by Josh Thomas
***
A nurse came, late one night, leaned into the doorway, watched Kent trim Jamie’s fingernails. His nails grew even as his body wasted away, and here was a state trooper giving personal care. She was pained by the intimacy of it.
Kent picked up a slice that went flying into the bed, lest Jamie roll onto it and feel discomfort. She said, “Care to talk?”
“I’m that bad, huh? Sure.” Kent pulled out the other chair for her.
“It’s so hard just to wait.”
“What can I expect if he wakes up? You’ve seen this before, I haven’t.”
“Well, on coming to, he won’t be able to function. It’s such a big step, regaining consciousness, that you can’t expect anything more than that. Everything is measured in steps. He won’t be able to talk at first. He’ll be in pain, extremely uncomfortable. You’ll want to communicate with him, but you won’t know whether he understands a word you say. Still, go ahead and try. Maybe all he’ll be able to do in reply is blink. Maybe he’ll be able to squeeze your hand. But realize, he won’t know you from Adam.”
“Why the heck not?”
“You met too recently. You’re not family, a friend he’s known for years. He’ll have no short-term memory. He won’t know what happened to him or why he’s here. He won’t be able to feed himself, he’ll have no eye-hand coordination, he’ll be like a baby who has to be taken care of.”
“Gee. Poor guy.” Kent trimmed Jamie’s little finger.
“Waking up is no guarantee, either. We could still lose him even after he wakes up.”
“Give me the good scenario. I already know the bad one.”
“He wakes up, and day by day he gets a little stronger. We’ll get him drinking full-nutrient liquids. His body starts to recognize that it’s getting more nutritional support, so it gradually improves systemically, cell by cell, organ by organ. The central nervous system begins to respond. Slowly he’ll regain the power of speech. We’ll test his vocabulary, help him relearn words. We’ll begin physical therapy, first in bed, later in a chair, simple things like pointing to body parts. All this improves his coordination. As his nutrition upgrades, so will his physical functioning and his mental alertness. We give him, while he’s unconscious, the best nutrition we have, but it’s so inadequate, all it really does is keep him alive. There’s no substitute for real food. And the lack of that, as well as the physical trauma, works against his waking up. The longer this goes on, the worse it is. If he stays under for more than a month, he’ll never completely recover.”
“Oh, God.” Kent wasn’t sure he could cry anymore, but inside he cried, as he trimmed Jamie’s thumb.
“Take heart, though. It’s only been a week. So far this isn’t too terrible.”
“I heard this is within range for people who do wake up.”
“So don’t lose hope. But do think about the time when you don’t stay here anymore.”
Kent sighed. When he thought about going back to the cabin, he thought about taking Jamie home with him; caring for him, every day if need be, till he was well.
His mother would say he shouldn’t. Taking care of a sick person for years? Only a madman would do such a thing.
But Jamie had done it for Rick; and caring for Jamie was exactly what Kent wanted to do. He worked on his guy’s index finger.
The nurse said softly, “I’m not religious, half the time I’m an atheist. But I can’t stop thinking about this Bible verse. Greater love hath no man than this…”
“…That a man lay down his life for his friends.” Kent flung aside his clippers. He and Jesus wept.
44
Citizen
Kent took a call from Phil Blaney. “Commander, I’ve got someone here at the City-County Building you might want to meet. A citizen claims someone paid him to throw a drink on a certain blond patron at Chez Nous.”
“You think this citizen’s credible?”
“Halfway. You might want to take a listen.”
“Hold him.” Kent called the crime lab and ordered an investigation into what caused Jamie’s mic to go out. “Also the sweatshirt. Does it contain a foreign substance?”
“It reeks of beer,” the lab director replied. “Big investigation.”
“Then find out the make, model and serial number.”
***
Phil brought in the citizen, a scared-acting 22-year-old male White. “Commander, this is one William Franklin Gowdy. Lives with his parents in Brownsburg, claims he works at a bank in Castleton. No priors.”
Kent eyed him. “They let you wear all that jewelry at the bank, do they?”
“No,” Gowdy mumbled. “I work Saturdays, this is my day off.”
