The Lamp

It was cold in Nathan Bledsoe's room. At least it was cold to Nathan.

He was always cold.

It wasn't necessarily the temperature. There was the linoleum floor. The steel bars around the beds. The fluorescent lights. Especially the fluorescent lights. Everything was cold.

That's why Nathan's plastic bedside lamp was his most prized possession. Maybe not prized. Nathan didn't prize anything. Most vital possession? Maybe. The $10 lamp with a red base and a white shade brought occasional warmth to Nathan's life. He thought that would be enough.

But it had brought something else, something totally unexpected.

It was about a year ago when that orderly, what was his name? Jason something. When Jason the orderly had asked Nathan if there was anything he could bring him from Target. Nathan had asked for a table lamp, a request that came from out of nowhere, a flash of pure genius. You don't get many flashes of pure genius at age 92. You don't get many flashes of any kind.

That evening, Jason returned with a plastic bag adorned with the big red Target dot and pulled out the lamp. He moved some magazines and put it on the bedside table. Then he got down on the floor, first on his knees, then stretching out flat, reached as far as he could and plugged the lamp into an outlet behind the head of the bed.

"There you go, Nathan," he had said. "I don't know if it'll give you much light. All I had was a 40-watt bulb."

Nathan told him that would be fine. Said he'd try it later.

Jason left, and Nathan sat there looking at the lamp. On that particular night, Charlie McNamara, Nathan's roommate, had rolled down the hall to the television lounge to watch the news.

Nathan liked the lamp but was a bit unnerved by the touch of domesticity it brought to his sterile surroundings. This was supposed to be a temporary visit, after all. The lamp made things feel permanent.

After a while, he got up, walked to the wall and flipped the light switch beside the door. The room went dark except for the blue glow from the muted television hanging in the comer. A game show. He walked back and turned on the lamp. The room was bathed in an anxious incandescence. Nathan gasped, staggered backward. Sat down in the vinyl chair next to his bed.

The memory came flashing back like a lightning bolt. Suddenly Nathan was in a motel room, second floor, ocean front at Carolina Beach. He was looking across two beds toward a sliding glass door that opened onto a balcony. It was open. He could hear the surf, feel the ocean breeze. The woman, Melinda, was stretched out on the far bed, the one closest to the balcony. She had on jeans, a white button-up shirt, not unlike a man's dress shirt. One leg was crossed over the other, her foot flexing up and down, doing an agitated dance. Her eyes fixed on the television.

Nathan's breath was short. He began to sniffle, then weep.

Of the million or so memories crammed into his wrinkled brain, why did this one come crashing back? It was so long ago. Sixty-two years? Sixty-three?

He reached over and turned off the lamp. The room was dark again except for the television. He stood up, unsteady, and walked slowly to the light switch on the wall. Tears still streaming down his face. He turned on the light. The room was once again cold and clinical.

That was a year ago. Now Nathan is 93, sitting in the same vinyl chair next to the same bed and listening to the snores of Charlie McNamara. Watched him roll over, grunting and talking gibberish. Pour old soul. Made a fortune making plastic shopping bags and look at him now. He hoped Charlie's children and grandchildren were enjoying the money.

Nathan stood up, steadied himself, walked over and switched off the overhead light. He shuffled back, turned on the lamp and sat back down. The motel room rushed back. This time he was ready.

At first, Nathan couldn't handle the lamp more than once or twice a week. The pain was too severe, the emotions too jagged. But after a few months, the pain didn't last as long and the tears didn't flow so freely. He gradually came to terms with the images in his mind. He even began to massage them, enhance them, strained to remember more.

There were the remains of take-out seafood dinners in Styrofoam boxes on a table, fried popcorn shrimp, coleslaw and hush puppies. A wetsuit hanging over the balcony railing. A surfboard leaning in a corner next to the bathroom door. An old RGK model. Suitcases open on the floor, some dirty clothes scattered about.

But mostly there were images of Melinda. Her shoulder-length black hair, bangs touching her glasses, eyes refusing to meet his. Nathan welcomed her into his mind, choked back the tears and tried to swallow regret.

He had wondered many times during his life what it would have been like if he'd married, had a family, made decisions based on the welfare of others and not just himself. He had watched many friends live full, contented lives of marriage, family and child-raising. He had gotten to know their children and developed a heartfelt love for many of them.

Of course things weren't always rosy. Several of his closest friends had suffered the agony of divorce, custody battles, and the trauma of searching for new partners. Nathan smugly told himself he was glad he'd never had to go through that.

He'd had many affairs, relationships, and lovers. But that's all they ever were. Except for Melinda.

Things had been confusing at first. Previous relationships muddied the water. It was a workplace affair, uncomfortable, complicated. But Melinda told Nathan she loved him. Completely.

He had faltered, tried to reassure her. Said everything would be all right. It never was. The night in the motel at Carolina Beach came near the end. He had gone surfing with an old friend. They'd surfed until dark and stopped for a couple beers on the way home.

As they stood in the parking lot across the street from the motel, Nathan looked over at the old ocean front lodge and scanned the floors. Rows of doors, each with its own wall-mounted lamp glowing in the night. He zeroed in on the top floor and found the door to the room he was sharing with Melinda. It was then a sensation washed over him more powerful than any ocean wave. The love he felt for Melinda was immediate, all-consuming. "Maybe this is what a baptism feels like for a true believer," he thought. Finally, Nathan believed in love. He knew that the woman behind that door, in that motel room, was the only woman in the world for him. He would never want another. It felt cleansing, pure. Such a relief.

