108 fountains
05-01-2014, 07:00 PM
I hope you all enjoy this. Any comments/feedback will be welcome.
Just Starting Out
Alfred J. Waterharce was just starting out, and for the first time in his life, he felt things were going right. He had completed his Associate’s Degree in May, found employment at a long-term nursing care facility two weeks after that, moved out from his parents’ house and into his own studio apartment one week after that, and – best of all – he hadn’t messed up or had an accident yet.
Alfred would be the first to acknowledge his tendency toward bad luck. He had worked as a waiter while studying at community college, and he was happy to leave both school and waitering behind him. He still remembered his first job as a waiter. It lasted less than an hour. He was serving at a Cub Scout breakfast. While the other waiters brought out the eggs and the bacon, his job was to carry out the milk. He filled fifty small glasses of milk, placed them on a large, circular tray, carried the tray into the banquet hall, and set the glasses down at the various tables. It should have been easy, but nobody told him to be careful to balance the tray and not take all the glasses of milk from one side. He had put down about twenty glasses when he felt the tray tip and go over. Thirty glasses of milk crashed to the floor to the great amusement of the Cub Scouts. The entire room erupted in hilarity as they laughed, cheered, and screamed their delight. The other waiters looked on wide-eyed and amazed. When the restaurant manager rushed in to see what had happened, she stopped short, her jaw dropping as she surveyed the broken glass and spilt milk that was everywhere. Alfred sized up the situation quickly. While pandemonium continued to reign in the roomful of ten-year-old boys, Alfred walked past the other waiters, walked past the restaurant manager, walked out the back door, exited the building, and never came back.
Incidents like that seemed to have plagued Alfred all his life, but now he felt things were different. He was on his own now. He felt his own maturity and confidence growing. At the nursing facility he had assumed significant duties, helping to care for the sick and the elderly, and he took them seriously.
For the first time, Alfred felt self-assured. He felt he was ready for anything. But he was just starting out, and while his studies had prepared him for his employment responsibilities, nothing had prepared him for love. That hit him on the very first day on his new job, and it hit him hard. He had never felt Cupid’s arrow before, never dated in high school or even while attending junior college. He was content just hanging out with his friends, shooting hoops, or playing cards. He had been one of those rarest of teenage boys – he had not spent every waking moment thinking about girls. Perhaps that’s why when the love goddess first bit him, she drew blood.
His new supervisor had been taking him along on the rounds, doing some on-the-job training and introducing him to the nurses, nurses’ aides, and receptionists on each of the six floors of the facility. On the fourth floor, he met the head nurse, Sandra, a bulbous, buxom, bouncy blonde who liked to keep herself busy by gossiping about the patients, and Sangeeta Patel, the floor’s receptionist. When Sangeeta, with her silky black hair, honey-colored skin, balmy brown eyes, and lively, enticing smile said “Hello,” the entire world changed for Alfred in a moment. She was beautiful, exotic, bewitching. He was lost. He was stunned. He was transported to the highest ecstasies. He was driven to the deepest despair. He was laughing. He was crying. He was… in love in an instant.
He managed to mutter something that sounded in his own ear like, “Nice ta meecha.” And he lingered with a ludicrous grin on his face, incognizant of how ridiculous he looked. Sangeeta giggled somewhat nervously and went back to her work.
Alfred realized he had not made a great first impression, but he was okay with that. He was just starting out, and he had plenty of time. Respiratory care patients among the residents on the fourth floor were few, so he rarely saw Sangeeta during those first few days. But each time he did have an opportunity to pass by her desk, he smiled at her and she smiled back at him. He wanted to stop and talk with her, but he was desperately shy and could think of nothing to say.
At the end of his shift on the Wednesday of his second week, Alfred saw Sangeeta in the parking lot as he was walking toward his car to go home for the day. She was talking with one of her friends, standing about twenty feet away. Alfred smiled, and both of the girls waved at him. He returned their wave, opened the door to his used, ten-year-old red Subaru Impreza, and got in. When he reached to put his key into the ignition, he realized he had gotten into the back seat. He was mortified. He knew they had seen him. He ducked down, pretending to look for something on the floor. He heard laughter, then silence.
The girls had strolled back toward the building. Sangeeta told her friend she had left her keys up at the nurses’ station on the ward. They laughed at her forgetfulness and did not even notice Alfred as he got in his car. Alfred stayed down for several minutes before he got up the nerve to look up and out. They were gone. He was convinced they had laughed at his ridiculousness.
