by H. T. Night
“That’s a terrible thing to say,” the doctor said to me.
“I’m not God,” I replied. “I can’t do it.” Maybe that was dramatic, but I was being asked to make a horrid decision.
“If you don’t make a loving decision on his behalf, then the hospital will be forced to make a medical one.” The doctor looked at me with her piercing brown eyes; she was a little bit attractive.
“Which is what?” I stood up and paced around the hospital bed, looking down at my ‘friend.’ His face looked so puffy I could barely recognize him. He had become a pretty decent friend of mine in the last few months. He had a great sense of humor and loved to talk sports. My kind of guy.
They claimed it was a drug overdose with an element of foul play, but that was the extent of it. The authorities didn’t think it was an attempted murder. If he wasn’t a drug addict, they would had been investigating this as a potential homicide. He was so badly beaten up.
“The hospital is obligated to keep him alive for another week and that’s it,” the doctor continued to speak to me. “Their decision will be a financial one. If you want to yell at anyone, you can yell at them. If you want him to leave this world on terms other than greed, you need to sign off before it’s too late. Sometimes the most merciful we can be is to pull the plug and let his light burn out.”
“There is no chance for him to come out of this?” I was asking because I was deciding. She’d hooked my liberal sensibilities.
Doctor Gomez looked at me and simply said, “No, there isn’t.”
“So, there is no use keeping him alive?” I asked desperately. “What if he comes out of it, and he can tell the police who kicked his ass, and left him for dead.”
“Do you think that’s what happened here?” she asked me.
“You don’t?” I asked, flabbergasted.
“I see a drug addict who needs fluids, and if he has any injuries, they probably occurred when his overdose kicked in and he fell to the ground.”
“Look at him!” I said, raising my voice. “You think he fell down. Someone obviously beat the crap out of him before he overdosed. Is anyone investigating that?”
The truth of the matter was that I had grown very fond of my outpatient. He was an honest guy. Drugs had a hold of him and he knew all the consequences. He wanted to live, but didn’t like the way he was living.
“We need to make a humane decision,” the doctor said. “He put all the power in your hands, Mr. Crenshaw, and obviously cared for you in a way that I’m not even sure you understand. He knew his addiction was leading him down a very dangerous road. You were this light at the end of a tunnel. Like I said, he spoke quite eloquently about you often.”
“I was just there for him. As any friend would be.”
“Then be there for him now.” Doctor Gomez gave me an honest, sincere stare. She continued, “I think in the end, he might have seen a premonition of something like this happening. I have seen some off things with addicts at the end of their rope. It’s prophetic that he would meet with a hospital administrator and fill out his bereavement paper just one week ago. For something like this to happen to him…it’s heartbreaking.” The doctor paused and gave me a warm smile. “I know this isn’t easy. I’m asking you to make a humane decision based on the quality of life this man has left.”
I looked down at this man who had come to me for help. By the time he got to me, he was so environmentally and socially addicted to heroin and alcohol that it didn’t matter how many times he went through drug rehab. The demon had gotten the best of him. This was a hard decision, and it wasn’t fair that he’d put it in my hands. But nonetheless, he did. I glanced to the nurse and said, “Give me a minute alone.”
The nurse left and I paced around the room, staring at my outpatient. In my line of work, I tended to get really close to my patients. Sometimes, I stayed up all night just to keep them clean. Dave, the man lying in front of me, was no exception. I gave him all I had and probably a little more than I could even give. It didn’t matter, because it only took two days without my influence and he overdosed. Put himself straight into a coma. He was only 32 years old. The same age as me. And it somehow was my decision to end his life?
I walked over, grabbed a chair, sat next to him, and held his left hand. My emotions usually got the best of me, and this time was no different. Tears dripped from my eyes. I looked at his black and blue face. I heard the ventilator breathing for him. I had to face the fact that he was now a vegetable.
