The Man Who Would Not Die

by Thomas Page

  “Pretty good,” Dutton replied, hitting him over the head with the oscilloscope. The man went down and Dutton rolled him onto his side, so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit. He took the keys from the man’s hand and climbed into the truck where he gaped at the array of coontails, polished chrome, and CB and stereo equipment lining the dash. This was a truck?

  The engine started with a single roar. Dutton jammed the teak-headed gearshift into reverse and backed out toward the road. As the lights swept over his own car, he saw the figure of a man sitting in the backseat like an executive waiting for his chauffeur.

  Five minutes after the truck had gone, the night manager of the motel, the guard, and the bearded man burst into Dutton’s room and found his luggage lying on the bed. The bearded man said, “Crapola,” and rubbed the blood on his head.

  They surrounded Dutton’s car. The stranger sat in the backseat, looking straight ahead. The manager whispered, “That’s the guy who was looking for him.”

  The guard tapped on the window. “Mind getting out for a second?” The man did not answer.

  The manager cried, “Your friend stole this man’s truck. He doesn’t want to press charges, he just wants it back because it isn’t paid for yet. He’s willing to forget the whole thing. Can you tell us where he’s going?”

  Finally the man turned and looked at them. Although he had no expression, they sensed his deep, bitter disappointment. The man looked at each one of them. Then he vanished.

  The manager jumped back from the car as though it had turned red-hot. They slowly circled the vehicle, looking under the wheels, peeping over the window and in the space between front and backseat. None of them wanted to touch it.

  At ten-fifteen, the staff gathered round the LS capsule in Denver shuddered as the waves of electricity crashing through Daniel Forrester’s chest muscles sent the frail body into paroxysms that threatened to tear the IV lines from the flesh. The body bobbed on its fluid bed at each jolt. The fourth shock got the heart going again.

  Bickel had decided to jolt the heart manually after the phone call to Dutton, even though the doctors warned it might do permanent damage. That was exactly what happened; the computer printout reported burns round the heart muscle and chest cavity.

  The resident cardiac surgeon did not like the high-handed way Bickel had overridden him. “He’s breathing again,” said Bickel. “And what has he got to lose?”

  “Why did you do it?” asked the surgeon. “The machine would have brought him round again.”

  “I wanted to see if the manual defibrillator would work,” Bickel answered coldly without going into details. “It did.”

  After the staff left him with one nurse, Bickel felt tense and sticky with sweat. “Is there a shower I can use?” he asked the nurse.

  “There’s one on the third floor,” she replied, looking at the capsule with distaste. “It’s probably terrible of me, but I wish he’d die and get it over with.”

  “Katsy. So you’re Katsy Burnham. George often spoke about you. One of the things that I loved about him was that he never tried to make me jealous. He was honest to a fault, almost to a boring fault.” Mrs. Jeffries refilled Kate’s teacup. She had brought out the framed photo of her and George Hadley at the wedding in 1967. Kate figured she must have been a good five years older than Hadley when she married him.

  Kate was sitting on a white sofa decorated with huge sunflower designs. She cleared her throat and set down her cupcake.

  “How did he die?”

  “He was changing a fuse in the fusebox. Something went wrong and he was electrocuted. His brother found him. It was plain bad luck. Do you realize no one has ever written a story about misfortune? Bad luck? Everything has to have a villain or a meaning, but so much of what happens in life is just plain luck. Anyway, it was August 10th, 1968.”

  “That’s what I feared,” said Kate. She had run this lie over in her head and she hoped she had it down pat. “I keep a diary, you see, on and off, and I wrote something down about George a day or two after he died.”

  Mrs. Jeffries’ smile remained on her face, but her humor fled like a canary from a cage. “Tsk, tsk. It was very bad for me for two years. That’s the strangest thing, Kate. Grief, I mean. I felt nothing right after he died. And two years later the full impact hit me. My analyst says it works that way sometimes.” Her sunny face held more secrets than a poker player’s, yet Kate sensed she had reached home base.

  “Anyway,” Kate continued, “I had a dream about the time he died. I dreamed he came into my apartment and tried to speak to me. He was wearing a tweed jacket and penny loafers . . .”

