     s$
     $$     .d""b. .d""b.                  HOE E'ZINE #1106
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     $$  $$ $$  $$ $$ss$$                    "The Nurse"
     $$  $$ $$  $$ $$                         by, Kreid
     $$  $$ $$  $$ $$  $$                      6/28/00
 [-- $$  $$ $$  $$ $$  $$ -- ------------------------------------------- --]
     $$  $$ "TssT" "TssT"

 --(1)--

        I became a nurse so that I could heal.  That's not too unusual,
 right?

        "Hi, George, is it?  All right.  This here is morphine.  I'm just
 going to give you a shot of this to dull the pain.  Is that okay?"

        "Yes, yes.  And you are--?"

        "My name's Doug.  Here."  I plunge the morphine in and get a huge
 smile.  I make so many friends in this business.

        "L-listen... D-doug... I'm gonna need a little more of this stuff.
 I've got a little... tolerance... for this kind of s-stuff... a h-habit...
 understand?"

        I give George a big smile in return.  "I more than understand, buddy.
 Just give me a second."

        Driving the needle into his other arm reminds me a little too much
 of myself.  I take a coffee break to shoot up in the supply closet, very
 sanitary.  It's not like old times.  I use cotton and alcohol and a real
 tourniquet, and I throw away the needle when I'm finished.  I became a
 nurse so that I could heal.  That's not too unusual.

        I'm not too unusual.

        There must be guys like me all over this country.  When I went to
 college, I had no direction.  It was a small school.  Nursing was a popular
 major.  I became a nurse so that I could heal, for lack of any higher
 ambition.

 --(2)--

        Around quitting time, Phyllis showed up in my ward.  She was the
 newest and prettiest nurse at the hospital.

        Yeah, that's the other reason I became a nurse.

        Phyllis and I had a dinner date tonight at her apartment; she was
 cooking.  I do this a lot because I got off work too late to eat out and
 I can't cook for shit.

        "So, how are all your patients doing?" she asked.

        "If any of them could talk, I'd ask."  I laughed a little.  Phyllis
 didn't.  She's still new to the job.
     
        "Now here's a real tragedy.  This guy wrote a suicide note three
 pages long and then parked his car on the train tracks.  You'd think
 that'd be a pretty certain death, huh?"

        "I guess so..." she mumbled.

        "Yeah, well now look at him!  All burned to a crisp and crippled.
 It's amazing, you know, the resilience of life.  The guy gave up on life,
 but his body wouldn't; at least not in time.  Now we've got him on all
 these so-called life machines, so I guess his body couldn't give up even
 if it wanted to."

        "Dave, I think you need to calm down..."

        "Nah.  I'm okay.  I don't care.  Let's go."

 --(3)--

	I woke up the next morning around 6:30.

        "Ah, what a beautiful morning," I said to her.  "The sun is shining;
 I feel alive!  Of all the euphoria in my life, nothing compares to a sunny
 day.  Don't you agree, Phyllis?"

	She woke up and looked at me with dread and ten-pound bags under her
 eyes.  "Dave..." she moaned, "...you are one twisted motherfucker."

	"Hahahaha!"  I beamed at her.  "What do you know, you stupid bitch?"
 My smile grew wider and wider still as the sunlight blazed through my
 window.

        Phyllis was livid.  "How can you act like this after two hours of
 sleep?  Aren't you hung over?  Strung out?  Dehydrated?"

	"No.  Well, maybe a little bit."

	"What the fuck is wrong with you?"

        "Nothing!"  I was grinning from ear to ear.  I kissed her on the
 forehead.  "Listen, baby.  I woke you up early so that you could shower
 before I took you to work.  I'm sorry I kept you up so late last night.
 I guess I'm a bad influence on you, I'm sorry.  I'm a bad, bad man."

        Now she was beaming; a typical woman.  She walked silently to the
 bathroom.  Thank god!

        Every muscle in my body was in pain.  I downed a few morphine pills
 and everything was pleasant.  The sun was pleasant.  I rolled a joint; not
 because I needed it, but because Phyllis did -- to take the edge off before
 work.

        Phyllis came out of the shower, naked and clean as the new day.  She
 got back into the sweaty outfit she wore yesterday and we hopped in the
 car.  I lit the joint as we pulled out of the driveway.  Tomorrow, she
 would be with me again, only with a change of clothes.  With any luck,
 she'll be making breakfast by the end of the week.  I'll wake up to see
 the hollow shell of her beauty, making breakfast for her corruptor, held
 up only by the sustaining glow of the sun and by the sustenance of morphine
 and the prettiness of a breakfast that we couldn't eat if we tried.  Damn
 it all.  She does not deserve this.  I do not deserve her.

        At least we'll be happy together.  We'll be so happy with this
 life.  This horror!

        I'm a bad, bad man.  Why won't she listen to me?  By the end of the
 week, she'll be on a downward spiral, hooked on drugs, hooked on my love,
 sleepless, hungry and lifeless.  I am so fucking horrible.  On the way to
 work that morning, she is stoned out of her mind and I am crying silently.

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 TO MY READERS:

        Dave (AKA kreid) here.  I'm sure these sentiments are commonplace
 and implicit without me saying so... but I want you all to know -- I love
 you all; by reading my words, you fill my heart; you make me feel as if
 my life were worth living.

        Oh boy, this is sappy.  Please forgive me for my
 uncharacteristically blatant display of emotion, but I want you all to
 know how I feel.  It doesn't make me sad, now that h0e is dead.  I'm glad
 to have been part of this clique.  I consider the text files that we all
 have written together the greatest artistic movement of my life thus far.
 The scene was critical of me from the start, but never alienating ... like
 a father to me.

        Anyway, now that h0e is dead, the 'zine scene will continue on,
 I hope, as it always has, in spite of the death of the written word.  I
 will continue to write because it is my passion and there is nothing that
 I can do better.

	On that note, I want to thank the 'zine scene for giving me that
 passion.  It was not Hemingway or Bukowski or Dostoyevsky or Vonnegut or
 Hunter S. Thompson or Burroughs or Irvine Welsh or Ray Bradbury or Robert
 Anton Wilson or Carlos Castaneda or any of those guys that got me into
 writing.  In fact, those guys are barely worth mentioning.  No, it was
 Mogel, Eerie, Styx, Jamesy, Jason F., Trip, Phorce, Black Francis, Belial,
 Edicius, Hooch... well, the list is very very long.  Anyway, it was these
 people who made a writer out of me.  The "scene" is often what makes an
 artist, and what drives him.

        History can only inspire an artist, and while the classics touch
 his soul in incomparable, divine ways, the classics can never move a man's
 life -- can never drive a man the way his contemporaries and his loyal
 readers do.

        Anyway, I feel like I'm going overboard here.  It's late and I'm
 getting really drunk as usual.  Let me conclude:

	To my readers and my contemporaries: I love you and my writing will
 (obviously) continue on.  Look for further chapters of my current works,
 and new work, it'll be around somewhere; I just haven't figured out where
 my future lies just yet.

	And fucking e-mail me, okay?  negleyd@hartwick.edu

	 -- d.

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 [ (c) HOE E'ZINE -- http://www.hoe.nu       HOE #1106, BY KREID - 6/28/00 ]
