Bookmark this on Delicious

Michael Angrosino

Michael Angrosino is Professsor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of South Florida. He currently resides in New Jersey and looks forward to having more time to devote to fiction writing.

The cardiac care unit at University General Hospital was the center of my drastically altered world not so long ago as I recovered from bypass surgery. Although festooned with enough wires, tubes, drains, and catheters to suggest that some mad quasi-genius had tried to turn my mortal body into a grotesque sci-fi human/machine mutation, I was feeling sufficiently alert to turn my attention to the stuffed animals that had been sent or brought by friends and relatives and that were waiting for me, lined up neatly on the window sill. I made a quick survey of their ranks. There were teddy bears of various shapes, colors, and sizes, a couple of smooching froggies, a smirking pig with an outsized crimson heart embroidered on his rump, and a silvery unicorn dressed in surgical scrubs.

Then I noticed that crammed into a corner behind one of the bears was a figure who clearly hadn’t attended the hospital gift shop orientation lecture about bringing cheer to the afflicted. It was a parrot dressed in buccaneer garb, and he was crouched in the corner exuding truly piratical menace. No charming Jack Sparrow he. The polly was skinny, with meager, bile-green fuzz that made him look like his feathers had succumbed to some sort of tropical parasite. His eye patch was definitely sinister rather than yo-ho-ho jaunty, and his bandana was stained and ragged. The area around his peg leg looked swollen and infected.

I wondered which of my oddball acquaintances might have chosen such a gift, but there didn’t seem to be a card attached. In any case, I was soon interrupted by Charlisse, one of the housekeepers. Charlisse was from the Caribbean, and she was the mistress of a very considerable repertoire of West Indian musical genres. In her early twenties, she naturally favored modern styles like soca and reggaeton, but much to my delight she also knew old-time calypso of the Mighty Sparrow and Lord Kitchener vintage, which took me back to my very first visit to the region when the world was young and my heart was in one piece. Charlisse was always singing as she worked her way down the hall and during my several days on the unit I came to look forward to the time she spent there.

“Which part of the Caribbean are you from?” I asked her once.

“Oh sir, is a very small island – you never hear of it.”

“Well, I’ve traveled a lot down there – I’m pretty familiar with the region, even some of the out-of-the-way places.”

“No sir, is a very small island,” she said with a finality that invited no further inquiry.

That morning Charlisse decided to straighten up the toys at the window, singing Bob Marley’s Trenchtown Rock as she did so: “One good thing about music,/When it hits you feel no pain.” Not a bad anthem for a cardiac care unit. But she stopped abruptly when she got to the polly.

“Where this come from?” she demanded.

“I don’t know. I didn’t see a card and I can’t remember anyone bringing it.”

“This thing – it must go!”

“What’s wrong?”

“Is bad. Bad juju. Someone want to do you harm. Oh sir!”

Just then Nurse Juanita came in with a needle the size of a railroad spike and she saw Charlisse frozen in horror by the window. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Charlisse thinks that polly is bad luck.”

Nurse Juanita clucked briskly and said, “Charlisse, you must not upset the patients. If you’re finished here, you may go.” She seemed to be unaware that looming over a patient with a syringe the size of a telephone pole might also be upsetting.

Charlisse slunk out of the room, but not before casting a baleful look in my direction behind Nurse Juanita’s back.

Later on I called a few people I thought might have the sense of humor required to have sent Polly the Pirate as a get-well present.

“Did you bring me a parrot when you were here yesterday?” I asked Laura my artist friend who was known for her impishly askew sense of style.

“No. I brought you that beautiful plush teddy with the blue eyes…” she replied in a voice that betrayed her suspicion that the surgery had left me disoriented and cognitively impaired.

“Bobby, did you send me a stuffed parrot?” I asked an office-mate notorious for his less than cheerful attitude.

“No, I didn’t send you a parrot. In fact I didn’t send you anything. Life’s been a mess lately and, frankly, you’re not at the top of my list of things to worry about this week. What are you trying to do – make me feel guilty? I’ll send you a card as soon as things clear up around here, so stop whining.” He went on in this vein for quite a while, discouraging me from pursuing the matter with anyone else.

I heard Charlisse singing in a room down the hall and when she passed my door I motioned for her to come in. She did so fearfully, as if the very room was permeated by forces she had to steel herself to deal with.

“Charlisse, you can take this thing away if it’s bothering you.” I pointed to the villainous polly. To tell you the truth, it was beginning to get on my nerves, quite apart from Charlisse’s alarmist tone.

“Yes. Oh, good! Oh, yes sir. I will take he away and destroy. Yes, is good you see he cannot stay here.”

She snatched the offending toy and, carrying it with her fingertips at full arms’ length, she marched Polly to his doom. I guessed that he would meet a gruesome end amid the hospital’s biohazard waste products. But I awoke the next morning and there on my bedside table sat the little pirate as insolent as you please. He seemed a bit singed around the edges, but was otherwise not much the worse for wear. I must admit, though, that the look in his one good eye seemed more malevolent than before.

By and by Charlisse came in, singing happily. But she stopped in mid-verse, stared popeyed at Polly, and then uttered a terrible stifled scream.

“I thought you were going to get rid of this thing,” I said as soon as I ascertained that she wasn’t going to keel over onto my bed.

“Oh sir. I did, sir. I took he away. I put he… Well, I put he somewhere he cannot get out. How he here? How he here?”

