by Bruce Blake
No. It’s too big. It’s big enough to be a man.
The thought prompted her off the path, fear forgotten, concern taking over. Her heart beat fast as the soles of her shoes squelched in the grass, the saturated dirt sucking at them, trying to pull them off her feet. Three steps closer confirmed her worst fears.
“Are you all right?” she called, voice trembling.
No answer.
She crouched at the man’s side, the dark making it impossible to determine whether injury or intoxication laid him out here. Hand quaking, she reached out her hand and rested it gently on the man’s shoulder.
“Sir, are you all right?”
A car went by on the street, tossing light over the church’s stone wall and across the lawn. Sister Mary-Therese thought about signaling for help, but the face it illuminated stopped her, forced her heart into her throat.
“Oh, dear God. Icarus.”
***
If hospitals are for the sick, those in need of help, why are they such unpleasant places?
I no longer felt any pain and the tingling in my skin had calmed, allowing me to focus on the gurney’s squeaky wheel as paramedics shuttled me across the sidewalk, then jarringly out of the somber night into fluorescent-light-hell. Doctors and nurses in pristine whites and muted greens hovered around me, their silhouettes blissfully blocking out the too-bright light as they poked and prodded, hung I.V.s and called for blood. By then, it was too late to help me, I knew it but lacked a voice to tell them. I was flattered they showed so much concern for preserving my life but felt a little guilty they worked so fervently to save someone un-salvageable--a doctor term they don’t like the general public to know they use. Wouldn’t want a dying patient to feel like a car with a thrown rod.
The world blended into an indistinct meld of whites and greens, barked instructions and beeping equipment. The blaring lights, the crinkle of a plastic-covered mattress beneath my soaked clothes, the smells found only in a hospital, they all dimmed together, like a full-sense movie fading to black. Bring down the lights, cue relief.
A weight lifted from my chest and limbs, as though my mass disappeared, like floating on my back in a pool. I opened my eyes expecting to see the hospital’s glaring lights above me, but I didn’t. Instead, I stood amongst the medical staff as they brushed past me without noticing. The team of doctors and nurses fought soundlessly in organized chaos to save another me lying on the table in the emergency ward.
I looked like hell.
Blood and rain soaked my white shirt, staining it a uniform pink. My suit jacket was gone, probably cut off by the paramedics who brought me here and a pang of regret tweaked my chest--it was my only suit not purchased at the Sears bargain basement. Mud smeared my face and stuck my dark brown hair to my forehead. Some mortician would clean me up, probably make me look better than in life. Hopefully, he wouldn’t use too much make-up. Rae always called me a pretty man and, though years of hard living dulled my looks, unprofessional application of cosmetics would either make me look like a clown, or worse, some old queer’s boy-toy. Above all else, I hoped he wouldn’t disguise the expression on my face, one I wanted so badly to wear in life but never found: relief.
This isn’t happening.
It was the only thought I could drum up while I stood there watching. No sadness or disappointment, no anger or relief, only disbelief.
Sound crept back into my little world of silence. First, a persistent, high-pitched tone, then the voices of the doctors, the squeak of rubber soles on linoleum. An overweight nurse pushed a cart to the bed and one of the doctors grabbed the two paddles sitting on it. The nurse squirted goo on them and he pressed them to my exposed chest.
“Clear!”
My body jerked along with the me on the table and pain shot through my chest. The electricity passed through me, yanked me back toward my body. I fought it like a fish on a hook. The guy on the table didn’t look very good, even by dead guy standards. The machine buzzed again, the doctor shouted again, electricity jolted me again. My feet skittered on the linoleum but I held my ground.
I’m not going back there.
Not that it mattered, anyway: none of this was real. I was in the body, this scene just a creation of my mind, an amusement before the final curtain fell. Nothingness, the end of it all, would be next on the program, but the medical staff disagreed and kept me hanging around for the better part of an hour.