  Mrs. Jeffries set her cake plate down. “That’s what he was wearing when he died! He was lying in a puddle of water and the jacket was scorched . . . oh, don’t worry, it’s well behind me now. And those awful tortoise glasses. The frames melted.”

  “What do you make of that, Mrs. Jeffries?”

  “Oh, undoubtedly it was your imagination.” Mrs. Jeffries’ smile was ornamented by the sunlight flashing off her glasses. “You had a vision. I did, too.”

  “You did?” Kate balanced her teacup on her knee.

  “It’s a common event for those in grief. I don’t believe in ghosts, you see.”

  “Me either,” Kate said with alacrity.

  “Certainly it was nothing worth being a ghost for. It was a matter of exam scores.”

  Kate nodded with polite sympathy. “He was in graduate school?”

  “Yes, he’d completed this brutal oral exam for his degree and he died before knowing the results.” Mrs. Jeffries clasped her hands on her knee. “It had to be a hallucination; after all, we were just married and one would think he would be worried about my happiness, not some goddamned—oopsy, excuse me—exam grades. I was snoozing in that very chair when I opened my eyes—this was the day after the burial—and I dreamed George was shaking me awake and asking me how he did on the test. I told him I didn’t know. He walked out the front door and I never saw him again. I was devastated! Not one word about me! I thought he’d come back to kiss me, but not another word.” That little implication of supernatural insult on top of injury was the reason Mrs. Jeffries became so taut, Kate decided. She was a lady with an absolute hell of a will to lead an orderly life with no unpleasantness in it.

  Kate mulled it over and pulled out the answer. “He must have known you quite well.”

  Mrs. Jeffries pushed her glasses back on her nose. “We were together for three years. After you and he broke up.”

  “I meant to say, George knew you’d be all right, so there was no reason to cheer you up.” Since Mrs. Jeffries’ hard smile indicated she did not take that remark well, Kate stood up and shook hands. “I’m sorry to have bothered you. I wonder if you could tell me where George is buried. I thought about flowers.”

  Mrs. Jeffries all but kicked her out the front door. “Outside of town, at the Presbyterian church, is a cemetery to the side. George is in the third row. Or is it the fourth? One of those back near the trees. Do call again.”

  George Hadley. Born 1940. Died 1968. There was no inscription, no wilted flowers, nothing to indicate anyone had visited Hadley since he was put under. Probably his widow would detour to Nebraska before going near the grave.

  Kate put flowers down in front of the headstone. All she had ever known of Hadley lay beneath her feet, yet this was death at its most plebeian. Standing in the green grass of this sunny churchyard, white clouds in the sky, she could not connect what she saw in her apartment to this peaceful place. It was not spooky, nor was it ominous. Kate had a mad urge to dig up the body and see what clothes Hadley had been buried in.

  At any rate, she got what she wanted. George Hadley had been seen walking the earth once after he died. Kate was the second person to see him. He fit the requirements pronounced by Nora Stone, since there was a reason for him to return. Hadle
y had been very nervous around exam time.

  She had a sandwich at a diner up the road where she called Bickel in Denver again. Bickel informed her that Dr. Dutton was headed for Las Vegas. If she called again later, Bickel should know exactly where he was staying.

  One should not drive into Las Vegas at night. The city springs out of an austere desert and grabs the traveler in a clamor of crawling neon, car horns, and carloads of the most beautiful, graceful hookers on earth. If a traveler tries to pass through it, Las Vegas chases him halfway across Nevada before giving up. After a nerve-racking drive on roasted sand, Dutton felt the city draw him in. He cruised the strip, eyeing the tourists, the marriage parlors, and the galaxy of Cadillacs before checking into a fairly small casino hotel called the Sidewinder. His bungalow fronted a pool with a Jacuzzi, and he was given a free drink, also called a sidewinder, with a snake-shaped swizzle stick and a taste like fruity gasoline. Once settled on top of a bed with a closed-circuit porno TV against the wall, and the oscilloscope safe on the floor, he dialed Bickel.

