Head shake.
“Violent episodes. Combative,” he explains, concerned chastisement oozing from his vowels.
“You had a bad go of it. But you’re coming along fine now. Your fever is one for the books. Thought we lost you. Some say we did. You stopped breathing three times. Just stopped breathing.” He clicks his tongue as if chastising a naughty child. “The EMT guys declared you dead on the way here. They charted it and everything, but then you came back.” He says this like it was all a fun prank, an interesting anecdote for him to share with friends later on, and not Michael’s perpetual oblivion. “You tried to stop breathing here too, but we saved you. Your fever was a real stinker though. Yes, a real stinker.”
Michael manages to read the badge hanging on a lanyard around the man’s neck: Dr. Kevin Hancock, PhD. MD, Intensivist, Summerline Hospital, Las Vegas, Nevada.
“I’ll check back on you later,” says Hancock. “Glad to see you awake.” His warm smile lasts almost to the door, but not quite.
Michael is acutely aware that he’s restrained and plugged into machines. He hears beeps and mechanical diaphragms. He feels like he’s choking; there’s something big and hard in his throat, but he can breathe.
He stares at the false light and accepts his fate. He’s here for a while. He’s been here for a while. Where’s his patience? Three weeks. Nearly four. It’s not nicotine addiction that’s putting him in this mood. He’s long over that. Hell, he’s a non-smoker now. Longest he’s gone without tobacco since he picked it up.
He was dead. Three times. Dead.
Michael closes his eyes and waits.
To pass the time, and there is a lot of time to pass, he tries to remember when he was last so angry at anyone as he’d been at Dr. Hancock. He and Carla had had their share of arguments, but he’d never imagined hurting her. He didn’t get along with his boss Roy, but he was an irritant at most. He has to cast back thirty years before he lands upon the face of Ken Hilchen.
The name hasn’t crossed his mind in decades. An older boy. Ken Hilchen had the room on the main floor. Michael’s room was in the basement. He was in foster care. It was before the Dormitory. It’s what led to the Dormitory.
It had to do with that damn bag of sugar.
Ken took it from him. They fought. Ken was bigger but Michael was meaner and he knew how to fight. No. He didn’t know how to fight. He knew how to finish fights.
Ken had beaten him and taken his sugar. Michael couldn’t complain. He’d stolen it. He remembers stealing a lot, then and before. Mostly pocket-sized candy. The sugar had been a coup.
Ken found his stash of candy and helped himself to it all, threatening to turn him in to his foster parents and maybe the police. Ken didn’t want the bag of sugar. What would he do with it? But he took it anyway because he saw that Michael wanted it. Needed it. Michael couldn’t let it go. He was desperate.
He’d struck Ken first, a weak roundhouse landing on his arm. A pathetic initiation. Ken had punched him hard in the stomach in return and took the wind from him. Thinking the fight was over, Ken left with the shoe box of sweets and sugar. Michael grabbed him at the stairs. He missed his attack and only pushed Ken forward. Ken dropped the box, swung around and bloodied Michael’s nose. Michael remembers Ken’s smug face as he picked up the treasure and walked away.
“Dr. Hancock said you were awake.” It’s a woman and though her cheerfulness is less plastic, it’s still saccharine and tired.
Michael manages a grunt of hello laced as thickly as possible with plaintive begging to be released from his tubes and restraints.
She’s a heavy-set women with bobbed hair. She casts a shadow on his face. He rolls his eyes and grinds his jaw to try and get his point across.
“Sorry about those tubes,” she says. “I know they’re bothersome, but the last time we took them out, we had to put them right back in. We gotta leave those in for a while. Another day at least. Do you understand?’’
He rattles his wrist restraints and jiggles the ones at his ankles.
“Hurmmm,” she grunts. “You in your right mind?”
He nods.
“Maybe you are,” she says, “But the doctor didn’t leave orders.”
He begs with his eyes.
