Little Reef and Other Stories

by Michael Carroll

  Scott was distracted by the kid’s youth, while thinking of himself at the age of forty-six.

  “But I was just thinking about you and your family, your beautiful family, with your wife and beautiful children, and I was like, that’s a beautiful thing when we were out at your party on your property, it was nice. It was nice, man. And she turns to me, Sheila, and says ‘So wassup?’ I was just like so resentful, like what’s her right? What right’s she got? So I was like, ‘I’m young, I’m single, I’m hitting the shorties, and that’s what’s up …’” There was a headachy pause.

  Scott looked at Perry and reached down to smooth the top of his arm. They were both so bored, waiting. Healing was waiting. Dr. Popinjay, the invasive cardiologist, pulled the edge of the curtain and sang, “Hello! Hello there! May I come in?” and Perry writhed on the bed.

  The doctor didn’t wait for an invitation but stepped around the curtain, leering brightly.

  “How are you feeling? I’m not disturbing the professor? What happened to your hair?”

  Scott said, “Well, he’s been in the hospital for three nights and he hasn’t shampooed.”

  “Right. I’ve been going over your MRI and CT scans. When you’ve had a first, then the second is almost inevitable. You must get used to this idea of another occurring. It was inevitable, and so you must not think darkly of me. We did what we could. We were right to go in, and so it was a good thing, however unfortunate. It was a procedure they ordered—I cannot be liable!”

  Pretty soon he’d retreated.

  Just before Perry was taken down to the ambulette to be transferred to the rehab facility, the neurology fellow had come in to see him. He looked like a smart chevalier in his surgery-liveried tailored scrubs. He sat on the edge of the bed and took Perry’s hand, and Scott watched as the two of them smiled at each other. Dr. Ryan handed Perry a copy of one of Perry’s books.

  He said, “I was wondering if I could ask you for your signature one more time.”

  Mr. Park had a crisis in the middle of the night. The machine monitoring his vitals went crazy and the nurse followed by other members of the team came in to check on then discreetly remove him. An hour later Claudette, the sassy nurse, came in saying, “And how are you, Mr. Knight?”

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Mr. Park, he ain’t coming back, so. Blood pressure, everything, no way. He’s in ICU.”

  “Where I started,” said Perry, chuckling through a dry cough. “Where I started, see.”

  “You’re different now, you ain’t going back! You want a second sleeping pill, darling?”

  “Please.”

  “You’re a big boy, you’re my big boy. I know you can handle it. I’ll be right back.”

  He kept thinking of Mr. Park’s barking. Here was a man barely seventy, a tae kwon do master with his ninth belt since he was thirty, his daughter Olivia had said. He had run into bad luck when a spur growing from his spine into the spinal cord became dangerous and so he’d had a neck fusion, which caused a massive heart attack. Because he’d just had the fusion he couldn’t take the blood thinners necessary for heart surgery. While he was waiting to heal he had another heart attack, this one a massive coronary, and while they were preparing him for surgery, a stroke.

  Just like that, with Perry thinking he might slowly be on the mend, Mr. Park was gone.

  Some got the shittiest breaks, but the shittiest break was just around the corner for us all.

  Perry had gotten used to the daily rhythm. He pitied Mr. Park, and that felt therapeutic.

  Poor Mr. Park. He’d only been around a few days, Perry thought. The daughter Olivia would come in bowing at the edge of the bed saying, “Father?” She would stay the entire day.

  Time was sloshy. Mr. Park was gone now, but then he wasn’t. Perry had him, just here.

  Olivia was always there, taking care of her father. Her mother ran a bank and couldn’t be there around the clock, although tonight Olivia had left earlier than usual, because her marketing job, which had given her a three-week leave of absence, needed her back. Olivia’s brother, Perry thought, was useless. He would come sailing in around six or seven and tolerate the situation for an hour then yawn and apologize and leave. Once, though, he’d brought in several of Mr. Park’s tae kwon do students, forming a queue. One by one the young men, lithe most of them, stepped up to the foot of Mr. Park’s bed and bowed, eyes closed, as though praying, and Perry had wept.

