Sara “Sugar Pants” Petersen had decided to become a volunteer at the Loone County Hospital. She hoped seeing people who were really sick might take her mind off the hot flashes that had been plaguing her lately. She had been working there a month now and wasn’t sure if she would be able tolerate Mrs. Crabtree much longer. She always seemed to be there no matter what day Sara volunteered. How many times did that woman have to be told that she didn’t want to pray with her before they started their shifts? She believed in God, but was not one to waste His time on the little things. Sara knew that she had been short-tempered lately. She had been especially prickly since last week when she was washing windows in the vain hope that she could cheer herself up with sparkly windows.
Her husband, Tim, had called her Sugar Pants since they were first married. She had always thought it was sweet and special, only for her, until that day when she was in the upstairs guest room washing the windows. She saw him in the back yard standing at the fence; she leaned out the window to ask him if he was ready to come in for lunch when she saw he was talking to their neighbor Althea Goodnight. She heard him say," Your rose garden is really outdoing itself this year, Sugar Pants".
She didn't wait to hear Althea's reply, but eased the window gently down and sat on the bed and cried hot tears. She cried at the least little things, but this didn't seem little; it seemed big, too big for her to accept, too big for her to let go of. Maybe she would just smother him in his sleep one night and bury him under those precious roses he admired so much. My God. What was wrong with her? Talk about over-reacting. But thinking about the plan made her feel better, gave her something to focus on besides the humdrumness of window washing and lunch making.
She guessed she was going through the change. She was about the same age as her mother was when she went through it. And the horror stories she remembers hearing when her mother and her friends got together for coffee every morning made her want to smother her own self with a pillow rather than go through this crazy-making phase of life.
The next day at the hospital Sara managed to extricate herself from Mrs. Crabtree and spent a pleasant afternoon chatting with patients and their families while handing out magazines and candy. She was wheeling her cart back to the volunteer office when she saw Mrs. Crabtree barreling down the hall, the old cart’s wheels protesting squeakily at its breakneck speed. Mrs. Crabtree’s face was so red that her pink circles of rouge had disappeared from her cheeks. She was huffing and puffing so much that Sara was afraid she was going to faint.
“What is wrong, Mrs. Crabtree? Are you all right?” asked Sara.
“Water. I need water,” gasped Mrs. Crabtree as she leaned on the cart. Sara went to the water cooler and returned with a cup of water. She helped hold it for Mrs. Crabtree whose hands were shaking mightily.
‘There, that’s better. Thank you, my dear,” said Mrs. Crabtree.
“Do you need to see a doctor?” asked Sara.
“Oh, no! I just had a run in with that newcomer Milton Matthews and that creature who was visiting him,” answered Mrs. Crabtree.
“What on earth happened?” asked Sara, curious in spite of herself. It was about that time that Nurse Jackson and a nurse’s aid named RaeAnn came over to see what all of the commotion was about.
“Well, he was just plain rude. Imagine, not letting me pray for him,” said Mrs. Crabtree. The other three stifled laughs, not daring to look at each other. “And the late Reverend Finn’s sister was there visiting. It looked like she had had her claws sharpened at the Lovely Locks Salon and was ready to sink them into Mr. Matthews. Even though he’s a heathen, I feel sorry for him if he falls into her web.”
Sara, Nurse Jackson, and RaeAnn scattered as quickly as they could when they realized Mrs. Crabtree’s personal peril was falling into a Pit of Judgmentalism.
The speed of sound would be the only measurement fast enough to explain how quickly the “Hospital Incident” spread around Chanceville after Mrs. Crabtree’s tirade to the women at the hospital.
