Eye Contact, page 6
He began to think more about the mysterious uncertain someone's possible motive for kidnapping him. If the person had taken David, drugged him and then hid him somewhere in the hospital, that person might be someone who was employed by the hospital. “Yes,” he thought. “That could be it.” The hospital might be a very large complex and someone could have access to most of the hospital rooms, not to mention any cabinets containing drugs. Such a person might be a maintenance man or perhaps an orderly, and that person might be able to successfully hide David away. Someone like that could have overpowered David, drugged him and brought him here. Most people would think nothing of an orderly wheeling a gurney with an unconscious body on it through the hospital. And if the perpetrator had covered David with a sheet and hung a tag on his toe, people might assume the person was simply transporting a corpse to the morgue.
Maybe these presumed kidnappers sent Gina a ransom note. But he could not imagine why anyone would want to do such a thing. He and Gina had no money other that a few hundred dollars in savings. The bulk of their original savings had been all but cleaned out when they had to come up with the down payment required to buy their small house a few years ago. David's parents were not wealthy, either. His parents were both retired, his father from a local metalworking factory and his mother from the local knitting mill. The only thing his folks had to their names was their modest home, equally modest pensions and a small social security income. David assumed they may have had some money saved, but he did not suspect it was any substantial amount.
Gina's father and mother were a bit more financially better off, however. Her father had owned a local men's clothing store for many years and was one of the town's leading citizens and businessmen. They were not what most of America would consider wealthy but were fairly well-off by coal region standards. David’s father-in-law, Bill, had offered to help them out with the down payment on their home so they could consider purchasing a better home than the one they actually purchased. David recalled his father-in-law suggesting they look into buying a single home with some land in suburban Mountain Springs.
However, he and Gina were determined to buy the house on their own, which they proudly did. Neither of them cared about settling for a smaller home because no matter what its size, it was their first home. They had bought it themselves and they loved it.
The house they had settled on was a wood-framed “company” type of row home on Walnut Street in Ashton. Most of the residents of Ashton lived in similar homes, which were what remained of the originals built by the coal companies in the early part of the twentieth century for the immigrants who flocked to work in their mines.
Many of the homes were built before the onset of indoor plumbing or steam heat, so some of them had exposed pipes visible along inside walls and in the corners of the rooms as a result of such upgrades added sometime after the homes’ initial construction. These pipes traveled from the second or third floors down through the first floor and into the basement.
Local residents often devised creative decorative ways to work around these potential eyesores in later days when homes became less about functionality and more about appearance. For example, some people would paint or paper the pipes a color or pattern to match the walls behind them, hoping to have them blend in with the walls in the background. Others would build decorative boxes around the pipes with access for plumbing issues. Some people also built boxes around unsightly cast-iron radiators with decorative open brass screening to allow heat into the rooms.
Still other houses had holes leading from one level to the other cut into the floors and covered with metal grates, known as heat registers. In this type of home, the coal furnace, located in the cellar of the home, actively generated heat. The heat would rise up through the holes to heat each floor. It was not the most effective form of heat. For example, during the coldest months of winter, children had to sleep under many blankets to combat the cold, and when they awoke, it was often in a very cold house. Then they would have to stand directly over one of these registers to become warm enough to get dressed for school. In the case of families with many children, the kids often had to stand in line bundled in blankets waiting for their chance to get dressed on the register. It was not very private, but at least it was warm.
The house David and Gina had purchased had fortunately already been updated throughout the years, so there was little to be done other than the personal changes the couple chose to make. Also, David was what locals called “handy” and had been doing most of the minor renovations himself, such as fixing leaky pipes, replacing electrical receptacles and some general minor carpentry work. During the past several years, he and Gina had managed to fix the place up quite nicely, and they were both very pleased with the results.
As David lay helplessly in the darkness, he began to rethink his situation. He did not honestly believe he had really been drugged and kidnapped. He could not really come up with any sound and logical reason why anyone would want to take him. He was a simple machine operator with a below-average income. He had nothing any person capable of such a crime would really want.
Therefore, something else must be wrong with him, but what exactly he could not determine. He tried to imagine what series of calamities could result in his being left stricken blind, deaf and paralyzed with almost no sense of smell or feeling. And now that he was starting to slowly gain back some of his lost senses, although in miniscule increments, he wondered how long it might be until he was normal once again.
He began to feel a new sort of sensation throughout the inside of his body—that of incredible cold. It felt like much more than just a typical chill. It felt almost like some sort of sinister icy hand with razor-sharp, frozen fingernails was crawling through him. He began to wonder if it was more than just a chill; perhaps it was an omen, a warning of some danger which awaited him. If so, he knew he was helpless to do anything about it.
This futile train of thought combined with David's feeling of complete impotence only served to increase his level of anxiety, until once again, overwrought, he blacked out.