Phil said, “Tell the sergeant what you told me.”
“Well, um, I was at Chez’s last week, when the stabbing thing happened…”
Kent interrupted, “What were you doing there?”, just to intimidate the guy. He wasn’t in the mood for Good Cop today.
“Dancing. With my friends.”
“Do Mom and Dad know you’re hanging out at Gay bars on weeknights?”
“No. It’s none of their business.”
“Don’t make me play 20 Questions, say what you’ve got to say.”
“Well, we got to the bar late, Jimmy and me, and as we were going inside a security guard asked if I’d play a trick on a guy for twenty bucks.” Phil moved his hand in circles to speed the guy up. There weren’t any security guards at the bar that night. “To spill a drink on this blond guy in an IU sweatshirt.”
“Blonds in a Gay bar,” Phil said, “how original. Wearing an IU shirt. How would you recognize which one?”
“Bright blond hair, built, 5’10”, a face that’s pure Hollywood. I’d know him the minute I saw him, there wouldn’t be anyone else like him. If I wasn’t sure, it wasn’t the right guy, keep looking.”
Kent said, “What else?”
“To be sure to throw the drink on the chest area. Not the shoulder or the back, the middle of the chest.”
“Did they say why?”
“He’s this rabid IU fan, always going on about his precious Hoosiers. The sweatshirt was brand new and it’d screw with his head to have his shirt messed up. That way his Purdue friends could tease him all night.”
“So, you’re in the habit of taking $20 bribes to mess up someone’s outfit. A stranger who never did anything to you; a fellow Gay guy.”
“You must have been drunk already when you got there,” Phil said.
“I didn’t drive,” Gowdy said.
Kent said, “No, but your drunk friend Jimmy did. I’ll be sure to pick you out the next time you’re wearing new clothes.”
“I know it wasn’t right. But I was doing the guard a favor. For twenty bucks, why not?”
“Maybe I can pay you fifty bucks to slash this officer’s tires. Maybe for a hundred you’ll knock over a liquor store.”
Gowdy looked glum. “I said I’m sorry.”
“No, you didn’t. Why are you coming forward now?”
“I think it was the guy who got stabbed.”
Kent and Phil exchanged looks.Kent said,“Pictures of him have been all over TV for a week. Newsweek, Time, the BBC. And you just now recognized him? Lieutenant, you got yourself a real citizen here. Yeah, this is the kind of solid citizen we know we can count on to help us catch criminals, to provide us with information we need to know. And to do it so timely, ya know? Making sure we’ve got all the facts we need to apprehend the bad guys. Lieutenant, I think you got a candidate for a special citation here.”
“Citation?” Gowdy asked.
Phil snarled, “Accessory before the fact.”
“Oh no! I didn’t know what they were going to do to him.”
“You little punk,” Kent said. “You spill your drink on a perfect stranger, find out he’s an incredible hero saving the lives of…”
Phil supplied, “Faggots like you…”
“…Then you wait a week to come forward with the
news that Fact A is connected to Fact B!”
Kent turned away. Didn’t want to browbeat the guy, just wanted to make sure he was properly scared and 100% honest. “What drink was it?”
“Huh?”
Phil demanded, “What did you spill on him?”
“Beer.”
Kent sighed, “Bottle, can, draft? Miller, Budweiser, Pabst, Coors? What was it, Mr. Helpful Citizen?”
“Bud draft. In a plastic cup.”
“Tell me about the guard. Did you ever see him before? What was he wearing? How did you know he was a guard?”
“Well, a uniform, patches, a nightstick, no gun, at least I didn’t see one. A baseball cap, I remember that, Pioneer Hi-Bred. No one I’d ever seen before. But it wasn’t a he, it was a she.”
“How could you tell? It was dark outside.”
“I may be Gay, but even I can tell she was a woman. She had tits, a high woman’s voice.”
“A woman guard at a Gay men’s bar? Wearing a baseball cap? Gee, a guard like that’d intimidate me real quick.”
Phil said, “Was she big? For want of a better word, dykey-like?”
“No, average size, petite almost. But she was a real guard, I could tell. We were going to ignore her and just go inside, but she made us stop.”
