Benjamin's Parasite
Page 6
The student, whose name Benjamin should have known but which he couldn't recall, nervously switched his hall pass from his left hand to his right. "Should I get help?"
"Kill me," Benjamin gasped. Then he realized what he'd said. "No. Don't. Really, don't."
"Want me to go get the nurse?"
Benjamin shook his head and grabbed the student by the arm. "Help me get there."
* * *
Nurse Judith Reiser clucked her tongue as she removed the thermometer. If there was anything she hated, it was a faker. And this child (a junior, no less—far old enough to know better) was a great big faker.
"Temperature's fine," she said. "Any other symptoms? Headache? Tummyache? Sore shoulder? Kidney failure?"
The girl shook her head. "Just kinda dizzy."
"Seeing black spots in the corner of your vision?"
"No."
"What about leprechauns? Have you seen any leprechauns?"
"Say what?"
"No need to answer that. I think I have enough data to make my diagnosis. You, Sally, have what is commonly known to those of us in the medical profession as slackerfluenza."
"Are you saying I'm a slacker?"
Judy frowned. They usually didn't pick up on that the first try. "Yes, Sally, you're fine. Funny how these things seem to pop up around final exam time, isn't it? Now, do I need to give you a lollipop, or can you make it back to World History without one?"
Sally scowled at her. "Dyke."
"Hey, now, I may just be the school nurse, but I can give out detentions. Do you want to join me for lunch tomorrow?"
"No."
"Then watch your mouth. Now go back to class."
By the way, faker, I bring home a different man almost every weekend.
Sarah left, looking mad at the world and the medical profession in particular. Judy unwrapped a grape lollipop and popped it into her mouth. Life was good to her.
"Ms. Reiser! Ms. Reiser!"
Tim Hart, a scruffy young gentleman that she recognized from the mandatory Dangers of Smoking workshop, rushed into her office. "Ms. Reiser, there's something wrong with Mr. Wilson! Hurry!"
She quickly stepped out into the hallway and saw Benjamin Wilson moving toward her. Staggering toward her was more accurate. He was walking like a man who'd taken a bullet to the stomach. She hurried over to meet him, then took his arm, ushered him into her office, and helped him lie down on the bed.
"Thank you, Tim," she said. "You can go back to class."
Tim stood there, as if wanting to know how this all turned out, but then nodded and left.
"I'll fix you up," she told Benjamin, patting him reassuringly on the shoulder. "Can you tell me what's wrong?"
"Pain! Fuckin' pain!"
"Calm down," she said, soothingly. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you."
He was drenched in perspiration. She very lightly touched his side, testing for an inflamed appendix. That didn't seem to cause extra pain, though he was clearly in so much distress that it might not have mattered.
She called 911 and told them to send an ambulance immediately.
As she watched in horror, a bulge about the size of a magic marker protruded from the center of Benjamin's waist. It twitched a bit, then sank back down.
And at that moment, Judith Reiser knew exactly what was wrong with her patient: he'd been possessed by the devil.
Though Judy always strove to conduct herself in a calm and reasoned manner, that did not apply to matters involving demonic possession. She crossed herself and shrieked.
* * *
Benjamin had drifted out of consciousness for a moment. He returned to find Nurse Judy pressing a crucifix necklace against his stomach.
"Out, Satan!" she cried. "I cast thee out!"
"It's not..." Benjamin said, but then he hesitated. Actually, the Satan angle was a pretty good theory. He raised himself to press against the crucifix more firmly. Burn him out! Burn the devil out!
There was no smoke or sizzling, though. Where the hell was the smoke? You couldn't burn Satan out of your intestine without smoke and sizzling.
It wasn't working. "Say 'The power of Christ compels you!'" he begged.
"The power of Christ compels you!"
The power of Christ didn't seem to be compelling squat. Either the devil was uninvolved or Nurse Judy was doing it wrong.
He drifted out of consciousness again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Benjamin woke up in the back of an ambulance. A paramedic loomed over him, holding his left eye open while shining a penlight into it. The paramedic said something cryptic about dilation and wrote it on a clipboard.
The pain was still there. Benjamin politely asked the nice man to make it go away.
"You're going to be fine, sir," the paramedic assured him. "We'll be at the hospital any minute now."
Somebody patted his arm. Benjamin glanced over to make sure it wasn't Satan and saw that it was Cindy, looking terribly concerned. For his daughter's sake, he gritted his teeth and contorted his mouth into something that he hoped vaguely resembled a smile.
"It's okay, Dad," she said, as a tear trickled down her cheek. "They're going to take care of you."
"Good," he said. "That's good news."
