by Jude Hardin
She jabbed the hypodermic into my right thigh and pushed the plunger. There was nothing I could do to stop her.
I woke up with a dull ache in my right side. I looked around. I was in the hospital.
I threw back the top sheet and saw a rubber tube about the diameter of a drinking straw coming out of the lower right side of my belly. There was a bulb the size of a hand grenade attached to the end of the tube. Dark red blood oozed from the tube to the bulb. It was half-full. Or half-empty, depending on your level of optimism.
There were six electrodes pasted to my chest, with six wires attached to them. The wires terminated in a harness attached to a little gray box nestled between my left hip and the left side rail. The box reminded me of a remote control, only there were no buttons on it. An IV snaked from my left arm to a pump on a pole. A bag of fluid hung there. D5LR, whatever that meant. The digital readout on the pump said it was being infused at a rate of one hundred milliliters per hour. There was a tube hissing into my nostrils, what they call a nasal cannula. It delivered oxygen at the rate prescribed. I’d learned a few things from being in hospitals before, and a few things from being married to Juliet.
I pressed the NURSE CALL button on the bedrail. A female voice answered.
“May I help you?”
“I want to see my nurse,” I said.
“Can I tell her what you need?”
“I need to talk to her. Where am I?”
“Orange Park Medical Center, sir. The trauma unit. Your nurse will be with you shortly.”
“Thanks.”
The last thing I remembered was talking to Juliet in the bathroom at home. She had proven to me that Terry Vine wasn’t real. The guitar had been the clincher. That Telecaster Deluxe I’d sold five years ago. Terry Vine was a hallucination. And if he wasn’t real, maybe some other things weren’t real either. Like Diana Dawkins.
Apparently, I had lost my fucking mind.
There was a plastic pitcher on my bedside table and a stack of Styrofoam drinking cups. I reached over and poured myself a cup of water and took a drink. Almost immediately, I felt nauseated.
My nurse walked in. Her nametag said Pamela, RN, BSN. Green scrubs, strawberry blond hair, athletic build.
“Give me that,” she said. She took the drinking cup from my hand. “You’re supposed to be NPO.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Nothing by mouth. I don’t know who left a pitcher of water here, but they shouldn’t have.”
“Sorry. I didn’t know.”
She walked around to the other side of the bed and checked the IV pump.
“You received some blood in surgery,” she said. “But your H and H is still low. I’m going to have to give you two more units tonight. The doctor will be in shortly to get your consent.”
“What happened to me?”
“You came in with a gunshot wound. You were in the operating room for several hours, and then they transferred you here from the post-anesthesia care unit.”
“Who gave consent for all that?”
“It was an emergency. If they hadn’t taken care of you right away, you would have died.”
“Who shot me?” I said.
“You don’t remember?”
I looked up at the ceiling. Tried to take a deep breath, but it hurt. The television was on, and they were talking about the president’s car breaking down during the drive from Gainesville to Jacksonville. Something about the wrong type of fuel being pumped into the gas tank. I figured someone was going to be in big trouble over that.
“I don’t remember anything,” I said “Did my wife bring me here?”
“That’s another thing the doctor will want to talk to you about. And the police. A couple of EMT guys wheeled you into the ER on a stretcher, and then they took off without giving the trauma nurse any sort of report. Nothing. They just disappeared. We don’t know what agency they were with or anything. First time that’s ever happened, as far as I know.”
“What’s this tube coming out of my belly?”
She pulled back the sheet. “It’s called a JP drain. I better empty it.”
She left for a minute, came back with a plastic beaker. She pulled a little stopper out of the end of the bulb and drained the blood. She squeezed the bulb flat, and then replaced the stopper.
“It creates suction,” she said. “Like when you squeeze the end of an ear dropper to draw the medication. When it inflates, it needs to be emptied and squeezed again.”
“I’ll keep an eye on it.”
“Good. I’ll come in and check on it from time to time, but let me know if you think it needs to be emptied.”
“I need to call my wife,” I said. “Is there a phone in here?”
“The phone’s right there on your nightstand. But like I said, the doctor will be in to talk to you shortly.”
“About my wife?”
“Among other things.”
“Is there a problem?” I said. “Is there some reason I shouldn’t call my wife?”
“The doctor will be in to talk to you shortly.”
“But you’re here now,” I said. “Just tell me. I have a right to know.”
She turned and walked out of the room without saying another word.
“Hey!” I shouted. “I want to talk to you.”
She didn’t come back. I grabbed the phone and tried Juliet’s number. No answer.
I tried Brittney, but she didn’t answer either. I hadn’t talked to her since our little argument about the dormitory versus an apartment. Maybe she was still mad at me about that.
I needed to get some information from somebody, and I didn’t feel like waiting around—for hours maybe—until my doctor decided to mosey in. I sat up and pulled the nasal cannula off and the wires going to my chest. A couple of alarms started wailing, one of them a continuous high-pitched tone and the other a series of obnoxious beeps. I was about to rip the IV out of my arm when Pam and a man wearing a long white lab coat came running into the room.