“Well, don’t worry, but please just get rid of it now.”

“I cannot, sir. Is too powerful. Oh sir. I am so sorry. I am so sorry, sir. Oh sir!” And she ran out sobbing.

“Charlisse!” I heard Nurse Juanita say sharply in the hall. “How many times must I tell you not to frighten the patients?” She came in with a cup full to the brim with a frightening number of pills.

“What’s all this carrying on?” she asked.

“Oh, I told Charlisse to get rid of this parrot, but…”

“For heaven’s sake,” said Nurse Juanita, seizing Polly by his good leg and heaving him into the large waste basket by the sink. She then calmly returned to stand over me to make sure I swallowed every last one of her thirteen dozen pills.

Although I distinctly saw one of the other housekeepers take out the Polly-filled waste basket, you will probably not be surprised to learn that later in the afternoon, when I returned from a halting stroll around the halls with the physical therapist, Polly was sitting on my bed, looking as if he definitely had a bone to pick with me.

“Have it your way, pal,” I said as I put him back on the window shelf. I caught a glimpse of Charlisse staring at me in consternation from across the hall. She then disappeared for the rest of the day.

Now when you’re in the hospital, you get used to having your nighttime sleep interrupted at regular intervals by techs recording “vitals” or drawing blood or taking chest x-rays. Because they were supposed to monitor my output of urine, I was directed to deposit my fluids in a graded jug. For some reason, I never discovered the exact spot where Celi, the night nurse, expected to find the bottle. So on top of all the other interruptions, she would always come in around 3 AM, switch on the overhead lights, and demand, “Where is your pee?” So the night before my discharge I was not surprised to hear the sound of scuffling feet and muted whispers in the wee small hours. But for once no one was making a grab for my anatomy. Instead, the footsteps and voices seemed headed toward the window.

Hoisting myself up as best I could, I found my glasses and saw Charlisse leading by the hand an apparently blind, inconceivably wrinkled old crone who was decked out in red and yellow ribbons. Both were barefoot. They carried handfuls of some sort of seed pod, which they shook rhythmically. When they reached the window, they knelt down. The old lady drew forth from the recesses of her robe a bunch of grass that gave off a tangy, lemony aroma as she set a match to it. She held the little blaze aloft as she chanted and moaned. Charlisse continued to shake her seed pods as she swayed to the rhythm of the beldame’s incantations.

At length, the hag let out a shuddering sigh and fell over in a heap. Charlisse got to her feet and helped her companion get up. The old lady blew out the burning grass and tossed a clump in Polly’s direction with Charlisse guiding her aim. The two shuffled out without saying a word. I couldn’t tell whether or not they were aware I was awake and watching them.

When Nurse Celi came in a little later demanding to know the whereabouts of my piss, she said loudly, “Who’s been smoking in here?” I pretended to be asleep.

The next morning I looked at the window shelf. The clump of grass had disappeared, perhaps removed by Nurse Celi. But Polly looked – how can I put this? – distinctly chastened. The evil gleam was gone from his eye and he drooped against the wall as if he no longer had the energy to carry out his nefarious plans. His ratty bandana sagged forlornly and it seemed as if his leg could no longer support his weight.

Charlisse came in while I was waiting for discharge.

“You know I saw you and your friend last night,” I told her.

“Hmmm,” she replied noncommittally, casting a contemptuous glance at the deflated Polly. “Is okay now. She more powerful than he.”

“Who was she?”

“She from my island. She know lots of things. Do not worry, sir. She owe my family big favor from back home. No charge.”

“Well, thank you. But why are you so concerned about me?”

“Sir, this is my floor – just like is Nurse Juanita’s or Dr. Evangelides’ floor. All-a you patients is my responsibility. Now alla-dem others they know their white medicine, and that’s good. But sometimes there’s a problem they can’t handle – that they don’t even recognize.”

“Like Polly?”

“Do not make jest, sir. You have a powerful enemy who was fighting the white medicine. But he was not powerful enough. I am part of this team. It is my duty to step in when the others cannot help. Now you are safe. You can go home.”

“So your friend – she is an obeah-woman?”

“Hmmm.” She did not seem surprised that I knew the term.

“Has this happened before?”

“Oh yes. But usually I can take care of it myself. This time – I needed her help.”

“But I don’t have any enemies. Who would want to hurt me?”

“Hmmm. That is not for me to say. Inside you, outside you – enemies one way or t’other. How you t’ink you get in this place to begin with?”

“But I was getting well,” I said a bit less confidently. “I was going home today anyway.”

“You t’ink?”

Charlisse marched over to the window, snatched up Polly and set him next to me. “You take him home. Now he has been turned. He will be your medicine forever.” And she began singing Bob Marley’s Redemption Song: “Won’t you help to sing/These songs of freedom?”

I did take Polly home. He now sits, a bit resentfully perhaps, but definitely tamed, atop my bookcase. He’s been watching me type this story. I’m sure he’s ticked off at having been thwarted, but now he has no choice but to somehow use his wiles to keep me in one piece now that I’ve been ripped open and sewn back together.

I sometimes wonder if the glossy brochures turned out by University General Hospital’s cardiac unit ought to include a full roster of its care team with a nice picture of Charlisse singing calypso as her obeah-woman lurks in the shadows behind her. “Providing something for whatever ails you,” could be their new slogan.