The piss trickled into Stony's shoe.

"Hey, Reynard! Hey, Reynard! I'm finished! I'm finished!"

Glaring at Stony, Reynard roughly jerked his patient off the toilet, wiped his ass and almost threw him back in the wheelchair. He started out of the bathroom, then turned. "Valentine's finished."

Stony tossed the ball of toilet paper on the floor, lifted Valentine off the pot, pulled up his pajama bottoms and tried to maneuver him into his wheelchair. He forgot to lock the wheels and as he began Valentine's descent the wheelchair rolled away from him. Reynard pushed the chair back and braced it as Stony sat Valentine down.

"You forgot to wipe his ass," Reynard reproached.

"He didn't shit."

After depositing Valentine back in his room, Stony stomped through the corridor, eyes straight ahead.

"Lifter!"

Stony ignored the nurse and ran down six flights of stairs to Personnel.

***

"Miss Guardino, I can't hack it." Stony shook his head as he leaned forward hunched over in his seat. "It's too depresso up there. I'm up to my elbows in shit, I got piss on my pants, and I got death up my nose. Excuse my language."

Miss Guardino regarded him with a half smile, played with a pencil on her desk. "Well, this is a hospital."

Despite his misery Stony noticed she had some fine bosoms on her. "Yeah, I know, but this isn't what I was promised. What's the story on the children's ward? Because I'll tell you honestly, if nothing's gonna happen, I'm gonna hafta quit."

She picked up the phone, dialed once.

"Three-four-three, please." She winked at Stony. "Yes, Mrs. Pitt, please. Thank you. Florence? Rae Guardino. Hi. Listen, I have a boy in my office now who's been working on six and he was promised last week that he would be working with you. Uh-uh. Uh-uh. Yeah. Thomas De Coco Junior. D-E-C-O-C-O. Uh-uh." She lightly scratched her nose with a chipped pinkynail as she talked. "Well, he's been having a rough time on six and ... Yeah, O.K. O.K. Thanks. Bye."

"Go up to the fourth floor, Room Four-o-one, and see Mrs. Pitt. She'll try to switch you over today." She winked again.

"Fantastic." Stony got up. "I was really gettin' the horrors up there."

"Geriatrics isn't for everybody."

"You can say that again. Thanks a million." As Stony left the office Miss Guardino studied his ass, whipped out a brown paper bag and a thermos from her desk drawer and had lunch.

***

"Have you ever worked with children before, Mr. De Coco?" Mrs. Pitt was a short, heavyset woman in her sixties who wore her gray hair in bangs. Stony could tell by her patient smile that she had worked with kids for two hundred years.

"Nah, not really, unless you wanna count my kid brother. He's eight. I take care a him pretty good. He's anorexic." Stony scratched his jaw and glanced at a photo cube on her desk, stuffed with Instamatic shots of a family around a Christmas tree.