She looks at him appraisingly. “If I gotta sedate you, I’m going to break a needle in your ass to teach you a lesson. You good with that?”
He nods.
“You won’t go pulling on those tubes? That’s not allowed. It can hurt you bad.”
He shakes his head.
“You gotta go the bathroom?”
He nods. He doesn’t need to go, but he senses the excuse.
“We are sick of cleaning your bedpans.” She glances over her shoulder. “Melanie, I’m releasing Mr. Oswald. He needs to use the privy.”
“Use a chair,” comes the response.
“I know,” she fires back.
She looks one more time at Michael and he tries to smile. She shrugs and releases him from his restraints.
“You lie there and don’t try to move. I’ll get a chair. You may think you can walk, but you’ve been on your back for nearly a month.”
She leaves and Michael examines his wrists. They are red and sore, scabby, ulcerated. He rubs them and then touches the hose in his mouth.
“Now what did I say?” The woman is back with a wheelchair.
She removes a catheter and helps him to swing his legs around and off the bed. She helps him slide into the chair. She was right. He is weak. He wouldn’t have made it to the toilet. She pulls machines behind her as she steers the chair to the toilet. She locks the brake in place and then helps him sit down.
“Don’t be bashful,” she says.
He isn’t. After a moment, he’s done. He washes his hands and looks longingly at the faucet. He gestures to it and to his mouth.
“Sorry,” she says wheeling him back to bed. “Not while you’re intubated.”
Back on the bed, he sits up and studies the room. He’s in an upper floor, somewhere between four and eight. He’s not close enough to the window to be sure. The room is single. All the machines are marked ICU and there’s a glass window looking out into the hall where people pass by with some frequency. His wallet, watch and keys are in a vomit basin on a side table beside his bed. Beside it is a cactus with a ribbon around it and a couple cards.
He reads the first: “Get well soon. Your car is in B lot space 12,” signed Craig McCallister.
“Praying you have a speedy recovery,” From Maggie at work.
He finds his termination letter from Roy. There’s a five-hundred dollar check in the envelope. It doesn’t say what it’s for, but Michael knows it’s for guilt.
There’s a business card from Agent Edgar Hall, FBI with a phone number circled in ballpoint. Michael’s not done answering questions apparently. He doesn’t know what to make of the three other business cards. There’s one from a Homeland Security agent, one from a Deputy Investigator from the Department of Transportation and Commerce, and one from the office of the Governor of Nevada.
There’s a florist’s card that looks to have accompanied a flower arrangement, but he sees nothing but the small cactus. In what is surely the florist’s handwriting, it reads only: From Carla and the Kids.
He examines the cactus. It’s a round golf ball-size thing in a terra cotta pot. There’s a price tag on the bottom: $9.99 from the Summerline Hospital Gift Shop, First Floor. A red ribbon is wrapped around the pot. A folded card is attached to that by a white string. He opens the tiny card and reads: Mother watches over you. It is signed only with a single letter J.
Chapter Thirteen
“You called for your mother a lot,” says the nurse. “I take it she’s dead.”
“Why would you think that?” asks Michael.
“She didn’t visit you.”
“Oh. Yeah, she’s dead.”
“The flowers were really nice. Shame they didn’t last long enough for you to see them.”
“The ones that came with this card?” he holds up Carla’s note.
“Yes. It was a nice arrangement.”
“From the gift shop?”
“I don’t think so,” she says, “They were nice.”
They’d made him wait an entire day before they removed the tube from his mouth that fed his lungs and the one down his nose that dripped nutrients into his stomach like a leaking faucet. Before they did, he had to demonstrate that he wouldn’t embarrass them and go and die again.
Dr. Hancock had visited during his rounds and left orders to release him from the machines if he behaved himself after lunch. He wasn’t pleased to see him out of restraints, but he pretended, poorly, not to notice.
