At 9:00 a nurse appeared with a tray of meds. She verified his name by checking his hospital bracelet and then handed him a small pleated paper cup with two pills in it. When he was a kid his mother had given him cups the same size filled with M&M’s.

“To help you sleep,” she said when she saw the look on his face. “Do you need a urinal?”

The minute she said it, he realized his bladder was full and the pressure close to painful.

“Please.”

She set down her tray and removed a lidded plastic urinal from the cabinet beside his bed. The device had a handle and a slanted spout and looked like something his kids could invent a hundred uses for at the beach. “I’ll leave this with you. You can ring when you’re done.”

“Thanks.”

She pulled the curtain along its track, shielding him from the curious eyes of those passing in the hall. He waited until she was gone and then rolled to his left and angled his penis into the opening of the urinal. Despite his best intentions, nothing would come. He tried to relax. He put his mind on something else, but the only thing he could think about was his need for relief. He would have laughed if the need to pee hadn’t been so imperative. He’d suffered something similar when he and Carolyn were undergoing infertility treatments and he was asked to ejaculate into a cup so his sperm could be examined under a microscope and then washed before each of the five fruitless intrauterine inseminations they’d undergone.

He took a deep breath, hoping his bladder would relent. A pointless enterprise. He gave up for the moment and when the pressure was unbearable, he rang the nurses’ station. Fifteen minutes passed before the aide appeared. She palpated his abdomen and then went to consult a nurse, who returned to the room accompanied by a student nurse. She had a catheterization packet with her, and she opened it and took out the Foley, a pair of latex gloves, and a packet of lubricant. She viewed the situation as a teaching opportunity. She grasped his penis and explained how to pass the Foley into the bladder by way of his urethra.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said to him, as an aside.

“That’s fine,” Walker said. If she didn’t get on with it, his bladder would burst. He only half listened, distancing himself from what was going on.

“The size of a Foley is indicated in French units,” she was saying to the student nurse. “The most common sizes are 10 F to 28 F; 1 F is equivalent to 0.33 millimeters or .013 inches, 1/77th of an inch in diameter . . .”