Day 21

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When I got back to the nurse’s office Tim was switching batteries for the space heater and Claire was slowly brushing Mrs. Snwoburn’s forehead who was sleeping deeply under a pile of blankets and Claire’s own coat. “How is she?” I asked quietly so as not to wake Mrs. Snowburn up. Claire shook her head. “Sean will be here momentarily to keep an eye on Dan. Until then I’ll keep him busy.” I stood up to walk across the room to Dan.

Claire immediately was in front of me, pushing me back onto the bed. “No, I’ll take care of Dan until you get back. I got Johnny running errands for me and he’s more than willing to cooperate as long as Snow is still ill, he likes her and he doesn’t want to see her in plain.” I nodded in agreement but stayed silent. “I’m more used to little boys than you are anyways; after all I am raising one by myself. You keep an eye on Snow while we wait for Sean.” She patted my head like a little child, but I was too worried about Mrs. Snwoburn to react, I guess that’s probably why she felt she could. “If Sean doesn’t show you can watch Dan and I’ll go…talk with him.”

Though it was clear that her meaning wasn’t talk I had to tell her to back off of the idea a little. “He’ll come, Mrs. Snowburn is too important to what he does for him not to.” I turned halfway to her as she walked away to Dan. “And if he doesn’t, well, then you and he can ‘talk.’”

As I sat there, watching Mrs Snowburn struggle to breath, I let my mind wander a bit. Like I’ve said, I’m not that much into the whole religion thing; it just never struck the chord for me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in the camp that says there is no God, but I’m not really in the camp that says there is a specific God either. I guess they call it agnostic, but I’ve never really liked the word, always reminds me of eggnog on a stick. And, while eggnog popsicles might or might not be a holiday treat, it wasn’t a title I liked to refer to when talking about my beliefs. Still, it wasn’t beyond me to pray, like I did in the car, and it wasn’t beyond me to have high hopes in those prayers. And did pray a little as my mind wandered, but beyond ‘please save Mrs. Snwoburn’ there wasn’t much I wanted at that moment. I was alive, I was with people who at least cared for me enough to want to see me live, and I had all the necessary things in order to live. I wasn’t going to die; I just hoped Mrs. Snwoburn wasn’t going to either.

Beyond the sentence of prayer I thought about the entire experience, I guess somewhat like I’m doing now. Except, now I’m doing it for someone else, I’m remembering because Mrs. Snowburn deserves to be remembered. At that time I did it because I was curious. I asked myself questions to see if I knew the answer. Questions like: why do these people seem so content with surrounding themselves with children? It was obvious for some: Tim was here because the daughter of his lost child was here. But for the others it wasn’t so easy. Why was Harold here? He didn’t seem to care about his kid, in fact it seemed like he cared more about inflating his own ego through his child’s aversion to authority figures. Claire loved Johnny, it was true, but why? She’d held him in her womb for nine months, sure, but at the same time he had to be a reminder of the husband she’d lost. “What are you thinking about Justin?”

I stopped looking at the other people in the room and saw the Mrs. Snowburn was finally awake. She was weak, I could hear it in her voice. Just louder than a whisper it didn’t carry on the cold air well at all. “Mrs. Snowburn. How are you feeling?” I grabbed her hand and squeezed it gently. I smiled, though it seemed more centered in her tired eyes instead of spreading across her face. She was struggling. “Is there anything I can get you?”

“How is Dan? I told him he should occupy himself while I rested my eyes. I didn’t think I would go to sleep.” She tried to sit up and look around the room but couldn’t. I stood up and readjusted the pillows to help her get a better view of the room; though I made sure she stayed lying down as best she could. “Wow, I’m very tired. W-What happened?” She looked to me for an explanation.

I was torn, she deserved to know that she had gotten very sick and that we were all worried about her health, but at the same time I didn’t want to worry her. “You-you’re I mean we’re-” She waited expectantly for an answer. “Dan is fine, Claire is watching him right now. Johnny is doing some errands for Claire and Jessica is with Coach Z. Tim’s fixing the space heater and Sean is on his way to help out a little more. He and Ms. George are finished for the time being. Don’t worry about anything, we’ve got everything handled.” Mrs. Snowburn nodded and smiled with nothing but her eyes once again.

As she let herself relax into the bed she sighed heavily. She closed her eyes for some time but I could tell from the frequency that she breathed that she hadn’t drifted to sleep again. “You know, you’ve gotten good at avoiding the question asked of you, but giving enough information to appease the audience. You explanation almost put my question out of my mind completely.” She opened her eyes and swiveled her head to look at me. “You can tell me what’s wrong. I can handle it.”

I breathed in deeply to postpone the explanation, in case I could come up with some reason not to. I didn’t. “You’ve gotten sick Mrs. Snowburn. All the stress of making sure everyone is okay has built up and you’ve exhausted yourself. You need to rest now.” I tucked the blankets around her like she had been doing for me.

