No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

"No good deed goes unpunished," is one of those quotes the origin of which no one seems to be certain, but whose veracity can be proven in countless anecdotes from across the spectrum of human experience. Across the face of the globe there are hosts of do-gooders who bear the scars of what seem to be seemingly and completely unrelated causes. Well, then. It all began in a place not far from here, at about 3:00 a.m.

A nurse with something on her mind came by my room. What it was she had on her mind was rather a simple request and not that important to my mind. Of course, that small arms training John Wilkes Booth took bore no particular impression on anyone's mind at the time, either.

The request was that I give up my private room for a semi-private one. It is a measure of the treatment received by the nurses here that I immediately asked where they wanted me and when. If asked to do something here I never question; just doing it is all that is required as far as I am concerned. Or, in other words, there is nothing I would not do for these nurses.

This particular request, coming as it did at 3:00 a.m., seemed to bear some urgency, which my movements reflected. I was ready in minutes and spent the bulk of the next hour sitting in the visitors' lounge. Sitting in that lounge gave me time to think and to hope. Imagine you are on the cancer wing of a hospital, it is 3:00 a.m., and you have just been asked to trade off your ideal room for a room that could prove to be less than ideal. Where, exactly, would your mind wander off to? Lots of answers to that question. Not one of them makes much sense in the larger scheme of things. There is an answer that makes perfect sense and that is my acquisition of Bed #2 or, as I like to call it, the window seat. My mind was absolutely focused on Bed #2. Bed #2 had to be open and then all would be well. In this hospital, all Bed 1 assignments are next to the door while all Bed 2 assignments are next to the window. All I was asking for was a window seat on this flight. I prayed for that bed to be mine; yet, as I used to remind the sixth-graders in my religious education class on Thursday evenings (okay, kids, now that you can conjugate "smite," we are ready to begin), God sometimes will answer our prayers by issuing a loud and definitive, "No." God was in one of his negative moods the other day.

So, there I am, in Bed #1, wondering if I could survive long enough to displace the pretender currently in Bed #2 and then be able to make the move to the window seat. Assassination seems a bit premature, even though the next ides are not that far off. But then...It was meant to be! The interloper has gone home and I am in the window seat. He may have seen my lean and hungry look and decided to vacate the throne before being brought before my forum of justice.

Ensconced at last in my throne overlooking the mighty hub that used to be Bridgeport (Arsenal of Democracy, etc., etc.) I gloat over my rise to power in such rapid and easy fashion. I am at the pinnacle of my preening and pride when a voice carries down the hall and insinuates itself into my ear canal. A silent scream utters, inside my tortured brain, and its cause is the voice of a man who has shared a room with me on three previous occasions, none of which was pleasant. The person in question is called Ted. He shows up here every two weeks or so for chemo.

On each of the three occasions I have shared a room with Ted, he has managed to alienate the nurses and everyone else within hearing range. He is loud, vulgar, crude, rude, overbearing, physically a slob and just not a nice person. In short, Ted is an asshole of the first degree. I have been witness to his pill-hurling fits of anger, his rages when he calls the nurses every name in the book, questions their abilities and barks orders to one and all. My practice always has been to keep quiet simply because if I opened up on him, an argument, the volume of which would soon get out of all control, would ensue. Besides, I really do not think Ted would want to keep it verbal and I might be forced to validate his judgment and kick his ass so hard, his grandchildren would gave to blow their noses in order to fart.

Who says we no longer live in the age of miracles? Ted left today after a stay of less than 48 hours. That must have to due with the new infusion center here where the bulk of his work may have been done, making his stay with me blessedly short. Someone give my a round or two of the Hallelujah Chorus or the Ode to Joy, rinse, lather and repeat.