After the back seat incident, Alfred was even more disinclined to simply walk up and talk to Sangeeta; he needed to wait for a good opportunity. A few days later, opportunity knocked.
He had not yet established a lunchtime routine. Some days he brought a sandwich from home; on other days he left the facility for a fast food restaurant. On this day, he decided to eat in the facility’s cafeteria. The cafeteria was never crowded since most residents had their meals delivered to their rooms, and most employees brought their lunch or ate outside. When he walked in, Alfred saw Sangeeta sitting alone with her back turned toward him at one of the twenty tables in the room. Not more than a score of other people, mostly elderly residents, were dispersed among the other tables, singly or in pairs. Alfred realized his chance. He would pick up his tray, get his lunch, and sit down with Sangeeta at her table, and it would be the most natural thing in the world. No need for him to be bashful.
So Alfred picked up a tray, filled his plate with mashed potatoes, a helping of string beans, and two fried chicken wings, and paid the cashier. Then he turned around and walked straight toward Sangeeta. Unfortunately, he slipped on a string bean that somebody had dropped on the tile floor. One leg went out from under him, and he nearly went down. He caught his balance before hitting the floor, however, and managed to save most of the food on his plate. But one of the chicken wings went flying. It skidded across the room toward an elderly gentleman sitting in a chair against the wall on the other side of the room. The old gentleman saw the whole affair, and with the reflexes of a young infielder, scooped up the chicken wing and laid it down on his tray with a triumphant grin. Another elderly man two tables over stood up and applauded, yelling “Nice catch, Joe!”
Alfred turned around sharply and sat down at the table farthest away and faced the opposite direction from Sangeeta. He lingered over his lunch for a long time – until he was sure that she had departed the room.
Three more days passed without Alfred being called to the fourth floor. He was pleased with the reprieve since he was afraid he had made a fool of himself again in front of Sangeeta. But on the Friday of his third week, he had an order to perform a procedure on a new sixth floor resident, an elderly woman with chronic bronchitis. Alfred arrived on the sixth floor pushing a portable Intermittent Positive Pressure Breathing Machines (IPPBM) and carrying a tray full of test tubes that he needed for blood gas samples.
As he walked by the receptionist desk, Sangeeta smiled a warm, radiant smile in his direction and said, “Hello, Alfred. How are you?”
Alfred’s heart pounded. She remembered his name! And that big smile – was it really meant for him? He was dumbfounded for a moment; then he heard his own voice utter something guttural that sounded like “Awrrright. How’rrryuuu?”
He made short work of his therapeutic task with the bronchitis patient, as he was anxious to walk by Sangeeta again. When he finished, Sangeeta was still at the desk. He was relieved to see that she was talking with someone on the phone. This released him of the need to actually go up and speak with her. Instead, he walked by smiling at her as he went. She returned the smile, still talking on the phone. Alfred turned awkwardly and meandered his way toward the elevator in front of the reception desk, continuing to look moon-faced at Sangeeta and not paying much attention to anything else. Once inside the elevator, he pressed the “Down” button. The sliding door began to close, but bumped the tray that he was carrying, sending several test tubes scattering on the floor. Embarrassed, Alfred hit the “Door Open” button, got down on one knee and bent over to pick up the test tubes. But before he got back up the elevator door closed again, this time right on his neck.
He must have presented a hilarious spectacle with his head sticking out of the elevator door, his eyes and mouth wide open, and a dazed expression on his face. The bulbous, buxom, bouncy blonde nurse Sandra, who was boisterous and blustering under any circumstances, and who happened to be walking by at that very moment, burst into laughter. Sangeeta, who was still on the phone, also couldn’t help but laugh, although she covered her mouth with her hand and tried her best to repress her show of mirth. The elevator door opened again, Alfred stood up with cheeks that were redder than sun-ripened tomatoes and hit the “Down” button and the “Door Close” button several times in rapid succession.
Alfred’s chagrin intensified when he returned to the Respiratory Care Center and his supervisor told him he needed to return to the fourth floor to drop off the IPPBM treatment confirmation form with the receptionist. With dreadful reluctance, Alfred staggered back down the hallway to the elevator.
In the meantime, Sandra and Sangeeta were still laughing and talking about Alfred. “He is in love with you, you know,” said Sandra.
