by J. Naomi Ay
I also left a sponge and a tiny piece of gauze in the abdominal cavity of another patient because a nurse had distracted me when the guy's anesthesia wore off and he woke up.
We got him back to sleep quickly, probably before he even realized his gut was wide open. Unfortunately, the sponge festered, and the guy died. In my defense, if I woke up and took a good look at my intestines, I probably wouldn't want to live any more either.
"I won't screw up, sir." I saluted and then taking my orders and my protein drink, I headed toward the door.
My glasses had fogged up a bit as I had been sweating profusely. The Captain had a way of making my sweat glands shift into hyper mode. I didn't see the coat rack, or the Captain's jacket, which I happened to walk into. The coat rack fell over and knocked me in the head giving me a fairly good sized hematoma and sending my protein drink flying.
I thought the Captain would be able to get the stain out by putting some salt on it. If not, he could try dry cleaning.
He didn't want to listen to my suggestions, so I never found out what happened to his jacket. I went home to Earth for a few days instead, as I now had an unpaid disciplinary leave which delayed my Starship posting.
"You're still a schmuck," Grandpa Lou said when I went to see him at The Home. "Now, you're just a space schmuck."
"It's good to see you too, Lou," I replied and ended my visit before all the rest of his posse decided to comment.
They were in the midst of a hot and heavy poker game anyway. My presence was distracting him from his pile of chips.
I had lunch with my brother at an Irish pub on the Upper East Side.
"The spaghetti here is the best in town," Kevin said, marinara dripping down the sides of his mouth. "Who'd have thunk it from an Irish joint?"
"How's Desdemona?" I picked at my own Irish stew. It was better than anything I had eaten in space, although I wasn't really a fan of mutton.
"History," Kevin replied, now taking a swig of his Guinness. "Margarita is my latest. Right now, she's modeling bikinis in Turks and Caicos. If you're still around on the weekend, we can jet down there in my new Ferrari. Maybe she's got a girlfriend."
"Gosh, I can't." I pretended to be sorry.
Any time Kevin had set me up in the past, it resulted in the girl wondering how I could possibly be Kevin's brother. I used to tell them I was adopted. They usually nodded and remarked how that made sense.
After lunch, when I reached in my jacket pocket to pull out my wallet, that Altarian guy, Dgery Wadmon's charm bracelet came with it.
"Hey, what's that?" Kevin leaned across the table. A small pile of spilt al dente noodles lay like a nest of snakes between us. "You've got a girl?"
"No." I stared at the bracelet in my hand. I must have been wearing this jacket at the pawnshop and forgotten all about it. Kevin wanted to know, so I had to explain about my quest, albeit slowly, to find the poor guy's family. "I think the key might be the key."
"Let me take a look." Kevin held the tiny key charm up to the light and examined the inscription while finishing his second beer. "This key belongs to a safety deposit box."
"Any idea where?"
Kevin shook his head. "I've got boxes all over this planet, Jer. I've never seen one with this marking before. Good luck with your quest."
Shoving the bracelet back in my pocket, I forgot all about it again.
****
For the next few years, I lived aboard the Starship Discovery. I enjoyed my life there. The food in the cafeteria was much better than on any spacebase. We had an ice cream parlor which served a variety of flavors in wafer or waffle cones. Every afternoon, I would meander up there to get my fill. My favorite flavor was Purpleberry, which was a genetically modified cross between a blueberry and a raspberry grown in hydroponic forests in space. On holidays, the ice cream parlor would dip the waffle cones in chocolate and sprinkles. As there were many different species working and living aboard the ship, somebody was having a holiday almost every week.
I had a competent nurse aboard the Discovery. Her name was Caroline Adamson, and she too was from Earth. She was from West Virginia or Tennessee or one of those states where her English had a distinct twang and her parents bred like rabbits. I didn't hold any of that against her, and she didn't mind me being from New Jersey, so overall we got along fine.
