The Orchid

by Robert Waggoner

My mom and dad rushed into the room and hurried to my side. “Jimmy,” mom said giving me a kiss, “the doctor says you’ll be okay.”

  “It was a blood clot,” my dad said. “The doctor says you need to exercise your legs more often.”

  “When can I go home?”

  They all shrugged.

  A doctor with the traditional white frock and stethoscope came into the room. “So, you decided to wake up.” He looked at my chart before stepping over to the bed. He put the stethoscope on my chest, took my pulse and did the same two tests that the nurse had done earlier. “Mr. Turner, you are one of the lucky ones. A clot deep inside your leg could have done a lot of damage.” He looked over at Lindsey. “Is this your sister?”

  “No sir.” I said. “She’s my neighbor.”

  He looked at me and then at her. A pregnant silence hung in the room.

  “Well, whatever the fortunate circumstance,” the doctor said looking at the chart, “if the medic hadn’t recognized the symptoms and administered tenecteplase instantly, you wouldn’t be functioning at all.” He watched me while that fact circulated around in my head. When it looked like I got the message he said, “You’ve been neglecting exercising your legs. We’ve got to change that or we may see you back in here again.”

  He went on to explain in some detail that I was at far greater risk of blood clots because I was exercising my upper body but not my lower body. The blot clot came from my legs and stopped my heart just long enough for me to pass out. So many “lucky” things happened including the proximity of the ambulance that I could consider this a miracle. But I’d better not fail to heed the warning. This clot was unusual in that it actually broke up and my heart started itself. In effect, I had had a heart attack with no permanent damage.

  “How likely is this to happen again?” I asked.

  “Oh, ten to twenty percent,” he replied. “Less, if you exercise your legs like you are supposed to.” He looked at my parents. “Is he on a regular routine of therapy?”

  My parents were pale with worry. “No, we don’t have a schedule,” my dad said after confirming it with a glance at my mother.

  The doctor made a note. “I will set you up with that.” He looked at me. “I’m going to put you on an exercise regimen. I want to keep you one more night to make sure that the drugs we have used to get rid of the remaining clots do not cause any side effects. If things look good in the morning, we’ll let you go home.” He hung my chart up and walked out. In a moment, he returned. “I’m going to have the lab test you for factor V Leiden or a prothrombin mutation. I don’t think we’ll find it but I’ll know in the morning.” I learned later that he was talking about deep vein blood clots.

  A short while later, a nurse came in and took blood from my arm. While she was working, my parents, Lindsey and her parents walked out into the hallway to talk. I could hear Lindsey making an argument for something by the tone of her voice but I could not hear the words. Soon they returned and the Andersons said goodbye. Lindsey brushed my cheek with her lips and left with her parents but promised to come back.

  “I didn’t know about exercise,” my mom said. She pulled a chair near the bed and took my hand. “I would have done something, if I knew.”

  “I know, mom.” I squeezed her hand.

  “The doctor never told us, or if he did, we were in shock. I wonder why it hasn’t come up in our visits to the doctor over the last few years.” My mom was searching desperately for a way to ease a fresh rush of guilt.

  “Mom, I don’t think that doctor took much of an interest in me after the surgery.” I remembered the short visits. It seemed like he was always in a hurry when he was in the room with you but had all the time in the world when you were sitting in an empty waiting room.

  She was silent. My dad said he was going outside for a smoke.

  “Mom, it’s not your fault. I do not want you to feel that way. Please.”

  Tears came to my mom’s eyes and she blinked to clear her vision. “You’ve grown up a lot, Jimmy.”

  A deep uneasiness was settling inside me, though. I wondered if she would understand if I told her. I did not want her to worry or feel guilty. I decided not to talk about my feelings with her for those reasons. I could feel myself getting angry but not at mom or dad or the doctor. I was getting angry at…God? My body? Fate? I did not know who to be angry at, or with. Why would an invisible enemy that could kill me or cause brain damage in an instant suddenly threaten my life!