  The next morning Olivia came in to get the rest of her father’s things. Perry drowsed but looked up just as she was leaving, head lowered, with the duffel bag. He said, “Is he all right?”

  “My father is strong. But he doesn’t want to live. He doesn’t see the point. Plus here, he was always cold. He complained about the air conditioning. It was too cold for him, too drafty.”

  “Tell him good luck,” said Perry. “I’ll be thinking of him. Good luck to all of you.”

  “He’ll like that. Bye-bye. Be strong. But hey, you look very good, really strong!”

  “Thank you, but maybe I’m just lucky,” Perry said and thought his voice was stronger.

  “Maybe. Great wishes.”

  But then when she was gone he worried about having said that. Did that mean he said he thought her father wasn’t so lucky? Which he wasn’t, just look at Mr. Park. The hours unwound here slowly. Perry was getting used to the new pace. He rather liked it, and with the room all to himself he thought with the second sleeping pill he might get some rest, not thinking about sex at all. He’d gone two or three days not preoccupied by going online to find a younger usually Latin partner in search of a daddy. He didn’t need to hear “Papí” during the throes of passion. Passion actually wasn’t so important now. His body had failed him, and in turn he may have failed it. He wasn’t being spiritual but practical. Without your body fully functioning how could you think of the sanctity of the orgasm? How many men, how many frittered afternoons? Not a concern now. For the first time in his life since infancy, he was rocked in an insurance-sponsored cradle of care and he was special. His life was dear and he hadn’t felt that in a while. Oh sure, his work; it was something. He liked what he wrote all right. At least it was honest. It was about sex largely, and most writers shied from the subject. He felt special, that he was blessed to have the Seventh-day Adventist nurses. He’d achieved something but was resting now: for full details go to Facebook.

  Scott wrote on his Facebook page to concerned friends and readers: “Perry has good days and bad days but gradually, thanks to this incredible facility, he seems to be getting better. You’ll understand if you don’t hear from us in a while. Thank you, everyone, for your well wishes.”

  Well wishes. The cornier the better. The oldest sentiments were the truest, Perry saw. He had spent half his life seeking the mot juste, but all lives boiled down to the same in the end.

  He could now put his laptop on his tray table and slide it toward him and read his emails.

  People came by, concerned. There was no shortage of late-afternoon visitors—but who’d come exactly? It was hard to recall. Next time Scott came, he’d ask. But he’d felt them, surely.

  Scott was equally moved by their expressions of love, their outpourings of sympathy: and Perry was probably going to die eventually, if not sooner, they thought. You could read it in their suddenly stricken facial expressions (meant to look inspiring, or else spiritually potent), or hear it in their tone of voice. “Just be sure to take care of yourself,” they inevitably told Scott, then they patted his shoulder with a wan, frightened, droopy smile. “Will you do that for me, take care?”

  Some friends came and visited, an older couple. The man was a neuroscientist with this pooty, lisping way of talking—like Sylvester the Cat’s. He said, “Studies show”—unhappily he used a lot of s’s in his speech—“that stroke patients recover more strongly and rapidly next to a window. A view of the outside world—that’s the important thing, these studies showed.”

  The wife said, �
�And also if they have a great, loving partner to be with them, like Scott.”

  The scientist shook his head with certitude: “No, just the window. That’s all it said.”

  Later Scott got an email from the wife saying, “I think you two should get married sooner rather than later. Perry looks great! His voice is so strong! Do be sure to take care of yourself.”

  Two days after Mr. Park had vacated the space, Perry asked if he could move over next to the window. It was nothing. They unplugged his call console and wheeled him and his monitors across the room. There was the Empire State, that big beacon of old to Metropolis, to Gotham.

  Every couple of days a neuropsychologist came in to discuss Perry’s mental state.

  “So tell me what you’re going through, Perry, what are your thoughts and feelings?”