Caroline had a new boyfriend every week. In fact, she had more boyfriends than I thought we had men aboard the ship. She'd fall in and out of love with every one of them, which meant on Monday, she was deliriously happy, and by the following Sunday, she was ready to kill someone.
I dated around a little bit. I guess the spacegirls aboard the ship were desperate and not too particular.
There was one girl I really liked. Actually, I fell head over heels in love with her. She was also from Earth, from Seattle, which was practically a whole different country compared to New Jersey. The first time I saw her, I knew she was the one, and like every captain I ever worked for, she made my glasses fog up.
She liked me a little bit, I thought, and sometimes we went out. We had a disco aboard the ship, and she loved to dance and drink fruity cocktails. I never got past first base with her though. Mostly, I struck out no matter how hard I swung.
"We're just friends, Jerry," she kept reminding me with a peck on my cheek.
Caroline would shake her head and roll her eyes when she saw this. "Leave her alone," she cautioned. "That girl has something else going on."
"What? I never see her with anybody."
"Just trust me. She's got herself some guy who ain't gonna like you messing with his girl."
"How do you know?"
"I just know." Caroline would point her finger in my face. "Don't be a schmuck."
I couldn't help it. I was a schmuck and that girl was totally messing with my head and some other body parts too. When the opportunity arose to attend a conference on emergency room protocols in space, I decided I needed a break and took advantage of that. The conference was taking place at Landbase Rozari, one of the largest Allied landbases outside of Earth and Mars. Even though the entire planet had been nuked a thousand years earlier, it was purported to be safe and no longer radioactive. On top of that, the land was very inexpensive, and there were tax incentives for buying it, so many Earth ex-pats were moving there.
Once arrived on Planet Rozari, I stayed in base housing that was even smaller than my quarters on the Discovery, but for the first time in several years I was actually on the ground. The seminars finished by 1600 every day as we were expected to review the materials and report in the morning for a quiz.
I studied for a while that first afternoon and then headed out for dinner, happy to be walking on a planet even though it was extraordinarily hot and covered in red post-nuclear dust. Figuring the cafeteria would be as luxurious as the accommodations, I decided to put on my civvies and head into town.
There was huge mall in the nearby city of Takira-Hahr and in the guide book at least a few of the restaurants had a five star rating. When I boarded the nearest bus, I reached into my jacket pocket for my paycard and realized that old dead Altarian, Dgery Wadmon's charm bracelet was still in there.
I had never tracked down his family! I had totally forgotten about him!
Overcome with guilt, and not particularly hungry anyway, I jumped off the bus at the mall and headed toward the nearest bank. Maybe somebody there could look at the key and tell me what it might open up.
My glasses were slipping as I was sweating profusely even though the Rozarian sun had set and the planet had cooled somewhat. By the time I walked into the bank where the air conditioning was blowing full blast, I had streams of sweat pouring from my temples and my glasses were completely fogged up. I bumped right into a woman and knocked her on the floor.
"Oh, I'm so sorry! Are you hurt?"
"No." She clambered back to her feet. "But you're a schmuck."
"Actually, I know that," I replied apologetically. "Go ahead. I think you were firs
t in line."
"Hi Shelly," the teller called.
Shelly glared at me once again before smiling at the teller and stepping forward to do her banking, while I waited until it was my turn, fumbling with the bracelet in my pocket.
It was one minute before 1800 when I finally stepped up to put the bracelet on the counter and explain about the key.
“Uh huh.” The teller glanced at the overhead clock. Now, it was 1800, which turned out to be closing time for the bank. "Come back tomorrow,” she announced. “You'll need to show this to the manager and she’s already left. Is there anything else I can help you with today?" She didn’t wait for me to answer, just slammed shut her window and ducked into the back.
So, I left, and wandered around the mall looking for a place to eat. I ended up at this joint called the Cowboy Corral, which had a giant synthetic Saguaro cactus out front and a green Talasian woman in cowgirl dress doing the seating inside. There was a forty-five minute wait for a table, so I just took a stool at the bar and ordered a good old fashion Coors with a double bacon burger with cheese.
