Rules Get Broken by John Herbert

cancer patients,” he volunteered when the second of the two people who had gotten on with us left the elevator. “Floor seven is the pediatric cancer ward; floors eight and nine are for the adults. Mrs. Herbert will be on nine.”
    A cancer ward , I thought. How in God’s name did we wind up here? In a cancer ward!
    I reached out and touched Peg’s shoulder. In an instant her hand came up to mine, and she lightly squeezed my fingers. Somehow I knew she was wondering the same thing.
    The elevator doors slid open, and the orderly signaled me to step out first. I did as he asked and found myself at the end of a long corridor with dark brown linoleum floor tiles, beige concrete walls and a high, vaulted concrete ceiling that had once been white. Ornate dark bronze lighting fixtures, each supporting five large milky-white glass globes, hung from the center of the ceiling every sixty or seventy feet.
    God, this place is old , I thought, looking down the length of the corridor. Look at the ceiling height. Don’t see that anymore. And the walls must be a foot thick. Built like a fortress. But God, it’s old.
    I waited until the orderly had wheeled Peg out of the elevator and then followed him a couple hundred feet down to a nurse’s station. He brought the wheelchair to a stop, walked over to one of the nurses and said something to her. She looked at Peg and me while he was speaking and then at a clipboard on her desk. Apparently finding what she was looking for, she pushed back her chair and came out to greet us.
    “Good morning, Mrs. Herbert,” she said warmly, extending her hand first to Peg and then to me. “And good morning to you, Mr. Herbert. My name is Janet Reinart. I’m the head day nurse. We’ve been expecting you, Mrs. Herbert, and your room is all ready for you.
    “This way, Jerry,” she said to the orderly over her shoulder, and she started to walk down the corridor back towards the elevators. Then she stopped and pushed open a heavy oak door on the right side of the hall.
    “Here we are,” she announced cheerfully. She stepped aside to allow the orderly to wheel Peg into the room. I followed the orderly, and Janet followed me.
    While Janet and the orderly helped Peg into bed, I looked around at what was to be Peg’s new home for as long as it took for her to get well. The room was on the east side of the building and, thanks to three over-sized double-hung windows, offered a wonderful view of the East River and of Queens and Brooklyn beyond. The bed was placed against the south wall, and a large corkboard hung on the north wall at the foot of the bed. The ceiling was at least twelve feet high, and a lighting fixture with a single glass globe hung from its center. Off-white walls, ceiling, and vinyl floor tiles made the room bright but stark.
    “I’ll bring in some pictures of the kids tomorrow,” I said after the nurse and the orderly had left the room and as I was taking Peg’s things out of her overnight bag. “This place needs a little decorating, a little softening, don’t you think?”
    “I’m hoping I’m not going to be here long enough for that to matter,” Peg said, her voice suddenly quivering.
    “I’m sorry,” I said, seeing the terror-stricken look on her face and realizing how she had taken my comment. “I didn’t mean to imply that. I just meant…”
    “I know. I know,” Peg replied, waving my words away as she reached for a tissue. “I’m just scared to death that I’ll never get out of this room alive, John.”
    “You’re going to get well in this room, sweetheart,” I assured her. “Not die in it. And you’re going to walk out that door, healthy again, and come home to Jennie and John and me. Believe me.”
    I wrapped my arms around her, and she buried her face in my chest and began to cry.
    “I don’t want to die,” Peg whimpered into my shirt. “I just don’t want to die.”

Twenty-Three
    He came in without knocking and was halfway across the room