  He liked the nurses to fuss over him addressing him informally as Perry. The shrink had a soft, friendly, “trustful” look, and he wore a clinical white coat even though he had no medical credentials. He was a shrink, and in his life of coming out trying to defeat midcentury Freudian ideas Perry had learned to despise trendy notions of mental health. Plus this shrink was touchy-feely, and Perry thought probably a big Buddhist, another road Perry had traveled without much success. He’d authored a text called Many Ways, One Direction. He sat at the end of the bed in a “casual,” “observing” position. To be called Perry by this man was condescending, since Perry had written with difficulty twenty-five books, each of which had to be miles beyond Many Ways, One Direction. Perry thought the shrink was smirking “wisely” as he discussed his fear of losing touch with his old, adventurous sexual side. And maybe for the shrink, everything he heard from all of his broadly differing clients boiled down to the same delusional goo, jellified corpse-gunk.

  “What are your fears? Your hopes? What things do you find yourself hanging onto?”

  The shrink was referring to attachments, that Buddhist bugbear. Attachments only hung you up and left you clinging to the illusion of this life—a delusion so very few would let go of.

  Perry, exhausted but recovering, learning things or just not giving a damn, went with it. He said, “I’m afraid of dying and leaving Scott. I’m afraid he’ll survive me; he’ll find someone else to be happy with and forget about me. I’m not, actually. I really want Scott to be happy.”

  The shrink fretted warmly, opening his mouth and preparing to ask a tender question.

  “And what do you think Scott thinks? Have you discussed these fears with Scott?”

  “He cares about me. He’s human, he’ll move on if he has to. Oh, why not just ask him?”

  “Because you’re afraid, unsure, to ask him yourself?”

  “Because I’m tired and trying to heal and I don’t want to think about it. To be honest.”

  The shrink inclined his head empathetically, blinking on. Oh, he desired to understand!

  “That’s perfectly valid. Let’s talk about the things you miss while you’re here, what else you’re afraid of losing.” The soft-faced, watery-haired man paused. “What are you tiredest of?”

  “Tiredest” sounded purely out of Salinger, something a Glass family member would say.

  “I get tired of typing or writing or reading,” said Perry, “and I’m afraid I’ll lose touch, but I kind of enjoy letting go at the same time. Lying here talking, I’m afraid of dying of boredom.”

  The shrink laughed gently, reminding Perry a little of the Dalai Lama—and before he left said that his book, Many Ways, One Direction, was also available as a series of video lectures, in case Perry would like him to order the set of DVDs for him, then charge it to Perry’s insurance.

  They joked that for that entire halcyon week, with no midnight interruptions of violent phlegm-barking from Mr. Park, it was rather like a country club here except for the food. Scott thought it smelled awful but was grateful to Perry for not complaining about it, which anyway he didn’t eat much of. He seemed to be losing weight, the old goal. Looking up Second Avenue, Perry had a view of the shimmering Chrysler Building, all lit up and bejeweled at night. Perry’s shrink from the post-Stonewall days chewed sunflower seeds and said with Borscht Belt timing that this part of Manhattan was informally called Bed Pan Alley for all its hospitals and medical facilities. He had pointy incisors to crack the seeds and said languidly, “So what’s up, toots? Tell me …”

  They had Perry on Prozac and Provigil, a mood elevator. A week ago Perry had teared up and said to Scott, after arriving from his morning PT, “I walked thirteen steps on a walker today,” then bit the heel of his hand and got hot in the face and felt all embarrassed, which would not do.

  Now, with the Provigil, he said that he felt—at most moments—as high as a penthouse.

  Then one day around noon Scott entered amid a crowd of bustling hospital workers. He’d been up late the night before drinking white wine, feeling the situation had turned a positive corner.

  Now in Perry’s old end of the room, a new man was being craned into bed by a Hoyer Lift. Scott entered just as the man was hanging, his legs drooping like raw drumsticks, in a cloth sling before, at the push of a button, he was articulated over to the bed then lowered into place looking clueless and exhausted. The sling was unhooked from the Hoyer Lift, then he was rolled onto his side and the sling was pulled out from under him—and he was rolled the other way and the sling was removed. One of the attendants worked the buttons on the side of the bed to get him upright, but the patient’s glassy expression never changed. His limbs were repositioned like a cadaver’s.

  “How’s that? Better?” said the nurse, observing and doing her part. “Better, Andy?”

