A Yankee Red Sox Wedding Read online

  A Yankee Red Sox Wedding

  Patrick Kirley

  Copyright © 2017 Patrick Kirley

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 154302310X

  ISBN 13: 9781543023107

  Library of Congress Control Number: XXXXX (If applicable)

  LCCN Imprint Name: City and State (If applicable)

  1

  She watched his pink face wince as the air shot up his nostrils. She stutter-stepped backwards, steering the gurney cautiously through the excited, poorly lit corridor toward a swamped entrance of errant hollers. Parting the crowd with swiveling hips, she pushed through the swinging doors—wheeling him under a scurrying nurse’s view and relaying the stretcher to oncoming paramedics. Gazing tensely a final time into the child’s squinting eyes, she surrendered him. Retreating back through the swinging doors, she snatched a clipboard off the wall and dropped anxiously into her chair. Pretending to read, she heard a shrill tone rise up from behind her. She stiffened up like a soldier at attention without turning. She didn’t have to. She knew the drill—had replayed it a thousand times in her weary mind until it pounded on her brain.

  “You know our procedure. All entries, critical or other, require designated personnel to perform a mandatory check-in. We document what we can now; we get what we need later. No exceptions. Got it?”

  It always sounded so inhumane, and the micro-second the words passed her boss’s lips Angela knew she’d been set up again. This case was obviously a critical, but sometimes the obvious meant nothing. Some bosses possess that gift of rhetorical jargon—asking the second question first, adhering to that extraneous fine print they probably wrote themselves, or phrasing reprimands with subtle booby traps. Thus, assuring their prey cannot fend for itself and severing any humanistic quality, like a rabbit’s leg caught in the trap meant for a more powerful animal. ‘Compassion is the disease of dogs,’ Angela recalled Stalin’s words from one of her drab history classes before she switched over to nursing. One thing she never learned in her history, or med classes, was how to handle oppressive managers who equate two-way communication in the workplace with pure anarchy. Thinking up her usual vain response—which always amounted to a grudging silence anyway—her mind was still affixed on that little boy’s sweet, somber face as he entered Trauma Room 1. She didn’t even know him; she didn’t have to. She knew with certainty that her suffering, though unbearable in its everyday burden, couldn’t possibly fair in comparison to his.

  An eerie calm ensued as the swinging doors finally settled; the bitter aroma of burnt coffee sifted through the chilly late-afternoon hallway. A few feet away, an attractive nurse with pinned up, sandy hair, wearing wrinkled aqua garb, smirked beside an older, distinguished surgeon leaning against the wall. He concealed his insidious grin behind a foam cup as he humored her with some smut, savoring her slightest reaction. They’d witnessed the kid’s traumatic entry. They’d witnessed it a thousand times, and were already enjoying their usual callous return to normalcy. She imagined the two were laughing at her while Babz waited impatiently for her answer. Angela had grown slightly paranoid in recent weeks following a string of sporadic Babz lashings as winter havoc approached for that haven of hope—and sanctuary of terror—that is the Emergency Room.

  When Babz walked into a room, it was as if everything Angela ever stood for, believed in, and had earned was relinquished at once to one more inherently deserving; someone whose path to authority was not to be questioned, but only followed. Angela was taught, from her very first day, that Babz’ way was the only way. She wasn’t the first to work under a narcissist’s self-imposed rule of law, and she blamed no one but herself for being in such a situation. What Angela couldn’t understand was why she felt compelled to believe in this woman more than the dire task at hand, more than the rule of humanity, more than herself. How many enduring such daily abuse by a crazed egomaniac are actually socializing outside of work with that same chronic abuser? What was it about this woman? What is it about me? Angela would ask herself each night. What made her need Babz’ company, no less than Babz demanded Angela’s? Babz was the quintessential control freak. That was understood even by Babz, though she’d never admit it. Angela, like the rest of the ER nurses, answered to Babz dogmatically—without questioning a policy or command for fear, not only of their jobs, but of conceding yet another ounce of dignity and self-esteem. But if Angela, unlike the others, frequented bars, lunched in the hospital cafeteria, and even played tennis with this freak every single Sunday—their only day off thanks to Babz’ tactful scheduling—then Angela had yet to answer the only question that mattered in all this: Why me? Why was Angela—someone known to those who knew and loved her best as one of tremendous substance, heart, and character—undeniably trapped in not just an oppressive and hostile work environment, but in an emotionally unstable, codependent enigma of a friendship with a totalitarian monster who still believed in the straight jacket.