Chapter 7
David cautiously opened his eyes to the width of two extremely small slits almost as if he were afraid of what he might find waiting for him. He tried to focus, unsure of his surroundings. He was feeling quite bewildered and disoriented, not certain if he were awake or asleep. His body felt very cold, his lips shivering involuntarily with the onslaught of a sudden chill, which seemed to work its icy way from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.
His body ached with an incredible racking pain, making him feel like a twenty-five-ton Mack truck had run over him and then decided to back up and run over him once more for good measure. For a moment he thought back to how many times in the past he had routinely used the expression, “If I ever get hit by a truck” in his daily conversation. He would often use it to emphasize the critical nature of some small tidbit of technical information he possessed that he felt was extremely important and needed to be passed on to someone else. For example, when he was trying to explain some aspect of his job to a newer employee something only he knew, he would often say, “You really should learn this in case I get hit by a truck.”
Although he never actually thought he would ever be involved in such an unfortunate accident, David seemed to understand somewhere deep in his subconscious his “Hit by a truck” analogy might not be all that far from what may have actually occurred. Based on the way he felt, something bad had to have happened to him; what exactly that might be he did not know. He may have been in some sort of accident, though he could not recall it. But it made sense. Surely he must have had some sort of calamity if he was suffering with as much pain as he was currently feeling.
From the distant recesses of his befuddled mind, David felt as though he might be awakening from some sort of dream, perhaps a disturbing yet possibly significant dream. However, he could not recall a single instance of the experience; it was all black to him, all dark. He felt as if this experience in the blackness might also be something of importance to recall. In addition, he sensed those recent thoughts that he could not immediately call to mind might not be the only thing he needed to remember. He deliberated on the notion that he may have experienced numerous dreams with many vivid and strange images of unknown places and never previously conceived events.
He seemed to recognize that not only had there been such dreams but these particular dreams may have been more than just simply a collection of unrelated subconscious mental images; they may have been tied to some sort of noteworthy event, one he believed he might desperately need to call to mind but unfortunately could not.
He had some indescribable knowledge, bordering on instinct, that told him it might be extremely critical for him to remember at least some small part of these illusive dreams, as if to suggest the dreams may have presented him with some specific type of warning of impending danger. It was a warning he believed he was supposed to heed.
Unfortunately, whatever the focus, implication, or admonition of these dreams, whatever their vital communication, it had been lost, probably forever. He supposed it was possible the memories might lay buried deep in his subconscious and someday find their way forward into the forefront of his mind, but he did not put too much stock in the idea of such a thing happening.
He also questioned his own personal rationale as to why he might feel it was so important for him to remember these occurrences in the first place. After all, he supposed they were just dreams, nothing more. And he always believed dreams were primarily insignificant, just the brain’s way of relieving stress through a jumbled series of unrelated ideas. In David's opinion, dreams were as intangible as a puff of smoke or a swirl of fog. This image of swirling fog seemed to almost conjure up a recollection, or at least part of one, that caused David's heart to skip a beat. “Fog?” he thought for a moment, almost recalling the picture. Then the recollection faded just as quickly as it had almost materialized. Out of frustration, he decided to refocus on the here and now.
Even though the pain he felt throughout his body was extreme, it did not begin to compare to the throbbing misery he felt inside of his skull, which was unlike even the worst headaches he had ever experienced in his young life. He had experienced a few significant migraine headaches in the past. However, none compared with this one.
He wondered again what exactly had happened to him and where he might be. He smelled the clean, antiseptic scent he associated with hospitals. Was he in a hospital? He thought so. Was it the Ashton State Hospital? Or perhaps he was in the Yuengsville Hospital. Or maybe somewhere else. And why was he here? Once again, the thought of a hospital gave him a slight mental twinge as if perhaps he had dreamt of a hospital at some point in time.
His lips felt as though they were dry and cracked; his throat was parched and on fire. He heard through the cloudiness of his mind what sounded like a continuous flow of cool air, and he could feel it entering through his nostrils. He guessed he was connected to some sort of oxygen supply being fed to him through a type of nose clip he had seen used in hospitals before.
With his eyes still mostly closed, he tried to move his arms, discovering that doing so was extremely painful, as was any attempt to move his legs. He did not believe he had any broken bones, although he had no way of knowing this for certain. However, after a few brushes with such incredibly intense pain, David decided that attempting to turn his aching head to venture a look around the room might not be a very practical idea, either.
Instead, he decided to move his eyes just slightly from side to side and use his peripheral vision to learn what he could about his surroundings without causing himself any additional unwanted pain. “Peripheral vision,” he thought, feeling a sense of déjà vu, as if to suggest that at some earlier time he had been forced to resort to using peripheral vision to examine his surroundings. He could not recall where he had felt this feeling before but knew it must have been recently. He wondered if it, too, might have occurred in one of his unrecalled dreams but did not know for certain.