He’s been tube-free for a week. He’s visited the physical therapist every day and today he can talk again without needing a sedative, albeit in raspy scratching tones.
“The cactus survived at least,” Michael says to the nurse. He has a cup of ice water and is sipping it slowly to numb his neck where the tubes rubbed him raw.
“I tell you a secret,” she says. “I’ve seen them re-use those cactuses. If someone checks out and forgets one, someone’ll take it downstairs and re-sell it.”
“Smart,” he says. “Reduce, reuse and all that.”
“Unethical,” she says. “What if it’s got AIDS on it or something?”
“I can see that.”
“Another glass of water? You’re going to pee all night.”
“My throat’s sore,” he says. “And my wrists.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
He shrugs. He wasn’t asking for medication. He was just talking.
“So tomorrow?” he asks. “I’ll be released tomorrow?”
“You are something,” she says. “The physical therapist told me last week you’d be here for a month getting your muscles back. But she says you’re one for the books. You didn’t decay the way most do in comas.”
“So tomorrow then?” He’s heard enough of his “miraculously slow-atrophying muscles.” If someone had bothered to talk to the night orderlies, they’d understand differently. One of them came in the night before while Michael chased shadows on the walls and told him what happened.
During his month in a coma, Michael would wake up in the darkest hours of the night and thrash in his bed. He’d struggle against his restraints and wear the flesh off his limbs. He’d gotten more exercise in his hospital fever-coma than he ever did in his everyday life. Not much of a coma. He is ready to leave.
“That’s what I hear,” she says.
“But you don’t agree?” he says reacting to something in her voice.
“Twenty-six days unconscious, flat-lined twice—”
“Three times,” he corrects her.
“Three times. No, you should be observed longer.” She bends in close. “If you ask, they’ll have to let you stay. No matter what your insurance says.”
“Thanks,” he says.
She smiles, puffs his pillow and leaves him to sip ice water.
He had a quick visit from the hospital’s billing department a couple days before and the nurse must have heard some of it. Roy’s insurance, what little there was of it, is refusing to cover any of his stay. Roy’s letter of termination is dated for the day before the “accident” and that makes this his problem. The billing person was nice about it and gave him the phone number of a good lawyer to go after Roy and the insurance company. She was hopeful that they’d come around to paying it. Michael listened attentively, unwilling to speak at the time, his neck still swollen and scraped. He wore his best face of concerned interest but he really didn’t care. Pay or not pay. He was beyond credit scores and dunners now. He’d been dead. What power did anyone hold over him now?
Dr. Hancock visits him that night, he’s staring into shadows. “Hope I’m not interrupting you,” he says cheerfully and turns on the light.
“Keep the light off,” Michael says. “Hello doctor.”
The lights go out. “Are your eyes hurting you? How’re you feeling?”
“My eyes are fine,” he says. “I’ve seen everything in this room. I’m ready to go.”
“Well,” he says pulling up a chair. “You do know that we never actually determined what was wrong with you. There’re still a lot of questions.”
“Always are.”
“There’s an epidemiologist from the CDC who wants to see you. She’ll be here tomorrow if you’ll see her.”
“I’m anxious to get going,” Michael says looking back at the shadows. “Whatever I had, you fixed it. I’m a satisfied customer. A+ Would buy again.”
“Your symptoms are unique. A bit like cholera, but no bacteria. The respiratory element is a little like SARS, but no virus. It’s curious.”
“You’re dropping a lot of scary names, but I don’t think so. I want to leave.”
“The CDC will pay for your continued stay. You don’t need to worry about the bill.”
“I’m not worrying about the bill.”
“She wants to ask you questions. Maybe take some samples.”
“I’d like to leave.”
“You’re weak. Actually, you should stay,” he says. “In fact, I’m going to say you need to stay another day or two at least. You were in a long coma. It’s not good to release you so soon.”
“Then I’ll leave AMA,” Michael says to the shadows. “Against Medical Advice—right? That’s what it stands for?”