  A proud registered nurse in Joan of Arc Metropolitan Hospital’s Emergency Room, smack amidst Boston’s Longwood Medical Center—affectionately known as ‘Bed Pan Alley’—the only thing Angela hated more than Babz’ unwarranted scoldings was Babz referring to her so damned patronizingly as a “triage nurse.” Angela worked very well with, and had tremendous respect for triage nurses, but her educational background warranted a significantly higher level of responsibility and scope of authority. She possessed both undergraduate and graduate degrees in nursing—not that any of that mattered to Babz. Pulling out a host of prebaked excuses, the Head Nurse always had a personally offensive reason for why Angela wasn’t ready to take on more, or—with virtually no reason—why they just couldn’t promote her at this time.

  Nursing was challenging for sure, emotionally consuming at that, and it was definitely important. It just felt like there was something else out there, somewhere—something Angela was meant to be doing with her life instead of sitting here day after day absorbing these undue batterings from this ever righteous, condescending, sad mistake of a manager who once criticized her for not tying the little white bows of her little white nursing flats to utter perfection; all the while, Angela didn’t even fully know how she got there, or what she was looking for.

  Angela’s duties ranged from warm greetings and screenings of walk-in patients to morbid messages for the loved ones of those lost, and all the grungy paperwork in between—clipboard monitoring of patients’ statuses, logging and time tracking of visitors, and her all-time favorite, verifying health insurance. She could handle much more than that, and Babz knew it, delegating Angela tasks she was clearly overqualified for, but accepted gracefully nonetheless for the sake of their mission. “A good little Type-B,” Babz constantly reminded. She did what was asked of her and demanded nothing of others. In her three grueling years at JoA, she didn’t mind the work nearly as much as Babz and her self-serving tirades. She even learned to enjoy the climate at times, despite its ever-present dreadful possibilities. Angela especially liked her graveyard shifts, as Babz was rarely there. She found great solace and peace of mind in the tranquil stillness of the long, affable night, reading poetry and listening to late night replays on Red Sox radio—until interrupted by the most awful of realities. She’d grown immune to the inordinate pressure of the ER, and its unmatched test of one’s daily emotional stamina—compartmentalizing the grief and sorrow someplace deep within, somewhere most couldn’t comprehend.

  She had, until this moment, enjoyed working at JoA, receiving deep fulfillment from easing traumatic experiences by humanizing their horrors for victims and their loved ones. But, that empowering feeling of bettering the world—or at least this cruel little corner of the world—by providing shelter from the storm of ill fate and anguish, creating a world of refuge, safety, and love all their own—always seemed to fade into something far less. It was as if, at the end of each gloomy day, she was nothing more than a government funded servant whose job was to cast a stewardess’ smile at those undergoing the most unfathomable pain and suffering.

  Angela had to get out of this place—out of this life for that matter—but she didn’t know how. She should’ve stayed an Art History major. Maybe that ‘Art History store’ would’ve worked afterall, disproving all those belittling warnings from all those arrogant business majors. She couldn’t help wondering now where she would be if she had only tried. Surely not propped up at attention like one of those cardboard cutout extras in the background of a low-budget B-Flick.

  Like her job or not, Angela was stuck there. She had made her vocational and lifestyle choices and was now a bona fide, card-carrying member of the most stressful, depressing profession on the planet. Her three years in the ER had felt like thirty, and she was just getting warmed up. She would be here for years to come due to those choices, Boston’s scaling back of the healthcare industry, and because there was something about its buoyant promise, its mere existence, that just wouldn’t let go of her weighty conscience.