  My mom could feel my mood changing. “Jimmy, what are you thinking?”

  “Nothing, mom; I’m just tired.”

  “I’ll let you rest then.” She kissed me and left the room. I almost asked her to stay. Panic clutched at my throat. I did not feel the clot the first time and I would not feel it the next time. One minute from now, I could be dead! I did not call her back, despite the desperation that welled up inside of me. I did not want to close my eyes. I could see the clot forming in my imagination. The silent killer with the power to rob me of what little happiness I possessed made its way up my leg, past my ribs and into my heart where it struck with savage fury. Bitter tears squeezed out and ran down my cheeks.

  Two plus years ago, I would have welcomed this silent death. Now I wanted to live! Life had meaning and purpose. I barely recognized the angry, frustrated Jimmy of long ago who sat at the top of the steps thinking about the best way to die. I wanted to live! “Please God! I’m different now,” I said earnestly. “I’m not that guy at the top of the steps anymore!”

  Mom and dad returned. As the afternoon wore on, they tried to carry on a conversation with me but all I could think about was that blood clot working its way up to my heart or brain. I answered in monosyllables. I wanted them to be there but I was feeling intensely sorry for myself. I was imagining myself dead or lying forever in a vegetable ward in the state hospital and mom and dad visiting once a month, hoping I would get better but knowing I wouldn’t. When they left to go home at 6:00 p.m. mom asked me if I wanted her to stay.

  “No, its okay, mom; I’ll be fine,” I lied. I kissed them both. I imagined I was kissing them for the last time.

  “Lindsey is going to come by later,” my mom said. She hoped that I would feel better but that only made me feel worse. I tried to cover it up.

  “Okay.”

  My mom started to say more but decided against it. She and dad left.

  I watched the clock tick one second after another until the second-hand completed a full circle. At which one of those dots on the clock would a new clot break free and do its terrible work? When would it sap me of my ability to think, eat, breath, or love?

  My gaze constantly moved to the clock on the wall. I hated the clock. It represented that which we all have in common—except some of us have less of it than others. Why did it happen now, just as I was finding a small bit of happiness again? I gritted my teeth so hard I felt my jaw ache. Stop teasing me with this roller-coaster life! Just get it over with! Finish it!

  Why is it, that life’s playing field is so unevenly portioned out to the players? Why do some of those on the playing field walk from one end to the other without ever seeing a single obstacle, while others, like me, trip over them with every step!

  Even more unfair and unkind was that it was not just my life that was being played with so cruelly. It was my mom’s and dad’s lives too. I had just had the best experience with my dad since the accident. I just made things right with my mom a short time ago and now it was starting all over again. I was cursed to live a life of tragedy.

  The clock ticked and ticked and ticked. I wanted to get up and pull the battery out of its body. I wanted the clock to die so I could live! I closed my eyes to get the image out of my head. Nurses woke me up one after the other. Some came to push on my legs, some to check my pulse and temperature, and all of them to remind me that they existed because of the obstacles that abounded on the playing field.

  What did life hold for me except uncertainty? I should have said “
no” to Lindsey that day. “No, I don’t want you to come back!” It would have been kinder than to let her fall in love…my heart clutched in my chest. She was in love with me! Oh, dear God! We were friends but it had become more than that! I had to say “no” to her now, before it was too late. Before the strings became ropes between our hearts. I would be the hermit that fate intended me to be. I would stop resisting it. My mom and dad were involved, we could not change that—it was their fate. They were destined to it. School—that was a joke! Friends were around as long as you could give them something that they needed. I could give them nothing.

  Jimmy Turner would be a vague memory of tragedy to them, “Remember that boy…what was his name? You know, the kid whose mom hit the tree?”

  We are just ticks away from being insignificant to a whole lot of people. My new so-called friends would forget me as easily as my jock friends had forgotten me. The best thing I could do would be to ride the elevator to my bedroom and find my happiness in puzzles and books.

