One, and a Bit of a Thumb

It was the hottest day of the year when Wendy Robertson came home from her family vacation and reported to work as a nurse at the St. Joseph’s Women’s Hospital. This was the cause of much excitement from the on-duty nurses, because Wendy’s family always seemed to find trouble whenever they went away for a few weeks.

It was a slow day, made slower by the summer heat seeping through the very walls around them. There had already been two successful deliveries that morning, with the current occupants of Maternity Room 3 on deck for the afternoon. With not much to do at the moment, the three on-duty nurses were eager to hear what calamity had befallen the Robertson family this time.

Wendy was a storyteller by nature, and her stories never disappointed. There had been the time her family had been staying at a campsite near the Florida/Georgia state line and stumbled upon a labor trafficking ring. That story had been bested a year later when their flight out of Orlando to upstate New York had almost been hijacked by a man who tried to divert the plane to Cuba. The hijack attempt had ended when a pair of professional patriotic pugilists flying in coach had gotten up and beaten the man senseless, earning the eternal praise of the other passengers and an immediate upgrade to first class by the flight crew. Then there had been the time in Texas had, through a series of unfortunate misunderstandings involving a typo at the DMV resulting in their rental car being confused with a known drug lord’s personal vehicle, ended with Wendy’s family facing a federal roadblock and getting their front tires shot out by snipers.

“So, there we were,” Wendy said, brandishing her drinking cup like a holy orb while the other three nurses listened intently. “We get the beach house and we knew right away that something was wrong because of all the broken glass.”

“Bad sign,” said Nurse Jackie.

“Was there a break out?” asked Nurse Julie.

“Or a break in?” That was Nurse Lei, with a quick eyeroll at Nurse Julie.

Wendy said, “We figured a break-in. So, we unlock the front door with the code and the whole house has been turned upside down. The tables and chairs have all been knocked over, the couch cushions pulled out, and all the stuff from the kitchen drawers was on the floor.”

“So, a break-in,” said Nurse Lei, followed by nods of affirmation from Julie and Jackie.

An orderly wheeled an expectant mother into Maternity Room 3 and brought the information to the nurse station before departing. The nurses recorded the information.

Wendy said, “So, Michael calls the police while the kids start complaining about, ‘oh, why does this stuff always happen to us,’ which amazes me since it meant they had to put down their screens long enough to notice the mess. But I notice that while the whole front room looks like a hurricane went through it, nothing is really damaged. I mean, everything’s knocked over or emptied, but it’s all intact. I mean, usually in the shows and movies, if someone was looking for something hidden in the furniture, the cushions get cut open and anything wooden gets broken open like it’s got a secret compartment. But everything’s intact.”

“Huh,” said Nurse Jackie.

A tall man came out of the Maternity Room 3 wearing blue scrubs and the nervous energy of a soon-to-be father. The scrubs did not fit him well; he looked like a Sasquatch that had wondered into a clothes line and walked off with the clothes draped over and around him. Watching from the nurse station, Wendy was about to ask the tall gentleman if everything was all right when he started to drift down the hallway towards the bathrooms. She watched him go down the hall before turning back to her audience, who leaned forward in anticipation of a story that could top blasted tires or trafficking rings.

“What about the floorboards? Were their loose panels?” Nurse Julie liked true crime and murder mysteries, and her comment drew an admiring nod from Nurse Lei.

“Nothing,” Wendy said, “and that’s when I heard a noise come from the hallway.”

“What was the noise?” Nurse Lei said.

Wendy said, “I wasn’t sure at first, but with Michael on the phone and the kids out on the front porch refusing to come in, I took it upon myself to find out. There was a door in the hallway directly across from the kitchen, and it had been left slightly ajar. The noise was the hinges squeaking, so I open the door and see a stairwell.”

All three nurses said, “Basement?”

“Basement,” Wendy said with a nod.

The Sasquatch in blue hospital scrubs had reappeared and started making his way down the other side of the hall. He moved past the nurse station, completed the hallway trek, and made a left turn. The nurses watched him go, making note of the man’s aura of confusion and anxiety, and collectively decided to check on him when he came back. Expectant fathers left unattended in maternity wings could be trouble.

“You didn’t go into the basement, did you?” said Julie.

“Please say you didn’t,” said Jackie.

“Come on, Wendy, you didn’t,” said Lei.

Wendy looked guilty. “Well, I wasn’t going to, but then I heard another noise at the bottom of the stairwell and…”

Here all three nurses let out a collective groan, which Wendy batted away with her drink cup. When it came to critiquing questionable life choices, the nurse station of St. Joe’s could be a place of harsh judgment.

Nurse Jackie said, “Rookie mistake, Wendy!”

Wendy said, “I know, I know, but what else was I supposed to do?”

All three nurses said, “Don’t go into the basement!”

From the hallway came the sound of rapid movement, and everyone at the nurse station tensed as it got closer. They peered out from the nurse station like meerkats. Fast movement usually meant two things: either it was an emergency situation, or…

Orderly Gary appeared, pushing an empty bed at speed. He cut hard and drifted into the hallway, righted himself, and sped by the nurse station with a quick, “Afternoon, ladies!”

“Gary!” Nurse Lei stalked out from the nurse station to yell at Gary as he receded down the hall. “You know you’re not supposed to run around here like that!”