I looked up towards the ceiling and called out to anyone who would listen.
“Why?” I said. “Why do you put me in these people’s lives to just watch them die one by one?” My heart felt overwhelmed and I looked at my friend. He had become dear to me over the last few months. We fought for his life together, but he lost. The drugs had beaten him.
“Take him, and free him.” I looked up and wiped my eyes. I rose to my feet, and walked towards the door. I opened it and the nurse was right outside. I stared at her and said, “End it.”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “But that’s my decision. Call my office and we’ll arrange his funeral. They’ll tell you where to send his body.”
With that, I walked down the hall, went into the administration office, and signed my friend’s death warrant.
Chapter Two
5:00 p.m. Monday Evening
I went by the pharmacy and picked up my refills on my medicine. ‘All in a day’s errands,’ I thought sarcastically.
I picked up my pills: Tegretol, Prozac, and Ativan.
Why do I take such pills?
I have a form of epilepsy: it only affects my sleeping or my dreams. I was diagnosed with it after having seven E.E.Gs—Electroencephalograms. That’s where they stick pins in your brain and monitor how it works. The right side of my brain shows a strong abnormality. My neurologist, Dr. Kim, had diagnosed me with sleep paralysis. I have frequent sleep paralysis seizures.
I’ve been asked many times in my life what it feels like to have a sleep paralysis seizure. The sleep attack is both repeated and specific. I say “attack” because that’s what it feels like. It feels like a hundred bolts of insanity being charged into my nervous system. The paralysis comes in when I’m unable to move. It’s as if a three-ton elephant is squashing every bone in my body. I’m pressed to the earth.
Then it feels as though I’ve entered an alternative universe. Not fully the dream world, and not fully awake. I’m aware that I’m both awake and dreaming. My dreams start getting darker and darker, to the point a normal dream quickly turns into a nightmare. There was no reason for me to feel as terrified as I do. That’s where the neurology comes in. I feel an extra dose of fear, and it’s zapping my entire body. My mind awakens, but the rest of my body remains in the sleep state. I can see the room, but I am also dreaming.
My nightmares never made much sense. One time, I was being chased by a black unicorn. Another time, I had a dream I was in an elevator and suddenly it started going down at a rapid speed. I sensed that I was on my way to hell. Like I said, my dreams never made much sense. I had a hard time explaining what was wrong with me to friends.
Steve Moss was a guy who was always sympathetic. That was who I was meeting at a sports bar called Ricardo’s. He was my best friend, and we spent most of our time making each other laugh. He was a good friend to have. Especially on a day like today.
Chapter Three
5:30 p.m. Monday Evening
I stepped into Ricardo’s Sports Grill. It was downtown over on Harbor Boulevard. I was to meet up with my best friend. He was at our usual table in the corner of the bar, which had a perfect view of the biggest of all the big screen televisions.
Steve was a local private eye that was always going on Magnum PI-type exotic cases that made a guy like myself jealous. If it was football season, we were meeting at Ricardo’s Sports Grill on Monday night to watch football in Fullerton, California. Ricardo’s had the best wings a
nd beer on tap in Orange County.
Steve had blond hair and usually sported a California tan. Even in the wintertime, he was a tanning bed junkie. He was a couple months older than me, at least an inch taller, and twenty pounds heavier. I was six feet, 160 pounds, dripping wet. Steve was built like a brick house. He was an all-state wrestler in high school.
One thing about Steve was that he told it like it was. He had no filter, and no apologies. That was why I loved him. If you wanted to get real, you had a sit-down with Steve and let it all out. He often stuck his foot in his mouth with his blatant honesty. I loved the guy for it. He was a loyal buddy, and we were two guys who weren’t afraid to talk about shit, all the way down to the nitty-gritty details.