  “We’re getting near the end,” Bickel told him with clinical bluntness. “We shocked the heart last night after I talked to you and it worked. But he hasn’t arrested all day and he’s taken a lot of damage. I’m expecting a call from your girlfriend and I’ll tell her to look for the Sidewinder.”

  “Terrific. Now tell me why you sent me here.”

  Bickel coughed discreetly. “It’s all Thomas Edison’s fault.”

  “Oh, Christ, you’re going to throw theories at me again.”

  “You see, Thomas Edison died at three-twenty-four on the morning of October 18th, 1931. Four clocks stopped at that exact moment, three of them belonging to his business associates, one of them a big thirty-day clock Edison kept in his office. In fact, he had recorded a song called ‘Grandfather’s Clock’ on one of his cylinders. Do you follow me?”

  “Synchronicity,” sighed Dutton. “You’re beginning to sound like Jones.”

  “Then there was the soldier killed in Viet Nam and a clock belonging to his mother stopped on that day, at that time. And there’s me. When my old man died, I got a tax bill, my MG caught fire in the garage, and my sister fell down a stoop and broke her leg in three places. It’s not telepathy, Dutton, to tell you the truth, I don’t know what the hell it is. Maybe some theo­logian could explain it but the point is, there was no causal relationship for any of these events. See what I mean? Since we’ve got a true logical anomaly with Daniel Forrester here, I’m wondering if it’ll show up in other ways.”

  “Like gambling?”

  “Yes. Look for peculiar coincidences, Dutton, see if the numbers behave strangely. Numbers are all we can use in events like this. Maybe it’s something connected with the girl. Number theory is a mess these days anyway.”

  “Jones mentioned something like that. You’re all crazy.”

  “It’s a shot in the dark. What’ve you got to lose, Dutton?”

  After talking to Bickel, Dutton finished his sidewinder and carried the oscilloscope into the casino, feeling a bit awkward.

  On a raised dais in the casino, there was a roulette wheel surrounded by six weary people and a croupier who glared at the oscilloscope. Dutton watched the wheel spin a few times. He bought some chips and put a few of them on black thirteen, because it fit his mood exactly. Dutton remained at the table where Kate Burnham found him later that night.

  When Kate spotted the Sidewinder, she knew she and Dutton were kindred spirits. This out-of-the-way casino was the kind of place she would have picked herself.

  She spotted the bearded doctor hunched over the roulette wheel, a fair collection of people gathered round him. He smiled at her and waved as she walked inside.

  “Dr. Dutton, I presume,” she shook his hand.

  “Good evening. I hope Forrester won’t show up this time.”

  “If he does, I’ll kill him,” she replied.

  Each remembered the other from the night at the lodge, centuries, even eons, ago. It was as though a friendship extending back to childhood was about to resume again after the interruption of many years. In a word, they clicked.

  By Dutton’s arm was a considerable pile of chips. “How about this? I just won a thousand five hundred dollars and I’ve never won anything in my life. There are forces at work in the universe, Kate. Do you believe me?”

  “I’m sorry to say I do.”

  “Do you have a room?”

  “No, I wanted to find you first. Do you have a room?”

  “Er, yes.”

  “How big is it?”

  Looking at her pale, wan face, Dutton realized she meant nothing romantic by the question. She was as nervous as he was and did not want to be alone. Neither did he for that matter. “I’ll get them to move a cot in.”

  In spite of the eloquent protest of the croupier, Dutton gathered up his chips and cashed them in. The casino considered him good luck and provided free drinks for them in the bar. As Kate tried to wrap her throat around a sidewinder, Dutton told her everything that had happened. And she in turn told him about Forrester’s visits. After they finished, Dutton wondered if finding each other meant they were twice as safe or twice as crazy.

  “If Mr. Bickel shut the machine off, what would he do then?” she asked. “Wouldn’t he just go away?”

  “That’s logical,” Dutton replied, lighting a cigarette. “The trouble is, he isn’t logical. From what Bickel told me, he’s going to die for the last time. His heart was damaged by the defibril­lator.”

  “Then I guess we’ll know, won’t we?”

  “Soon enough,” Dutton replied, blowing out smoke and pondering the wad of money in his pocket. “Let’s get you checked in. I haven’t even told you about Dr. Gareth Jones and his dream machine yet.”

