“You know what to do,” Jesus said. “Go on now.”
“Ask now what you do for yourself,” JFK said.
“Free yourself,” Martin said, “from the chains of your own slavery.”
When I put the med list back up, I took a hundred off my roll and stuck it under the magnet and tacked it up there on the refrigerator.
“Cross yourself now,” Jesus said.
And I did. I crossed myself as I had not done since I was last in church as a small boy when my mother and father still lived together and my mother believed in the church. I crossed myself.
“Go forth,” JFK said.
“It’s a long climb,” Martin said, “but you can reach that top. We believe in you, son.”
“What the fuck are you doing with that crossing yourself business?” Tom asked.
“Such language.”
“You are getting weirder by the day.”
“Life is full of surprises,” I said.
“Amen,” the three voices said.
I left another hundred on the bedside table of an elderly diabetic on Enfield Street. At their behest, I slipped twenty dollars to a homeless man who’d had a seizure, but refused transport to the hospital. All he needed, he said, was a drink to get himself under control. Jesus made me give him another twenty.
I’m not saying I was a saint, but when they say better to give than to receive, I saw some of their point. I felt a glow, an aura around me, accompanied by a grooving soul soundtrack
I strutted down the street, and I felt like a new man with Jesus, Martin and JFK stepping along behind me like the Pips, dancing in time. I learned not to fight or question my strange visions.
I felt that each time I gave, I grew as a person. A little of the weak me left and, slowly, a stronger foundation was built. I walked a little taller. I told no one about the gifts, never let Tom see my generosity. I probably shouldn’t say generosity because, after all, the money was stolen in the first place. Still, finders keepers, possession is 99% of the law. The money was mine now, and I didn’t have to give it, but I did.
I gave a hundred to a mother with an asthmatic child, a fifty to an elderly woman in a nursing home. They were taking donations at work for a fellow EMT whose husband was dying of cancer. I put two hundred in a blank envelope and dropped it in the contribution box. “Hallelujah!” Martin exclaimed from the pulpit. I never told anyone. We transported a baby who needed a heart transplant to Boston, along with his young parents, and while the three apparitions had stayed back in Hartford, I still put a hundred in the mother’s Bible when she set it down to sign the transport form for Tom. I imagined JFK and Jesus watching me on TV in a bar and high-fiving each other.
One day we did a call on Martin Street where some volunteers called Habitat for Humanity were building a house. One of the volunteers—a pretty twenty-six year old—smashed her thumb using a hammer. We took her to Saint Francis. All the way there I asked her about the project and she said it was a volunteer thing. It was about helping people afford their own homes. She told me how I could volunteer. When I asked her for her number as I filled out my run form, she looked at me a little funny like I was asking her out. “It’s just for the billing department,” I said. “You don’t have to give it to me.” She smiled and gave it to me. JFK told me I should call her later to see how she made out at the hospital, but Jesus rebuked JFK and said that wasn’t their mission for me. I considered it anyway, but decided it was too forward.
“She was a fox, huh?” Tom said. “I was feeling sorry for you. That was the only reason I let you tech it.”
“I appreciate it,” I said.
“You going to call her? Because if you don’t, I will.”
“I don’t think so.”
“All right, don’t say I didn’t give you a shot.”
I didn’t call her, but I did take a day off and went down to Martin Street to volunteer to hammer nails for a day. I was hoping she’d be there and we could strike up a conversation again, and then I could ask her out in a better way, but she wasn’t there. I ended up spending most of the time talking to an old retired guy who told me about his sick daughter. I ended up putting two twenties in his jacket pocket.
Later that week, we were given a transfer—a patient with a festering bedsore that needed debriding. I couldn’t believe it when I entered the room and looked at the patient and then looked at the W10 the nurse had handed me. Joe Thompson—my stinking neighbor—the man who poisoned my dog. He looked up at me, though he could not move his skull. I felt his heart rate go up. He had a feeding tube in his stomach and a Foley catheter in his penis, and he stunk of infection. And he was looking up at me and he knew who I was. I had him where he didn’t want to be.
I thought for a minute that this was my dream come true. I could empty his Foley catheter and slowly drip urine into his open mouth. Or I could put a cockroach in his ear, and then block it in with cotton, and sit there and watch as the cockroach walked through his head and peered out through his eyes. I loved my dog, and I knew if he was looking down from doggie heaven he would be woofing with delight, urging me to take my vengeance, but I couldn’t do it. This wasn’t the same man who had stuffed poison inside hamburger meat and lobbed it over the fence. He wasn’t the same man who insisted I pay him back for his burned-down garage even though he had no proof that I had done it. I can still feel his spit on my face as he threatened to take my mom’s house away from her and get his cop buddies to see I did time and that I got fucked up while I did it.
But he wasn’t even a man anymore. He was just a poor scared soul trapped in his own dying carcass. I was gentle with him when we moved him over to our stretcher. I pulled the blanket up to his neck and wrapped a towel over his head against the afternoon rain. I talked to him, telling him what I was doing when I took his blood pressure or felt his pulse. I made no mention of the past. I was alive and he was dying. I had no need for revenge. Washing hands after the call, I looked in the mirror and there was Jesus offering me a fist bump.