Steve and I loved to lay down action, and tonight we picked opposite teams. The Broncos were playing the Raiders, and the spread was three and a half points in favor of the Broncos. I liked the Broncos this year and thought they would cover the points. Steve, on the other hand, thought the Raiders’ defense was too tough, and he picked the Raiders. This usually made for a fun evening when we were both rooting for opposite teams. I expected a lot of shit-talking.
Like I said, Steve was a private investigator, and damn good at what he did: everything from catching cheating husbands to finding runaways. Lately, he had been asked to help out on some pretty serious cases that the local Orange County police had fumbled. Family members have a way of wanting to see justice done. A private investigator doesn’t have the same red tape a local police force does.
I walked up to the table and took a seat. Steve had a plate of nachos in front of him that looked to be a big pile of cheesy, delicious goop. He had one of Ricardo’s giant beer mugs in front of him, and it was almost empty. It was going to be one of those nights. Ricardo’s large beer mugs held 120 ounces of beer. My friend had basically already downed three 40’s.
“What’s up?” I said to Steve.
“There he’s. Hunter Simon, the man who is fixing the world...one loser at a time.”
Okay, maybe he was on his third large Ricardo’s beer mug. That statement was crude, even for Steve’s standards. “I’m not in the mood, brother. I had a bad day,” I said, giving Steve fair warning: no more career jokes.
“Sorry, man. I’m just giving you a hard time.” Steve looked at me, concerned. We had been best friends for years, and he knew if I was to make a statement like that, then I really had a bad day. He knew I could take a lot of shit. I came here tonight to forget my job, not to be reminded what a high failure rate I had in helping people.
“No worries, man. You didn’t know,” I said, steering the fun back into the night.
“Anything you want to talk about?” Steve asked with a touch of sarcasm in his voice.
“Not really. Let’s just watch some football.”
“Raider Nation, baby,” Steve snickered at me.
“Raider Nation, my ass. Peyton Manning is going to take the Faders to town tonight.” Now, this was the type of shit-talking I meant. Good, clean shit-talking about teams we had nothing to do with.
The waitress came up to our table, and she was a new girl. Steve and I came here all the time, and we both had had some luck in getting waitresses to come home with us and well, you know...play Trivial Pursuit. This was definitely fresh meat.
She walked up to me and said, “What can I get you?” She looked like a bikini model from one of the beer advertisement commercials. She had brown hair and was built like a supermodel. Damn, she was hot.
I quickly looked at Steve and gave him a look that said, ‘Are you fucking kidding me? The new waitress is this smoking and you didn’t let me know?’
“I’ll have an order of sweet and sour wings and a MGD,” I said, and gave the gorgeous waitress a confident smile.
“A glass or the large mug?” she asked, not even looking up at me.
I looked at her name tag. “Well, Wendy, I’ll have the large mug.” Wendy had beautiful green eyes. She had some meat on her bones, but it didn’t matter, because it looked as if it was in her boobs. I’m by no means a pig, but I love a beautiful woman. I’m a pretty handsome guy, or at least that’s what I’ve been told. I have that smoldering squint thing going on. Not because I was mysterious and James Dean-like. It was more I needed glasses, too vain to wear them, too scared to have laser surgery, and too weirded out about sticking contacts in my eyes.
There wasn’t a ring on Wendy’s finger, but I was sure she never made eye contact with me. I needed to see if at least there was some attraction on her part. I have light brown hair and green eyes. I was thin, but it was a muscular thin. At my age, I’m a catch and I knew it. I have a great job, and my only vice is betting. Plus, I’m one charming dude, so I have been told.
“All right, sweet and sour wings and a MGD in a large mug,” I said to Wendy. Okay, maybe my second vice was drinking, but I kept it under wraps. Wendy never looked me in the eye. She walked away and took the order to the kitchen. She never knew what she had missed. I looked at Steve, who had gotten back to work on his nachos as if he would never eat again. “What was that about? She never once looked at me.”
Steve laughed. “Yeah, she’s a hard ass. That’s why I didn’t say anything. She has zero flirt in her waitress arsenal.”
