Cyril in the Flesh

by Ramsey Hootman

  That would not have given him the slightest pause in the before times, back when his “extracurricular” activities had been motivated by an idealistic moral imperative. He could have written an entire manifesto about the injustices of the corporate world and what needed to be done to take down the powers that be. But now? Now he’s not so cocksure of his own inviolable rightness, or his power to effect change in the world. Now he knows exactly what a single slip-up might cost. And he’s not so sure he’s willing to risk his freedom just to make a quick buck.

  But he’s getting ahead of himself. Before he can even consider rejoining the bottom feeders running basic click farms and ransomware, he’ll have to earn at least a scrap of trust from his peers. Which, even with his outsize skill set, takes time.

  He mainlines IRC until his phone pings, tossing a text notification up in front of a heated discussion about TensorFlow implementations of GANs. The context switch derails him so abruptly that for a moment he cannot reconcile Robin in surgery with Robin sending a text. But Seth’s teacher also has his number, and now, apparently, so does Cooke’s wife, Greta.

  Any news?

  He punches in a curt no, resenting this woman for dragging him out of the abstract mental space where the real world ceases to exist. Somehow, he has made it past noon without feeling the slippage of time. He flips back to the discussion and tries to dive back in, but the flow is lost. The battery indicator on his phone is red. His stomach rumbles. Two techs chat as they push a cart down the hall.

  With a snort of disgust, he pockets the phone and rises, performing his usual tug of pants and shirt, and turns to survey the ripple of disorder left in his wake: tangled earbud wires, empty snack wrappers, water bottle, Robin’s bathrobe spilling out of the open duffel. He’s shoving it all back into the bag when he realizes he is, of course, alone in the waiting room, and nobody working here is likely to make off with his shit. No need to act like a con.

  He rummages in the bag for a power cord and plugs his phone into a nearby outlet before scouting out the hall. “Hey,” he says to the nurse behind the desk. The man leans back in a rolling chair behind a plexiglass barrier, foot propped on one knee, tapping a pencil rhythmically against the edge of the chart he is studying. “Robin Matheson. Anything?”

  The man raises his eyebrows, then seems to register Cyril’s demand. His foot drops to the ground and he leans forward, using the pencil’s eraser to tap a few keys on the station’s keyboard. “Still in surgery.”

  Three hours. Is that short? Cyril hadn’t asked how long this was supposed to last. And he’s not going to betray his ignorance to this idiot. He’ll look it up later. “Food?”

  The guy cocks a thumb. “Cafeteria’s that way. Normally I’d tell you to go out the Main Street entrance and turn right—there's a strip mall down on the next block—but if you leave, they won’t let you back in.”

  Cyril heads for the cafeteria, stopping in at a bathroom along the way. Anything in the strip mall is doubtless superior to hospital grub, but even without COVID regulations he’d never have left this abattoir with Robin still under the knife.

  He is right about the food, of course, but it doesn’t matter; he’s probably lucky the place is even open, with all the precautions they’re taking. He loads a tray with prepackaged foods: chips, three individual servings of potato salad in plastic cups, and a ham sandwich wrapped in cellophane, bread visibly saturated with mayo. There’s a sign taped to the checker’s plexiglass shield that directs diners to an outdoor eating area, but he ignores it and takes the tray back to the empty waiting room. Nobody stops him.

  Another hour passes, crawling this time. A cursory Google search for hysterectomy surgery times gives him an estimate of one to three hours, which Robin is already well past. He knows she’s also having her ovaries removed, which the internet informs him is called a “bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy,” but he doesn’t know if it’s laparoscopic or not, and by then he’s reached the limit of his ability to stomach the thought of what’s being done to Robin.

  He locates a vending machine. A sign taped to the front informs him it’s out of operation because of COVID-19. Under it is a map directing him back to the cafeteria. He leans a shoulder against the side of the big box and gives it a couple of good thumps, but nothing falls out.

  The fifth time he paces down the hall, the nurse at the desk slips him a granola bar.

