Flesh Wounds, page 21
“Not Death then,” Shelby sighed when I did not immediately answer her. “A ghost? Have you come to taunt me, ghost?”
I shook my head and tried to lay a comforting hand on her shoulder. “I’m no ghost.” The hand passed through, defying the answer I gave her. “Just another patient.”
She smiled and I realized that I saw two faces upon her pillow. One, the animated Shelby that spoke to me now, and beneath that transparent veneer of life, a second face, comatose, blank, staring blindly. Which of them was real?
“You’re more than just another patient,” she said. “How is this possible?”
“I don’t know. One minute I lay like you, the next—”
“Can’t wash your hair today, Shelby,” Eva said as she gathered together her things and turned for the door. “I’m running behind and you know how Snider is. I’ll do your hair tomorrow.”
“Don’t go,” Shelby cried when she saw that I meant to follow Eva out the door.
“I’ll be back.” I laid one hand against her face as if I could touch her.
Tears ran down her cheeks, dripping off onto the pillow to disappear as if they’d never existed. “You’ll never come back,” she sobbed. I saw in her eyes that if I never returned, her Hell would be worse for having spoken to me once.
I leaned close. “I know your pain, Shelby. I will be back. I promise.”
Shelby looked away, her eyes dark with distrust. Behind me the door was swinging closed as Eva left. There was nothing I could say to convince Shelby. I’d been in her position long enough to know that the only thing she took on faith was the continuance of suffering, the absence of Death. I turned and dashed after Eva, passing through the closing door as if it possessed no more substance than smoke.
So went that first afternoon with Eva, meeting the others, learning their stories. Until I stepped outside myself and walked from room to room, each of us had suffered in solitude.
Peter dubbed us the Magnificent Seven: Shelby, Alberto, Linda, Donald, Geoffrey, Peter and I. There were other patients who came and went, those who suffered from fugues, coma-like lapses, pathological amnesia, and more complex illnesses, but we were the true comatose. Those others were blind to us, as were all of the living. They projected nothing, even those who suffered occasional unconsciousness.
I was the Seven’s nexus, the messenger, the binding element that held us all together, kept us sane until we figured our way out. Each of them, in time, asked me to end their suffering, to take up Death’s idle scythe and do for them what he had never done for me.
“Johnny, you’ve been given this incredible gift for a reason,” Shelby told me one afternoon. “I believe you’ve been sent to free the Seven.”
Linda showed me how it must be done: “If you can’t manipulate your environment, Johnny, you’ve got to influence someone who can.”
Donald pointed out who that someone should be: “Snider’d kill each and every one of us if she thought she could get away with it.”
Peter asked the important question: “Why does Snider hate us so?”
And Snider herself provided the catalyst to set it all moving.
I slid to a halt in the open doorway and watched as Snider reached for the ventilator beside my bed. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably and it took her several tries to throw the recessed power switch. When she finally did, the machine died with a shudder. In the sudden silence, I could hear heavy footsteps charging down the hallway.
“They’re coming!”
“Don’t worry, Father.” She took a fire extinguisher from the wall. “No one’s going to stop me.”
The nurse’s lounge is not a place I’d frequent save for the fact that it’s Eva’s last stop as she leaves for home. She collects purse and coat, then departs. I follow her as far as the elevators where I say my goodbyes. In those early days, goodbye consisted of convincing her that she could get through another night without cocaine.
There were times when I was certain I’d lose her, when I feared she’d go back to Clint and the coke. But each night, she’d nod her head and promise, and though she had no idea that I stood right before her, she understood that I was speaking to her through that empathic bond we shared. Those first few weeks, her eyes were apathetic and bloodshot, her hair lackluster, her hands nervous, and her shoulders hung under a great weight. Though her love and care for the patients in Ward C didn’t lessen, her energy and patience did.
Snider noticed. She might have searched Eva’s locker on a whim, but I suspect Eva’s withdrawal was obvious to any nurse with more than a few year’s experience.
