The Big Nurse walked away from the broken window and I could see her trembling. That night, I was sweeping up the glass from the broken window. The Big Nurse came out in a gray robe; her head looked as if it was a huge gear on the verge of falling off her body.
I took the broom and kept on sweeping. She looked at me and then down at the rusted old floor.
"The sound of glass," she said in a whisper. "It will never go away. I was 17 and fearing for my life. He came in and broke every mirror in the house. Never in my life had I been so afraid," she looked up at me and took a puff on the newly lit cigarette. "He came up to me and forced himself on me. I screamed and he would not let of my body. I screamed but he muffled the sound with his hand. When he was done, he broke the window above my bed and cut me with it. I screamed and my mother came in but he was gone."
She took another puff on her cigarette and flicked the ash off the end onto the floor. "I was put in the hospital and stayed there for days."
I looked at her with sad eyes and kept on sweeping the floor like a disjointed machine. I saw her shivering and the tears rolling down her face. She really thought that I couldn't hear her and that I was not capable of love.
I picked up the glass and took it outside to dump is to not shake her up more. I then went to one of the cabinets and took out a blanket and handed it to her. She looked at me as I handed her the ashtray on the table. There was something about her; the way that she was a different person at night. She didn't look scary or mean at all. She looked like a lost puppy in the snow trying to find its way home. She looked at me with saddened eyes.
"My mother told me to get over it but I knew that I would never be the same. She was such a bitch. The day she died I was free to run this place how I wanted to."
She pulled the blanket closer to her body. "Now, the glass has fallen and the only person who gives a damn is the deaf one. One day, the world will see what it means to be a woman and how to make men do what a woman wants. I could kill McMerphy right where he stands. That bastard is going to pay for what he has done." She was so out of it that she hadn't realized that I had heard her.
She was just a person like all of us. She had lost so much at such a young age. I felt bad for her and wished that someone would help her. She really wasn't that bad, she was just alone and very miserable. She remanded me of my father when he had become smaller and weaker.
She looked at me and I thought that I saw her smile a little. It could have happened.
"Go to bed. Finish in the morning." I put the broom away and as I was walking, I looked back at her.
"Good night," I said quietly.