  Another hour passes. He is on the verge of demanding to know what is taking so fucking long when the surgeon arrives. He’s slight but compact, like a jockey, with a confident stride and half-rolled sleeves revealing arms covered in dark, wiry hair. Not everyone recognizes Cyril’s ugly mug, especially hidden behind a mask, but this guy does—the jolt of shock might as well be written in sharpie on his brow. He recovers quickly, holding up a palm as he approaches Cyril. “Don’t get up.”

  Like he was going to. “Well?”

  “She’s in the recovery room,” the man says, clearly well versed in delivering the most vital piece of information first. He seats himself not in one of the twenty vacant chairs, but on the coffee table directly facing Cyril. “And she’s stable.”

  He lets out a breath like a deflated balloon.

  The surgeon extends his elbow, like a handshake but even more idiotic. “I’m Dr. Effler. You are...?”

  “Not interested in your bedside-manner bullshit. And you fucking know who I am.” What this surgeon thinks about Cyril’s exploits or his prison sentence, he neither knows nor cares.

  Effler lowers the elbow, and his face is carefully neutral when he replies: “Fair enough.”

  Cyril waits.

  “We—” Effler shifts, leaning forward to prop his elbows on his knees. Like it’s physically uncomfortable for him to maintain a distance of six feet. “Had some trouble controlling the bleeding once we removed the uterus, which is why the surgery took longer than expected. There was quite a bit of blood loss, which necessitated a transfusion.”

  “A—Jesus Christ.” Cyril has been trying to hold himself together. Trying not to think too much about what’s happening to Robin, or lose his cool, or do or say anything that might get him kicked out. But just hearing the words out of this asshole’s mouth makes him feel like he’s going to vomit. He looks at the floor between the surgeon’s feet and breathes.

  "It happens. Things might have been fine without one, but obviously it’s better to play it safe. Fortunately, we were able to get the bleeding under control.”

  This smug, self-congratulatory asshole. It’s not even personal, to him. Not Robin’s uterus or surgery or blood. Just the uterus. The surgery. The bleeding. As if the body on his operating table wasn’t the most important person in the world. “Her name,” Cyril hisses, instead of throttling the man, “is Robin.”

  “Yes, I’m aware.” The surgeon cocks his head, as if he’s not quite sure what Cyril’s getting at. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. Blanchard?”

  He doesn’t want to know, not from this prick, but he can’t not ask. “The cancer—”

  Effler shakes his head before Cyril can finish the question. “That’ll have to wait for pathology. Her oncologist will get the report.”

  His hands are fists. Soft, doughy fists, but there's bone underneath. “That’s convenient. For you.”

  The surgeon shrugs. “It is what it is. Oh—and your COVID test came back negative, in case you were wondering. So you’re cleared to—”

  “I want to see her.” Alive. Breathing.

  The other man nods, once again the portrait of empathetic patience. “She’ll be in the recovery room for a little while yet, but once we’re sure she’s stable we’ll move her to a room, and you can see her there.” His hand comes up, hovering for a moment, as if wishing he could lean across the distance between them and give Cyril’s knee a comforting pat.

  “If you touch me, I will break your fingers.”

  Effler laughs and slaps his own knee, as if he thinks Cyril is kidding. “Thanks for the re
minder.” He pauses to pump a glob of sanitizer into his palm on the way out.

  By the time Robin is released from the recovery ward, it’s late afternoon and the nurse on duty outside the waiting room has gone off shift. A sixtyish woman in pink scrubs and compression stockings leads Cyril through a maze of back-stage corridors and fire doors, up a gurney-sized elevator, and into a more polished hallway of closely spaced doors, numbered like hotel rooms. She strides past an unshaven elderly man with a walker and finally opens the door onto a room so small this asshole could reach out and touch both walls. A curtain hanging from a track on the ceiling blocks his view of the bed, but not the subtle dead-animal musk of dried blood.

  “Jesus,” he says. “I thought COVID rates were falling. This place must be bursting at the seams if you’re putting patients in broom closets.”

  “This is a private room,” the nurse says, as if the luxury ought to be obvious. She pumps hand sanitizer from a bottle on the wall. “We only have four.”

  “Lady, my prison cell was bigger than this.” Bunk, technically, but same difference. He reaches around the nurse to slather his hands with the transparent gel.