When Eva quit, she deposited that last vial of cocaine in her locker, a safer place than her apartment because she knew I’d never let her use it. She could have thrown it out, but that would have admitted she couldn’t stand up to the temptation; it seemed important to her to face what she’d done to herself. Sometimes I think she might have planned to use that cocaine later to notify the authorities about Clint or his supplier. Whatever her reason, it all changed when Snider found it in her locker.
“Please, Beverly, I’m begging you. Nursing is all I have. Don’t take it away from me. Don’t turn me in.” It hurt to see Eva supplicating before that fat cow.
“The blond goddess likes cocaine,” Snider mocked. “Not so perfect after all, are we, princess?”
“I’ve quit. You’ve got to believe me, Beverly. Look at me! You can see the withdrawal symptoms.”
Snider smiled like a shark. “What I see is the addiction.”
“No! I’ve given it up. I—”
“Do you want to keep your job?”
“Without my job, I am nothing,” Eva confessed.
And Snider’s smile widened, expanding to the limits of her porcine face. “My silence will cost you a vial like this twice a week.”
“What?”
“Twice a week you’ll bring me cocaine.”
“I can’t.”
“Three times a week then.”
“No!” Eva wept. “You don’t understand. Clint bought me the coke. To get more I’ll have to go back to him.”
“Shall we try for four times a week, Schüpfheim?”
Eva bit her lip and said no more.
“I’ll expect your first delivery on Monday.” That gave Eva one day, her day off as it turned out, to get more cocaine.
Snider knelt so she could look Eva in the eye. “Fail me, princess, and you’ll be out of work.” She pocketed the cocaine and sauntered out.
The room was silent save for Eva’s sobs. I stood there unable to hold and comfort her, unable to go after Snider and—
Snider! Linda had asked, “Why does Snider hate us so?”
“Get up,” I told Eva. “We can beat this.”
“What can I do, Johnny?”
“We’ve got to see Snider’s employee records.”
Somehow, Eva got those records. She brought them to my room and read them aloud to the corpse on the bed, while I stood and read over her shoulder. She read them twice without finding anything she could use. But I found what I was looking for the first time through. It’s true that our parents make us what we are. Beverly Snider owed her hatred of the comatose to her father. In a letter requesting assignment to Ward C, she’d listed her father’s coma and her experience caring for him as qualifications.
As Snider braced to meet the three men, my fears were replaced with guilt. I remembered her meeting with a young resident that afternoon and how I’d thought then how much she reminded me of a little girl, overweight and unaccepted by the other children. She’d only wanted the cocaine to buy her way into the hospital click, to belong for once in her pitiful life. She’d grown up tied to a father who was in turn tied to a ventilator, kidney machine, and tubes. From his cocoon, Snider’s father had screamed in silence for half again Donald’s seven year sentence before his body finally resisted the machines and shut down.
The coke bought Snider an invitation to an upcoming party. She’d never experimented with drugs. All I had to do was encourage her to try the cocaine so she wouldn’t make a fool of herself at the party. Since she rarely took time off, a night with only herself on duty seemed the perfect time.
From there it was not so difficult to encourage her to take too much. And then to convince her hallucinating mind that her father still screamed for release. To maneuver her into providing freedom for Eva and the Magnificent Seven.
The body on the bed convulsed. I felt drawn to it as if there were a thousand piano wires laced through my flesh.
One of the interns entered the room, his wide eyes registering the silent machines and shuddering body before they locked on Snider. She caved in his skull with the fire extinguisher. He went down with blood gushing from his head. Somehow, he was able to scream.
When he fell, he looked not at her, but at me. At me! I saw my guilt printed in jagged red lines across his glazed eyes. He hit the hospital floor with a sound that hurt, and his eyes rolled back in his head.