A curious calm settled in as they injected me with solutions with names unpronounceable without years of education and shocked me with enough juice to make a shock-therapy patient jealous. I’d been raised by Father Dominic as a ward of the church, thoroughly versed in God and Heaven and all the requisite trappings, but the way my life had gone convinced me long ago that, if those biblical rumors held any truth, then God must hate me. And, let’s face it, if God existed, he probably looked down one day on the shite he created, packed up his tent and went somewhere else to give it another shot, hoping for better luck on the second go-round
“Okay, that’s it everyone. I’m calling it,” a doctor with an overbite said glancing at the wall clock. “Time of death: two forty-seven a.m.”
I surge of panic caught me unaware. Calling it? Giving up? This was really the end? I didn’t get to give Trevor his birthday present.
“Do we know who this guy is?”
“They found his ID on the scene. Looks like a mugging.” Nurse Overweight looked to the cop standing at the curtain. “Got a name, Ted?”
“Yeah. Icarus Fell, thirty-seven years-old.”
“Icarus Fell?” Dr. Overbite said. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Nope. That’s what it says on his driver’s licence.”
A rubber glove snapped as the doctor removed it. “Guess his parents didn’t like him much.”
Their conversational tones irked me--where did the caring go? Thankfully, sound faded. My mind still told me I stood amongst them like a medical student learning how to make fun of a dead patient’s name. I stepped back from the melange of medical personnel, glanced around the room, waiting for darkness, emptiness, nothingness.
Nothing is exactly what I got.
Dr. Overbite left; Nurse Overweight pulled a sheet up, covering my corpse all the way to the top of my head leaving a tuft of wet, spiky hair remaining in view. I stepped up to the gurney, alone with my corpse, and stared at the pink, rose-like blossoms of blood soaking through the sheet. Soon, someone would come and wheel away this inanimate piece of meat, take it somewhere to be identified by my next-of-kin: Rae and Trevor. I rested my hand on the corpse’s shoulder, sighed heavily, and wondered if they knew I loved them.
I didn’t get to say good-bye.
This was really it, then. I surveyed the area, heard the sounds of movement beyond the curtain partitioning my deathbed from the rest of the ER. Were both my morbid beliefs and Father Dominic’s bible wrong? Was I doomed to spend eternity hanging around an emergency room watching the sick and injured dragged in and out? Better than at least one of the priest’s alternatives, but I didn’t believe in Hell any more than I did Heaven. If this was it, the ultimate destination, it promised to be terribly dull.
But maybe it was a chance to see my son again.
I walked toward the curtain, reached out my hand to push it aside, but my fingers passed through like it wasn’t there. Like I wasn’t there.
Every bed in the ER was full. Some of the curtains were pulled closed, like mine had been, others were open. A man sat on one holding a blood-soaked compress on his arm. In another, a white-haired woman reclined with her eyes closed and her breath fogging the clear plastic oxygen mask covering her nose and mouth; a curious gray halo surrounded her head, like a dirty outline on the pillowcase. In a third bed, a feverish boy a year or two short of puberty glanced around the room with nervous eyes; his mother stood at the side of his bed, brushing hair from his sweaty forehead.
I stopped and watched them for a moment, my chest aching for them as I remembered
Trevor at age two, fever raging, his dry lips quivering as he muttered about the hallucinations the high fever caused. I’d never been so scared in my life.
Before the sight of them made me cry, I moved on.
I passed through the ER without garnering a look from anyone and exited through an open door into the over-crowded waiting room. People sat on uncomfortable chairs doing their best to avoid eye contact with everyone else in the room. A TV mounted high in one corner showed a talking head with no voice--a news anchor talking about tonight’s top story. I wondered if it might be me.
I turned to leave, to wander out into the spring storm, a spirit in search of his son, when a familiar figure caught my attention.
Sister Mary-Therese.
She stood off to one side, Dr. Overbite standing in front of her with my blood on the front of his scrubs. From across the room, I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but the sister’s reaction told me all I needed to know.
