Full Circle

by Kaje Harper

  Three steps further and I saw him lurch. He leaned against the building, hugging his arms around himself. Might have just been cold, but I diagnosed cracked or broken ribs from the posture and the careful way he moved. He coughed once, and training took over. I hurried toward him.

  "Are you all right? Breathing okay? No blood?"

  I reached out to him but he jerked away, despite the hiss of pain that the fast motion caused him. "Don't touch me."

  "It's alright. I'm a doctor."

  He straightened and laughed scornfully. "Yeah, right. And I'm Elvis Presley."

  "I'm just trying to help."

  "I don't need help from some stinking, dirty, lying drunk! I don't need help from anyone." He straightened carefully and continued on down the street. His gait was noticeably stiff and slow.

  I stared at his retreating back. His words echoed in my head. Stinking, dirty, lying, drunk. "I'm not a liar," I whispered. I looked down at myself. I was wearing my favorite parka. It wasn't really that cold, but in those days I never could feel warm. It was smeared with the remains of a drippy taco I'd had for lunch. Or maybe had for lunch the day before. And there were other, older stains on it.

  My pants had once been a good pair of khakis, but now they too bore the marks of hard use. One knee was ripped out, where I had fallen, navigating the steps down to the subway while under the weather. I raised an arm and sniffed myself, oblivious to the people walking around me on the sidewalk. Maybe I was a little whiff. I couldn't think when I'd showered last. Or changed clothes, or slept for that matter. And I didn't care. I'd finally managed to get to the point of intoxication where nothing mattered at all. So why was I letting some punk upset me?

  "So what?" I muttered. "So what if I'm dirty and smelly? Doesn't matter. Nowhere to go, nothing to do. And I'm not half as drunk as I wanna be." I pulled the new bottle out of the bag, cracked the top, and took a healthy swig. In fact, I leaned against the wall right there, where he'd rested for a moment. I put my shoulders where his had been and raised the bottle to my lips, feeling the burning darkness of the liquor slide down my throat. And as I slid over the hill from almost drunk to totally smashed, for some reason, I couldn't shake the image of a pair of disapproving grey eyes. But more whiskey would fix that.

  The next time I saw the kid with the grey eyes, we were both in line at the local soup kitchen. He was two ahead of me. He'd scrounged up a jean jacket from somewhere, but even on his lean frame it was a little small. His hands and wrists poked out of the sleeves like a kid in a growth spurt. The bruises had healed, but his pale skin was greyer and less healthy. A faint patina of dirt around his neck suggested he'd washed his face but not showered lately. And his hands shook a little as he picked up his tray.

  He sat at a table as far from the rest of us as he could. I'm not sure what devil on my shoulder prompted me to go and plunk my tray right down beside his. He glanced at me for just an instant then turned back to his spaghetti, visibly tuning me out.

  "Cold day," I said, dumping three packages of sugar into the sludge they called coffee. When he didn't respond, I added, "The food here is edible, but watch out for this stuff they call coffee. I think they scrape it off the floor in back of the counter."

  He grunted involuntarily, but kept his eyes fixed forward. He ate with a tight control that suggested he was an inch away from just stuffing everything in his mouth. He looked thin and cold, but not high, not like he was using. His eyes were bright and alert, flicking toward any movement that came close. As he was finishing up, mopping the last specks of sauce with the crust of his bread, I slid my own untouched bread over onto his plate.

  "They always serve me too much," I lied. "Hate seeing food go to waste, especially in here."

  He startled, far more than the gesture was worth, and stared at me. For a moment I think it hung in the balance, his hunger against his pride. Then he pushed back from the table roughly.

  "I'm sure you'll find someone who wants it," he snapped. His voice was light and just a little rough. He pulled the collar of his denim jacket up around his neck and strode out the door without a backwards look.

  I sighed and reclaimed my bread before someone stole it. I chewed slowly, in no hurry to leave, and thought about the kid. Not in a sexual way. For one thing, I had hit my thirties and the kid had to be straddling eighteen, one way or the other. And between the booze and the lack of sleep and losing Henri, I had about as much sex drive as an amoeba back then. I was just speculating.