  Andy made a nasal grunt then mumbled the sentence the grunt had pushed into being, but it was hard to know what he was saying. He was tall with wide shoulders and with the flesh hanging slack on his cheek he looked as though until recently he’d been rather hefty. He was wearing a crash helmet and in the horseshoe-shaped opening for his face the expression was glazed like a Halloween cookie’s. His mouth curved up in one corner, all four of his limbs shaking. His long, pinnate feet pushed into their no-skid hospital socks waggled like nervous windshield wipers and his hands were bound in plush padded white mittens so he couldn’t tear the trach from his throat.

  “What?” said the built-out male attendant, who leaned down to hear. “Whassat?”

  “What, Andy?” said the nurse, and she leaned down as his sandy throat sifted sounds.

  “Can’t do, that, buddy,” said the attendant with his gorilla-jock build. “Can’t take it out.”

  “Andy, you need that in,” the nurse explained. “Remember how you couldn’t breathe?”

  The second attendant stood in the doorframe, and Scott took his seat across from Perry.

  Scott made a pitying face. Perry scrambled his eyes, not even making an effort to sound discreet when he said, his voice stronger than yesterday, “He’s a pain in the ass—big baby.”

  To Scott’s right, the quivering Andy with jerking limbs still looked surprised to be here.

  Scott frowned at Perry but noticed that at least Perry was in bitchier, more fighting form.

  “He’s a tennis pro. I don’t think I know what that means? Hit a tree and had a stroke.”

  Then Perry was sitting higher up in bed, alternately brightly grinning and then not: “Hi!”

  A little more himself: around the apartment Perry would say “Hi!” several times a day.

  “As opposed to a professional tennis player,” said Scott, remembering being a teenager in Florida hoping against hope—he was too old already at thirteen to be seeded—to become Jimmy Connors or Björn Borg. “A tennis pro is basically somebody at a club who corrects your stroke.”

  Perry’s eyes lit up and he said, “Today I did deep squats and went up and down stairs!”

  “That’s marvelous, sweetheart,” said Scott, nearly choking the words, eyes wet and hot.

  “Isn’t that great?” said Perry, and he couldn’t quit fuck
ing with his bed’s back elevation.

  “You’ll be back to normal in no time,” said Scott, smiling beatifically. “It is great.”

  On the other side of the room the attendants were clearing out, removing the Hoyer Lift, backing out, and nodding. The nurse—one Scott had never seen before, at least he didn’t think he had—said, “Now let me just get your helmet off, Mr. Andy. Somebody’s here to see you.”

  Scott told Perry, “Lots of people have called the home phone concerned, like Francine.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Apparently she hadn’t heard. She wanted to confirm for dinner on Thursday, so I called her back and thank God she wasn’t there. I left a quick exhaustive summary explaining. We had about seven bills I wrote checks for and forged your signature on. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

  The food people came and Scott got up and wrestled with the tray stand with its extension that was supposed to pop out at the mashing of a lever, but it always got stuck. Scott couldn’t fit everything on the stand without releasing and rolling out the extension. Books, Perry’s Mac, his boom box, earphones, plastic cups, the water pitcher—all kinds of cluttery shit, just like at home.

  Andy called out from his side of the room: “Sir?”

  Scott paused. The extension wouldn’t fucking release. He turned and said, “Me?”

  Yes, he must have been feeling better about Perry’s situation— indulging in irritability.

  “Sir?”

  “Me?” Scott collected himself. “Is there something you need?” he said on a down beat.

  The nurse had vanished. She’d removed Andy’s helmet and he doddered his mitts in the air. He stared at the wall and said, “Just need you to do me a favor. Just one favor, don’t mind?”

  “And what’s that?” Scott said, putting his hand on his hip and narrowing his eyes expectantly.

  “I need you to go out to the bar. There’s a guy, named Matthew. I need you to tell him to come help me get this guy off me. He’s on me—big asshole. I’m going to kick his jerk-face in.”

  In came a young man who wasn’t the other nurse, Matthew, but someone in street clothes carrying a bouquet of white roses. Scott sat down again and Perry shook his head unpityingly.