The body on the bed had become a black whirlpool, whipped by howling vapors. No one else seemed aware of the phenomenon. As I was sucked into the maelstrom devouring my body, the second intern stumbled over the first and sprawled at Snider’s feet. She raised the heavy tank to strike him.
There was light at some point below, in the eye of that black hurricane. And more—there was music.
The security guard turned the corner. Warned by the scream, his weapon was drawn and ready. He saw the extinguisher descending on the second intern and he fired. I could barely hear the .38 over the howling of the maelstrom and the song from the light below.
Snider jerked, an awkward, disjointed ballet on toes that could otherwise have never supported her. A crimson flower blossomed upon her white breast. She redirected her weapon at the guard. He fired again. And again.
She hit the wall hard enough to leave an impression. As she slid to the floor, I saw a calm ghost-face overshadow her twisted countenance. It was there but a second, then it was gone and her head dropped forward to rest against the bloody swell of her bosom.
There were grasping hands reaching from the light below. The song had grown louder and I recognized the voice.
The intern scrambled across his dead companion and slapped at the switch on the ventilator. The machine kicked in with a great sigh and began to force air into my collapsed lungs. Helpless, they expanded. My traitor heart skipped once, then resumed its steady rhythm. The reaching hands brushed my extended fingertips and fell away. The tempest faltered, dissipated, and died.
I screamed, but there was no one to hear me.
Eva keeps me company.
Occasionally I walk the ward with her, but not very often... and I don’t go in to see the new patients. I have no plans to go and meet them. Let another come to me this time. And if not... nobody lives forever.
It’s only a lifetime.
Gramps Goes Fishing
Beneath a wounded sky, where a bloodless moon settles upon the surface of a stagnant ocean, she waits for him. He comes through the dark water with the sleek speed of a torpedo, pushing before him a phlegmatic wave that rocks her fragile raft and sets the sparsely lashed timbers to separating. Her foot drops through. Before she can draw back, he takes it off just above the ankle.
She screams, but there’s absolutely no sound.
The raft disintegrates beneath her. Water closes fast over her head as she’s drawn down in the turbulence of his passage. She feels her nightgown slip over her shoulders, tangle briefly in her long hair, then vanish in the waves. What little light the moon still casts on the ocean’s surface retreats quickly, gathering to a refracted star on the glassine
surface above. She’s acutely aware of a growing chill, as every inch of depth drops the water temperature several degrees. She kicks against the cold, but is hampered by the missing foot and a spreading paralysis. Her arms flail, but no matter how thick the black soup, they find no purchase.
She feels his turn in the water, a near-gentle caressas the sea transmits his movement. A second later, he’s there, tentacles clutching at her tiny breasts, teeth removing an arm as she tries to fight him off, a callous weight that spreads her legs, presses against her...
Mother’s hands on her back were gentle and warm. “Tabitha, it was only a dream, baby. Just a bad dream. Shush, Mama’s here now.”
Beyond Mother’s radiance, in the shadowed span of the bedroom doorway, his eyes were dark. Hungry. Cautious and threatening at the same time.
She overheard them the next morning, their voices mingled with the clink of coffee cups and saucers, the tinny rasp of spoons stirring sugar and cream. She stood in the hallway in her nightgown, uncertain of the time, wondering if her father had already left for work. When she didn’t hear his voice or the brittle rustling of the newspaper, she decided he was gone.
“Maybe you could talk to her,” Mom was saying, her voice laden with concern that she’d kept hidden last night.
“Most times,” replied a scratchy voice she identified as her grandfather, “there’s an underlying reason for frequent nightmares like this. A repressed trauma or—”
“So you’re a psychoanalyst now, Dad?”
She imagined his expression, that look of thinly veiled sufferance and intolerable indulgence that he’d perfected shortly after being forced to take up residence in their guest room. “Tabby,” he’d told her just the week before, “there’s only one thing worse than growing so old you can’t wipe your own ass. That’s having your children treat you like you can’t wipe your own ass. Somebody ought to just shoot old people like me.” When she’d told Mother about it later, Mother had assured her that Gramps hadn’t been serious. What Mother didn’t know, however, was that Tabitha knew that. She’d only told her mother in the hopes that she’d treat Gramps with a little more dignity. It hadn’t worked.