“I wouldn’t recommend you leaving.”
“That’s why it’s called that I suppose.”
“Mr. Oswald. I know the billing department was up here and talked to you about finances. I’m sorry about that. You are not being kicked out, regardless of what you might think.”
“I want to leave,” he says. “I’ve got work to do.”
“Weren’t you fired?”
“You know about that?”
“It came up,” he says.
“I’ve got things to do. I’m leaving tomorrow. Feel free to take blood or stool or piss, or whatever else you need now. Tomorrow I’m a memory.”
When the doctor leaves, Michael skries the gloom. He plumbs his past for clues to his present.
He has but fragments of his life before the Dormitory. It’s as if everything he was before eight years old was erased. He visualizes it as a glass-plate negative photo, shattered and reversed. He’s never bothered to notice the glass before, but now he has to collect the shards and reassemble it. It will cut him, of that he is sure, but he has to. It’s all he has to do.
The night nurse enters his room.
“Do you remember your childhood before eight?” he asks her.
The nurse jumps at his voice. “You frightened me,” she says.
“What’s your earliest memory?”
“What? Oh, I have one of my mom at a lake when I was two.”
“When can you build a timeline of your life?”
“I don’t know. It’s all jumbled. I have photo albums that help me keep it all straight.”
“I have a good timeline from nine or so, but before that, it’s all a black hole.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she says. “The past is behind you. Best to keep looking forward. Whatever happened to you back then all worked out fine. You’re here now, aren’t you? It did its job.”
“I feel like I started something and didn’t finish it,” he says and wonders why he’s telling this nurse something so personal. He feels that his whole being is teetering on this idea. He never said anything as raw as this to anyone before, not to his foster parents, not even to Carla.
“You mean as a kid?”
“Yeah.”
“Always follow your dreams,” she says.
But his dreams are dark.
“Did I get any visitors while I was out?”
“There was the muscular fellow the first day or two.”
“No one else?”
“You feeling sorry for yourself? Your people are all out of t
own and you were in a coma. Don’t get your feelings hurt.”
“The cactus,” he says pointing to it. “Who gave me this?”
“Isn’t there a card?”
He hands it to her and the nurse reads it.
“Was it a nurse?” asks Michael.
“I wasn’t me, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It’s important to me,” he says. “Can you ask around? Maybe one of the other nurses remembers a visitor. The cactus came from the gift shop. It wasn’t phoned in like the flowers that didn’t survive.”
“I’ll ask around. You still leaving tomorrow?”
“Oh yes.”
Michael takes his rest in short uneasy naps. When he wakes from each, there’s a terrible moment of disorientation. When he settles again he tries to remember the dreams that’d just frightened him awake and cannot. He’s left only with a feeling, an emotional residue, like a grease stain on a kitchen hood. It upsets him that he can’t remember—not the days before the Dormitory, not the dreams of minutes before. He has only an afterglow of troubled fantasies and yearnings. It is like homesickness but he doesn’t have a home.
Dr. Hancock doesn’t try to stop Michael the next day, though he does take blood, hair and urine samples.
“What no bone marrow?” Michael asks.
“Would you allow that?”
“No.”
The hospital cleaned his clothes. They smell of industrial detergent, the same smell as his pillowcase and sheets, but at least the smell of corpses is gone. The battery on his phone is long dead.
He gets dressed and feels weakness in every muscle he moves, but he has to leave. He’s not trying to avoid the CDC woman. If she’d have shown up before today, he’d have been happy to talk to her, but he’s fed up with the hospital. Disregarding his time in a coma, the week of conscious residence in the sterile ICU is more than enough. He has to get on with it.
“What happened to the other bodies?” he asks the nurse as she writes out his final paperwork.
“What other bodies?”
“The ones from Crystal Springs. Did they bring them here?”
“What about Crystal Springs?”
“They dug up a bunch of bodies.”
What Immortal Hand Page 11