"There are about a million grams of cholesterol in that," the drunk woman next me murmured, glancing at my side of fries.
"I know, but I don't eat like this every day. Once in a while, I get to splurge."
"Just don't come to me when you need a bypass." She lifted her shot glass of amber liquid and knocked it back. Then, she pounded it on the counter and yelled, "Bill, ready for another."
"I'm not so sure, Gina," Bill, the bartender replied snatching away Gina's glass and wiping the counter with a cloth instead of his tongue. "I think you're over your limit, Doc."
"Me?" I asked with my mouth full of food. All I had was one beer, and there was still half in the bottle.
"No, not you." Bill pointed his thumb at Gina who had a picked up the ketchup tube and was now squirting it all over my fries.
"They're better this way," Gina mumbled.
I didn't like fries that were bleeding red. They looked too much like the shredded spleen that I had once autopsied in a dead Xironian.
"Ketchup is for dipping, not dousing." I pushed the plate in front of Gina, who promptly swallowed every one of them, and then leaned over my shoulder to gaze at my burger.
"I am so fucking drunk," she announced, as if I couldn’t tell. "You wouldn't mind sharing that with me, would you?"
"Actually, yes," I replied, but being the schmuck that I was, I gave her the last third of the burger.
After that, I paid her bar tab as she couldn't find her purse or her pay card and Bill wasn't about to extend her anymore credit.
"Go sleep it off, Doc." He rolled his eyes and handed me the receipt. "I sure hope she doesn't have any surgeries scheduled for the morning."
"Yeah, me too," Gina chortled and stumbled her way out of the bar.
Running after her, I grabbed her arm to steady her on those six inch pointy heels. "Can I help you home?"
"Who are you again?"
"Nobody, just the schmuck who gave you his dinner."
I guess that was acceptable because she led me to her speeder. I drove her home, and helped her get inside her apartment. I even took off her shoes and laid her on the bed as she had already passed out.
Leaving a glass of water and a couple aspirin on her bedside table, I let myself out and walked down the street looking for a bus or a cab. I had to walk about six miles, and it was coming up on midnight before I finally managed to snag the late city bus which delivered me back to the base just after 1AM.
I didn’t get a chance to get back to the mall or the bank before the end of the week. The seminar got to be pretty intense, and I needed the study time every night. By Friday, it was over, and before I sailed out the next morning en route to the Discovery, I made one last attempt to figure out Dgery's key.
****
"This is for your box?" The bank manager picked up the key that I had removed from the bracelet. She twirled it between her fingers and studied the tiny markings.
"Uh, yes but, you see, I travel a lot so I can't remember which bank on which planet this key belongs to."
"It's all the same." She shrugged, "We're all part of the Allied Interplanetary Banking Network." She took a stack of forms from a drawer in her desk. "I'll just need you to sign here and here. Can I see your photo ID?"
"You mean you can open my box here on Rozari even though I last saw it on…say…Altaris III?"
"Sure." She looked at her watch. "Can you speed this up? Closing is at six. What did you say your name was?"
"Jerry Waldman…uh…Dgery Wadmon. That's how I spelled it back on Altaris." I handed her my Spaceforce ID. She examined it carefully glancing back and forth at my face a few times.
"Ok, Dgery. Come with me. Do you want any cash back with your box?"
"No. Thank you. Just the box."
Following her to the other side of the bank, we stopped before a kiosk. It looked like a standard ATM except for a large sign that read, Safety Deposit Boxes. There was a slot to insert the key which started the machine humming and the console lights flashing.
"Does this machine play pinball too? How about music requests?"
The bank manager didn't think that was funny. Come to think of it, it probably wasn't.
"Your box is stored in a vault orbiting Altarias III." She sniffed as if I was irritating her sinuses, and eyed me over the top of her reading glasses. "The contents are being transferred here by teleportation."