“What are you doing?” Pam said. She reached over and shut off the alarms.
“I’m leaving. I need to find my wife.”
“This is Dr. Arya. He’s going to talk to you now. Just settle down, OK?”
“I’ll settle down when I get some answers,” I said.
She checked on the IV pump, and the line going into my arm. “I’ll be at the nurses’ station if you need me, doctor.”
He nodded, and Pam left the room.
The doctor was tall and thin. He had thick black hair and a dark complexion and wire-rimmed eyeglasses and a clean shave and a clipboard. I recognized the accent when he introduced himself. He was from India.
“I performed your surgery earlier,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
“My side’s killing me, and I can hardly breathe.”
“Here, let’s put your oxygen back on.”
He donned a pair of gloves and guided the nasal cannula back into position.
“Thanks,” I said.
“You lost a lot of blood. That’s why you’re having trouble breathing. I want to give you two more units tonight, and I have the consent form here. Let me just take a few minutes to explain the benefits and the risks of a blood transfusion.”
“Pamela said you would talk to me about my wife. Her name’s Juliet Colt. Her maiden name was Dakila. I want to know what’s going on with her before I sign anything.”
“Your wife was also the victim of a gunshot wound,” Dr. Arya said. “She actually got to the ER before you did, and we know the circumstances behind her injuries. Unlike yours.”
I felt my stomach tighten. “What happened?” I said.
“She was visiting a home-health patient when the patient’s estranged husband came in. He wasn’t supposed to be there. He was in violation of a restraining order. Apparently there was some alcohol involved, and then there was a shootout. It has been all over the news.”
“Where is she?” I said, fearing the worst. “Whe
re’s Juliet now?”
“She is on the third floor, in the intensive care unit.”
“Is she going to be all right?”
“I am not her surgeon, but I have talked to her surgeon. So I am somewhat familiar with the case. It is too early to say whether she is going to be all right or not. Right now, her vital signs are stable, and her surgeon has stopped the bleeding. But she is not responding to any sort of stimuli. So far, they have not been able to arouse her from her sleep.”
“What are you saying?” I said. “Is she brain-dead, or what?”
“No, the EEG shows brain activity. She just won’t wake up. Yet. The next few days will be crucial in determining her prognosis. She might regain consciousness in the next five minutes. Or, she might never regain consciousness.”
“I want to see her.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible at the moment. Maybe if your condition improves over the next couple of days, we can arrange for you to be wheeled down there for a few minutes.”
My emotions swirled, like multiple shades of red stirred together in a paint can. I didn’t know whether to cry or start lashing out with a string of expletives. Or maybe punch this guy in the nose. One way or another, I was on the edge of losing it.
He must have sensed my anxiety. “I’ll tell your nurse to bring you something for pain,” he said. “And something to help you relax.”
“No narcotics,” I said. “I have a history of addiction.”
“That’s OK. We have some other medications we can try. Now, can I go over this consent form with you?”
“All right.”
He started talking, but my mind was elsewhere. I didn’t give a shit about the transfusion. I just wanted Juliet to wake up. I wanted everything to be back to normal again.
He handed me the clipboard, and I signed on the line where it said patient consent.
“I’ll send Pam in with the medicine, and we’ll get the transfusion going as soon as possible. I think you’ll breathe easier once you get some more blood in you.”
“Thanks, doctor. I definitely need something.”
He started to leave the room, but then he turned around and faced me again when he got to the door.
“One more thing about your wife,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“You know she’s pregnant, right?”
Five weeks, six days, and seventeen hours later, I left home in my 1996 GMC Jimmy and headed toward my teaching studio. I needed to get there and open up before four thirty. I drove fast. I was running late.
The doctors had finally isolated an infection in my blood, something with a long name that I couldn’t ever seem to remember. They’d kept me in the trauma unit for two weeks, administering heavy-duty antibiotics around the clock, and then had moved me to the psychiatric ward. It took me ten days to convince the shrinks I wasn’t a threat to myself or others. They prescribed a couple of different medications and sent me on my way.
But the pills were expensive, and they made me feel like crap, so I stopped taking them. I didn’t need the medicine. I was doing fine without it.
Juliet still wasn’t responding to stimuli. She still wouldn’t wake up. She had a feeding tube and a urinary catheter and a permanent IV in her chest called a portacath. My poor darling was in a vegetative state, and it broke my heart every minute of every day. I would have traded places with her if I could have. It wasn’t fair. She was such a beautiful person.
The ultrasound said the baby was a boy.
I’d had no idea that Juliet was pregnant. Eight weeks, as it turned out. Almost fourteen now. It was a total shock, and I think the additional stress of knowing that I was going to be a daddy again—maybe a single parent this time—might have delayed my recovery from the gunshot wound.
It was stressful, but also very wonderful.