“Doesn’t she understand that the way she gets drunk thirty-year-olds like us to give her an obscene tip at the end of the evening is by flirting? Because we don’t know any better and we just might think we have a shot, so we throw down an insane tip?”
“I don’t think she cares,” Steve said. “She has been told she’s hot all her life and she only comes up for air if she’s really interested.”
“Well, that’s just dumb business practice,” I said. “I don’t care how thorough of a waitress she is; she would only be getting 15 percent. The bare minimum I give is 10 percent and that’s when I get shitty service. I give 15 percent for mediocre to minimal service. I give 20 percent if the person does their job.”
“Huh? I didn’t realize she was a franchise.”
“She’s a franchise in her own surroundings.”
“How so?” Steve asked.
“Can her job take her tips?”
“No, her tips are all hers,” Steve said.
“So if you look at it, inside the realm of her making tips, she has an infinite ceiling, correct? In all reality, her job could pay her eight bucks an hour, but technically, she could walk out of here with two grand each night.”
“That would be some waitress.” Steve laughed. “We’re talking the works. She would have to cut my hair, feed me, and massage my feet, shoulders, and neck. Maybe even pop a couple zits on my back.”
“I’m glad you kept your statement classy as always.”
“I aim to please,” Steve said.
There was a pause at the table. Steve was great at reading silence for what it was. In this case, I was still feeling uncomfortable with the decision I was basically forced to make today about a person I had recently grown very fond of.
“What happened today?” Steve asked. “It’s obviously eating away at you. Let’s talk about it and get it out of the way, and we can watch the Silver and Black beat up some Broncos.”
I shook my head. I really didn’t want to go into it with Steve, but I guess it was bothering me more than I thought. How could it not? I made a decision that ended a man’s life this afternoon. “I had to make a rough decision today. A guy wrote in his bereavement papers that I was to be the one to make the final decision on his life.”
“What does that mean? You were his power of attorney?” Steve asked.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Wow, that’s heavy. Don’t they need your signature for that?”
“He was an outpatient of mine, and I thought I was signing his weekly report that he turns into his parole officer.”
“Instead, he had you sign his power of attorney paper?”
“Yep.” I looked at Steve and his investigative mind was working on overdrive.
“Who was this guy? Don’t tell it was that Crenshaw character?”
“It was,” I said.
“I told you he was bad news.”
“He wasn’t bad news. He had nobody in this world who gave a shit if he lived or died. He did what he had to do to get me to sign those papers.”
“You really liked that guy?”
“I mean he was no Steve Moss, but he had great qualities, and his addiction was bigger than his will.”
“That’s the difference between you and me, Hunter. You give the average Joe a chance. Hell, you give pond scum a chance. Me? I don’t trust anybody.”
“You don’t trust me?” I asked.
Then Steve gave me a look and said, “I don’t even trust myself.”
“That’s comforting to know: my best friend since freshman year in college doesn’t trust me.”
“Look, I trust you, Hunter. I trust you to show up when you say you’re going to show up. I trust that when you tell me something about your day, it’s the truth. You see, our world... the one you and I live in as friends…isn’t part of that world out there. The one filled with drugs, crime, and homicide. You see, Hunter, when I step into that world, I don’t trust anyone. I just do my job and hope the information I’m getting is correct.”
“What about Munson?”
“Munson is a great guy. But at the end of the day, do I completely trust him? No. You see, he will always have the Shield’s best interest, regardless if he steps outside the lines and gives me information that can help me on a complicated case or not.”
Munson was Steve’s immediate contact on the force. They were constantly doing each other favors. Whenever Steve needed police help, he called Munson. And whenever Munson needed to step out of protocol, if he needed something done that wasn’t necessarily by the book, he had Steve do it. I had met him a few times and he seemed like a genuine cop that cared for people and who wanted to see justice done at all costs.