Actually, assuming that the pain was temporary and it wasn't necessary to remove his entire lower intestine, this wasn't such a bad thing. It was kind of nice to discover that there was genuinely something medically wrong with him, and that he wasn't just the kind of asshole who would gamble away two thousand dollars.
"Mom's on her way, too," Cindy said.
Benjamin nodded. "Listen, honey, if I don't make it—"
"You will."
"But if I don't—"
"You will."
"Fair enough, but on the off chance that I—"
"You won't."
"I was going to say, if I don't pull through."
"You will."
"Cindy, I'm trying to use this as an excuse to tell you I love you. Work with me."
Another tear ran down her cheek. "Okay."
Blackness overtook him yet again.
* * *
"Mr. Wilson...?"
Benjamin opened his eyes. He was lying in a hospital bed. A doctor, a handsome, short-haired guy maybe in his early thirties, stood next to him. His expression looked much more like "It's terminal" than "It's gas."
"Yes?"
"How are you feeling?"
"Better."
"That's good. I'm Dr. White. We've given you some painkillers, but nothing to make you groggy yet. I want to make sure you understand what I'm about to say, all right?"
Benjamin really didn't like the way this conversation seemed to be headed. The doctor sounded as if he was trying way too hard to sound soothing. "All right."
"We took some X-rays. The results were somewhat alarming."
"The bad kind of alarming?"
"You seem to have some sort of intestinal parasite."
"Intestinal parasite." Benjamin considered that. "Better than an alien, anyway."
"Well, yes, that's one way of looking at it."
"So it's like a tapeworm?"
"Not quite. It's a bit more sizable."
"I actually don't know how big tapeworms run these days," Benjamin admitted.
Doctor White held up an X-ray.
"Holy shit!" Benjamin exclaimed. "That's in me?"
"Yes."
"Get it out!"
"That's our intent."
Benjamin took the X-ray from him and gaped at it. The thing was a frickin' monster! A squid monster. "Is this picture life size?"
"Yes."
"It's the size of a hot dog!"
"We know. As I explained earlier, the X-ray results were somewhat alarming."
"Look at those tentacles! I've got Chthulu in my gut!"
"Who?"
"It's from H.P. Lovecraft."
"Who?"
"Squid creature writer."
"Oh."
"That's what we need to discuss. Our first thought was to administer a very strong laxative."
Benjamin nodded. "Okay. I don't really like the idea of the monster coming out that way, but that's better than surgery, right?"
"Well, not necessarily."
"Why?"
"The parasite is—I'm not sure how else to describe it—feisty. If we flush it through the length of your bowels, it might cause irreparable damage."
"Then why did you even bring up the laxative? You don't offer somebody a laxative solution and then say, sorry, we've gotta cut!"
"I apologize."
"Is open-intestine surgery common?"
"It's sometimes necessary to remove blockage, yes."
"Scary monster blockage?"
"You probably shouldn't refer to it as a monster," Dr. White suggested. "That's not good for your blood pressure."
"What should I call it? Bob the Happy Little Parasite?"
"I don't recommend naming it, either."
"That was a joke."
"Joking is good. I do recommend joking."
Another blast of pain. Benjamin was pretty sure that women in labor were getting off easy, though he would never say such a thing out loud. "So when are we going to get this thing out?"
"Very soon. We have a specialist on the way. He'll be here before you know it."
"He'd better be," said Benjamin, "because I'm ready to jam a fork in there."
"Again, not something I'd recommend."
Benjamin considered pointing out that the fork comment had been a joke, but if the thing kept squirming around in there, and a fork happened to be lying within arm's reach, and it was properly sterilized, he wasn't entirely certain that it was a joke.
"Anyway, try to relax," said Dr. White.
"Okay." Benjamin took a deep breath and very slowly exhaled. He wondered what the best relaxation techniques were when one was being tortured by a horrific parasite. Maybe he should ask if they had a recording of gentle waves lapping against a beach at sunset.
"Would you like me to bring your wife and daughter in to see you?" Dr. White asked.
"Yes. Definitely."
The doctor left. Moments later, Margaret and Cindy burst into the room and hurried over to his bed, one on each side. They exchanged kisses and Margaret ran her fingers through his hair.
"How are you feeling?" she asked.
"Internally mangled."
"Ouch."
"Did they show you my guest?"
Margaret nodded. "It was a little disturbing."
"A little? That thing is my nightmare body occupant! If you were to ask me, 'Hey, Benjamin, what's the absolute last thing you'd like to have swimming around in your intestine?', that would be it!"
"At least it didn't have eyes," Cindy noted. "It would be really creepy if it had eyes."
"You're right. Eyes would suck."
"Do X-rays show eyes?" Margaret wondered.