  That weird guy was back.

  The night nurse at Los Angeles Memorial was seated at her desk when the man in the blue blazer walked in front of her. She was checking temperature charts and almost missed him. A flash of blue in the corner of her eye caused her to look up just as he disappeared down the hall.

  Persistent bastard. The nurse didn’t know whether she was scared or mad. Her hand shook as she picked up the phone and alerted both Dr. Coughlin and the security staff. “He’s here again,” she said to the doctor. “Just walked right by me into the IC ward, proper as you please, like he owns the place. Didn’t say a word, didn’t even speak.”

  The doctor said, “Okay. He might be a crazy, he might just be a relative. Let me speak to him before we get rough.”

  Dr. Coughlin met the security guard at the ward entrance and told him. “This is the fourth time he’s been here. He’s never threatened anyone, he’s hardly spoken. He’s well dressed, unarmed, and he only stays for a minute or two. He goes down to Room 33 and looks in on the LS.”

  “How does he get in?” asked the guard walking rapidly beside him.

  “Beats me. Same way he gets out. A nurse stopped him night before last and he left immediately. You understand what I’m saying? No violence, no threats.”

  The guard grasped the haft of his club anyway. They turned into the ward and walked into Room 33.

  The man stood beside the big plastic LS capsule looking into the transparent top. To the guard, he looked like a bereaved brother or father, someone trying to talk to a patient. The capsule had had three patients since he started coming in. Tonight it was empty.

  The man stared intently at the machine, his eyes fixed and distant. Coughlin noticed that the ward room was unusually cold.

  Coughlin cleared his throat and said, “Mister?”

  The man looked at him.

  Coughlin continued, “I have to ask you to leave and not come back. If you show up again. I’ll have no choice but to call the police.”

  The man said, “Where is it?” His voice was deeply sad.

  Coughlin said
in a measured tone, “We have asked you not to come in here. We’re getting short of patience.”

  “Where is it?”

  The guard said, “Where is what?”

  “Where is it!” The man’s mood transmuted to fury in a microsecond. His voice was so sharp the doctor and guard stepped back. That answered one question. The man was crackers. Coughlin thought about the range of drugs that caused violent mood shifts.

  Rather than wait for an answer, the man turned his attention back to the LS. The guard murmured to Coughlin, “Psycho. Answer his questions. Humor him.”

  Coughlin took a few steps toward the man. An odd smell emanated from him, not body sweat or cologne, just a heavy odor like ice left in the freezer too long, stale and flat. “Oh, you mean the machine? It’s quite a machine, it is. The Stendhal Holmes Life Support System. There are only two others like it.”

  “Where?” the man blazed, turning to Coughlin. The guard jumped and barely restrained himself from bashing the stranger on the head.

  “One of them is in a little town called Hillsdale in Ohio, the other was in Clayton, Colorado, and transferred.”

  “Where!” the man yelled.

  “You are interested in the machine? Is that why you’re coming round here?” The man stepped toward Coughlin. Coughlin raised his hands to protect himself and backpedaled for the door. “Okay, yes. It’s in Denver, I’m not sure exactly which hospital . . .”

  At the word “Denver,” the man’s range flickered out in that uncanny twist of moods. He rushed past Coughlin and was out the door so fast even the guard could not follow him.

  The hall was empty. Coughlin mopped his face with a handkerchief. “How about that? A life support groupie.”

  Word that an intruder had gotten into Denver Mercy Hospital reached Irwin Bickel as he was noting the deterioration in Forrester’s heartbeat that evening. After so many false alarms, it looked like this would be the last arrest. The LS had been shocking the heart muscle all day and had switched its program very subtly from simple caretaking to a more aggressive series of functions. By reading the program, Bickel knew the LS had taken over kidney functions and some of the liver functions as well. The massive doses of antibiotics indicated blood poisoning and spots of gangrene bacteria which the scanners destroyed every minute. The LS was making a serious dent in the hospital’s drug supply and after going over the data, Bickel realized the machine operation was becoming so costly that a staff meeting would have to decide whether or not to shut it off.