The doctors in the ICU said as long as they could keep Juliet alive, the fetus would keep growing inside her. It was quite possible she could carry him to term, they said. The baby was normal and healthy, and at the right time he would be welcomed into the world via Cesarean section.
And I would take care of him as best I could.
I steered the Jimmy into my favorite parking space, got out and grabbed a stack of mail before opening the door to the studio and walking inside. I stood at the counter and went through it all. There was an electric bill, a catalog from George’s Music, an advance payment from one of my students, and a past due notice from the anesthesiologist at the hospital.
And a credit card offer with a tiny red dot on the lower left corner of the envelope.
I scooted everything else aside and opened the envelope with trembling fingers.
Dear Nicholas,
I wanted to thank you for doing such a wonderful job for me. There are parts of it you don’t remember now, parts you will never remember, but let me assure you our country would not be the same if not for your valiant efforts. The attached pages will fill you in on some of the details, but it’s imperative that you keep these details to yourself. I’ve been monitoring your recovery, and I’m happy to see that you’re back to work at the teaching studio.
So sorry your wife was not as lucky. I know it looks grim for her, but please don’t give up hope. There’s still a chance she will wake up from the coma. I’ve seen it happen, more than once. Keep the faith, my friend.
As promised, I have paid you for your help. A check in the amount of $300,000 has been deposited into an offshore account, in your name. All the information you’ll need to make withdrawals is on the back of this page. Commit it to memory, and then burn this letter and the envelope it came in.
Also, as I said from the beginning, I might be contacting you again from time to time. Your microchip has been fully activated, and you are now considered an associate operative for the Circle. We have the ability to track your whereabouts, and you will feel a tingling sensation at the site of your blood tattoo when we want you to call in for an assignment. Use the number on the back of this page, and use the code name Bullfrog.
We won’t be requiring your services often, maybe only every six months or so, but when we call it’s crucial that you answer. Otherwise, we want you to carry on with your music business, and your other normal day-to-day activities. I understand there’s going to be a new addition to your family soon. Congratulations.
Thanks again, Nicholas. It was a pleasure to work with you.
I’ll be in touch.
Di
The letter was real.
I could see it.
I could feel it.
I could smell it.
I could hear it when I crinkled it with my fingers. I could taste it when I put it to my tongue.
I didn’t care what the psychiatrists had said. Diana Dawkins was not a hallucination. The ultra-secret government agency called the Circle was not a delusion I’d created in response to post-traumatic stress syndrome—in response to the atrocities I’d experienced at the hands of a serial killer known as The Zombie down in Key West, and possibly in response to an infection that might have been acquired down there in the most horrendous way imaginable.
Just to make sure, I logged onto the website for the offshore bank account and entered the user name and password Di had written on the back of her letter. The account details consisted of exactly one transaction, a deposit in the amount of three hundred thousand US dollars. It was right there in black and white.
Diana Dawkins was real, and Nicholas Colt was rich.
Not most people’s idea of rich, maybe, but three hundred grand would definitely take care of my and Juliet’s co-pays on the medical bills, and there would be enough left over to get started on the expansion plans for my music business. It was the most money I’d had at one time since my heyday with Colt .45.
I folded the letter and slid it back into the envelope, and then folded the envelope in half and stuck it in my back pocket. Later, after I finished with my last student for the evening, I would take it out to the A
irstream and torch it.
I had mixed feelings about being an associate member of the Circle now. I’d known from the beginning that Diana might contact me from time to time, but it seemed more official now that I’d read the letter. I just hoped it wouldn’t be anytime soon.
My cell phone vibrated. It was Brittney. She’d finished her sophomore year at the University of Florida, and she was home for the summer. Apparently she’d given up on the idea of an apartment in Gainesville for now. She hadn’t mentioned it since school let out.
“Have you been to see Mom today?” she said.
“Not yet. I’ll go tonight.”
“I was there a while ago, and I swear I saw her eyelids flutter. She was trying to wake up, Dad! Wouldn’t that be just wonderful?”
“It would,” I said. “But I don’t want you to get your hopes up too much. You know what the doctor said—that her muscles might twitch involuntarily from time to time. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“I know, but this was different. I was talking to her when it happened. It was like she was trying to respond. I think she heard me, and she was struggling to climb out of the darkness.”
“Did anyone else see it?”
“No. She stopped when the nurse came in. But I saw it. I think she’s going to wake up soon. Maybe even tomorrow. I think everything’s going to be all right, Daddy. I just have a feeling, you know?”
“I hope you’re right, sweetheart. I really do.”
We talked for a little while longer, and then said goodbye.
I looked at my watch.
It was Thursday.
Four thirty.
I stared at the door for a few minutes, as I had every Thursday for the past several weeks, but Terry Vine never walked through it.
So maybe I was cured.
I didn’t have another student scheduled until five, so I sat on a stool behind the counter and started reading Juliet’s diary again.
From the beginning, back when things were still good.
There’s no better feeling than to see months of painstaking work come to fruition in the form of a published book. And, as always, it could only have happened with a little help from my friends.