“Legally, I couldn’t enter,” he assures me, as though the law prohibitively affects physics. “Besides, we need to go in there as a unit.”
I don’t understand the distinction. I’m too annoyed to care.
“Hey, I’m hourly,” laughs the orderly. “Long as I’m done by five, you can do what the hell you want.”
Why am I fighting the inevitable? I open the door. I regret it.
“Damn!” the orderly recoils with his free arm to his nose. “And I hose down folks that s**t themselves!”
The scent is noxious, but it’s not s**t. And the fumes don’t burn my soft palate like so many chemical smells do. It’s not sweet like rot, either, or reeking like fish, or rotten like phosphorous. I can’t classify it. It’s aggressively damp, somehow, and fetid, like the burning fur of a sick dog was dowsed with vinegar.
Du