  I would be Charlie in Flowers for Algernon. It would be my fate to have tasted a better life and to watch it slip from between my fingers twice! The only hope that thought offered me was that Charlie was happier with an IQ of seventy than he was as a genius. I knew why too. He no longer worried about other people as if he were responsible for their well-being and happiness. All of those worries melted away with his diminishing IQ and he was able to enjoy the fleeting time he had left.

  Perhaps the clot would cause a stroke. Then I would not be the one suffering. That selfish thought tugged at my mind like a little boy trying to get his dad’s attention. It was a terribly selfish thought.

  Which brought me back to the original thought; it would be far better for me to say “goodbye” to Lindsey now, than to wait for the rope to thicken until the clot that took me tore her life apart too.

  My heart felt like a lump, a rock, a piece of shriveled up gore that had no more purpose or use in the world than the dead dog rotting on the side of the highway. Nobody cared except the occasional tenderhearted girl who looked out the car window and exclaimed, “Oooh.”

  “Oooh,” I muttered aloud. “That’s what they’ll say about Jimmy Turner: Died of a blood clot because life was out to get revenge.” Revenge for what? My fingers curled into angry fists. How long could I go up and down on this roller coaster? How could life be so great and then so horrible?

  The clock kept ticking.

  The sun was losing its battle to stay in the sky. Its rays filtered through the Venetian blinds and cast horizontal shadows across the room. I saw it as a picture of my life. I felt vulnerable and afraid for the first time in a long time. I hated that an unseen enemy could be inside me, threatening to break loose any moment to rob me of what little I had left. It just made me angry at…everything.

  I needed distraction. I pressed the remote that turned on the television but nothing interested me. I tried to think but I could not. I tried to read but nothing made sense. I closed my eyes to shut out the relentless ticking of the clock.

  When I woke up Lindsey was watching me with a half-smile on her face. The clock was ticking over her left shoulder, reminding me that the smile on her face was temporary just like my life.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  She glanced at the clock. “It’s 10:00 p.m.”

  “How come they let you stay? I thought visitors had to be sixteen or older?”

  “You’re feeling better,” she said tongue-in-cheek. It was classic Lindsey. Meet fire with humor.

  It did not work. I did not want it to work. Lindsey was the one person who would say “Oooh! We have to stop and help the dog.” She would be the real victim of this tragedy. I did not want that. She needed to stop wasting her great talent and love on a hopeless cause. Walk away, please! I could not say that aloud. I rolled my eyes.

  She scooted her chair closer and put her head on my pillow. “I’m glad you’re awake,” she said. She was happy to be with me. I bit my lip.

  “Jimmy?” Lindsey touched my face.

  “I don’t want you here,” I said flatly. Tears squeezed out of my eyes.

  The look on her face was shock that registered in stages. It had been a long time since she heard words like that from my mouth. I watched it register but suppressed the guilt it evoked in me. She was wasting her life on me and it took this demon inside to remind me how vulnerable I really was. If I loved her, I would push her away before it was too late. And I had to do it.

  “Why not, Jimmy?” The hurt in her voice pricked my heart. The fact that she lost her humor and there was a touch of fear in her voice hurt more. “I had to beg and plead with my dad and mom to let me stay with you tonight.” I was not used to hearing her beg. My heart beat wickedly inside my chest. I nearly relented.

  I turned my face toward her fresh, young, beautiful face and said, “I won’t have you wasting your life and your pity on me!” I tried to mean it.

  “I’m not going away!” She put an arm over my chest. Her eyes flashed, making the green flecks appear phosphorescent. “And if you are having a pity party, it can stop right now!” She burst into tears. “I sat here all night last night waiting for you to wake up! I’m scared to death, Jimmy. Don’t you dare tell me you don’t want me here! Don’t you dare tell me anything but that you’re going to do everything the doctor says…” She broke down, unable to express the hopes and fears pent up inside her. She was crying into the pillow on my bed.

  A nurse looked into the room and started to come in and say something—probably to boot Lindsey out—but someone said something to her in the hallway and she just turned and walked away.

