flashquake Nonfiction

Portrait of a Lady
by Gideon Piers Alexander Smith

The first time I met Miss Madeleine, she threw a bedpan at me. Quickly retreating from her room, I stood, wondering what to do next, as her warm urine soaked down my shirt, and spread down my side, and a piece of her feces slid off of my freshly minted "Volunteer" badge and slopped onto the floor. I knew at that moment that Miss Madeleine was probably not going to be my favorite patient. Seeing my condition a passing nurse smiled wryly, "Did you knock before you entered her room?"

"Of course!" I spluttered, offended.

"Well, that was your first mistake — that's how she heard you coming!" Over the next few months Miss Madeleine threw her bedpan at me a total of four times. She also bit me, scratched me, poked me, and spat at me. However, although she was not my favorite patient, she was certainly the most memorable. She challenged me every day; she challenged my patience and my politeness, but more than that, she challenged my ideas, my preconceived notions of life, and death, even my beliefs of identity, self-image, sexism, prejudice and gender roles. Not a single visit went by without her trying to teach me something. She was an intellectual whirlwind and quite possibly the most impressive woman I had ever met. Which was ironic, as 45 years earlier Miss Madeleine was born one Charles Langham: a man.

The second time I met Miss Madeleine, I entered without knocking. She was bolt upright in bed, eyeing me, a purple kimono drawn tightly around her frame. Broad shoulders incongruously bulged beneath the thin silk and as I drew closer I noticed a mild stubble, and an Adam's apple bobbing in her neck. Her face was a mask. Who knew what she was going to do next. Nervously I approached the bed. "Hello...um...Miss Madeleine...?" I didn't mean it to sound like a question but I wasn't even sure if I was meant to refer to her as a man or a woman. She motioned for me to sit on the edge of the bed.

"You may refer to me as Miss Madeleine, or Ma'am." She instructed me. Evidently she had correctly interpreted my confusion. I realized it wasn't the first time she had encountered such a reaction, and my reaction probably wasn't the worst.

"Why did you throw your bedpan at me?"

"So you wouldn't knock again. I find people learn quickly that way." I was confused.

"I'm sorry, I wanted..."

"I don't give a damn what you wanted," she said, punctuating each word with a stab of a long red press on nail. "Are you dying?"

"Umm, no...I just thought for your privacy..."

"Honey, you are here to clip my toe nails, wipe my fanny, dress my sores, clean me when I vomit and listen to me bitch. By the end of this there will be no privacy left between us, so why pretend? However, my back is covered in sores, I have pus leaking from every orifice, my lymph glands are swollen, and I fight every day just to sleep. The last thing I need is someone knocking on my door waking me up." She had this peculiar habit of emphasizing a word in each clause. It was oddly effective. She told me it was theatre.

It made sense; theatre and drama seemed to be the keystones of her life. She was a diva, a goddess, a world famous performer. At least to hear her tell it she was, and tell it she did. It was the one subject she never tired of.

"Did I tell you about the time I performed for Princess Diana?"

"Several times."

"Well shut up then, because I want to tell you again." And she would. At first her airs, her vanity, her obviously untrue stories seemed ludicrous, but over time she also told me how life had really been for her. She told me of isolation, self-hate, and with tears in her eyes of her own father beating and raping her when he discovered her in a dress. She told me of her time as a prostitute, the funny stories, the sad. And day by day she changed in my eyes from being a patient to a person. Dying and deeply troubled, perhaps, cantankerous, definitely, but funny, and proud, and strong, loving and loveable. As I got to know her I began to enjoy her stories, even the one about Princess Diana. "You know," she told me one night, "I only tell these stories to feel special." It was the only chink in her armor she ever let me see.

One day I noticed from her chart that her birthday was approaching. I asked her what she wanted. "You're going to buy me some presents?" I had managed to surprise her but she wasn't thrown for long "I want some dirty magazines. Ones with big, naked, muscular men, in them. Doing nasty things to each other." On the appointed day I brought her a stack of ten.

"Where do you want these?" I asked. She roared with laughter.

"Oh honey, I don't want to look at them! The entertainment's not in seeing them, but I'll be laughing for the next 20 years at the image of you walking into a store and having to buy all those!" I think she laughed for 3 days solid. The magazines she put straight in the trash.

On my last day at the clinic I said a tearful goodbye to Miss Madeleine. Standing outside her door trying to compose myself I was passed by a young volunteer. I didn't hear him knock, but I heard the bedpan hit the door. After a series of strokes her left side was completely paralyzed and her accuracy with the bedpan had deteriorated. It didn't matter. She was a master spitter. The volunteer stood beside me disoriented and disgusted by the bodily fluids splattered across his cheek and shoulder. I smiled sympathetically.

"Did you knock?"

Copyright 2002 by Gideon Piers Alexander Smith

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