GIGGLES

by CeCe Pleasants Adams  —

Cynthia stood in the sick yellow staff bathroom of the pediatric wing of the hospital. She held a handful of lethal-smelling makeup wipes as she leaned over the sink and let her gaze drift to the dusty art piece that hung opposite the mirror, visible over her shoulder.  

It was one of those mass-produced canvases pumped out by big box stores. It depicted a terracotta wall behind a bowl of lemons sitting on a butcher block. One of the lemons had escaped and rolled artfully forward, almost touching the exclamation mark of the bold, black cursive letters that were suspended, forever just out of reach, in the foreground.

“LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE!” it declared. Or, more accurately, “!EVOL, HGUAL, EVIL”  

“I bet that poor lemon has had it with toxic positivity,” thought Cynthia.  

One of her teenage patients had introduced her to the term “toxic positivity.” Unlike some of her peers, Cynthia liked the youngs. They came up with cute names for the shit she’d been swallowing for years. She wasn’t sure what that did, but maybe naming the horrible things made them easier to kill. Maybe.

She dragged her focus away from that desperate, striving little lemon and back to her reflection.

“Jesus Christ,” she muttered as she surveyed the broken-down clown nurse that stood before her.

The greasepaint that defined her enormous red smile, lined in black, was sinking inevitably into her wrinkles. She got why women her age pumped their lips full of – what was it? Silicone? Botulism? Gluten? Those weird, bloated duck-lips might look cartoonish, but they hid the fact that you smoked in your twenties.

“Man, I miss smoking,” thought Cynthia.

She puffed out her lips in the mirror and uttered a sultry, “Prunes…” then laughed to herself.

To herself? It almost sounded like someone was laughing with her. A girlish voice, higher than her own grown-up tenor… “He-he-he-he-heeeee!”

Cynthia stopped laughing. She breathed softly into the quiet of the antiseptic room. She might need glasses to read these days, but she had excellent hearing. If someone was here…

Nope. Nothing. She was overtired.

The hospital “strongly recommended” the nurses in peeds each take a monthly shift smearing on clown makeup to “cheer up patients.”  

That was textbook toxic positivity. Wasn’t it? Especially when up to seventeen percent of Americans have a clinical phobia of clowns, according to Cynthia’s phone.

“You’re a kid with cancer? Well, I’m a fifty-six-year-old medical professional in clown makeup. Do you feel better?”  

They did not.

With or without the makeup, Cynthia knew how to get a laugh. Usually by cursing or telling a poop joke when the parents were out of the room.

This farce wasn’t for the kids. It was all for Jim Roberts, the hospital administrator who’d never stopped congratulating himself on his brilliant “nurses as clowns” idea. He liked to tell them, “It’s not mandatory, ladies! It’s fine if you hate fun.”

Fuck him.

“And fuck me I guess,” said Cynthia under her breath. Not for the first time today.  

The top of her scrubs, which were covered in balloons, stretched too tight across her bust. It had, over the past few years, simultaneously swollen and deflated. How was that even physically possible? She was a nurse and damned if she knew.

Her hospital ID had been shoved in her pocket, and in its place was a giant yellow nametag that read, “HI! MY NAME IS GIGGLES.”

The huge, curly rainbow wig was askew, and her coarse, silver roots poked out at random intervals. It was a losing battle at this point, but she kept trying. She patted her hair thinking, “I need to make a color appointment at Hairway to Heaven… Ridiculous name.”

“Hehehehe! Hairway to Heaven! Oh, that is TERRIBLE! Hahahaha!” the cutesy voice rang through the bathroom again.

Cynthia jumped! “What the hell?”

“Hahahaha! You jumped!”

“Where are you?” Cynthia knew she’d checked for feet when she came in, but now she rushed around, slamming open the three metal stall doors.

No one.

No one.

No one.

“I’m losing it,” thought Cynthia. “Did someone slip something into my coffee?”

She checked her pulse. Normal. Breathing? Steady under the circumstances. She looked at her pupils. Not dilated. If anything, her eyes looked brighter than usual.

Her color? Well, lead-paint-white, black and red. But that was easily solvable.

She forced herself to unclench her fist, and with one of the crushed makeup wipes, she gave her cheek a purposeful swipe.  

“I’m done with twelve-hour shifts,” she thought.