As things about him began to come into some limited degree of focus, although they were still quite blurry, he saw he was in a bed—a hospital bed, as he had suspected—which appeared to have been adjusted to allow his head and back to be slightly elevated. Looking straight up toward the ceiling, he could see the metal off-white tracks in a crisscross pattern from which two-by-two square acoustical panels hung. Between two of the panels he saw a two-by-four-foot florescent light fixture , which had been turned off for some reason, behind a translucent plastic cover.
David stared for a moment at the milky white rectangular plastic face of the light cover floating above him. Its foggy appearance caused his imagination to run wild for some unknown reason, and for a brief moment he thought he saw two large clawed animal-like hands pushing down from behind the translucent cover. Its surface was no longer rigid plastic but now an elastic rubbery membrane, which seemed to stretch downward toward him. David tensed with fear then involuntarily blinked his eyes and the horrible image disappeared, leaving the firm plastic cover back in place. “Wow!” David thought. “That was really weird!”
The only light in the room seemed to come from a dim amber lamp somewhere behind his head and another one somewhere across the room out of his field of vision. Attached to the ceiling was U-shaped track from which a privacy curtain was suspended. It was pulled all the way around to his left. He assumed either he was the only person in this room or someone might be in another bed to his left behind the curtain. He suspected he was alone.
He stared up at the ripples in the curtain where it connected to the hooks that secured it to the track. For a moment, he thought he saw some sort of snakelike vines slithering along the back surface of the curtain making serpentine rippling motions in the fabric. Again, he was forced to blink his eyes to clear away the strange vision.
Within the range of his still blurred view, he could see he was hooked up to a collection of strange noisy machines. “Machines?” he wondered. He had a brief flash in his mind of the distant humming of machinery. Had he dreamt of machinery? Had these machines surrounding him affected the content of his dreams?
David found the entire effect of the unclear vision and the humming machinery to be quite disconcerting. It made him feel as if he were actually living and breathing underwater. Again, the strange feeling of déjà vu overcame him, as if something was trying to make itself understood in his scrambled mind. “Breathing under water,” he thought with bewilderment.
He decided to try and communicate and to call “Hello” or “Help” or anything that might attract someone’s attention, but he discovered he could only utter a dry, faint “heh” sound, which started out as a weak puff of indistinguishable air and then faded into nothing from there. The barely noticeable, miniscule sound coming from his mouth reminded him of the noise the tin man made in the original Wizard Of Oz movie when Dorothy found him rusted in place and he could barely utter enough to ask her to retrieve his “oil can.” David recalled the pathetic sound the tin man made and thought his feeble cry was no better.
As he lay in the bed virtually helpless, he wondered if anyone was there in the room with him or if he was alone. He pondered how long he may have been confined to the bed and if his wife Gina had been made aware of where he was and what his current condition might be. He again had a strange feeling, almost a flashback, as if he had heard Gina calling his name, perhaps in one of his dreams. For some unknown reason he had not been able to respond to her call in the dreams.
David logically assumed he must have been in some sort of accident but could not remember any details of the event. When he concentrated very hard and tried to remember, he saw just brief flashes of darkness, the moon reflecting against a blanket of ice, a wondering deer and tumbling as if out of control, but everything was so jumbled and disconnected that nothing seemed to make any sense to him.
Suddenly an image flashed through his mind; one of some sort of strange creature, some type of talking puddle of flesh with only one arm, a solitary wandering eye and a black gaping hole for a mouth. He did not know where the idea for such a horrid nightmarish apparition had come from or why it had entered his mind out of the blue. The image sent a cold chill throughout his body. He understood nothing as hideous as the thing he had just called to mind had any business in the conscious brain of a sane man. Then before the figure could come fully into focus, it too disappeared as the other images had done.
With his still hazy vision, he was unable to see across the expanse of the room. He couldn’t hear any other ambient noises because of the clattering, beeping machinery monitoring his vital signs like a group of mechanical sentries he assumed were reporting his progress or lack thereof to whomever was responsible for keeping track of such information. He surmised the critical telemetry was going to a nurse at a remote station, perhaps somewhere on this very floor.
As David stared about trying to focus in vain, he caught some slight movement off to his right side and strained through his misty vision to see whatever it might be. He didn’t want to turn his aching head in that direction, though. After a few seconds, he thought he could make out the faint shape of someone walking into his room through an open doorway; maybe it was the nurse in charge of his care or a doctor coming to check on his progress. Again he tried hard to speak, to call out, but was unable. He knew he needed some water to moisten his vocal chords and allow him to begin speaking once again. He tried generating a sufficient amount of saliva and swallowing but his mouth and throat were both too badly in need of hydration.
As the blurry figure came closer into his limited line of sight, he saw it was definitely a woman wearing a white nurse’s uniform, the style with a short sleeve top and dress combination he had only seen in old movies from the 1960s. He was fairly certain that in the twenty-first century, nurses all wore much more colorful smocks and comfortable casual pants and shoes, not the starched formal whites commonplace in the old days.
