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Part
45
"Okay Becky, you'll be cleaning the third and fourth floors," Mr Jensen said in a loud voice to the young woman standing directly in front of his desk. "Start with the empty rooms, then the ones with patients in them, and finally the hall. And for God sake, what ever you do, don't talk to the patients unless you absolutely have to. We don't want to scare them okay?"
Becky sighed mentally and barely kept a look of frustrated disdain off her face. In a slurred voice she answered, "Yehs sir."
Smartly turning around she wound her way through all the supply cabinets that cluttered the maintenance room down in the basement of the hospital.
What an SOB, Becky thought to herself as she started pushing a cleaning cart towards the freight elevator. He was shouting again. That jerk will never learn.
*****
As the elevator opened on the third floor. It was still early enough that there weren't too many visitors about. Perfect time for cleaning. The nurses and doctors that she did see, she avoided looking at. That way if they did try to speak with her, she could claim ignorance later. Because of this she missed the leer from one orderly looking her over; which in her mind was a good thing.
She knew she was good looking, but guys tended to run the other way when they found out about her disability. So she tended to ignore the guys that came on to her at work. She had only been working here at Rampart for a week, having been fired from the business building she had been employed with just because the wife of one of the vice-presidents thought she was too creepy to keep around.
Just before she reached the end of the hall, one of the doors opened up. A man in a wheelchair started to move out but the back wheels got caught on the door as it closed.
Great, just great, Brice fussed as he struggled with the chair. Spotting a cleaning lady, he called out, "Excuse me, Miss?"
When she just kept on pushing her cart, he called out again, a bit louder, "Miss? I need a hand here."
I can't believe this! She must be retarded, he fumed as she started to pass him. Frustrated, he threw one of his slippers at her; pegging her in the leg. That got her attention.
Becky turned as something hit her in the leg. Looking down, a blue slipper lay there. Picking it up, she looked around. A few feet away was the young man in the wheelchair sans one slipper, still half out of the doorway with a smug look on his face.
Silently she handed the slipper back and would have turned back to her cart except he captured her hand and wouldn't let go of it. So she looked him in the face.
He exaggerated his words, speaking slowly and gesturing. "Miss? I need you to help me. Push on this door, okay?"
Rolling her eyes, Becky reached into the breast pocket of her maintenance uniform and pulled out a card. Handing it to him. she proceeded to not only open the door, but pull the wheelchair out into the hall.
On the card Brice read: My name is Rebecca Jones. I am deaf but can read lips. Please speak normally, but to my face so I can tell what you are saying. Thank you. On the other side was an line drawing of an old-style school with the words Riverside School for the Deaf printed below it.
He just sat there for a moment. She's deaf? Hmmm.... lip reading, while Brice's hearing wasn't completely gone, it was bad enough that he couldn't tell what people were saying to him unless they were real close. And even then he would only get snippets of words and phrases. But if I learned to do this lip reading, I'll be able to keep up the charade of hearing a lot better.
He looked up to ask the girl about it, only to find that he was alone in the hallway. He started rolling down the hall looking for her, but suddenly he felt his wheelchair stop and a garbled voice talking behind him. Looking up, he saw that it was that drill sergeant of a nurse, Mrs. Williams.
He was glad he couldn't understand what she was saying as she pushed him back into his room and bullied him back into bed. He was dismayed however that she was taking the wheelchair with her as she left.
"Hey! I need that!" She just gave him a stern look and left any ways. "Witch." he muttered, trapped in his room again.
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