"Really? How is that possible?"
"Actually, it's not." Now she smirked. Apparently, that was funny. "Nobody has invented that yet. You're in Spaceforce. You ought to know."
"I'm in the medical corps."
She sniffed again, obviously not impressed. "What is actually happening is a replica of your box's contents is being created right now by a three dimensional printer. If you want the real thing, you'll have to fly to Altaris."
Glancing at her watch, she began tapping her foot and became even more irritable as it was now three minutes past six. At exactly 6:04PM, a strange shiny shape began to take form. I knelt down and peered in the little doorway but couldn't tell what it was.
"It's like a prize."
"Hardly. I hope it isn't too big."
It wasn't. About half a minute later, the door slid open, to reveal what appeared to be another charm for the bracelet. It was silver and in the shape of an angel. He was holding a sword in one hand, a tiny blue globe in the other.
"What is it?" The bank manager asked, her rabid foot going silent as she peered in my hand.
"The Archangel Michael." I recognized the little guy from my Bar Mitzvah twenty years ago. My Torah portion had been on a section in Genesis that had mentioned him so the Rabbi had made me do a fair bit of research about the guy. "He's the warrior angel among other things. That's why he's holding the sword."
"Oh." She sniffed one last time for my benefit and began walking toward the door. Everybody else had already left. As I stepped out into the balmy Rozarian evening as the bank manager locked the door behind me, I heard her say, albeit it under her breath, "Schmuck."
I was disappointed. It wasn't that I expected to find millions of dollars or anything valuable in the box, although that would have been nice. I was really just trying to do my poor dead Altarian namesake and his family a favor. If I ever turned up cold with a tag on my toe in some distant spacebase's morgue, I'd hope somebody would at least attempt to do the same for me. Now, after all this time, I wasn't any closer to locating Dgery's family. I had totally failed at my quest.
As it was early still, just after 6PM, and my last evening on Rozari, I decided to spend it walking around the Fashion Mall. There were a lot of people out, couples especially, holding hands and going in and out of shops. This must have been what passed for entertainment on this hot dead planet.
For a moment, I paused in front of a store that sold snow globes filled with radioactive dirt. Supposedly, they were totally safe, although as I stood there,
the sky darkening around me, most of them started to glow eerily.
Next door was a shop that had a display of dried flowers in the window. They were all red like everything on this planet and most of them had huge sharp thorns, not something I'd want to have delivered to my mother.
As I wandered over to a third shop, I caught the reflection of a couple in the glass. They were standing in the middle of the mall behind me, a tall guy with long black hair and a slight, blonde woman who looked just like that girl back on the Discovery. For a half second, I even thought I heard them call my name. I turned quickly, but they were gone. They only guy in the glass now was a fat mall cop eating some swirled ice cream from a waffle cone.
"Evening," he said and raised his cone in salute. He patted the laser at his side as if to assure me he was still doing his job, patrolling this rapidly emptying expanse of commerce.
"Evening." I returned his salute and headed back to the one restaurant I knew, the Cowboy Corral.
I spent the next few hours trying not to be lonely, trying not to miss my family back on Earth, or my friends on the Discovery. I drank too many beers and ate far too many nachos, while staring at the bracelet that belonged to some other guy.
"Hey." It was Dr. Gina. She sat down on the stool next to me. "I owe you a double bacon cheese burger."
"It's alright." I shrugged and tossed back my beer.
"No, seriously." She continued, "I really want to thank you for being so kind the other night. I'm not normally like that. I lost a patient. I lost a boyfriend. My whole shitty life is just getting shittier."
"I'm sorry. I know how it is."
"At least, let me do you a favor back?"
Why not? I shrugged so she ordered two burgers which we ate in silent contemplation as some woe filled country song about lost love and a lost dog belted out from the juke box. When we had finished our meals, I ordered another round of beers and pushed the bracelet in front of Gina.