  Now, engulfed by the widening shadow of a seasoned institutional bully breathing down her back like an elevator perv, and the two flirts nearby awaiting her answer, her fruitless life had hit a new low. She would try to get out. She would stand up for herself this time. Slapping down her clipboard, jarring loose a sheaf of papers from its clamp, she spun around briskly and stared daringly into the ogre’s vacant eyes with a confidence she’d never felt—a confidence which deflated at once, into silence, like a fizzling balloon.

  2

  His torn nail ripped t
hrough his bloody sock, but he didn’t feel a thing. Leaping an oval shade cast by the Queensborough’s towering steel beams, the crowd suddenly went silent, as he’d been warned. It was the quietest part of the run, and the loneliest. The dense cheers through Brooklyn’s intimate neighborhoods had been a help, helping him not to think, but now they’d betrayed him and left him in a state of alarming solitude. His fiery breath and the hoofbeats of his pounding sneakers the only sounds, he gulped some oxygen and lengthened his stride as an anti-resistance catalyst and momentum builder. Powering up an illusory hill on the bridge’s inner path, he felt a sharp tug in his left hamstring—the same hammy which ended his baseball days. Vision blurred from oncoming mist, he slowed and slid his hand futilely down his back leg, unable to feel his motoring lower limb. He let it go.

  Chris never went the distance in dry runs, not once. New York’s marathon seemed so simple on paper—parameters well defined, terrain less demanding than others. Dash through Brooklyn’s friendly confines, over a bridge, and you’re in Queens. Over another bridge and you’re in Manhattan. Up First Avenue and over another and you’re in the Bronx. Back over the Harlem and down Fifth and you’re tearing up Central Park. Twenty-six miles to think about your past, gotta think about your past, never about your future. Your future is uncertain; a moving target you’ll chase out of body. Your past stays put, painful or not, right between your ears.

  He palmed a burning streak of sweat from his brow and scratched his itchy ear in one violent doggy shrug, spotting in the distance a white, licorice trimmed 30 mph sign barraged by rain. Having reached the deceiving plateau nine months earlier, he thought of his age and how nothing had changed since reaching the magic milestone. He leaped over a placid gray puddle, his heart stopping—his mind with it—dead in the tracks of a doleful past. McCarthyism he called it: The unfaltering belief that nothing in life comes before one’s love, respect, and admiration for the New York Yankees. More a creed than an ideal, there is no higher love than that of a Yankee fan’s undying, lifelong affection, and sacrificial devotion to the almighty pinstripes. To do everything in life like the Yankees, with class and dignity, and to hate everything red equals McCarthyism. This was the definition his grandfather from the South Bronx passed down, along with a splintered old Highlanders’ bat, to his father, and his father to Chris and his siblings—all six of them. To his father, Jack McCarthy Senior—“Captain Jack”—love for the Yankees was stronger than love for his children. They lived in the Bronx, all nine, always in that same three-bedroom apartment—four boys in one, three girls in the other. More bunk beds than Sing Sing. Jack Junior got the bat, but they all got McCarthyism.

  His rubber soul smacked the moist, gravelly sod on the other side of the puddle. A faint tingle slinked up his vertebrae, dying at his neck’s icy base. Battling the strained hamstring, he lazily circled a slippery, expanding jug handle at bridge’s end, his stomach turning like he was on a cranky amusement park ride. He descended the roped off bend and hit the endless straightaway of First Avenue, greeted head on by the downpour. Pellets shelled his temple, snaking down his forehead and lifting dirt into his eyes. Picking up vanishing steam, he no longer felt his brittle legs except for the recurring, manageable burn in his right thigh. He punched it three times with his fist before his second wind kicked in. Racing passed a runny cardboard WELCOME TO MANHATTAN placard held by a retired school teacher—hood up in a military poncho—he stared in awe at the great stretch of rising urban slopes which lay ahead, though he’d promised in training that he wouldn’t, as they cried ‘do or die’ to approaching challengers.