The doctor put his hand on her shoulder and her expression sagged. Her head dropped forward and her hands came up to cover her face. Dr. Overbite spoke again, but this time I could clearly read his lips:
“I’m sorry.”
He stood with her a moment longer, then guided her to one of the uncomfortable chairs and excused himself. She sat leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. Her shoulders rose and fell with her sobs and, each time they did, an unseen hand squeezed tighter around my lungs.
I took a step toward the sister--the person in my life closest to a mother. I wanted to comfort her, to tell her everything would be all right, because I suddenly wished it was. Most of all, I wanted to apologize to her for losing touch over the years, for failing her after she put so much into making sure I survived the choices I made in life.
The light in the room brightened. The white walls became glaring, other colors faded and washed-out until my world seemed buried deep inside a drift of the purest snow. I shielded my eyes until the light became a bearable white nothingness.
“Sister,” I called, but the word died at my lips.
I saw her outline still, a shape burned on my retinas by the light, and rushed forward, hoping to reach her. I thought my fingers brushed the wool of her sweater, then it was gone.
And I was alone.
I paced a circle, searched the big empty, my feet touching something and nothing, but there was only me left wondering once more if this could be real. Maybe I still lay on the church lawn, rain pelting my bleeding body. Maybe no one found me and this was my brain making things tolerable for my body.
Then I saw the door.
One second it wasn’t there, then it was. With no point of comparison, it was impossible to distinguish whether it was very small or a long way off. I took three steps and found neither to be the case as those few strides brought me immediately before it. It might have been a door in any house or apartment--off-white, plain, its surface broken only by the knob--but the sight of it calmed me, brought a smile to my face.
I guess this is what they mean about being on death’s doorstep.
I chuckled soundlessly. The door swung open and I stared through it to the same white nothing on the other side, pondering what to do.
If I was dead, I was meant to go through. If this wasn’t real, what did I have to lose?
I stepped across the threshold.
Chapter Two
I woke to an unfamiliar room which looked like no hospital room I’d ever seen: mass-produced dresser, bed, chair like you might find sitting behind a teacher’s desk, and a table supporting a huge old microwave--the kind that buzzed and moaned as it heated your TV dinner, leaking enough radiation to shrivel your balls to raisins in the process. A door leading to a darkened bathroom stood ajar while a second closed door presumably led to a corridor lined with many similar doors. A hotel room, one of the places where people did their business by the hour. The itchy wool bedspread tucked under my chin confirmed its wouldn’t make the cut for a Lonely Planet Travel Guide.
I stopped and took quick stock of myself. Physically, everything seemed fine: ten fingers, ten toes, arms, legs, head, all the essentials in the proper places. And no pain. I looked up again.
It was all a dream.
It had to have been, because I clearly wasn’t dead. Then a second thought occurred to me: Where the fuck am I?
Somehow, the man sitting on a wooden chair in the corner had escaped my notice during my first inspection of the room.
And who the fuck is he?
His meticulously brushed hair fell to his shoulders in a style last popular when Kool and the Gang and roller skates ruled. The lamp on the dresser beside him cast a shadow across his face, hiding his features. He didn’t look up from the book in his lap.
So it had all been my imagination: the hospital, the doctors, the blood. But what about the men in the churchyard? Did I imagine them, too? None of it explained how I got here. I ground my teeth, bewildered, then looked back at the blond man still engrossed in his book and shivered a little. I cleared my throat; might as well find out what the hell’s going on.
“Ah, you’re awake.”
He leaned forward on the edge of the chair and I swear his eyes glowed. Not in the way of a poem, or a poorly written romance novel, but for a fraction of a second, it looked like they actually cast light. I fought an urge to crawl away.
The man laid his book on the dresser at his elbow, careful not to lose his page. “How do you feel?”
I looked at him, puzzled. “Dead?”
