Chapter Two – Foster, Indiana

Ava Hester struggled to push her cleaning cart down the winding corridors of St. John’s Memorial Hospital’s massive basement. With each ascending step forward maneuvering a heavy loaded metal cart, pain gripped her pelvic area on into her inner thighs. Perpetual agony seized her fifty-nine year old frame, as though she had undergone the gruesome torture device prevalent during England’s reign of the Tudor Dynasty, the Rack.

        There was no time to be giving in to her immediate malady, she had her orders from radio message from her supervisor, Mitch Fareway. He wanted her to check the recently cleaned dismissal rooms on 6South to inspect the work. Despite the difficulty her hips letting out a muffled popping sound underneath her navy blue scrubs, she slid into the basement Elevator 11 like a graceful dancer. Taking a deep breath, “well, it’s gone for now. Thank you, God!” Ava spoke out only herself to hear. The time was seven-fifty p.m.

        She parked her cart close to the service elevators nestled in front of the locked janitor closet. Marilyn, a friendly mature large brown-eyed African American floor secretary manned the floor’s front desk. The nurses and nurse attendants behind her were taking a break eating and laughing during their Friday night pitch-in.

        “Hey, Marilyn, how’s trick?” Ava asked as she glanced over the Environmental Tally Book. Marilyn chuckled, then filled her in. “You will see your gals got to ten dismissals in record time. We seem to be good for now.”

        Ava made her way to Room 631, the first of the rooms to inspect for the nightly quota. Passing Room 601, a lingering foul odor hit her in the face. She heard a squeaky wilting voice, “Nurse, help me! I had an accident, nurse!”

        What the Environmental Senior Housekeeper discovered in 601 caused all her senses to react in a silent revulsion. There laid an elderly woman appearing so frail, as a victim of the German concentration camps during the Holocaust in World War II. The sight on the sheets and the odor was explained why the poor woman was in such distress. The sheet underneath her ruffled soiled gown was soaked in watery feces, and making its descent to the floor under her bed. Ava, despite the ever-increasing mess moved closer to the woman’s face to her better. “My bag burst. I’ve been laying here for what seems like hours.”

        The patient’s eyes were sunken in. Ava could make out a faint filmy color of hazel. Suddenly, looking deeper at this woman, she knew who she was. Beatrice Tibbitts, the author of mysteries that had received widespread notoriety for the last three decades. Her connection to this woman brought her back to when her children were in high school. She took a creative writing course from Beatrice.

        “Mrs. Tibbitts, I will get you help. Just hang on, one moment.” Ava pleaded, then raced to the nurses’ station. Typical everyone on staff still gorging themselves on buffalo wings, loaded baked potato skins, and carrot cake.

        “Look, Beatrice Tibbitts in Room 601 needs help, Stat! She’s been lying in her excrement for hours!” Ava shouted above the endless chatter and annoying female cackles of laughter. Marilyn was the only person to reassure Ava was well among her rights to shout at them. “Is there anything I can do?”

        After two corpulent nurse assistants in red violet skin-tight scrubs moved toward 601, Ava grabbed her cart. Beatrice, frail as she proved to be with assistance was able to make it to the shower for a ‘sits bath’. Ava cleaned every crevice and surface that was affected by the fecal material. Beatrice was put back in her cleaned bed, freshened by Marilyn putting on white laundered sheets and a clean lightweight comforter. The foul air in the room now much vacated, Beatrice’s tubing changed and secured, she began to recognize her savior. “Ava Hester, are you still writing?” She asked as she enjoyed a glass of cold water.

        “Yes, I am. Not getting published, my daughter Betsy is a literary agent for LittleJohn in San Francisco. I’ve sent her finished manuscripts for three years now, no favorable response.” Ava said, pulling one of the room chairs closer to Beatrice’s bed.

        Beatrice laid there, her eyes stared hard at Ava. “My dear, have you ever heard of ‘Insect Politics’? Survival of the Fittest, the infirmed and the elderly are to be systematically wiped out. Keep writing, you are strong enough to tell the story. I remember, you had promise.” She said, then lowered her head and closed her eyes into an exhausted repose.

        Evening shift over, the shock of seeing her former writing teacher in such a state deeply disturbed Ava. A puzzlement developed on the ride home, Beatrice probably in the last stages of bowel cancer should be plagued by confusion from all the medicine she was under. Her body totally taken over by the disease emaciated beyond reason, but her mind seemed intact, her words rang with the intelligence of the writer she had always been.

