MISSING — BELINDA 1986

At first I wasn't worried when Lynne disappeared from my life. She had disappeared before and returned. It was August in Los Angeles, and all the people who can get away pack their bags. If I could, I too would escape from the broken backs, the torn meniscuses, and the arrogant doctors of the Ortho ward at Arcadia Memorial Hospital where I put in my mind-numbing sixty-hour weeks. I figured Lynne must have gone to visit her family with her new baby. I wouldn't have given it a second thought if it weren't for the envelope hidden in my basement that I had promised to safeguard for her.

Lynne had called me right after her baby was born in the beginning of August. I knew he was born on August 2, that her labor was five hours long, and that the baby's name was Alex. Alex is my favorite uncle, she explained, even though I hadn't asked about the origins of his name. I bit my tongue and didn't say, If uncle Alex is such a favorite, why haven't you ever mentioned him to me before? which was what I was thinking. With most people I didn't give a shit and just said what was on my mind, but I had come to be more careful with Lynne. She deserved that consideration.

Lynne liked that I was blunt. About a week after she started working evenings as a unit clerk on the Ortho ward, she came up to me as I was doing my charts.

I heard what you said to that doctor, she began in her serious, husky voice.

Already eavesdropping on confidential nurse-doctor conversations? I kidded, not sure where she was coming from. But she wasn't put off.

Dr. Stanwyck was accusing that elderly Black patient who just had back surgery of manipulative behavior because he wanted more pain meds.

I interrupted her.

Oh, yes, young Dr. Stanwyck. Just finished med school and he thinks he's the supreme authority on pain and manipulation. But sweetie, that's my specialty. So I told him that poor Mr. Williams needs his meds or he isn't going to be able to heal correctly. I stopped myself before I turned it into a rant.

Weren't you worried you'd get in trouble — telling a doctor that you knew better than he did?

Oh, it's okay. If they fire me, I'll just go back to being a waitress. Almost as much money and less stress.

Lynne laughed, and when she did her mouth relaxed and she stopped being such a super-solemn chick. It made me want to get to know her even though it was against my rules to get too friendly with anyone at work.

I had noticed her the first day she started the job. She was wearing dangling amethyst earrings and bright purple pants underneath her required striped uniform top. Her hair was reddish and cropped short, almost like she had chopped it off herself (something I often did instead of wasting money on a haircut). Altogether she had a radically different look from our last unit clerk, Tammy, who had been strictly pastel, fake pearls, and dark roots eclipsing her ultrablonde waves. I could have easily ignored Tammy's constant silly chatter, but I couldn't stand how her voice changed from slurpy to shrill when she commanded the Mexican orderlies to run errands that were really in her job description. So it wasn't a big loss when Tammy got pregnant with her third child and decided that it would be cheaper to stop working and stay home to take care of her kids.

After our first talk about back pain and doctors, Lynne and I couldn't seem to find any small talk groove to get us to the next step in our acquaintance. Lynne seemed to always be mulling over something momentous in her head during her spare moments between answering call bells and transcribing doctor's orders. Once I commented that she was the first unit clerk I ever knew who read long foreign novels in the break room. She immediately looked uncomfortable, almost guilty, and mumbled something about having majored in Latin American literature in college, so I dropped it.

One time she asked me why I always wore a white nurse's cap when they were no longer required. It seemed to her that the caps had sexist associations.

The nurse's cap originally derives from the nun's habit. I wear it to remind myself that I am eternally committed to an equally sacred profession. I watched amused as Lynne seriously began to turn this answer over in her head. Before she could reply, I switched it up.

Actually, it's my version of a witch's hat, and I wear it to promote an alternative form of healing in this bastion of Western medicine. Now she was looking frustrated, so I decided enough was enough and started to laugh.

Sweetie, I just wear it to keep my prematurely gray mop of hair in place, I offered in a conciliatory tone. This time she chuckled. Still, I wasn't sure I wanted to get to know the kind of person who claimed the moral high ground about a nurse's cap.

But a few months after she started the job, when I saw her dancing at the staff Christmas party she blew away all the pop psychology character theories I had been busy constructing about her. Staff Christmas parties were the one work-related social function I made myself go to each year. I avoided the department parties, held in the hospital conference room, where nurses, doctors, clerks, and orderlies were all supposed to intermingle like equals and forget who really ordered who around. After the uncomfortable party icebreakers, where we were obliged to partner off with a member of a different vocational sector, each group quickly gravitated toward their own segregated occupational zone. The staff parties, however, didn't include the doctors and the venue rotated from one person's house to the next each year, although I had made it clear that my house was out of bounds.

That year, the party was at Juan's house. Juan was the orderly I liked the best. He never complained when you asked him for help moving a patient, even when it was time for him to clock out, and he was always willing to help translate a patient's requests from Spanish to English if you needed him to. Most of the nursing assistants and clerks thought he was very cute. Even though I warned each of them that he had way too many novias already, it didn't stop them from flirting with him at every opportunity. But Lynne had never expressed any interest in Juan, so I was a little surprised when forty-five minutes into the party, before anyone had a chance to get really plastered on the huge assortment of booze spread across the table, I looked away from Imelda, the nurse I was talking to, and caught a glimpse of Lynne dancing with Juan. I tried to get back to my conversation with Imelda, but my eyes kept wandering back to Lynne.

She was wearing her signature purple pants, but in place of the uniform top she had on an aqua and purple flowered Hawaiian shirt, which might have looked loud and stupid on someone else, but somehow she was able to bring it off. Instead of looking like she was trying to figure out the world's problems, she was totally absorbed in the beat of this old disco song, shaking and rolling her hips like this was what she had been longing to burst out and do every day while she was hunched over, transcribing...