone about it, not my parents, my doctors or even my wife—God rest her soul. I've kept it buried inside of me all these years."
"Maybe it's time you unburdened your mind."
He looked off to the distance, avoiding eye contact with her, and slowly began his tale.
"It was fifty years ago, half a century, and I still remember it as if it were only yesterday. I was with a group of friends from Harvard, all blue-blooded, filthy rich patricians. We were concerned only with our own privileged lives, with never a thought of the poor, downtrodden masses whose blood, sweat and tears cemented the foundation of our family fortunes. It was only a few days until graduation, and we wanted to celebrate. We had a trunk load of alcohol and a bevy of beauties but nowhere to go. We vetoed several suggestions, including Long Island, Newport and Atlantic City, in favor of someplace that was out of the way, where we weren't likely to run into anyone we knew. None of us wanted to have to explain our behavior to an old friend of the family. Finally, one of my classmates suggested we take a trip to his father's club at Lake Conemaugh."
"Lake Conemaugh? I've never heard of it."
"I'm not surprised. The state of Pennsylvania built a dam across the Conemaugh River in the 1830s to create a reservoir. The dam had already begun to deteriorate even before Lake Conemaugh was filled. The state paid for the repairs and turned around and sold the property to the Pennsylvania Railroad four years later. The railroad completely ignored the dam, even after a fifty-foot section of its center collapsed. The property changed hands a few more times. Then in 1879 a group of wealthy industrialists purchased it, formed the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club and built themselves a clubhouse and a few elaborate cottages for their personal use. As rich as the new owners were, though, they didn't want to spend the money to repair the dam.
"When my friends and I arrived at the lake, it was already raining. We didn't care about the weather so long as it didn't interfere with our plans, which it didn't. We were there to get drunk and—well, we weren't there to go fishing. What we didn't know then—not that any of us would have cared—was that during the previous two months, more than forty inches of rain and snow had fallen on western Pennsylvania. As we drank and caroused, it continued to rain, not just a light shower, mind you, but a heavy downpour.
"I remember that it was shortly after 3:00 p.m., and I was playing poker with two of my buddies. Funny, I can even remember the hand I was dealt: two jacks, two queens and an ace. I was about to ask the dealer for one card when I heard what sounded like a volcano erupting. We all ran outside to see what happened. From the deck of the cabin, we had an excellent view of the town below. We stood there and watched as a fifty-foot wall of water, some twenty million tons of it, raced down the fourteen-mile canyon, destroying everything in its path. Trees were uprooted; buildings were flattened. The force of the floodwater even picked up a locomotive and carried it five miles away. And then, as if the raging water hadn't done enough damage, the furnaces of the ironworks exploded, setting fire to whatever was left.
"Everywhere there was chaos. As I stood watching from the deck of the cabin, it was like standing on the threshold of hell. 'Listen to those poor souls screaming,' I said. 'There must be something we can do.' That's when one of my friends laughed and said, 'There's nothing to worry about, Rupert. We're perfectly safe.' I turned away from the horror below me and looked at the faces of my classmates. What I saw in their eyes was almost as sickening as the carnage I'd just witnessed. They weren't horrified as I was; they were excited! They were actually enjoying the tragedy, behaving as though it were the last game of the World Series.
"The newspapers later reported that there were two thousand, two hundred and nine confirmed deaths and more than eight hundred people missing. Three thousand people were washed away by the flood, Nurse Van Dyke, and I didn't try to save even one. I just stood there, helpless, and watched them die."
"And what do you think you could have done? Could you have prevented the dam from breaking or held back that wall of water? Or perhaps you could have stepped in like Moses parting the Red Sea."
"This is no laughing matter!"
"No, it's not. It's heartbreaking, but your blaming yourself is ludicrous. You didn't endanger those people's lives, and you didn't ignore their cries for help. Fifty years later, you're still hearing them in your sleep. Rupert," she pleaded, earnestly trying to get through to him. "Those people are all resting in peace now. Don't you think it's time you forgot about the horror of their deaths and rested, too?"
"You asked me before, Nurse Van Dyke, if I relived the experience every night. But the truth is that I rarely see the water, the flames or even the bodies. When I close my eyes to sleep, all I see is a giant tombstone above a watery grave, and carved on the stone it says JOHNSTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA, May 31, 1889."
The rain finally stopped, and the first rays of dawn could be seen on the horizon. Not long after he had finished his harrowing tale, Rupert lapsed into a fitful, exhausted sleep. Nurse Van Dyke remained at his bedside, holding his hand until it was time for her four o'clock rounds. As the young nurse stood to leave the patient's room, Pittman woke briefly.
"Kaye," he called quietly.
He looked deep into her eyes and saw in them mercy, compassion and empathy: qualities that for the past fifty years he thought missing in the human race.
"Thank you. You've managed to restore my faith in my fellow man."
"I'm just doing my job, Mr. Pittman," she said to cover her embarrassment. "Now, why don't you get some sleep? I'll check in on you before the end of my shift."
"Sleep ... yes. It's what I need most now."
When Kaye Van Dyke returned to Room 122 shortly before 6:00 a.m., she found Rupert H. Pittman III lying motionless on his bed, his eyes closed in heaven's serene and eternal slumber, free at last of his painful memories.
Whenever it rains, Salem takes cover under his Emily the Strange umbrella.
Emily the Strange © Cosmic Debris