She studied the area she’d hit with the wipe. There should be a satisfying Cynthia’s-skin-colored hole. But it was still bloodless, unnatural white.

She swiped again, more forcefully. Nothing. Then a long, sharp draw across the exaggerated lips. But it was like she wasn’t even touching her face. The makeup was not coming off. She went from swiping to aggressively scrubbing to digging into her skin so hard it made her hands shake.

She turned on the water and tried re-wetting the makeup wipes. Another swipe. Another scrub, but the clown in the mirror just looked at her with the fire-engine smile, the hearts on the cheeks. The too-bright eyes.

And then it returned… full of so much terrifying joy, “Hehehehehe! Giggles, you’re hilarious!”

“My name is not Giggles!” she shouted at no one.  

“But Giggles…”

She drowned out the voice by turning the tap to full power with one hand and loudly pumping gross pink soap out of its almost-empty sink-side dispenser with the other. She smashed the gummy liquid into her face, followed by a dousing with scalding water.

But what stared back was still the smiling, syrup-sweet face of a middle-aged lady clown. She wasn’t even wet.

Panic rising, she reached up to the crazy rainbow curls and yanked, hard… but no.

The wig was somehow glued to her head. And as she watched, the salt-and-pepper seemed to fuse with the rainbow, creating something that was an amalgam of her hair and the clown’s.

“You have PERFECT hair Giggles! Hahaha! Our appearance isn’t supposed to matter, but us girls know it definitely does; doesn’t it Giggles? Everything’s a trap! Hehehe!”

“Sweet Christ!” said Cynthia.

“Hahahaha! What’s HE ever done? All that suffering out there! Those kids! The only thing that has any power is laughter, Giggles! Nobody knows that better than you! Hahahahaha!”

Cynthia felt her skin prickling with sweat. But the Cynthia-clown in the mirror looked back at her, smiling coolly. How dare she?

She told herself she just had to get out of this awful bathroom. That’s all. One thing at a time. “Does asbestos make you hallucinate?” she wondered. There’s definitely asbestos in those ceiling tiles. Maybe there was a magic mushroom in the burrito she’d microwaved for dinner. Maybe her lump of a husband had absently dropped one of his weed gummies into her supplements. It didn’t matter, just get OUT. OF. THIS. ROOM.

She turned to the door, but before she could reach for the handle, it slammed open, the blinding hall fluorescents making it look like a portal to another dimension.

“Yes! Get out there and spread some glee! Live, laugh, love, Giggles! Wheee!”

“Breathe,” she told herself. “In and out.” Then with forced calm, Cynthia took a slow step forward and said, “My name is not Giggles. I’m Cynthia. And I will wake up any minute now.”

“Goose that caboose, Giggles! Choo-Choo!”

Cynthia pitched forward as she felt a pinch, yes, an actual pinch, on her ass.

And now she was running.

The ward was busy. Even during “quiet hours.” She had to dodge staff, patients and parents. Making her way to the large, cluttered oval of the nurses’ station, she grabbed her coat off the back of a chair, then picked up her water bottle and took a long pull, thinking, “Dehydration? That can do terrible things to your brain.”

The newest staff nurse, Madison, was sitting next to Cynthia’s workspace scrolling on her phone. Without looking up, she said, “Sharon hasn’t shown up yet. Roberts is looking for you to cover.”

“No. I can’t. I really can’t,” Cynthia almost screamed.

This jerked Madison out of her reverie, “Are you okay?”

“I couldn’t get the makeup off,” Cynthia apologized.

Madison cocked an eyebrow, “What makeup? You know, you should do lashes. Your eyes are really small. I read your eyes get smaller as you age.”

Cynthia stared with her apparently-small eyes…

“Ahahahahahahahaha!” The voice was crazy with delight. “How do you even see with those things, Giggles?! Hahahaha!”

Cynthia started trembling. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

Frantic now, Cynthia said, “The laughing? A little girl laughing?”

“Oh my God Cynth, you’re wild. You’re the one who gets them to laugh. They just look at me like, ‘What are YOU doing here, bitch?’”

“Hehehehehehe! Bitch! It’s the easiest gendered slur but works every time! Woohoohoo!”

Cynthia felt like throwing herself on the floor. Why couldn’t she hear? Why couldn’t everybody? It was SO LOUD.  