  Before Henri got sick, before I blew up my career and dove into the bottle, I'd worked the emergency room. You get to know the look of fear. The way the ones who had been hurt moved, like they wanted to keep everything tightly wrapped inside. Their eyes had this look, watching the world from behind a pane of glass. Like they were looking for the next pain to come flying at them, without any hope that seeing it coming would let them get away. Battered wives, abused kids, victims of assault of one form or another, they had a common face. And however controlled this kid was, he wore that look.

  I reached into the pocket of my parka for the flat, smooth shape of the bottle. Nothing I could do for the kid. Nothing I wanted to do for myself. The road to sweet oblivion was there, waiting.

  They say third time's the charm, but there was nothing charming about it. I almost tripped over him, there in the dark. Barely fifty feet from the back of that same liquor store as the first time, like a reprise of a moment that had come back to mind far too often.

  He grunted. "Watch your fucking feet." But there was a breathy quality to his voice that stopped me and turned me around.

  He sat slumped against the wall, legs outstretched, which was why I'd about tripped over his feet. It was a cold night, and getting colder, but he was just sitting still, head bowed down, ass on the frigid concrete. I hesitated and then squatted down. A graceless move that became even more so when I landed on my ass, balance destroyed by the booze and months without more exercise than the walk to the liquor store. I struggled up, kneeling, and peered at him. "You didn't laugh. Something must be wrong."

  "You aren't that fucking funny." He ended the statement with a cough. Once it started, the hacking went on and on. Finally he choked and spit a gob of something. He made the effort to turn away to do it, so I didn't have to pop him one. I reached out, really slowly, toward his wrist.

  He stared at my hand, but didn't pull back as I laid one finger over his skin below that skimpy jacket. His pulse bounded under my fingertip, and the heat of his skin burned in the cold air.

  "You have a fever," I said, trying not to slur the words. "And your heart rate is about one-fifty. You need a doctor."

  "And you just happen to be one, right?" He raised his head to glare at me and pulled his arm away. "Go fuck yourself."

  "You need a real doctor. One who isn't halfway to unconscious. I'll go call an ambulance."

  As I struggled to get my feet under me, he reached out and grabbed my wrist. "No. I'm fine. Just leave me the hell alone."

  "Can't do that. I may not be practicing anymore, but I signed that fucking hypocritical oath back when. You stay out here overnight and you may be dead by morning. That means I have to get involved."

  He shook his head hard and put a hand on the pavement as if the motion had made him dizzy. "Hell with that. Have a drink. Have ten. You'll forget all about this. Just go booze up somewhere else."

  "Can't." I scooted around and put my back to the brick wall beside him. Damn, that ground was cold. I pulled out my bottle and pretended to take a sip, then passed it to him. "Drink?" Alcohol was the last thing he needed, but the only thing I had to offer that he might take.

  After a moment he took the bottle from me and tilted his head back. Two long swallows and I thought about pulling the bottle away, because he really didn't need the vasodilation from the alcohol if he was going to sit out in the cold. But the next bout of coughing stopped him before I could. When it was over, he made as if to hand the bottle back and
then stopped short. "Maybe you shouldn't put your mouth on this. I might be contagious."

  I blinked, both at the thought and at the way he phrased it. More to this boy than I realized. "Alcohol sterilizes."

  "Not well enough." He set the bottle down on his other side and tipped his head back against the bricks. "I'm sorry."

  "So you owe me one."

  "Maybe." He closed his eyes.

  "Let me call 911."

  "Get fucked. I don't owe you that much."

  "Why not?" I was starting to get frustrated with him. "Why won't you let the city come scrape you up off the pavement and put you in a nice warm bed for a few days until you feel better?"

  "No money. No insurance."

  "It's free if it's an emergency, you moron."

  "Hate hospitals."

  "Enough to die rather than go to one?" I said acidly.

  He opened one red-rimmed eye and rolled his head a little to look at me. "Yeah," he said, and closed his eyes again.

  "Idiot." But I didn't get up. Beside me his breathing was fast and shallow, with an odd little grunt of effort on each inhale. The ER physician in me diagnosed pneumonia, and worried about TB. I put a finger on his wrist again, and he sat limply and let me. One-fifty-six.