  A frown line appears between the woman’s eyebrows. “Well,” she says, clearing her throat. “Let’s see how she’s doing.” The nurse peeks around the curtain. “Ms. Matheson, is it all right if I turn the light on?”

  It is impossible to tell if the muffled groan means “yes” or “no.”

  Cyril shoves past the nurse and yanks the curtain aside.

  He knew she would look like shit, but seeing Robin in the flesh hits him like a cattle gun to the skull. Every ounce of him rejects the hollow vacancy in her face, the terrible ash-gray tint to her skin. This should not be.

  This asshole’s gut reaction? Leave. Get out. Now.

  No lie: he very nearly does.

  “Chica.” He chokes the word, and panic rushes in. He seizes her hand, the one without the wires and tubes. Presses it, too hard, between his palms. “Chica. Please.”

  She blinks—raising her eyelids seems to take effort—and her eyes roll, unfocused, in his direction. Her lips twitch. “Hey, asshole.”

  His laugh is rough. “Yeah. That’s me.”

  The nurse pulls a keyboard down from the wall and uses a badge hung around her neck to log in. “She may be confused for a while,” she tells him, glancing at the screen on one of the machines hooked up to Robin and entering the data into the computer. “That’s normal.”

  “What can I—” He has never felt so fucking useless. “What do I do?”

  She shrugs. “Just be here.” She gestures to a rolling cart docked near the head of the bed, which holds a pitcher of water and a plastic cup with a straw. “She can have a few sips if her mouth is dry. No food yet. The on-duty nurse will check in every couple of hours. If you need someone, hit that button. She’s still getting fluids and medication through her IV, so she shouldn’t be in any pain.”

  And then the nurse just... leaves. Like it’s okay that Robin is lying there, barely conscious, having come through major surgery, with no professional observation whatsoever.

  Once, two weeks after Seth was born, Tavis brought the infant to this asshole’s house, not specifically to meet Cyril but to give Robin a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. Cyril had scarcely laid eyes on the kid when Tavis got a call from a superior at the base, and he’d handed off the tightly-swaddled infant like a football and dashed outside for better reception. Cyril had been left on the couch, holding the tiniest, most fragile human he had ever encountered, not knowing what, if anything, he ought to do, or whether the wrong movement could irreparably damage this small, infinitely vulnerable creature.

  That is how this asshole feels now. She looks—Jesus, she looks like death with a hangover, and he’s just standing here, desperately palpating her hand. Surely she needs to be monitored by someone who knows what the hell they’re doing.

  One of the machines next to her bed emits an unobtrusive beep, followed by a kind of ratcheting pump. He follows the wires and tubes and realizes that it’s a timed-release device, feeding into her IV. Narcotics?

  “Are you—okay?” He releases her hand long enough to drop the duffel bag and set her purse on the cart next to the pitcher of water. “Chica?”

  She doesn’t respond. He feels for her pulse in her wrist, but he can’t tell whether it’s there or only his imagination. He can’t see her breathing.

  Shit. Shit.

  He’s leaning over her to try to find a pulse in her neck when she sucks in a sudden, deep breath. And then lets it out again, nice and slow.

  He breathes. Like an infant, it’s impossible to tell whether she’s dead or asleep. Well—he's not going to poke her again. He’ll stand here. And watch.

  His phone buzzes, and when he fishes it out of his pocket he finds five texts from Greta, all with increasingly insistent demands for information. He contemplates making her wait another hour or two before replying, but that wouldn’t be fair to the kids.

  She’s out. Went long but doc says she’s fine. Sleeping.

  The “sent” notification under his text winks immediately to “read,” but there are no ellipses to indicate that Greta is composing a reply. She has apparently decided to give him the silent treatment. Fine with him.

  The only seat in the room, crammed into the corner not occupied by the bed, is a standard hospital-issue recliner which won’t even come close to accommodating his doublewide rear. Fortunately, the arms of the chair are low, and layering the seat with extra blankets from a supply cart in the hall offers enough lift to wedge his ass into the rose-pink vinyl. When he leans back, popping out the footrest, the back of his head hits the wall.