“I’m just saying there’s a reason why she keeps having these nightmares. A nine-year-old’s life is fraught with more trauma than you realize. Check with some of her friends. Talk to her teachers at school. Hell,” and Tabitha imagined him looking at the empty cup, half eaten toast, and discarded newspaper where her father had been, “you might even talk to him.”
Heavy sigh. “Would you just talk to her? She tells you things she won’t tell me.”
“Dreams,” Gramps told her, “are a lot like T.V. shows. Somebody writes them. Somebody else gets a bunch of actors, cameramen, and stunt people together, and they make it all look real. But it’s not.”
“Who’s writing my dreams, Grandpa?”
He smiled. “Quick, aren’t you? That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about.” He tapped her forehead. “Your dreams are written right here. If you don’t like the script, change it.”
“It’s that easy?”
“Easier.”
“But what...” She hesitated. “What if there’s somebody really, really bad in my dreams.”
Gramps thought for a moment. “Well, I guess I’d take along someone really, really good and see if they couldn’t talk to this bad person.”
“What if they won’t go, or... what if they’re too old to go?”
The old man smiled, his gums pink and powerless behind his thin lips, but the grizzled dimples in his cheeks hinting at years when he hadn’t been so fragile. “Tabby, it’s your dream. Make your friend as strong as a rhinoceros if you like. Make him young and dashing like that guy on 90210 you like so much. You’re writing the script, sweetheart.”
She pursed her lips and pulled at her long strands of amber hair.
“You can do it,” he assured her.
There’s a brilliant orange disk sizzling on the horizon, its glow reaching across the dark water to touch the edge of the raft and light the face of the fisherman there. She moves closer, her hand small and inconsequential on his broad back. He looks back over his shoulder and smiles at her, the orange glow of the sun catching his teeth. “You want to hold the pole, Tabby?”
She takes it and has only moments before a wave larger than the surface turbulence approaches, its white crest tipped with the brissance of the sun, the vee of its coming an arrow pointing at the tiny raft.
“Steady now. Let’s see if he’ll take the bait.”
She trembles. He’ll take it. He always takes it.
The vee vanishes as the beast goes under. This is that point where the raft typically falls apart, where she sinks into the sea and his puerile grasp.
Today is different.
The rod bends double and the line screams from the
reel.
“That’s it!” Gramps yells. “Set the hook on that baby, Tabby!” He reaches around and helps her haul back. The rod bends even more. With his hands lending strength to hers, she begins to reel it in. For a while the monster is strong, hauling the raft back and forth across a sea that has grown steadily brighter. The raft holds together. In the rising sun the tiny vessel gathers a substantial reality, begins to look more like a speedboat.
When the monster breaks the surface, it’s neither fish nor man, nor any comprehensible combination of the two. Tentacles. Teeth. Suckers and claspers, and male things for which she has only names taken from other children.
“Whoa, that’s an ugly son!” Gramps declares. “Big sucker too.” He retrieves a harpoon from behind one of the aft benches. “See if you can pull him a little closer.”
There was a scream from her parents’ room that took her instantly from the dream to the dark purple reality of her bedroom. It was a man’s scream. Tabitha recognized her mother’s voice next, heard her scrambling for the phone.
Her nightmares were over.
In both worlds.
Scarecrow’s Dream
On cold, unyielding nails red with rust I hang in tattered silence, dreaming of summers and springs, make-believe-things... and replacement.
My weathered cross bends in the wind that cuts unchallenged across the barren fields. The weight of accumulated ice sheaths me in a diaphanous cloak, failing even to hide the hollow places Time has plundered. My life lies pooled like blood about my feet: strands of unclotted splendor, all but lost against the blinding white.