  I waited until she stopped crying. “I don’t want to give you half a life,” I said earnestly. “I tried to tell you a dozen times but you won’t ever listen. I don’t have anything for you!”

  Lindsey wiped tears with a Kleenex, then got up, and brought the box over to the bed. The nurse had lowered the bed after I fell asleep earlier, so I was horizontal. A triangle dangled above my head, so I could lift myself and adjust position. A catheter dangled by the side of the bed.

  “I don’t want anything from you!” She said blowing her nose loudly.

  “Then why can’t you leave me alone?” I heard it the same way she did but I meant it to sound like a question. It did not sound at all like a question.

  The pain on her face was worse than death. I had wounded her severely. “Do you really want me to leave you alone? Are you telling me that you really don’t want me around anymore?” She used those words once before, when she was eleven years old and I had tormented her and told her to go the park instead of coming over to be with a crippled boy. If I would have said go away, what would have happened?

  I did not answer because I simply could not continue to hurt her. I was no longer certain that I was right. The hurt on her face told me I was wrong, dead wrong! But it would hurt worse if I did not end it now. Why is it that you can never end a relationship gently? Why does someone have to get hurt? Why do both people have to get hurt? What kind of a world is this when you have to hurt someone to protect them from hurt?

  “Do you Jimmy?” She repeated her anguished question.

  “Yes.” I could not look at her face. My heart told me I was wrong, as wrong as anyone had ever been in the world. Nobody was this wrong! The word came out of my mouth as if my tongue was not attached to my heart. It just came out. Yes. The most wicked word in the human language. Yes! I want to hurt you. Yes! I want to get rid of you. Yes! I want to dash all your sacrifice, pain, hopes, and fears!

  My heart could not believe my tongue had spoken the wrong word. It wanted my tongue to say NO! A thousand times no. Don’t go, don’t leave. You are the only friend I have in the world. You told me you loved me and now I am saying the most horrible cruel thing I could. Yes, I want you to go. How could I say that?

  She stood up, wiped salty tears from her eyes, and then gathered up her things. She gave me one long look and then stepped over to
the bed and kissed me on the forehead. When she straightened up, she had to dab her eyes again. Then she walked across the room toward the door.

  Everything inside leaped up and shouted at me to call her back. Every step she took with her back to me was as if someone was hammering nails into my chest. It felt like a weight had been dropped on me and I could not breathe. I wanted to beg her to forgive my stupid words.

  She stopped at the door and turned. She clutched her possessions in front of her chest and she looked fourteen years old. Her face was pale with tear streaks. Her hair twisted and clumped together from lying on a tear-wet pillow. In slow motion, she lifted her hand, wiped her eyes, and was gone. I heard her steps echo into oblivion in the empty hospital corridor.

  Chapter 8

  “Jimmy, you fool!” I condemned myself. Bitter, self-pity brought more tears to my eyes. My life was over. I turned my face into the pillow and ground my teeth. I did not care if I shattered them. I would welcome the pain. It would be continuing proof that I was on the wrong side of the obstacle course. My teeth did not break. I bit the pillow as hard as I could bite it. I ground my teeth against the lumps of poly fiber in the pillow. I tasted the dry cotton of the starched pillowcase and hurt as I’d never hurt during the worst moments of my life to this point.

  It was for the best. I did not deserve someone like Lindsey anyway. She ought to have a man who could keep up with her intellect and energy and force. She was destined to great things that my wheelchair and blood clots would keep her from achieving…I tried to find comfort in my rationalizations. By now, she was in the lobby downstairs with tears streaming down her cheeks, calling her mom and dad to come get her. I would never see her again except through my binoculars when she walked out of her house on the arms of another man…She would glance across the yard knowing I would be watching from my window, and she would smile sweetly at her boyfriend to show me that I should not worry about her. It was better this way. She would recover.

  How I slept, I do not know. When I opened my eyes sometime later, Lindsey was stroking my hair. Her face was tear-stained and her hair disheveled. Her eyes were red but she was smiling.