  “Cyril?”

  He has, miraculously, managed to fall at least partially asleep. His name on her lips, albeit blurred and cottony, brings him back with a jerk. “Robin. Shit—” He can’t get the chair back upright. He heaves himself forward, and then forward again.

  “Cyril, I don... I don...” Her head rolls toward him in the dim light, her features contracted in a look that he recognizes instantly from Nora’s infancy. He grabs the sick bag from the cart next to her bed and gets it to her mouth the instant before she retches. It’s nothing but thin yellow bile. “Don’ feel good,” she finishes.

  “I’ll get a doctor.” He uses the corner of the bedsheet to wipe her mouth.

  She grimaces as the rough fabric and then swallows, with effort. “No. M’okay.”

  “You don’t look okay. What do you need? Water?” He holds the plastic straw to her mouth, but she doesn’t suck. Her lips are dry and cracked. Somewhere—he paws through her purse—yes. She always carries a tube of Blistex. Applying it to someone else’s lips is trickier than he expects, and he squeezes out significantly more than necessary. He uses a finger to wipe off the excess, and then wipes his finger on his pants. “Is that, uh...”

  “Hg,” she says.

  “What?” He leans closer.

  She lifts her right arm, straight up, hand dangling loosely. “Hg.”

  “You want—a hug?”

  “Mm.” The arm drops onto his shoulder.

  “Uh. Yeah. Okay.” He leans over the bedrail, stooping to allow her arm to circle his neck. It starts to slide, and he catches it before it can flop back. “Here. Why don’t you let me—” He wedges his hand under her ribcage and lifts, just slightly. She moans at the movement. “Wait, hold on.” Carefully, he disengages himself, placing her arm at her side. He fiddles with the bedrail until it rotates down. There’s just enough room to sit on the edge of the mattress, or at least lean a thigh, and he bends forward and manages to slip an arm around her neck without moving the rest of her. He gives her a light squeeze.

  “Mm,” she says, when he starts to pull away. This time it is a negative.

  “Oh... kay.” He plants his free hand on the other side of her body, to prevent himself from crushing her.

  He is looming over her—like a vampire preparing to comme
nce exsanguination—when a new nurse comes in for a check. “What—” The sudden arch of her eyebrows, visible even through her face shield, says she’s two seconds from calling security. “Can I help you?”

  “Fuck. No. I just—” He wiggles the fingers trapped under Robin’s head. “Robin. I’m—gonna let go.”

  She doesn’t object when he shoves himself upright, but her hand catches his arm as he pulls away. “Huuugs,” she says, nuzzling the back of his hand. “Yer hugs’re th’best. Skishy. Shish—” She frowns. “Shishy. Skish. Squishy.”

  “Oh,” the nurse says, her body relaxing slightly. “I see.”

  Cyril extracts his hand and kneads the kinks in the back of his neck. “She’s... not gonna remember this, right?”

  “Is it done?”

  He looks up from the recliner, where he’s idly playing a match-four game on his phone. “What?”

  “Is it over? I had surgery?” She lifts the sheet up, presumably to examine her abdomen, and then immediately lets it drop, losing interest.

  “Yeah. Like—” He clicks out of the game to check the time. Two in the morning. “Six hours ago.” At this point, she’s wandered in and out of consciousness half a dozen times.

  She sighs. “Good. Did it go okay?”

  “They had some trouble controlling the bleeding. You had to have a transfusion. Otherwise I guess it was fine. No news on the cancer yet, but the meds are making you high as a kite.”

  “Oh,” she says. “Yeah.” She stares at the ceiling for long enough that he returns to his game before adding, “Oh no.”

  “Now what?”

  “I have cancer?”

  “Yep.” He matches four tiles vertically and horizontally. The game congratulates him with a shower of confetti. “I mean, that’s what I hear.”

  “I’m gonna die.”

  He blinks at her over his phone, then clicks off the screen and sets it aside. “Chica—”

  She turns her head to look at him. “I don’t wanna die.” The way she says it is eerily flat; a simple statement of opinion. I do not like pickles and jam.