I like to talk while I work. We, the patients and me, talk about the weather a lot. The patients like it if the weather is really bad outside, so they don’t feel like they’re missing out on much. Or I ask them what they do for work or what grade they are in school or when they get to go home. I never ask them about their medical problems, but you’d be surprised how often they tell me anyway.   

          I don’t mind. They need someone to listen. Like the other day, there was this old lady, blue hair all messy and flat on the back of her head. She was so pale she matched the sheets. I started out mopping. At first, she just stared out the window.

          “It looks like rain,” she said.

          “Yes, Ma’am.” I kept mopping.

          “I used to love the rain.”

          “Is that so?” I moved some chairs and kept mopping.

          “I could sit in my picture window with the cat on my lap and watch a storm all afternoon.”

          “Huh.” I mopped under her bed. I could see her hand shaking when she reached for her cup of water.

          “I may not ever get to see my house again.”

          You would have to be heartless to not respond to a statement like that. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

           She told me she was bleeding in her intestines and they didn’t know where and she was starting to cough and she was scared. She was afraid that she wasn’t going to be able to go back home. She had lived in the same house her whole life and all her things had great meaning to her. “I know a lot of people think that’s silly, to put so much stock into things,” she said, “but since my husband died, that’s all I have.”  

          She talked for a long time. I took my time with emptying her trash and then I polished the counters, then the bed rails, and the chairs, and even washed the windows, that’s how much she needed to talk. She made me promise to see her the next day. So the next day I worked really hard and really fast, so I would have plenty of time for her. But when I went into her room, it was empty. Made me feel kinda empty, too. So, I just took a breath, got myself organized, and started to clean. I washed away every last trace of her, which is what I’m supposed to do. Maybe she just got moved to another floor. Or the ICU. Or maybe she got to go back home. But she could have died. That’s a problem with this job: I’ll never know. 

          I’ve been a janitor for twenty years. After I got out of the Navy, I worked at GE for enough years to get a retirement. Now that was boring. Handled the same parts over and over and over. Worked as a janitor so I could pay for my girls to go to college. Got three girls, all grown up now, have two grandkids and another on the way. They’re all doing fine. When I left GE, I thought about quitting at the hospital, too, but I couldn’t do it. After my wife died, I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. I like to be busy. I like to make things better.

          Some of the other janitors, they don’t talk with the patients. They put their heads down and clean away without saying a word. Maybe they think it would be easier if they never got to know any of the patients. If the patients died, they wouldn’t feel so sorry. But it seems to me that if they didn’t want to talk with anyone, they should work in the morgue. 

          Sometimes I’m assigned to pediatrics. Usually, that’s a pretty fun place to work, but there can be really sick kids there. I feel bad for them all. One girl, her face was all bandaged, and her arms, too; she told me she got burned when their house caught fire and she went back to find her kitty, and she rescued it. I told her that her kitty was awfully lucky to be loved so much. 

          Down the hall is where the cancer kids are. I was mopping one day when this kid told me about what he used to do back when he felt good. He said he was the best skateboarder in the city and that when he grows up he wants to wrestle alligators. You can’t always tell with kids what is made up and what isn’t. When I came in the next day, the boy was just back from surgery. He’d had his leg amputated.

          So many of the kids are embarrassed over not having hair. In one room, there was a kid, maybe 10 years old. He was sitting up pretending to read a comic book. He didn’t look at me at first. 

          When I got near his bed he said, “You have to mop floors and empty waste baskets all day?” 

          I nodded and kept working.

          “That must be an awful job.”

          “It’s not so bad.”  

          “I don’t believe you. I think dumping garbage is stupid work.” Even though he sounded mean and angry, I knew it didn’t have anything to do with me.

          “That’s not all I do, you know.”

          He looked up at me.

          “I also polish mirrors.” I pulled out a clean rag and pretended to polish the top of his bald head. “There, that’s nice and shiny now.”

          The kid rolled his eyes. 

          I leaned my mop against the wall. “Now hold still so I can see.” I pretended to smooth my hair in my reflection on the top of his head. I pretended to check my teeth and put on makeup, and the kid started to smile. I made some silly faces, and he laughed out loud. 

          “See, that shiny head of yours is good for something,” I told the kid. He grinned at me.   

          A lot of times I’ve had to clean up messes, like when one of the kids throws up after chemo. Not that I mind puke so much. I cleaned up enough of it when my girls were young. But I feel so bad for the kids. They have to go through so much.

          Today I was on the floor where the new mothers are. In most of the rooms you might see the father, and maybe a bunch of other family there, too. But in this room, the new mom was all alone. I found her trying to get out of bed. I told her she might want to wait for a nurse. She cursed in Spanish. She hadn’t called a nurse because she couldn’t speak English. I rang the bell for her and asked for help, and told her to hold on. She said she really had to go to the bathroom, and she climbed out of bed anyway and once her feet were on the floor she started to sway like she might pass out. I put my arm around her and walked her to the toilet. A nurse came in and I translated for the young lady until the nurse had her all fixed up. I saw there was a big puddle of blood on the floor next to the bed and a trail of bloody footprints where she had walked. I cleaned up the floor, got it all washed and made sure it was dry before she got out of the bathroom. I didn’t want her to slip. Later I saw her walking in the hall pushing her baby’s crib in front of her. She didn’t notice me. That’s okay. It probably meant she was feeling better.

          During COVID a bunch of the janitors quit. They said their wives didn’t want them around if they were going to bring COVID home every night. One of the guys who stuck around, Jim, lived in his van so he wouldn’t spread anything to his family. They stayed healthy, but he got sick. He was unconscious when I cleaned around his bed in the ICU. He was there for two weeks. He never did make it home.

          When I get home after work the house feels so empty, just like that old lady’s room. When COVID was bad I’d peel off all my clothes, put them in the washing machine, and run them with hot water and high heat in the dryer to kill any bugs. I showered with antibacterial soap. No matter how hard I scrubbed, I felt the germs sticking to every strand of my hair, between my toes, under my nails, on my skin. I could’ve swum in disinfectant and still felt that way. So many people died. I imagine there’s germs even now. Somehow, I never get sick. 

          I wish I could tell my wife about my work and the patients I talk to. Some days, when work seems too hard, when the doctors and nurses push by me like they don’t even see me, when patients die, I imagine what it would be like to give up, and how nice it would be to see my wife again. But I picture her shaking her head and telling me that dying is not an option. She’d say I need to make some dinner. I need to keep up my strength. Those poor kids need me. And old ladies and new moms. And the nurses and doctors need me too, even if they don’t know it, even if I am invisible.