Benjamin considered that. "No, probably not. I bet that son of a bitch does have eyes! They could be blinking right now. I can't believe this is happening to me."
"They'll get it out, don't worry," Margaret said.
"Will they? What if it fights? What if it has a really good tooth-hold on my intestinal wall and they're pulling and pulling and they can't get it loose? Don't some of these parasites have hooks?"
"Hookworms do," Cindy said.
"Hooks, eyes, teeth...it's not coming out!"
"Shhhhh." Margaret gave him a kiss on the forehead. "The surgeon will remove it. Then you'll have a great story to tell your class."
"Oh, yeah, because nothing earns the respect of your students like telling them you had a cuttlefish inside of you." Yet another burst of pain, this one so bad that Benjamin sat up in bed and seriously considered asking Cindy to get him a fork. "Fuck!"
He'd never used the f-word in front of his daughter, and could tell that he'd suddenly become infinitely cooler in her eyes.
"Should I get the doctor?" Margaret asked.
"No. Unless he's willing to shoot me in the head, there's not much more he can do for me."
"Don't talk like that."
"Okay, fine. There's all kinds of stuff he could do for me, but shooting me in the head would be the most appreciated."
"Smartass."
"Blame the parasite."
* * *
Benjamin lay on the gurney, rushing at a high speed down the corridor. Though all of the hospital personnel were presenting a calm demeanor, the speed with which the attendants pushed the gurney made him think that their attitude was "Aaaccckkk! We've gotta cut it out! We've gotta cut it out! Waste no time or we'll have to pay the janitors overtime to clean up all the splatter!"
Hey, Mr. or Mrs. Parasite. If you can hear me, I'd really appreciate it if you left quietly. No biting, no burrowing, no hissing at the nice surgeons. I promise that if you make this all go smoothly I'll find a nice aquarium for you.
However, if you're a creep about the procedure, I swear, I'll stick you on a frickin' hook and catch a frickin' trout with you. Wanna be fish bait, you little bitch? Damn right you don't. So when they cut me open, you'd better play nice.
He hoped they understood each other.
The attendants pushed him into the operating room, and Benjamin instantly felt his heart race. Surgery. People he didn't know were going to slice him open.
He could feel panic setting in as they efficiently moved him from the gurney to the operating table.
The doctors looked terrifying in their white masks.
It was okay. No reason to be scared. They were going to make the pain go away.
Hell, even if he was awake for the entire procedure, it couldn't be worse than the existing pain. Even staring down into his own body cavity would be preferable to the agony the parasite was causing.
"Mr. Wilson?" It was the anesthesiologist.
Not gonna panic not gonna panic not gonna panic.
He imagined the surgeon pulling out the slimy creature, watching it violently wriggle in his hands, spraying blood on the operating room floor and walls. What if the surgeon couldn't keep a good grip on it? What if it dropped back down into his open body? He could almost feel the creature squirming through his guts as the surgeon frantically tried to recapture it. "Almost got it...nope...damn, slippery little thing...I see it, right there by the kidney...missed...missed again...here, roll him over and see if we can shake it out...get me the pliers...crap, I had it, but one of its tentacles came off...nurse, fetch me the harpoon..."
"Mr. Wilson?" the anesthesiologist repeated.
"Yes?"
"When I put the mask on you, I want you to breathe deeply and count backwards from ten."
Benjamin nodded, though he wasn't sure he was mentally capable of counting backwards at this moment. He'd never been so scared in his life. He wished Margaret and Cindy could be here, holding his hands. That would make things better. A lot better.
The anesthesiologist brought the mask toward his face.
The door to the operating room burst open.
"Everybody step the hell away from the patient!" a female voice shouted.
CHAPTER NINE
As the anesthesiologist quickly moved to the other end of the room, Benjamin craned his neck to see exactly who had interrupted his journey into sleepy time.
She was tall. Devastatingly beautiful. Long blonde hair flowed over her shoulders. Though her attire was simple—white blouse and black slacks—she had the body of a supermodel. She held a sexy gun in her hand.
If it weren't for the gun, Benjamin might have thought the surgery had gone wrong and that she was an angel come to take him to heaven. However, the firearm was a pretty good indicator of that not being the case.
"Get off the table!" she shouted
at him.
Benjamin's first thought was to do as she said, though his first actual response was to gape at her, slack-jawed. She grabbed his arm and gave him a violent tug to accelerate the process. He tumbled off the operating table onto the floor, but before he could even register the impact, she'd pulled him to his feet and shoved him toward the open door.
"I'm saving your life," she told him. "So don't screw with me."
"Uh...thanks?"
She shoved him forward. "Run!"