She examined me as I tucked in the blankets. “Thank you for being so concerned with my wellbeing.”

I smiled. “Why wouldn’t I help you out? Especially since this is exactly what you did for me.” I sat back on the adjacent bed and watched as she thought about this for some time. As she thought Sean walked into the room, saw Mrs. Snowburn lying in the bed, and immediately went to Claire and relieved her of her duties for Dan. Claire left, probably to look Johnny. Tim was still trying to get the space heater to work, a pile of batteries was sitting next to him and he was beginning to take apart the whole contraption. “It looks like the heater finally died.” I muttered to myself.

Mrs. Snowburn watched as I took everything in. “Do you know what I did before becoming the head of the Special Education department?” I shook my head. “I was the head librarian for one of the libraries in the big city. I worked there day and night to ensure that all the books were neatly stacked and that the rules were upheld to ensure everyone had a nice time at the library. Half the time I worked without pay simply because I enjoyed my work so much, and I didn’t really have anything to do when I wasn’t at work.

“I’ve always wondered why I enjoyed the work so much. Looking back on it now there’s a part of me that thinks the whole ordeal was futile. There was always a book that wasn’t in the right place or missing or that needed to be fixed in some way. I worked hard to do the same things every single day. Then I remember the faces of the inner city children as I helped them pick out a book that would fit their reading level. Or, the gratitude from the illiterate when I held free seminars on reading and writing skills. I remember the other librarians who looked up to me, some with aspirations to become what I was and others with aspirations to become what I was not. Most of all I remember overhearing conversations. What they were about didn’t matter half the time as long as they were about the library. Nothing else interested me really and so I didn’t need to hear about the latest baseball game or the newest restaurants and celebrities.

“I listened to the people talk of the effects and inspirations the library had on its patrons. The books clubs that came every few weeks discussed why a book was considered good and, for the especially well written ones, hoe the words were effecting the reader’s lives. I listened to the janitors talk about the notes they’d find on loose pieces of paper, beautiful pieces of hand drawn art and wonderful emulations of famous authors. At first I tried to find the creators of these things, but it quickly became apparent that their intention was simply to make them and never gain credit. Whether they meant to leave them in the library or forgot the pieces of papers I’ll never know. I even listened to the stories the other librarians had about notes in the margins of books that were returned to them. It was at those moments that my feelings of uselessness vanished and I remembered that my job was important.”

I wanted to stop her, she was simply using strength to tell me things that didn’t precisely mean anything to me, but I couldn’t, she seemed to want to talk and talk I was going to let her. She probably would have to someone else if not me anyway. “When I got married to my late husband I moved away from the big city and we found a home in this part of the country. I looked for librarian positions but nothing was open, so I returned to school and learned to be a teacher. With my background in the seminars I breezed through the classes and was looking for work shortly after graduation. The only thing that was open at the time was a one-on-one position at this very school and I took it without a second thought.

“I worked with a lovely little boy by the name of Kyle. He had bright red hair and his face seemed to be more freckles than anything else. Unfortunately, when he was born, his umbilical chord had wrapped around his neck which prevented air from reaching his brain and that oxygen loose caused a severe case of Cerebral Palsy. He was very smart in many areas of the classroom but due to his physical condition the required care at all times. The family was asked if they could find someone and the woman that they had assigned to Kyle couldn’t make it to the school three times a week, which meant Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays I was called in to help Kyle with whatever he needed.

“Shortly after signing on I was asked to come in on Tuesdays and Fridays to help with other children as necessary and I agreed. A worked in that capacity fro sometimes and eventually moved into the Special Education department permanently. From there, as they say, everything is history and I found myself promoted to the head of the department.” Tears began welling up in Mrs. Snowburn’s eyes as she continued to talk and I almost told her to tell me later, but I didn’t have the heart. Some part of me knew that she was dying I guess, and I wanted to her to tell me what she wanted other’s to know. The Catholics have a last confession of their sins, and while this wasn’t a confession it was along those lines. “Every year the school holds an open house that doubles as a sort reunion for past students to remember their childhood days. Every teacher who had students graduated from the school had visitors it seemed. Even teachers who’d been there for a single year had students coming back to talk with them, though they were more often than not there because their parents said they should.

“The only exception, it seemed, was the Special Education department. It didn’t bother me the first few years that we didn’t have old students walking in and out of our classroom, either the student physically couldn’t make it here or it was so far outside their daily pattern that the idea hadn’t crossed their mind. It wasn’t until I was the head of the department that I began to think about it and be bothered by it. Many teachers kept small files with a student’s best work in it to pull out and remember over if a former student stopped by. I was no different and I still have many of those papers and drawings that my students left when they moved to the higher grades.” Indeed, she’d never gotten the chance to clear out her desk when they took her to the hospital and I’d been asked to pick them up when it became clear that she wasn’t going to pull through.