Most of the patients were still asleep between four and five a.m. Only when the sun started to rise to many of them open their eyes and "rock and roll" as Jodi said. With her early morning nausea, Linda wondered if she would need the emesis pan before the patients. The director of nursing arrived and looked directly at her belly before even saying hello. "Are you sure you're only seven months along?" she said, making her feel even worse. "You look like you could pop at any time."
As the morning wore on, patients, and visiting family commented a few times about Linda's advanced pregnancy state. "I feel fine," she told them, knowing inside that she was feeling anything but.
Further on down the hall, Linda checked in on Mr. Jacobson. He was a white haired man with piercing eyes, who was suffering through end stage prostate cancer. That made his care easy for Linda: she did little more than administer pain meds for him. His eyes were closed when she first entered, but he quickly opened them and said "Well I'll be! It's Ginger Rogers!"
"One of the other nurses told me about your dancing," he said, in a thick, somewhat raspy voice, the same way all end stage patients spoke.
"Well it's been awhile since I've been on the floor," she said, as she switched out IV bags and reconnected one monitor.
"Dancing is a beautiful thing," he went on. She thought he was going to say more, but instead he closed his eyes and slipped back to sleep, snoring slightly.
While tending to the other patients for the rest of the morning, she thought about dancing, the studio, and her wonderful dream about the tall, mysterious man sweeping her through the grand foxtrot. It had been nearly a year since she'd been back to The Next Step, but Ginny called her every now and then to give her the latest news and gossip. That way she learned that Ron had resigned, to go to Florida to help a friend of his with a dance studio there.
By late morning, she knew there were no two ways about it: she had to get back out onto the floor. The best way she could think of was a dance lesson. She had over twenty hours on the books from the last program she'd bought, so the financial end was already taken care of. All she had to do was call.
On her next break she called there. A new woman's voice answered the phone. It seemed that Maggie was into hiring older receptionists these days. Linda hadn't been paying attention when she answered but she had to introduce herself. "I would like a lesson," she said.