“I don’t know,” said Sangeeta. “He never talks to me. But he’s very sweet. I wish he would ask me out.”
“You would go out with him?”
“Of course I would,” said Sangeeta. “He’s very sweet, and he’s cute, too.”
Sandra walked around the corner into the adjacent office area. After a moment, she called, “Oh, Sangeeta. Come here a minute. I need to show you this. The scanner isn’t working.”
So Sangeeta walked around the corner. While they examined the scanner, their conversation turned to other matters. Sandra had been particularly upset with an elderly man, a Mr. Hawke, who had taken up residency on their floor about a month ago. “He complains about everything,” she grumbled. “About the room, about the food, about the fact that nobody comes to visit him. If he wasn’t so ill-tempered, maybe his family would visit more often. Not only that, but he’s really a bit of a looney bird besides.”
While Sandra and Sangeeta continued conversing about Mr. Hawke in the office area, Alfred stepped off the elevator and was greatly relieved to see no one sitting at the reception desk. He thought he would just slip the confirmation form on the desk and steal away. As he placed the piece of paper on the desk, however, he heard Sandra and Sangeeta talking around the corner in the office area a few steps away.
“I know what you mean,” he heard Sangeeta say. “When he first came here, he was okay. But after a while, well, he just gets on my nerves. Whenever he walks by the desk, he gives me these looks. It’s kind of creepy.”
Alfred didn’t stay to hear more. Rather than take the elevator, he quickly and quietly rushed down the stairs. The expression on his face was one of total annihilation. For three weeks he had thought about nothing but Sangeeta. He had visions about her, thinking about what he would say to her, what she would say to him, fantasizing that she returned his feelings, peering into a future that included walks in the park, late night movies, and – dare he think it – a kiss from those lovely lips. Now all those thoughts, all those delicious daydreams, were shattered.
Late that afternoon, when Alfred returned home from work, he noticed that the single potted plant he kept in his one-room apartment, a broad buckler fern, was dying and turning brown. He didn’t realize he was giving it too much water. He was just starting out and had not yet learned how to take care of houseplants. He took off his shoes, turned on the TV, sat down on the bed, and buried his face in his hands. His tears burned, and they tasted salty.
Just Starting Out
Alfred J. Waterharce was just starting out, and for the first time in his life, he felt things were going right. He had completed his Associate’s Degree in May, found employment at a long-term nursing care facility two weeks after that, moved out from his parents’ house and into his own studio apartment one week after that, and – best of all – he hadn’t messed up or had an accident yet.
Alfred would be the first to acknowledge his tendency toward bad luck. He had worked as a waiter while studying at community college, and he was happy to leave both school and waitering behind him. He still remembered his first job as a waiter. It lasted less than an hour. He was serving at a Cub Scout breakfast. While the other waiters brought out the eggs and the bacon, his job was to carry out the milk. He filled fifty small glasses of milk, placed them on a large, circular tray, carried the tray into the banquet hall, and set the glasses down at the various tables. It should have been easy, but nobody told him to be careful to balance the tray and not take all the glasses of milk from one side. He had put down about twenty glasses when he felt the tray tip and go over. Thirty glasses of milk crashed to the floor to the great amusement of the Cub Scouts. The entire room erupted in hilarity as they laughed, cheered, and screamed their delight. The other waiters looked on wide-eyed and amazed. When the restaurant manager rushed in to see what had happened, she stopped short, her jaw dropping as she surveyed the broken glass and spilt milk that was everywhere. Alfred sized up the situation quickly. While pandemonium continued to reign in the roomful of ten-year-old boys, Alfred walked past the other waiters, walked past the restaurant manager, walked out the back door, exited the building, and never came back.
Incidents like that seemed to have plagued Alfred all his life, but now he felt things were different. He was on his own now. He felt his own maturity and confidence growing. At the nursing facility he had assumed significant duties, helping to care for the sick and the elderly, and he took them seriously.
For the first time, Alfred felt self-assured. He felt he was ready for anything. But he was just starting out, and while his studies had prepared him for his employment responsibilities, nothing had prepared him for love. That hit him on the very first day on his new job, and it hit him hard. He had never felt Cupid’s arrow before, never dated in high school or even while attending junior college. He was content just hanging out with his friends, shooting hoops, or playing cards. He had been one of those rarest of teenage boys – he had not spent every waking moment thinking about girls. Perhaps that’s why when the love goddess first bit him, she drew blood.