  "Fuck," I said. "Can't leave you alone here. Can't call 911. Don't want to sit on the fucking pavement and freeze to death. Guess you have to come home with me."

  "No way."

  "Yes way. Two choices, kid. You come home with me, or I will fucking call 911 on you and hold you here until the paramedics arrive."

  "Think you can, old man?" he sneered.

  "Before, no. You'd have hauled ass before I could even find a phone. But now? I think it's going to be an even chance whether we can get you two blocks to my place without you passing out."

  He made as if to stand and stopped, coughing, his hands pressed to his head like it was going to fly to pieces. When he was finally done, he looked at me and his eyes were old and tired. "Damn it."

  "911 would be smarter. I'm really not a doctor anymore, and my place is a dump."

  Oddly, he looked as if that confession made him happier. "Your place."

  "Okay." I reached across him to take the bottle back, capped it carefully, and put it in my pocket. Then I got on one knee and slid a shoulder under his arm. "Easy now. Get up slowly."

  Anyone watching that night would have thought we were both drunk. The kid walked as best he could on legs that were rubber at the knees. I kept an arm around him and tried to steer us both in the right direction. Twice he had to stop and cough, bouts so violent that I stood behind him and just wrapped my arms around his chest to hold him together. After the second one he was crying, although I don't think he knew it.

  "Fifty more feet," I told him. "Then one flight of stairs, and if that doesn't kill us, we'll be home, kid."

  "Toller," he said. "My name's Toller, not kid."

  "Whatever you say, kid. Fifty more feet." That last flight of stairs almost did us in. I was half carrying him, and staggering under the weight, thin as he was, when we reached my door. I propped him up against the wall, unlocked the door, and hauled him inside.

  One benefit to a tiny efficiency apartment: the bed was only ten feet from the front door. I manhandled him over there and let him half-fall onto the rumpled sheets. As he lay there, breathing harshly, I bent to untie his sneakers and slide them off. The socks under them were more holes than cloth, and I pulled them off too. His bare feet were bony and white, chilled at the toes and hot with fever by his ankles. I lifted his legs up onto the bed.

  He grunted, "Thanks," and tried to curl up in a ball.

  "Not yet. Pants and jacket off."

  "I'm fine like this."

  "My house. My rules." I stripped the clothes off him matter-of-factly, leaving him in dirty boxer-briefs and a worn T-shirt. I think he would have fought me, but he was losing coherence, eyes moving randomly. He made a protest or two, the words mumbled. I pulled the sheet out from under him and dropped it lightly over his body. Then I located the second pillow and raised his head a little more on it. He thanked me absently and went into another coughing spell. I stuffed a wad of tissues in his hand and left him to it.

  At the sink, I scrubbed up my hands mechanically. The dirty dishes piled high under the faucet made it difficult and I stared at them. How long had those been there? I couldn't remember the last time I ate anything that wasn't take-out.

  I still had a bag of doctor stuff in the cabinet under the bathroom sink. I pulled out a thermometer, stethoscope, and a penlight. Not much in the way of meds in the house, but in the mirror cabinet there was some aspirin and half a bottle of the Amoxicillin I'd started taking when I cut my foot. That had been a bad time, and the foot had healed before I remembered to take even half of the antibiotics. I peered blearily at the bottle and made out the expiry date, only eight months gone. Good enough.

  When I went out into the main room he had rolled in a ball away from me, facing the wall. I put on a kettle of water for the steam, poured a glass out of the cold tap because it was the only thing in the house other than booze, and went to the bed. I sat on the edge by his hips, gripped his shoulder, and pulled him to face me. "Humidity, aspirin, and antibiotics," I told him. "Because if you die on me in here it will be one fucking mess."

  For two days it was touch and go. Half a dozen times I almost called 911. Would have, if my phone service hadn't been shut off. But when he was lucid, he told me not to in violent terms. And when he wasn't, the thought of leaving him to go hunt up a neighbor and use the phone scared me. I wasn't sure he would be alive when I got back. And after Henri, I'd sworn no one I cared for would ever die alone.

