Paula's Clown

This piece, Paula's Clown, made the top 10 Beacon Flash 500 Word Competition for 2020/2021. Click below for their announcement.

Beacon Flash 500 2020/2021 Competition

Paula's Clown

by

Douglas Goodrich

When I reach the 3^rd floor of the main building at Northeast Children’s Hospital, I immediately notice the capacity. Sometimes it’s packed and other weeks, it’s light. If it’s light, it probably means we’ve lost some. These are the kids with cancer. This is the hardest floor to complete my job. This is where you really earn the laughs.

 At first, when I started working the circuit, the losses would knock me down up here. A kid that I was making laugh the week before, somehow was not there anymore. But I’ve been given the ability to push those losses aside and take care of the ones still here with a couple of good fart jokes. I do it for the kid’s laughter. The greatest sound in the world, always honest, never fake.

“Hey, Dr. Schmoozie!” That’s me. A Doctor of laughs. I recognized the call immediately and turned to see a little squirt staring me down with an orange water pistol pointed at my stomach.

Paula was a nine-year-old beauty who had Leukemia. She has been on the 3^rd floor for three months now and I’ve seen good times and bad. But she always wants to squirt me with that silly pistol, no matter how much pain she’s in.

As soon as she soaks my shirt, I give her the best Hollywood death scene I’ve got. I mean I lay it on so thick the nurses at the station explode with laughter and applause. Sweet Paula bends down and pulls my hair causing me to scream, “ouch” as I climb to my feet.

I push my flower horn, and greet her with, “Hello, Ms. Paula, what’s happening?” I always ask, ‘what’s happening?’, because you never want to casually say, ‘How are you?’ up here. That opens a whole can of worms and my job is to take her mind away from that. You can just assume that life sucks for the kids on the 3^rd floor.

“I missed you, Dr. Schmoozie!” Oh, that breaks my heart! If I could stay on the 3^rd floor all the time, I would. I’ve created distractions for someone getting a shot, dried tears from painful chemo treatments, and danced in and out of all these rooms but at some point, I must go home, and they must stay.

Paula’s mom greeted me with a smile and a hug. I could tell she’d been crying but I didn’t change my goofy expression. At no point was I going to let Paula think I had a serious bone in my body.

My job as a hospital clown is to make sick kids laugh. To make them feel normal. I inhale their pain and exhale fun.

As Paula rode on my shoulders down the hall squirting everyone with water, I dreamed that she’d be there the next week, but I prepared myself to entertain a new kid and never let them see the sadness in my heart.