His new supervisor had been taking him along on the rounds, doing some on-the-job training and introducing him to the nurses, nurses’ aides, and receptionists on each of the six floors of the facility. On the fourth floor, he met the head nurse, Sandra, a bulbous, buxom, bouncy blonde who liked to keep herself busy by gossiping about the patients, and Sangeeta Patel, the floor’s receptionist. When Sangeeta, with her silky black hair, honey-colored skin, balmy brown eyes, and lively, enticing smile said “Hello,” the entire world changed for Alfred in a moment. She was beautiful, exotic, bewitching. He was lost. He was stunned. He was transported to the highest ecstasies. He was driven to the deepest despair. He was laughing. He was crying. He was… in love in an instant.
He managed to mutter something that sounded in his own ear like, “Nice ta meecha.” And he lingered with a ludicrous grin on his face, incognizant of how ridiculous he looked. Sangeeta giggled somewhat nervously and went back to her work.
Alfred realized he had not made a great first impression, but he was okay with that. He was just starting out, and he had plenty of time. Respiratory care patients among the residents on the fourth floor were few, so he rarely saw Sangeeta during those first few days. But each time he did have an opportunity to pass by her desk, he smiled at her and she smiled back at him. He wanted to stop and talk with her, but he was desperately shy and could think of nothing to say.
At the end of his shift on the Wednesday of his second week, Alfred saw Sangeeta in the parking lot as he was walking toward his car to go home for the day. She was talking with one of her friends, standing about twenty feet away. Alfred smiled, and both of the girls waved at him. He returned their wave, opened the door to his used, ten-year-old red Subaru Impreza, and got in. When he reached to put his key into the ignition, he realized he had gotten into the back seat. He was mortified. He knew they had seen him. He ducked down, pretending to look for something on the floor. He heard laughter, then silence.
The girls had strolled back toward the building. Sangeeta told her friend she had left her keys up at the nurses’ station on the ward. They laughed at her forgetfulness and did not even notice Alfred as he got in his car. Alfred stayed down for several minutes before he got up the nerve to look up and out. They were gone. He was convinced they had laughed at his ridiculousness.
After the back seat incident, Alfred was even more disinclined to simply walk up and talk to Sangeeta; he needed to wait for a good opportunity. A few days later, opportunity knocked.
He had not yet established a lunchtime routine. Some days he brought a sandwich from home; on other days he left the facility for a fast food restaurant. On this day, he decided to eat in the facility’s cafeteria. The cafeteria was never crowded since most residents had their meals delivered to their rooms, and most employees brought their lunch or ate outside. When he walked in, Alfred saw Sangeeta sitting alone with her back turned toward him at one of the twenty tables in the room. Not more than a score of other people, mostly elderly residents, were dispersed among the other tables, singly or in pairs. Alfred realized his chance. He would pick up his tray, get his lunch, and sit down with Sangeeta at her table, and it would be the most natural thing in the world. No need for him to be bashful.
So Alfred picked up a tray, filled his plate with mashed potatoes, a helping of string beans, and two fried chicken wings, and paid the cashier. Then he turned around and walked straight toward Sangeeta. Unfortunately, he slipped on a string bean that somebody had dropped on the tile floor. One leg went out from under him, and he nearly went down. He caught his balance before hitting the floor, however, and managed to save most of the food on his plate. But one of the chicken wings went flying. It skidded across the room toward an elderly gentleman sitting in a chair against the wall on the other side of the room. The old gentleman saw the whole affair, and with the reflexes of a young infielder, scooped up the chicken wing and laid it down on his tray with a triumphant grin. Another elderly man two tables over stood up and applauded, yelling “Nice catch, Joe!”
Alfred turned around sharply and sat down at the table farthest away and faced the opposite direction from Sangeeta. He lingered over his lunch for a long time – until he was sure that she had departed the room.
Three more days passed without Alfred being called to the fourth floor. He was pleased with the reprieve since he was afraid he had made a fool of himself again in front of Sangeeta. But on the Friday of his third week, he had an order to perform a procedure on a new sixth floor resident, an elderly woman with chronic bronchitis. Alfred arrived on the sixth floor pushing a portable Intermittent Positive Pressure Breathing Machines (IPPBM) and carrying a tray full of test tubes that he needed for blood gas samples.
