Poetry and Prose from the Center for Writers
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The English Nurse
by EDDIE MALONE
I told an English nurse I loved her because it was the romantic thing to do, and at the age of twenty-three I was a romantic kind of guy. If you find yourself in London and don’t know where you’re going in life, you have no choice. You have to fall in love.
The fact that Suzanne was an English nurse was like a nudge from God. I’d just finished reading Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, and if you haven’t read the novel, it’s enough to know that the American hero falls for an English nurse. The symmetry was perfect, I thought, ignoring the ominous fact that Catherine Barkley dies at the end. What’s more, I was hardly heroic.
In bed, at her flat, I told Suzanne that Texas was a wonderful place. “I think you’d like it,” I said.
She threw her head back and laughed. Suzanne had freckles on that ridge below the eyes and long, curly brown hair. She owned a motorcycle and once I rode on the back, my arms wrapped around her waist. Later, I believed I’d made a mistake. A man should never ride bitch.
At twenty-three, I was still thin and fragile. My high school soccer coach, a good ol’ boy, once likened me to a prisoner of war.
For a month, I wooed her. Suzanne worked the night shift at a hospital caring for the sick and dying—cardiac intensive care—which meant I never saw her during the week. On the weekends, we met at pubs in Central London. Once, we went to a dank nightclub that looked and smelled like a dungeon, and I discovered Suzanne couldn’t dance worth shit. I forgave her for it.
One Sunday morning, we rode the bus to Hyde Park where we picnicked in the sun. I asked about her job because I was genuinely interested. “There’s not much to tell,” Suzanne said, shrugging, but I felt she was holding back. She did say that she’d held a patient’s hand as he lay in bed dying. His family didn’t come to visit. On the same day, at her flat, Suzanne told me that her mother died from breast cancer, three years ago. This is a breakthrough, I thought. I told her about Texas again.
The following weekend, I couldn’t reach Suzanne by phone. I figured she was busy with work. On Tuesday, when I still hadn’t heard from her, I started to worry. I left a few messages on her voicemail. The next day, I called her friend, also a nurse, because I knew that something bad had taken place, an accident or mugging. Her friend didn’t call me back.
I was a mess on Thursday. I worked as a receptionist at a publishing company on Oxford Street—I was on a six-month work visa—and my boss noticed that something was up. Stephen was an Oxford graduate, in his early forties, with boyish looks and mischief in his blue eyes. He called me into his office.
“Your American energy, it’s not there today.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I’m concerned about its effect on the business since you are, in a very real way, the voice of the company. When our customers call, yours is the first voice they hear.”
I knew what he was saying, but at that moment I could give a shit.
“It’s a woman, isn’t it?”
I told him; it came pouring out. Stephen nodded. Then he told me what I should do.
“You must send her a dozen roses with a note attached. The note should say: ‘I demand a decision from you.’”
Stephen said that a woman would respond to a strong, assertive man. Deep down, it was what she really wanted. He told me about an old girlfriend for whom he prepared an elaborate dinner. The evening ended as romantically as it began. In the morning, as the woman joined him downstairs, Stephen gestured despairingly toward the dirty dishes and demanded that she clean the entire kitchen. “Look at this mess! Take care of this fucking mess!” The woman, successful and educated, responded by doing exactly as she was told.
I left his office feeling very confused.
Suzanne called me on Friday as I was walking to my bed-sit in Notting Hill, thinking about the cost of roses.
“You shouldn’t have called Emma,” she said. “If I don’t call it’s because I’m busy at the hospital.”
She sounded pissed off and I heard her out, hoping I could see her that night. I would make things up to her. But then she said we shouldn’t see each other again, and my whole body felt hollowed out.
“But I love you,” I said.
While in London, I was a terrible tourist. Instead of going to the Tate or St. Paul’s Cathedral, I toured the places where Suzanne and I had gone. I thought she might turn up at our favorite pubs, the Slug and Lettuce or The Abbey, and it wouldn’t be strange. “I’ve missed you,” she would say. “Can I buy you a pint?”
I left the country without seeing her again. Of course, I moved on with my life. But I think about Suzanne, even fifteen years later. Sometimes I get angry: “That fucking bitch thought I was stalking her. I was just concerned.” I wonder if she’s married and has children now. I remember that her mother died from cancer, which can be hereditary, and I imagine her lying in a hospital bed. Somehow I am holding her hand.
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