“Sort of.” A look of bemusement tugged the corner of his mouth. His flawless features reminded me of an artist’s rendering of a fairy tale Prince Charming.
“Where the fuck am I? Who are you?”
“You may call me Michael, Icarus.”
I raised an eyebrow; who but teachers use the word ‘may’?
“Call me Ric.”
“Where we are is of no consequence. The why is most important.”
“Don’t get ahead of me here, Mikey.” I pushed myself to a sitting position, making the wobbly headboard bang against the wall--part of the charm of rooms rented hourly. No pain as I shifted, but the memory of a knife blade piercing my flesh made me flinch.
It wasn’t real.
If my visitor noticed, he must have found it amusing because his grin remained intact. I wanted to slap it off.
“You have questions,” Mike said.
He dragged the chair to the side of the bed and sat again. The white dress shirt he wore open at the throat looked like he’d put it on straight out of the package and his dark red slacks dated from the same era as his hairstyle. The aroma of cinnamon and cloves wafted from him, like fresh-baked pumpkin pie. My stomach growled.
“What do you remember?”
“Trevor’s birthday. I missed it.” I looked into the beautiful man’s eyes--not blue or brown or green like eyes are supposed to be, but yellow, like a cat’s. Golden. The light I saw before flickered far in the back of them, almost unnoticeable; I wanted to look away, but couldn’t. “What happened to me?”
“Do you remember the two men in the churchyard? The wounds they inflicted led to the death of your earthly body.”
How does he know that?
I raised an eyebrow and gestured around the room. “And this is...?”
“A hotel room on east 38th.” He chuckled, a sound that made happiness bubble inside me, but I pushed it aside in favor of confusion and doubt, two sentiments which seemed more appropriate given my current situation.
“So you’re telling me I’m dead.”
He nodded.
“And staying in a shitty hotel.”
No response, only the grin.
The memory of the two men--their faces hidden, rain dripping from the edge of their hoods--was too real. It had happened. This, however, couldn’t possibly be reality--my mind was concocting it.
Play along, see what happens.
“I thought souls went to Heaven or Hell when the body died.”
/> “No you didn’t. You’re an unbeliever. You thought you disappeared into oblivion, that death was the end of everything.”
Touché.
“Poor choice of words. Religion says Heaven or Hell. If I’m dead, I may have been wrong about the oblivion thing.”
A bead of sweat rolled down my temple and I wiped it away on my bare forearm. I hadn’t noticed how warm it was in the room. A knot formed in my belly, equal parts dread and excitement. Maybe it wasn’t the best choice to skip confession all those times. Every time, really.
“You were mistaken. But, as you can see, this is clearly neither Heaven nor Hell. It is a hotel room. We needed somewhere to store you while you recovered.”
“So what? Purgatory?”
“There is no such place.”
I felt the puzzled look on my face again. Or maybe it never left. “Why did you say ‘sort of’ when I said I was dead?”
“Because you died, but you are no longer dead, Icarus.”
“Ric.” Butterflies beat delicate wings against the lining of my gut. “Why wouldn’t I be dead? Who the hell are you?”
“Tut, tut.”‘ He waggled his index finger at me. “Hell has nothing to do with me.”
“Fine.” Answer the damn question. “So who are you?”
He leaned forward, eyes flickering noticeably, dispelling all doubt about the light dwelling within. “As I said, my name is Michael.”
If my life--or death, or dream, whichever--was a movie, a heavenly choir would have burst into hymn in the background, indicating the dawn of realization.
“Michael? The Michael? The archangel?”
He leaned back, folded his arms across his chest. “Archangel is a term coined by men. It does have a nice ring, though, does it not?”
“So, you’re telling me you’re an angel.” I watched him through narrowed eyes.
He nodded.
This must be someone’s idea of a joke. In a few minutes he’d reveal a hidden camera behind the curtains or inside the microwave. Well, if I was being punk’d, I’d play along. I could take a joke.