As he walked by the receptionist desk, Sangeeta smiled a warm, radiant smile in his direction and said, “Hello, Alfred. How are you?”
Alfred’s heart pounded. She remembered his name! And that big smile – was it really meant for him? He was dumbfounded for a moment; then he heard his own voice utter something guttural that sounded like “Awrrright. How’rrryuuu?”
He made short work of his therapeutic task with the bronchitis patient, as he was anxious to walk by Sangeeta again. When he finished, Sangeeta was still at the desk. He was relieved to see that she was talking with someone on the phone. This released him of the need to actually go up and speak with her. Instead, he walked by smiling at her as he went. She returned the smile, still talking on the phone. Alfred turned awkwardly and meandered his way toward the elevator in front of the reception desk, continuing to look moon-faced at Sangeeta and not paying much attention to anything else. Once inside the elevator, he pressed the “Down” button. The sliding door began to close, but bumped the tray that he was carrying, sending several test tubes scattering on the floor. Embarrassed, Alfred hit the “Door Open” button, got down on one knee and bent over to pick up the test tubes. But before he got back up the elevator door closed again, this time right on his neck.
He must have presented a hilarious spectacle with his head sticking out of the elevator door, his eyes and mouth wide open, and a dazed expression on his face. The bulbous, buxom, bouncy blonde nurse Sandra, who was boisterous and blustering under any circumstances, and who happened to be walking by at that very moment, burst into laughter. Sangeeta, who was still on the phone, also couldn’t help but laugh, although she covered her mouth with her hand and tried her best to repress her show of mirth. The elevator door opened again, Alfred stood up with cheeks that were redder than sun-ripened tomatoes and hit the “Down” button and the “Door Close” button several times in rapid succession.
Alfred’s chagrin intensified when he returned to the Respiratory Care Center and his supervisor told him he needed to return to the fourth floor to drop off the IPPBM treatment confirmation form with the receptionist. With dreadful reluctance, Alfred staggered back down the hallway to the elevator.
In the meantime, Sandra and Sangeeta were still laughing and talking about Alfred. “He is in love with you, you know,” said Sandra.
“I don’t know,” said Sangeeta. “He never talks to me. But he’s very sweet. I wish he would ask me out.”
“You would go out with him?”
“Of course I would,” said Sangeeta. “He’s very sweet, and he’s cute, too.”
Sandra walked around the corner into the adjacent office area. After a moment, she called, “Oh, Sangeeta. Come here a minute. I need to show you this. The scanner isn’t working.”
So Sangeeta walked around the corner. While they examined the scanner, their conversation turned to other matters. Sandra had been particularly upset with an elderly man, a Mr. Hawke, who had taken up residency on their floor about a month ago. “He complains about everything,” she grumbled. “About the room, about the food, about the fact that nobody comes to visit him. If he wasn’t so ill-tempered, maybe his family would visit more often. Not only that, but he’s really a bit of a looney bird besides.”
While Sandra and Sangeeta continued conversing about Mr. Hawke in the office area, Alfred stepped off the elevator and was greatly relieved to see no one sitting at the reception desk. He thought he would just slip the confirmation form on the desk and steal away. As he placed the piece of paper on the desk, however, he heard Sandra and Sangeeta talking around the corner in the office area a few steps away.
“I know what you mean,” he heard Sangeeta say. “When he first came here, he was okay. But after a while, well, he just gets on my nerves. Whenever he walks by the desk, he gives me these looks. It’s kind of creepy.”
Alfred didn’t stay to hear more. Rather than take the elevator, he quickly and quietly rushed down the stairs. The expression on his face was one of total annihilation. For three weeks he had thought about nothing but Sangeeta. He had visions about her, thinking about what he would say to her, what she would say to him, fantasizing that she returned his feelings, peering into a future that included walks in the park, late night movies, and – dare he think it – a kiss from those lovely lips. Now all those thoughts, all those delicious daydreams, were shattered.
Late that afternoon, when Alfred returned home from work, he noticed that the single potted plant he kept in his one-room apartment, a broad buckler fern, was dying and turning brown. He didn’t realize he was giving it too much water. He was just starting out and had not yet learned how to take care of houseplants. He took off his shoes, turned on the TV, sat down on the bed, and buried his face in his hands. His tears burned, and they tasted salty.