“Sorry, miss!” Gary did a hard right turn at the next hallway. “Just got the call from Theater 2! They said ASAP!”

“Well, be careful! You could hurt someone running around like that!”

It occurred to Wendy the last woman scheduled to give birth in the ward that afternoon had been wheeled out of Maternity Room 3 about 20 minutes past. She checked the log and, after confirming the woman had been taken to Theater 2, decided to go see about the Sasquatch in hospital scrubs.

Realizing what she was doing, the other nurses moved to assist. While Wendy and Lei moved to the hallway the Sasquatch had recently gone down, Julie went down the hallway Gary had just shot through just in case the man had taken a turn.

Remaining at the nurse station, Jackie said, “So, what happened in the basement?”

“I went down the stairs and into the basement. It only had one lightbulb on a pull switch, and I didn’t see anyone hiding in the corner when I pulled the switch. At least, not at first.”

Jackie called out, “What do you mean, not at first?”

Wendy peered down the hall and saw nothing, and neither did Lei or Julie. “Well, it took a moment for my eyes to get accustomed to the light, but when they did, I saw movement in the corner behind the dryer. I moved to the side, and there was a teenage girl crouched down right by the fabric softener.”

Julie and Jackie both beamed. “A teenage girl?”

Lei walked back to the nurse station. “What was she doing in there?”

Wendy said, “Hiding. I had just discovered her when Michael came down the steps, still on the phone with the police. He saw the girl and immediately panicked, started calling ‘there’s someone in the house!’ That scared the girl, who tried to rush past us. She ran right into Michael and knocked him into the washer, but she tripped on the stairs.”

Between phone calls to other departments inquiring on the whereabouts of their wandering Sasquatch, Wendy detailed how the girl, now sporting a bruised knee and panicking worse than before, offered a confession for breaking into the house.

Her parents owned the rental property. Two nights earlier, she had used their code to access the building and hosted an “epic house party.” As the party had not been held with parental consent, she had worked all day Saturday to clean up the mess before the new renters arrived. But then she woken up early Sunday and realized that she had left an expensive and incriminating set of earrings at the house. With Wendy’s family already en route to the house, the girl had gone back to the house with the intent of running in and collecting them before anyone else arrived.

Unfortunately, upon arriving at the house, the girl had discovered that her parents had changed the access codes. Panicking, she had decided to force her way into the house and stage a break-in to cover her tracks. The house had no alarm system, unusual for a rental home but there you are, and after having gained access with the application of a garden gnome through the window, the girl had turned the place upside-down looking for the earrings.

She had only just discovered the earrings when Wendy’s family had pulled into the driveway, and she had darted into the basement in the hopes of finding an exit or waiting until the family left.

The police eventually arrived. Order was restored when the girl confessed the whole thing to the police, who then relayed the story to the parents. The window was repaired the next day, the Robertson’s bill had been comped to make up for the trouble, and the girl was sent to work cleaning the other rental homes for the rest of the summer.

“Wow,” Julie and Jackie said when Wendy had finished.

“Why does this stuff always happen to you?” Lei asked, smiling as she shook her head in disbelief.

Wendy shrugged. “It was a pretty uneventful vacation after that. Just a week at the beach, nights in town or sitting on the patio with a glass of wine. We did see a celebrity at the beach. It was a professional tennis player. I can never remember her name. She’s married to that other tennis player, Andrea Agassi, the bald one that real famous 20 years back.”

“I remember her!” Julie said. “What was her name?”

“She was really good, too,” Jackie said. “It’s right on the tip of my tongue.”

“I like football,” Lei said.

“What was her name?”

From the hallway a man’s voice bellowed, “STEFFI GRAF!” The Sasquatch appeared in the hall, looming menacingly in the poorly-fitting set of blue scrubs. “NOW WHERE IS MY WIFE?”

Everyone was so taken aback by the demand that no one spoke up. Greeted with silence and stunned looks, the Sasquatch started to lurch toward them when he somehow managed to trip and fall over his own two feet. He was sprawled on the ground when, to Wendy’s horror, Orderly Gary zoomed into view and shot past them all but not before making the tiniest of bumps when he accidentally ran over the sprawled man’s finger and neatly severed the tip.

Later, when the man had his finger tip reattached free of charge and reunited with his wife in time to watch her deliver a healthy son, the hospital administrator got the full story from the four on-duty nurses, Orderly Gary, and the anesthesiologist who had attended the new mother and father.

As it turned out, the inhabitants of Maternity Room 3 had been separated when, due to high blood pressure and a stubborn pregnancy, the mother had been whisked away and the Sasquatch left in the room without explanation. As she left, an orderly had presented the Sasquatch, real name Bill, with a set of scrubs and told to wait until someone came for him.

Another expectant mother had been wheeled into Maternity Room 3 half an hour later, the woman and staff surprised to find Bill sitting on a stool in the empty maternity room. He had been asked to vacate the room, whereupon he had started wondering the halls looking for some sign of his wife.

The hospital administrator chose to omit most of these details when writing the official report of the incident. The administrator did, however, note the successful delivery of the third child and the reattachment of a thumb. On the way to the parking lot that evening, the heat still in the 90s even after dark, the administrator chuckled at the deliveries of “One, with a bit of a thumb.”