“Would you recognize her if you saw her again?”
“I don’t think so. She kept her cap real low, I couldn’t really see her face. Plus it was dark, like you said.”
“What else?”
“That’s all.”
“Why did you wait so long?”
“I was scared.”
“Of what? We arrested 13 people. Someone’s going to retaliate when they’re behind bars?”
“I didn’t want to get involved.”
That really ticked Kent off. “Tell it to Davey Shuey, you son of a bitch. Tell it to Glenn Ferguson and a dozen previous victims. Tell it to Mr. Ferguson’s lover, how you didn’t want to get involved. Tell it to the Gay undercover informant who’s lying in a hospital bed right now thanks to you!”
Phil said,“When you find yourself the victim of crime,maybe I won’t want to get involved either.”
Kent told Phil, “Get his information, his employer and his next of kin, then get him out of my sight.”
“Was what I did so wrong? Are you going to charge me?”
Kent walked out, left him to Phil to deal with. Phil said, “I don’t have to tell you this, but I will. For twenty bucks you destroyed the communication system of an undercover informant investigating the murders of 13 Gay men. Under his sweatshirt was a microphone, which is why the chest area was so damn important. Because our informant lost his backup, he got stabbed. He’s now in a coma. You tell me how wrong it was, you slime-sucking dickhead.”
A tear ran down Mr. Gowdy’s face. Phil wasn’t impressed. Five minutes later, after the paperwork, he mumbled thanks for coming forward, better late than never. ***
He made calls; the Chez Nous did employ two female security guards, but they weren’t on duty on a weeknight. Both denied being present and had solid alibis; one was a sheriff ’s deputy and mother of two small kids, the other was an IPD reserve officer who spent half the night with a Gay guy and four women friends, trying to get her lover pregnant with a turkey baster. Both willingly let their closets, laundry baskets and vehicles be searched for baseball caps; no Hi-Bred, no seed corn of any kind.
The lab reported finding beer in the sweatshirt fibers, with a 99.7% likelihood it was regular Budweiser draft.
As advertised, Mr. Citizen was halfway credible, but his story didn’t add up. Phil shrugged and forgot about it.
45
Commander
Kent didn’t give up.
He read Jamie the newspapers; not coverage of the case, but the sports section—Purdue football, keeping him up on the Big Ten— Yugoslavia occasionally, but it was depressing; advice columnists, editorials, business news he couldn’t make heads nor tails of; he read the comics and described the drawings. Every day he read Jamie his horoscope; he’d known from day one that Jamie was a Gemini on the cusp of bullheaded Taurus. “Today is a good day for traveling. A chance encounter with Sagittarius may lead to passionate romance. (Hey, that might be fun. Guess who’s a Sagittarius, Jamie?) A close friend needs your encouragement.”
Kent babbled and liked it. He never felt freer or worse. But mostly he sat quietly with the blond, bruised face, bland and unvarying, both of them numb and half dead. ***
Kent finally gave up. He’d cried five million tears. He’d said fifty thousand words. He’d prayed five thousand begging prayers. None of them mattered. God cared about zilch. There was no God.
Kent learned to accept that his friend, his sweet, pure heart, was a vegetable.
“Augh!” And with that scream, one last rebellion struck in fury. “Here’s the bottom line,” he cried, pacing around the tiny room. “You faced a choice! You or Daveyboy. Who would it be? Jamie, you stupid, ignorant fool, you have all the talent in the world. And you traded it for that lowlife? What? I’m supposed to stand here and let you trade? Get fucking real!
“He ain’t worth one-half what you are, one-fourth, one-tenth. When you gave us the patch we knew where to go, you asshole! Even if Davey had died we’d have caught ’em. Stand aside, you stupid civilian, and let me do my job!”
He exhaled deeply, over and over. The patch wasn’t enough; he knew it, hated accepting it. There was no escaping the central fact: when they lost contact with Jamie, had to regroup at headquarters, Ford and Jamie got such a head start on them that not even a chopper could get there fast enough.