He physically couldn't wait to dash across the street and race up the stairs to the top floor. The wetsuit hanging across the surfboard under his arm was too much weight to bear. He wanted to throw it aside and run.

His surfing buddy was saying goodbye from the driver's side window of his van, but Nathan didn't hear a word. Finally, he was across the street and huffing and puffing up the stairs, down the open-air corridor and turning the key in the door.

Melinda was there on the bed, watching the television, her foot doing the agitated bounce. She didn't even look his way. She was angry, and she had a right to be. It was supposed to be their trip to the beach. Their chance to work things out. It wasn't supposed to be a surf trip.

Nathan stood in the center of the room, his hair tangled and matted, the wetsuit dripping on the carpet. He stood the surfboard in the comer, walked across the room to hang the wetsuit on the balcony. Melinda never took her eyes off the television.

He came back into the room and sat down on the opposite bed. He faced Melinda and watched her. There was so much he wanted to say. But his throat was dry. He couldn't talk. All those fears and doubts came rushing back. He fought to keep them out, fought to remain focused on the feelings he'd experienced in the parking lot. But he failed. "I love you, Melinda. More than anything." But it wouldn't come out.

Nathan turned and stretched out on the bed. Eventually the lights and television were turned off. Not a single word was said. They slept in separate beds.

"Why's it so dark in here?"

Charlie McNamara sounded more feeble than usual. Nathan shivered, cleared his head. "It's OK, Charlie."

Nathan got up, walked over and switched on the overhead light, walked back and turned off the lamp.

"There you go. How's that?"

Charlie didn't say anything. He just lay there, staring at the ceiling, his breath shallow and his gnarled and spotted hands clutching the sheet to his chest.

Nathan left the room and made his way down the hall to the TV lounge. Slow going. Holding the handrail. When he passed the nurses station, he paused and told Edna, the shift supervisor, that she might want to look in on Charlie.

He watched a cop show and half of what they call a reality show. It made no sense to him. So he walked back to his room. When he got there, Charlie was gone. His bed was stripped of its linen. Nathan sat down just as Edna stepped into the room. "Bad news, I'm afraid, Nathan." "I know," he said. "I could tell he didn't have long."

"Are you all right? Can I get you anything?"

"I'm OK."

Edna put her hand on Nathan's shoulder and squeezed gently, then left the room. Nathan wasn't upset. He didn't even ruminate about the great beyond or where Charlie might be right now in the grand scheme of things. He had liked his roommate but never considered him a close friend. Charlie was just the person who lived in the other half of the room.

But Charlie's departure had personal implications for Nathan. The room was all his now, at least until a new roommate arrived. He could turn on the lamp as much as he liked, spend as much time as he wanted with Melinda in the motel room in Carolina Beach.

And that's what he did for almost a week. He hardly ever left the room. His hibernation took on all the classic symptoms of addiction. Nathan knew it wasn't good for him, but he couldn't help himself. He sat there for hours in the warm glow of the lamp. He talked to Melinda. Said all the things he'd wanted to say. She smiled and understood. They had so much to look forward to, their life together.

The new roommate was named Jerry Huggins, a young man, 86. He talked a lot and was actually kind of entertaining. Nathan didn't have as many chances to turn on the lamp now. But that was OK. Strangely, the tears had ceased. The painful earlier trips to Carolina Beach were now memories themselves.

One night Jerry returned from the TV lounge and found Nathan sitting in the room with just the lamp on. He asked what was going on, but Nathan deflected his roommate's curiosity with excuses about the harshness of the overhead light and how the glare hurt his eyes. Jerry offered to get a lamp of his own for his bedside table, but Nathan had insisted that it wasn't necessary.

All in all. Jerry turned out to be a pretty understanding guy. In fact, it was Jerry who encouraged Nathan a few months later to tell the doctor about the blood in his urine.

"You're up and down all night," he told Nathan. "Just go and get it checked out." Nathan didn't have a choice when the orderlies noticed the blood on the sheets. He sat in the infirmary, listening to the Muzak playing somewhere overhead. An old Vietnam protest song. "Who'll Stop the Rain?" It had been stripped of its urgency. "Like everything else in life," Nathan thought and looked down at his hands. When he was a little boy, Nathan looked at his hands a lot. Studied them. Marveled at the creases in his knuckles and the lines in his palms. "This is me," he would think, and a shiver of fear would run down his spine. Life was enormous. He was afraid he wouldn't make the most of it.

The doctor spoke in a soft, consoling voice and didn't beat around the bush. Of course he didn't tell Nathan anything he didn't already know.

Back in his room, Nathan sat by the bed and rubbed his right hand over his head. There was still some hair there, thin and sparse. Nothing like the thick blond curls from his surfing days.

Jerry quietly asked what the doctor had said. Nathan told him. "Anything I can do?" Jerry asked.

"I'd just like to be alone for a little while," Nathan said. "If you don't mind." Jerry said sure and went down the hall to play some cards.

After a few minutes, Nathan got up, turned off the overhead light and sat back down. He reached over and turned on the lamp.