  The third day, his fever came down from stratospheric to merely uncomfortable. He let me raise his shoulders on pillows stolen from the couch and drank a little weak tea. I was reusing tea bags by then and seriously jonesing for coffee.

  Toller blinked at me. Those grey eyes had some light coming back in them, and his long dark lashes swept upward. He looked puzzled. "Who are you again?"

  I resisted the temptation to say, the dirty, smelly drunk. Not reassuring to a sick man. "I'm Jamison Seavers. This is my apartment."

  He looked over my shoulder at the tiny kitchenette, almost reachable from the bed. "Do I know you?"

  "Not really. You got sick and crashed here. It's been a couple of days."

  He nodded slowly, a fine crease knotting his forehead, thinking back. "You're a doctor, right?"

  "Not anymore. But I was." I stuck the thermometer in his mouth, mostly to shut him up because I'd checked it under his arm just a few hours before. He submitted docilely enough and looked around as it counted up his fever. At least all that time I'd spent in the last two days stuck in the house hovering over him hadn't been wasted. With nothing else to do, it was only logical that I'd washed the mound of dishes, although one plate crusted with something had to be thrown out. I'd put the laundry in bags, sacked the mounds of trash, and even mopped the two by six feet of linoleum in front of the appliances. It was still a rat-hole, but a fairly clean one.

  When I took the thermometer back, he said, "So, can I leave now?"

  I looked at it. One hundred and two. "Do you want to?"

  He tried to sit up from the pillows and then sort of slumped back. "Guess not." Two days of raging fever on top of who knows how long of not eating well had fined him down to skin and bones. I was betting that even if he forced himself out of bed, he wouldn't make the ten feet to the door.

  "How about we wait until you can at least make it to the john without help?"

  He nodded and then looked horrified. "What have I...have you been helping me there?"

  "Nah. Too much work. You've been peeing in a bottle."

  "Jesus." He swallowed. "I'm sorry. You shouldn't have had to do that."

  I laughed. "I was a doctor. Believe me, compared to a three hundred pound woman with stomach flu when I was
an intern, this has been nothing."

  "Thanks, I think." He struggled a little more vertical. "This is where you live?"

  "Yup."

  "It's small. Not that that's bad, but it's just...you really were a doctor?"

  "Was. Now I'm a drunk." I stood up, rolling my shoulders to get the tension out.

  "I shouldn't have said that."

  "Humph. I wondered if you remembered. No, kid, you were right. That's what I am, and it's a full-time job. Or was until you tried to die on me. I've had to put it off for a bit."

  He looked puzzled. "You don't seem drunk."

  "Right now I'm just lightly pickled. Enough to get by on. When you're back on your feet I figure I'll go back to my real profession." I was drinking a glass of something every few hours. Enough to keep my blood levels out of the detoxing range. The kid was sick enough, we didn't need me on the floor rolling around and spewing.

  He nodded like he got it, but his eyes were already starting to roll back in his head. I sighed. "Sleep some more, kid. Then we'll see if we can get you as far as the bathroom."

  He muttered, "Toller. Not kid," before sleep pulled him under.

  Whatever Toller had been doing to his body, in addition to the beating I knew about, it hadn't been good. His recovery was slow and difficult. It was five more days before his temp dropped below a hundred, and a week before he could make the twelve steps to the bathroom without help.

  He wasn't a good patient. When he wasn't sleeping he was fretful and irritable. When he was sleeping, he had nightmares that brought him awake screaming almost silently, his mouth open in a rictus of pain, the tendons of his neck tight and straining. Sometimes he would hit out in his sleep, small muscle-inhibited motions with his clenched fists. He muttered too, but the only words I could make out were no and please. If it got bad I would wake him, and he grunted his thanks but never told me a thing more.

  There wasn't much for him to do. He tried to read, but he quickly developed a headache and had to stop. I wondered idly if he needed glasses, but that was a thought for another time. I had an old TV, but no cable. I hadn't watched the thing in years. I dug out a pair of rabbit ears and set it up for him, and it pulled in two local stations adequately. We found ourselves watching General Hospital and making acerbic comments. He critiqued the character interactions; I gave them hell for the medical inaccuracies. We found ourselves looking forward to it. At least I did.