So Jamie traded his life for some Daveyboy’s—some guy who, whatever his worth, didn’t deserve to die. “Jamie, I can’t deal with this. Not losing you! This is the most incredible act by a human being I’ve ever seen. Your life for a stranger’s? Wake up, damn you!”
He sat in sorrow and fury. And from somewhere Jamie said, in Kent’s mind, “Davey’s as important to humanity as I am. To your humanity; to mine.
“In this life we can take or we can give. You’ve faced that choice, and look at yourself, a police officer, a giver. And I’ve faced it. Don’t ask me to let the killers go, to let the poor man die. That would have destroyed me more than anything the killers could have done. I’m a Hoosier, a
smalltown boy. Don’t send casseroles if you can pull victims out of the car wreck instead.” As sentiment, as hope it was fine. Not a word of it actually got said. It was just Kent going berserk, trying to hang on. He took a break. Minutes later he was back in the room doing a relaxation exercise. ***
On Day 9, a Thursday evening, particularly dull, Jamie’s eyelids fluttered, opened; he tried to focus. He canvassed a wall near-sightedly. He felt extremely weird.
It took him three minutes to realize he was alive.
A hospital, I think. God, this place is ugly. Who designed this, Phyllis Schlafly?
He glimpsed a tall, dark-haired man. The man was looking down, maybe reading. Even near-sighted, Jamie could see the man was handsome.
Jamie closed his eyes, so overwhelmed by all the pains in his body he couldn’t think. He wanted to cry out but he didn’t have the energy for it. So he tried to switch off physical awareness entirely, feel only his emotion.
It was very difficult. But gradually he concentrated on the man; on the man’s face.
Didn’t know who he was or why he was here. But reading; waiting on him. Jamie had spent too much time waiting in hospitals not to know why the man was here. So they knew each other. Who was he?
Jamie opened his eyes again. Feelings came, intense, cascading. Masculine. Intelligent. Sensitive.
Is he my lover? But Jamie knew he didn’t have a lover. Rick was gone, Jamie was alone.
Alone, yet somehow in love with this man.
That felt good for a minute, bizarre; what is so strange as being in love with someone you don’t even know?
But he was quickly overpowered by a dark, menacing
shroud that made him want to hide under the covers. He didn’t have the energy to cry, no way to express his terror but to let it wrack his body, already wracking.
He wasn’t supposed to be in love with this man. That meant the man was Straight.
His spirit plummeted, the heartache of falling in love uselessly. He wanted to die. But he couldn’t even manage that, it took too much energy.
Minutes later, he tried to figure out, to sense really, who the man could be. The man waited; that counted for something. A friend, maybe.
He sank into his body, let it feel whatever it felt, no words, let go of words.
From somewhere deep inside an image slowly formed; Kentland.
He knew the man wasn’t from Kentland, but there it was; the Nu-Joy.
A car. Riding together. We didn’t stop, we talked about it. Headed where? White Sox.
Ice cream. Morocco to Kentland.
Why Morocco? What’s there anymore?
The Slough?
Oh no. His body shivered, ice cold for minutes.
Some poor guy; God no, those poor guys. Every cell of his body filled with pain.
Policeman. A trooper? He shook my shoulders. I was terrified. And then, I wasn’t. Nice man. Safe. He saw another image, another highway. South. Toward Mom’s? Blue
lights. Oh no! Oh God no. He wept, tearless into eternity.
Finally, another image, same car, to Indianapolis. Woods. A clearing, bright as day.
Devils? He could see them, horrible fright. Anger too; fury.
And I told God I loved this man.
He opened his eyes, and this time the man saw him. His eyes got big, he put down his report, his tanned face turned white. He hurried over.
You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Let not your heart be troubled.
Kent stood motionless, watched green eyes move. He wanted to shout, but he was scared beyond belief. He finally whispered, “Hi.”
Beautiful brown eyes, so worried. The man was in as much pain as Jamie was. Jamie wanted to reassure him. How, though?
Jamie blinked. Breathing was a horrible chore. He looked down at his body. There were plastic tubes everywhere, he could feel them—including places they ought not to be. His dick ached. A catheter? Get this god-damn thing offa me.