        Reaching her small house, Ava was in no mood for late night talk shows and cable movies. She climbed into her warm soft bed shifting her morbid thoughts to remembering a  better time when she worked at Foster High School. The atmosphere there was extremely uplifting; teachers, other fellow custodians, and office personnel collectively possessed goals to make the learning environment for the students, the best it could be. There was Dalton Lazenby.

        In 2004 when Ava could get away with looking younger than her years, ‘hot n’ tasty cougar’, forty-nine year old strawberry blonde with sexy green eyes and sex appeal even in worn-out jeans. Dalton put it once, ‘could make a preacher throw away his Bible.’ The high school groundskeeper possessed the occupational hazard of being perpetually dirty and disheveled most of the time. When he cleaned up, his ruddiness gave him a very appealing quality. His face looked leathery from the consistent exposure to the outside elements. When he would lean in close to kiss Ava, she enjoyed looking into his sensual green eyes.

        Their intimate moments were dominated by his tender touch around her breasts, abdomen, and inner thighs. The touching and kissing went on for hours, surprisingly, he didn’t have to enter her for Ava to reach a full orgasm or even two. As in every ill-fated risky love affair, there were two factors that tore them apart. One was his wife of twenty-eight years, and two, Ava’s love of independence which kept her from promising Dalton a firm commitment.

        As she drifted from her memories of supreme passion, the tern ‘Insect Politics’ invaded her bedtime fantasy. It was two a.m., sleep came upon her, a heavy drug paralyzing every appendage. She would search for the disturbing set of words Beatrice uttered, tomorrow. Saturday was allocated to spend at the Foster Public Library, in spite of the insipid chatter from children roaming around with no supervision.

Home for Ava was a two-bedroom rental white painted wood-framed dwelling, part of a quiet wooded neighborhood amongst older residents who had raised their children on East Oak St. Her two children, Betsy and Ryan, two years apart were in their twenties, very well established in their careers of choice. Ryan due to call this weekend was a zoologist taking up temporary residence in West Palm Beach, Florida.

        Ava’s mothering skills were much more in tune with meeting the specific needs of her children. Her wifely role was another matter entirely. She froze out a perfectly loving husband, Jack Hester, for the only explanation that made sense to her, constant nagging of being smothered. She woke to making sure the coffee was on, filing in her mind the projects of the weekend. This practice kept her mind from dwelling on the loneliness as a solitary woman of her own making.

        The phone rang, To her delight, it was Ryan. “Hey, there, how’s it going?” He asked, his deep voice acting as an emotional balm she needed every now and then.

        “You know me, sweetie. I’m not happy unless I work my body to the point of decrepitude. Hey, by the way, I heard the term ‘Insect Politics’ last night. I cannot get it out of my head.”

        “The film, The Fly, Jeff Goldblum’s character mentioned it as he was turning into the insect. Insects with no basis for ethics exist in their brutal community of ‘Survival of the Fittest’. Large groups of workers eat, breed, and survive for the dominate stronger few. The weak or sick are quickly eliminated.” He spoke as though he was giving a lecture for college students.

        “Why bring it up?”

        “Beatrice Tibbitts, the mystery writer that influenced me to take up writing is dying of cancer. I helped her get cleaned up last night. The nursing staff was feeding their faces while she sat in her own mess for hours. Ryan, her appearance was ghastly. She had been such a hearty handsome woman. Before I left her room, she mentioned exactly what you said.” Ava said, holding back her emotions for her mentor.

        “You know, Mom. Why don’t you look into that? You could possibly write about it” Saying that, he faded some, talking to a female voice in the background.

        “Mom, sorry to cut this short. Da’Nai has been after me to take her to Sebastain. Love you, and really, look into that.” His parting words convinced her last night’s disturbing encounter could have some future purpose.

        In rapid succession, she received another call while her coffee mug became empty. “Hey, best friend, I’ve got my social security check! I feel like hitting the slot machines. Are you in?” Kate Moody, Ava’s longtime friend persuading her to join for a guilty pleasure.

        Overtime pay made it possible for her to withdraw some funds without disturbing her monthly expenses. “I’ll be at your house about two.”