  His legs were giving further and he was just a little more than halfway through, but he refused to acknowledge his fatigue. Hands over head, he tilted his jaw upward and took in the soothing droplets. Leveling his shaky vision with exploded eyes, he burst toward the rising boulevard, tearing up its pavement, burning nonexistent fuel, as others walked the other way, elbows spread like broken wings, staggering to meaningless ovation. He pitied their defeatist faces, picking up speed in fear of becoming like them. I didn’t have to do this. I could be sleeping, or drinking coffee somewhere, or watching football like normal people do on Sundays.

  Hurdling up another hilly section, he overextended, a stretching band of pain ripping across his rib cage. Though far away, he envisioned the finish line as he desperately kicked up his senseless thighs—feeling that, at any moment, he would collapse and surrender unto the cold hard earth.

  When the Bronx finally came into view, he realized he’d been fighting uphill against the grain, one which had held him back; the treadmill of life. He’d spent years trying to get the hell out of the Bronx, and here he was, returning to that which he came like a frightened, repentant runaway. He gagged on the humid air over the Harlem River, opening his mouth, desperately trying to take in the now sparse rain. He reached the far end of the Willis Avenue Bridge when a fierce November wind gelled his fleshy, needling cheeks. He was dizzy, high. His blood had rushed to his deadening limbs but was now rushing back to his mind. His neck tendons hardened like frozen pipes. Numbness is better than pain, he thought when a pin pricked his shredded hamstring. He limped several strides and “shook it off” as Captain Jack preached in his ear. Breaking sharply at a right angle onto Rider, his mind resisted, but his body committed. As he stepped foot in the Bronx, he wondered if he’d someday regret his decision. He loved his crazy Irish-Italian family and would undoubtedly miss the old neighborhood and friends still there, but sometimes domestic loyalty asked to much.

  When he retreated from the Bronx after his most grueling mile yet—over the Madison Avenue Bridge and back into Manhattan, the wind now at his side—his eyes shook free as he turned and sprinted down Fifth Avenue. He took his deepest breath yet, sucking in the heavy, liquid air, serving only to throw off his rhythm. He stretched his dulled legs, taking his longest strides thus far, when his left knee gave like a cracking seashell. You quit now—you wear Red Sox panties for a year up there. He knew he’d regret it more if he turned back on his commitment, his promise, and swore in this moment, when the blood had fully rushed back to his brain, that he would hold dear that one blessed thought.

  Streaking, bodiless, down Fifth Avenue into the final five mile stretch, his forearms bit through his thermal sleeves. His gloveless hands were waterlogged sponges; his penis a melting icicle. His mouth was soldering shut. The rain he’d fought so fiercely up First—the one he thirsted for now—had died. Squinting at the bleak, merciless sky, he begged for scarcely falling drops, but found none. He wiped the drooling snot from the bridge of his nose with his wooden wrist, stinging an eye. Another stride and up it came—that putrid regurgitation burning the back of his parched throat. He swallowed it back down and the gurgling wetness felt good. Think about your past, not your future. Your future’s unsure. It’s not you yet; your past is all you.

  With a rebellious C+ average and a discouraging, underpaid first year in a saturated profession opposing frivolous local lawsuits against the Borough of the Bronx, Chris spent three more miserable years staring into a glass ceiling at Gotham Life and seeing nothing but the reflection of his father’s stone cold face. Yet, something inside him had begun to unravel. One Sunday morning in the Riverdale Diner, beneath the rumbling Bronx thunder of the 1-train, while browsing the classifieds of an idle, disheveled New York Times, that something beckoned.

  FORTUNE 50 INS CO

  Seeks aggressive, thick-skinned attorney for

  insurance claim litigation of large, not-for-profits in

  greater New England area. Must be self-starter, motivated,

  tactless, with a winner’s edge. Report to lead attorney.

  Excellent benefits, growth op. Must be willing to relocate to Boston.

  Pay for Bar. Serious inquiries only. KK

  One moment you’re staring at a glass ceiling and the next you’re staring at your future in a crumpled wad of ash. Conceding a pay cut in pursuit of happiness, an aching sore Christopher McCarthy would pack his bags tomorrow morning, hop in his ‘89 Chevy Nova, and head north for Beantown.