That Sunday I went to church for the first time in nearly fifteen years. I put another fifty in the collection plate. And when we all stood and sang, I sang along as best I could. If my notes were off, Martin, Jesus and JFK covered for me with their sweet harmonies. And that was the last I saw of them.
Chapter 40
They gave us a call. “227 Duke, violent psych, possibly armed.”
“That’s Fred’s house,” I said.
“If that’s Fred and he’s armed, I’m not getting near it. That boy’s sick and he’s not taking me with him,” Tom said.
“He’s just upset about his brother and he’s probably drunk. It’s just around the corner. I’ll go in and talk to him.”
“I’m staying in the ambulance and we’re staying around the corner until the cops say it’s clear.”
“Fine.”
“Hey, where are you going?” Tom shouted as I went out the door. “You’re as crazy as he is.”
I knew Fred and I knew the cops, and that was a bad combination. The cops laughed at Fred because he was a cop wannabe, but they knew he never would be one. I ran through the backyard and out onto Fred’s street. I could hear the sirens in the distance. I looked to my left and saw Tom. Instead of staying where we’d been, he had come around the corner and was waving at me to get back in the ambulance. I saw Fred’s car in the drive and the light on up in his room, so I went right up the stairs. Fred had been terribly moody and angry since he came back from Germany.
The door was open. Fred had a revolver in his mouth. He sat at the kitchen table.
“Don’t!” I said.
He looked up at me with eyes I had not seen before. They were wild and scared.
“Give me the gun. Give it to me now. The cops are coming. Man, what are you doing?”
He took the gun out of his mouth and very slowly pointed it at me. “How about I blow your face up?” he said. “How many people’s faces should I mess up before we can get a law passed a
llowing people who want to die to die? How about I just start messing up everyone’s faces. Pow! Pow! Pow! Maybe then we get a movement.”
I held my hands up. “Fred, come on.”
Behind him I could see the History Channel was on TV, Allied planes dropping bombs on Germany.
“Fred, your brother wouldn’t want this. I know you’re upset, but we can get someone to talk to you.”
“I don’t want to talk to anyone.”
I glanced to the window and saw the lights of the police cruisers. The shades were open. I went right to the window and pulled them down. I didn’t think Fred would shoot me, but if the cops saw him holding a gun on me, he’d catch a sniper shot between the eyes. That was for sure.
“You shouldn’t be moving around when I’ve got a gun pointed at you.”
“You shouldn’t be pointing a gun at me. Now give it, give it here.” I walked right towards him. His hands were shaking. “Give it up. There’s a better way to handle this.”
Suddenly he pointed the gun at his temple. I kept walking right at him. Fred wasn’t the smartest guy and I didn’t think he’d have time to think out what to do. Besides, if he really wanted to kill himself, he would have done it.
I reached him. I reached up for the gun. He let me take it. I put it in the side leg pocket of my work pants. I put my arm around him, and he laid his head on my shoulder and cried. “It’s all right,” I said. “It’s all right.”
“It’s not fucking fair,” he cried. “It’s not fair.”
“It’s all right. It’s all right.”
“He and I should be out drinking beer…”
“Look, we’ve got to take you in. I can’t leave you here, but we’re going to get someone to talk to you.”
“I don’t want anyone to see me.”
“Look, here.” I took off my EMT jacket and had him put it on. “You still have to come in, but just follow me.”
We walked out together. They had cops behind cars with rifles pointed at us. We held our hands up, and the cops frisked Fred. “There was no gun there,” I said. “He doesn’t want to hurt himself or anyone else.” I told them he had admitted he was distraught over his brother’s death, and was coming voluntarily. I knew I was treading on thin ice, but I didn’t want Fred to be branded as a freak. I knew he was just upset by grief, and maybe the antidepressants he was on were fucking with him. He liked women and beer too much to want to off himself. I wanted to protect his reputation as much as I could.
I rode with him on the way in. At the hospital, he and Tom stood at the triage desk just like two EMTs. You’d never know he was a patient. I told the triage nurse he was distraught and had threatened suicide, but was willing to talk to someone. She nodded, and instead of putting him in the psych unit, got him a private ER room. A couple hours later, we took him over to the Institute of Living.
“What’s in your leg pocket?” Tom asked when we came out of the institute.
“Nothing,” I said.
“It doesn’t look like nothing.”
“Drive over to East Hartford,” I said.
“What?”
“Don’t clear, just do it.”
He followed my directions. I had him stop on the bridge over the Connecticut River. I got out and went over to the side. I waited until no cars were approaching, then took the gun out and dropped it down into the river below.
Tom looked at me when I got back in.
“I may underestimate you,” he said.
Chapter 41
Carrie called me. It was late at night. I hadn’t heard from her in over two months. I wasn’t usually home until after midnight, but since I had spent the day volunteering at the homeless shelter, I had gone home at ten, and was about ready to turn the light out.
“You’re home?” she said.
“Ye-ah, this is where I live.”
