He was in chair six

Quarter to five I'm through the door because I like being in before they turn the machines over. Sixteen chairs. Four techs if nobody called out, and somebody called out.

Six is down at the end of the row by the glass block window. Ray had it Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday on the first shift for seven months. Left upper arm fistula, good thrill on it. The kind of access you get maybe one in ten.

He wanted the same two spots every time so we ran buttonholes and I used the dulls. After about a month I could do it without looking at it much. He'd have the arm out on the pad before the tray was even over. Seven months is around ninety sticks.

Eighty-four two dry. Tuesdays he'd come in two and a half up from the weekend and we'd take it off and he'd sit there like nothing was moving. Never cramped. Not once in seven months.

He was a service writer at a dealership on Van Dyke and he went straight there off the chair. He shaved his head like I do, and his came out better than mine. I do mine in the sink with a mirror propped on the tank and I always miss the same spot behind my ear.

The TVs are on arms, one per chair, and everybody gets headphones. He never took the headphones and he never put the captions on either. Four hours of Family Feud with nothing on it. I asked him about it in maybe the third month and he said he already knew what they were going to say.

That's the level it was at. Weather. The guy in nine who keeps his phone on speaker the whole run with the volume up on a woman in Georgia telling him about her knee. Ray had a thing where he'd look over at nine and then look at me and not say anything.

Winter he'd come in with salt up the back of his coat and I'd get it on the hook for him, because you can't do much with one arm taped. August that building runs about six degrees colder than it has to, and he'd ask for the second blanket every time, and by spring I was getting it before he asked. He kept his keys in his hand the whole four hours.

The Saturday was the sixteenth. We went on early, he ran clean, no alarms the whole run, rinseback at nine forty. I pulled the needles and he held his own sites the way he always did, full ten minutes, never let go early like some of them do. He got his post weight and signed out.

He left a parking receipt on the arm of six. The structure on Clifford. He'd written a number on the back of it with a pen from the dealership, a 313. I was standing at the foot of the chair coiling the lines and I read it from there and I didn't pick it up.

Then I had eleven to turn over and second shift was already out in the hallway with their coats still on. Cleaning comes through between shifts with the cart and they wipe the arms down, and whatever's on the arm goes in the bag. I was four chairs off sanitizing a station and I watched the woman do it. She's been there longer than me. She didn't look at it either.

There's a page in the handbook about relationships with patients. Page nine, about a paragraph and a half.

Tuesday he came in at ten after five and put his arm out on the pad. I said morning, he said morning. Eighty-six one, so two up. I set the goal and we went and he watched the TV with the sound off.

Same Thursday and same Saturday. Then the Tuesday and the Thursday after that. Five more runs and neither one of us said a word about it. He asked about my daughter. I told him about the thing at her school where she was a cloud and they made the costume out of a pillowcase.

The Saturday after that, six was empty at ten after five. Still empty at five thirty. I had eight and eleven going and I kept walking past six anyway because the chart was still hanging on it.

Charge nurse told me around seven. He got the call Thursday night, went down to Ford, and they had him in surgery Friday morning. Deceased donor, good match.

That's the best thing that happens in that room. We had a guy last spring got one and the whole floor was banging on the counter with clipboards.

I finished out and picked up the double because Rochelle called out. The machine in the hallway had the Rock and Rye that day.

I've been taking every extra shift they put on the board and I got short with a new girl about a clamp that didn't matter. My sister asked me at a cookout what was wrong with me and I told her the a/c in that building.

Six has a man in it now. Sixty-eight, graft in the forearm, hard stick. I infiltrated him the second week and had to come up above it. He brings his own pillow in from the car in a grocery bag and his wife waits for him out in the lot the whole run with the car on.

Wednesday I had my daughter and she wanted the drive-thru on Twelve Mile and got the nuggets and ate two of them, and then she was out in the back seat before we got to Mound. I sat in the lot at her mother's building with the engine running a while.