By the Light of the Moon

The white disc
marred by spreading tar
and tiny, lonely peaks

Is near enough
to touch tonight




Grace has been feverish today and is on an antibiotic. She’s four and doesn’t understand why daddy goes to work when other daddies are arriving home.

“I made you a picture and spelled my name.”

I look at the squiggles, using four different color crayons and it looks genius to me—especially her name carefully crafted in bubble letters.

“That’s beautiful, Princess Dora.” —She’s Dora the Explorer and I’m both Ernie and Bert.

“I want Ernie to put me to bed tonight,” she pouts.

“Can’t Mommy do that?”

“Mommy bathes me—Ernie tells me stories.”

Inescapable logic—but I have the afternoon shift and won’t be home until after midnight.

“You say goodnight to the Man in the Moon and Daddy will kiss you when he gets home tonight.”

She frowns and looks cross, but when I head out the door, she clings to my neck for dear life. It’s hard to see her sad face at the window as I drive off.

It’s a Monday and surprisingly dead. There’s a hockey game on TV and it might be the post Christmas lull, but nothing’s popping.

I’ve already eaten my sandwich and drank one too many coffees, so I use my official supper break and head down to the psych ward.

Three psych patients are stranded before the electric door leading to the elevator that goes down to the ward.

“Hey, Doc! —Security locked the door and the receptionist says we have to walk around the building to the other entrance.”

I look at two of them in slippers and the other in a housecoat. There’s an 80 mph wind outside and it’s below zero.

“Really?”

I get on the phone and within seconds the door is unlocked.

As I get off the elevator at the ward I run into Doris, a Mohawk Indian, who’s out pacing the hall.

“S’up, Doris?” I smile.

“No money for coffee,” She frowns.

I flip her my Tim Horton’s coffee card. “Use this and bring it back to me when you come back down.”

She smiles from ear to ear. Doris is an alcoholic and her social worker’s told her she has to dump all her alcoholic friends—that means everybody she knows on the reservation.

I tell her she can come to a support group here and work part-time as a cleaner to make some cash. She thinks I’m Superman—I’m not. I just care about where she ends up.

I walk in and nod to the bored nurses clustered round a TV at the nurses’ station—most don’t even bother to look up or wave.

I pass Alice’s room and stop because I can hear her crying.

Alice is one of the forty percent without visitors. He sister’s a writer who wrote a memoir about a woman she barely knew who was dying of cancer. She wrote stories to cheer her up and then afterwards published them as an encouragement to others in a similar predicament.

Strangely, she ignores her own flesh and blood.

I rap lightly and Alice invites me in.

“Feeling teary today?”

She nods. “Don’t know if it’s my depression or the fact I’m not able to take my meds like I do at home.”

“Has your psychiatrist changed your prescription?”

“No. The nurses challenge me every time I ask for my meds. They lecture me—tell me my pills are addictive—then make me wait a few more hours.”

I check the computer—her scrip calls for meds to be taken prn, as needed.

I go back out to the nurses’ station and find Nancy, her nurse. “Did you refuse meds for Alice?”

“I did,” she admits, “but they’re highly addictive and I just try to get her to wait a little longer and not depend on them every time she feels a little anxious or depressed.”

“Alice is in a well supervised, clinical setting.” My voice is dripping with sarcasm. “Since her scrip says prn, give her the damn meds when needed and drop the lectures.”

“Yes Doctor.”

A curtsey would be in order, I muse inwardly.

I take Alice her anti-depressant and she looks relieved.

“My sister emailed me—said she might drop by next Tuesday after her church meeting, if she has time.”

“Good,” I have to guard my tongue. “Does your sister offer you any encouragement in her emails?”

“Oh, she sends me copies of her stories—sometimes asks me to edit them.”

“But does she give you any support or advice?”

“Not really, Doctor. My sister’s not like me—she’s a kind of happiness bully—she doesn’t like unpleasantness. Last time we talked and I told her I was down, she told me, whenever you feel sad …stop being sad and start being awesome instead!”

I try not to grimace, but my hands are itchy—very itchy indeed.

On my way back to the Emergency department, I hear a code yellow—I ask a nurse. She tells me a mental patient was unable to return to the psych ward and left the hospital by cab.

I shake my head.

It’s past midnight when I finally get in my door. Deb’s asleep and the house is in darkness. I creep upstairs to Grace’s room and look in on her. She ‘s lying there wide-awake, staring out the window.

“Ernie!”

“Shhhh! Hi there, Princess Dora. Watcha doing?”

“Oh, Ernie—I can’t go to sleep unless I see the Moon.”

It’s lightly snowing outside and dark clouds are racing across the sky.

“How about if I lie down and tell you a story?”

“About the Moon?”

I nod and lie down beside her.

“How about a One Day Story?”

She yawns and nods.

“One day Princess Dora was looking out her window and the Moon rose. It was so big, Dora thought she could touch it!”

Grace’s little hand grasps mine and I feel her little fingers holding on tightly.

“Well, Dora reached out and guess what? She actually touched the Moon. She grabbed hold of the rim of a crater and in no time at all, she was sitting on the Moon looking down on the houses below.”

Grace’s hand relaxes a little.

“All night long she sat there and the earth below kept turning until finally, her house came into view. She waited until her window was close and then she stepped down from the Moon and was back in her bedroom. She was so tired she went to bed and slept and slept.”

I hear her measured breathing beside me. I roll off the bed, just as a thin crescent Moon breaks through a rift in the clouds. I smile.

Grace sleeps, her breath soft as snowflakes.

She’s cared for and loved. I think of Doris and Alice back in the hospital. Perhaps they too will sleep well tonight.

I close Grace’s door and undress in the dark of my own bedroom and crawl into bed beside Deb.

Through the parted drape, a star waxes and wanes and I listen to Deb’s measured breath and the roar of the wind outside.

The long day is over and the bed is warm. I cuddle close.

Soon Grace will greet the Sun, “Good Morning!”

The end of the night.

© 2017, John J Geddes. All rights reserved

Photo