Madison was still going… “Earth to Cynthia! Would you open my Liquid Death? I just got these nails.” Madison brandished her artfully pointy nails.

With violently shaking hands, Cynthia picked up the seltzer can and turned away, trying for nonchalant conversation, “How are you doing IVs?”

“Oh, I just get Anita to do it for me, you know she loves being a martyr.”

Cynthia extended the can back in Madison’s direction and popped the top.  

The water EXPLODED.

Madison jumped up, “What the hell, bro!”

“Eeeeeehehehehehehehe! Direct hit, Giggles!”  

Cynthia grabbed a roll of paper towels and started ripping off sheets to hand to Madison, “Oh no! I didn’t mean to! I’m so sorry!”

But a small, involuntary chortle escaped. “Baha…”

“Are you laughing?” A smile was creeping onto Madison’s face, “A guy barfed on me earlier, I needed a shower anyway. Ha!”

Madison was laughing too now.

“No, no… it’s not funny.” Cynthia threw the rest of the towels toward Madison and grabbed her stuff. “I’m really sorry. I gotta get out of here!”

“Get some rest girl,” Madison snickered after her.

“Get some rest Giggles! Hahahahahahaha!”

Cynthia could feel the tears streaming down her face as she jammed her arms into her jacket. She speed-walked down the corridor toward the exit and caught a glimpse of her reflection in one of the interior windows.

Not a crying, harried Cynthia. It was that serene, crimson-mouthed clown wearing Cynthia’s puffy purple coat.

She plowed ahead and almost collided with a twelve-year-old patient whose spine was damaged in a car accident.

“I’m so sorry, Liam!” she said.

He smiled, “No worries!”

Liam was determined to get better by walking the ward every hour. His father had been driving the car. Probably while intoxicated, definitely while being an idiot. He was bent over, tying his shoe as his son struggled to take the next painful step.

The dad’s large, stonewashed butt was in the air, and suddenly, something compelled Cynthia to purse her lips and conjure a perfect auditory reproduction of a long, wet fart.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

Cynthia looked around, stunned at herself. The father stammered, red-faced, as, like a wave, the laughter erupted everywhere – the tired parents and doctors and nurses, sweet Liam. The high child’s voice was just audible above the din. “Hehehehe!” But surrounded by the mad chorus, Cynthia couldn’t stop herself. She felt the pull of it deep in her belly, and something in her broke.

She cracked a smile and then started chuckling along with the rest. The hysteria of the last hour melting into genuine mirth. It felt good.  

She rested her hands gently in her pockets and left the guffawing cohort behind her.

Still quietly giggling to herself, she had the sliding glass doors of the hospital entrance in sight. Just one big, cold blast of air, and Cynthia knew she would be okay.  

And then “Call me Jim” Roberts came trotting purposefully from nowhere, around the reception desk and toward the darkened hallway where Cynthia stood, frozen.

Roberts was the hospital administrator who decided birthdays would be celebrated only once a month to save on cake, whose sneakers were disgustingly clean, who’d neatly printed the yellow nametag: “HI! MY NAME IS GIGGLES.”

“Nurse!” he called. He could never remember Cynthia’s name. She’d stopped trying to help him. “Nurse …Cindy? Cindy, I need someone to stay to cover for…”

He paused, taking Cynthia in for a moment in the dim light. Did he see her? Did HE see the clown? He cocked his head and altered his tone a little, but continued his confident stride toward her… “The thing is, Nurse… Cindy… if you could help me out here…”

Cynthia felt something shift in her pockets. In her right, she had a loose grip on her big heavy ring of keys, but in her left, her fingers met something tender and a bit squishy. Huh.

Automatically, Cynthia lifted it out and pitched the banana peel low and perfect like a stone skimming across a pond. It landed directly under one of Jim Roberts’ bright white sneakers and BAM!

He went down in a perfect backward arc, slamming headfirst into the marble floor.  
“Ahahahahahahahahaha!”

Two voices laughed together. The little girl and the grown woman laughed and laughed until they melded into one wild, meaty “HAHAHAHAHAHA!”

A bright red pool was forming around Jim Roberts’ head. And the laughter only intensified.

Cynthia held her sides as she crab-walked past the prone figure. A little more blood bubbled from his lips as he tried to speak…

“Cindy… please…”

She turned and smiled down at the dying man.

“My name is Giggles.”

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