“What are you doing tonight?”
“Going to bed. Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I was just calling to see what you were up to. We haven’t talked for a while.”
I could tell from her voice she’d had a couple glasses of wine, not drunk, but not sober either; not that she ever was at this time of night. It occurred to me that maybe she was calling me because her plans had fallen through, and it was getting late and she didn’t want to be alone.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah, sure, dandy,” she said, sounding a little annoyed, like she wanted to say, “All right? I’m calling you at ten at night, drunk, because I’m lonely and not happy.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You want to come over?” Her voice cracked a little, and that crack went like an arrow right into my lonely heart. She wanted me.
I reflected on this. She had hurt me and I held it against her. But we are all flawed so who was I to judge? I wondered if I could show her and my own tortured self some mercy.
“Okay,” I said. “I can come over and talk.”
At the door, she gave me a big hug, and then led me in by the hand. She got me a beer and sat me down beside her on the couch, and said, “I’m so glad you could come over. I’ve missed you.”
When I said nothing, she said, “I’ve really, really missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too,” I said, as noncommittally as I could.
We had a few beers and watched some TV. I was beginning to wonder what I was doing there. I was almost ready to get up to leave when she started sobbing. She leaned her head on my shoulder and sobbed uncontrollably. I held her, held her while she cried. I patted her back. It felt very awkward to see her like this, all her guard down.
“It’s just, this dating is hard, so hard,” she said. “There are a lot of jerks in this world. I don’t know why they are all attracted to me. I want a decent guy, and I want to be married and have a family. I want someone to commit to me.”
“Give it time and maybe someone will.”
“There are a lot of things I would do over if I could.”
She looked so sincere, so anguished, that I really did believe her. When I excused myself to take a pee, after I washed my hands, I looked up in the mirror and saw only myself.
***
That night I did not leave. As I lay next to her, unable to sleep, I admit I felt like the two of us, imperfect as we were, were somehow linked together. Two outcasts, less alone as one.
Chapter 42
“I don’t believe you,” Tom said the next morning. “I just do not believe you.”
“What?”
“Your neck is covered with hickeys again.”
“So what if it is?”
“You are a glutton for punishment.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I’m going to take you to ADRC. Put you through rehab. See if we can’t get you dried out altogether. You looked like you had gone straight, but I could see it, I could see the little shakes and twitches behind your altar-boy persona of these last weeks. You’re a junkie, a junkie for that chick’s evil hoodoo.”
I just tried to ignore him. Though the truth was I knew that I needed some kind of answer, some kind of solution to the Carrie situation. I spent my life living day to day and I knew I needed a longer-term outlook. I had to make a break one way or the other. I needed a sign.
“463, 220 Capen Street for the unknown,” came over the radio. “Possible welfare check.”
“220 Capen,” Tom said. “Your lady friend. We haven’t heard from her for a while. Were you on the outs with her too? This is turning into reunion week for you.”
As we pulled up, we could see the pile of newspapers at the door, five days’ worth. The mailman, who met us out front, said he had called. “She hasn’t picked up her mail this week. I almost called yesterday. It’s not like she hasn’t let a few days slide in the past, but I’ve never seen her go this long. Usually the visiting nurse brings it in. I don’t know why she hasn’t. Maybe she went out of town. It’s just unusual.”
Tom and I looked at each other. “You first,
” he said. “If she’s home, one way or another, it’s going to be stinky.”
We went in through the back door. The house always had a musty aged smell to it. Miss Broadbent and her health aides didn’t always clean up after her dog. The air today was heavier with a hint of a familiar rotting smell. The closer we got to the stairs, the more pronounced it became. “I better get the monitor,” Tom said.
If that was her, he was right, all that we would need was a six-second strip and to write down the time.
I started up the stairs. Smells didn’t affect me like they did Tom. He was a great paramedic and fearless, but he had a weak stomach when it came to dead bodies. He carried around Vick’s in his bag that he sometimes put under his lip to ward off the smell. I just tried not to breathe through my nose. Upstairs, even I had a hard time with it. I looked in the bedroom. She wasn’t in the bed. The bathroom door was open. I glanced in. There she was.
She looked like she’d fallen off the throne some time before. She was leaned up against the radiator, which was slowly baking the flesh off her. It looked like the dog had eaten some of her leg. It was dark, raw and ripped open. She had to have been dead five days. Her body was swollen with gas, and if I hadn’t known she was white, I would have thought she was black.
“You find her?” Tom called from downstairs. Then I heard him gag. I heard him heave, and then swear.
“Yeah, I found her,” I said.
“Do I need to come up?”
“No. You don’t even need to a run a strip. She’s long gone.”
“Fuck, I’m going outside.” And I heard him retch again.
I stood there looking at her, thinking how sad it was what our lives come to, what her life and all the dreams she’d once had had come to—this—rotting alone in a bathroom, being nibbled on by your own dog, no family or friends to look after you. I wondered why the visiting nurse or home health aide hadn’t found her sooner. Maybe they’d thought she was out of town when they knocked and no one came to the door. It was a shame.
Diamond in the Rough Page 15