Lay Saints

by Adam Connell

  “We wouldn’t have left the bar,” Piker said.

  “Oh you’re not leaving,” Sotto said.

  “If we want to,” Attila said.

  “Condone us the jobs we’ve been pleading for years, we’ll stay indefinitely,” Piker said. “I’d go so far as to use the word perpetuity.”

  “We can’t accept those, they’re an abuse.”

  “You won’t accept them, Uptown will,” Attila said.

  “Could quadruple our money,” Piker said. “Your money. These jobs are here.”

  All this arguing, with the twins in bed, and Sotto too stubborn to come full into the bedroom.

  “Those jobs are wrong. I’ll throw you a word, since they’re being thrown, immoral.”

  “It’s that prudishness is why we’re leaving,” Attila said.

  “You’re not leaving. Kinkaid left. I’m not gonna let you abandon me for someone who abandoned me.”

  “What was all that about this girl?” Piker said.

  “To see if you’d assent just because I asked it. You never said you would, all you have for me are deflections.”

  “Pay us out more line, give us run,” Piker said. “We’re emaciated for freedom.”

  “Ewhat?” Attila said.

  “To victimize,” Sotto said. “You’ve been given a variety of freedoms under my roof and you’ve taken liberty to fornicate with the competition.”

  “We won’t bring anything with us,” Piker said. “You can have everything we own, and there’s some valuable shit hidden behind these walls you say flex.” He smiled. Sotto hated their smiles; their teeth were all crooked in exactly the same formation. Piker said, “We’ll even go naked if you like, right out the bar right now.”

  “You’re not going.”

  “We’ll stay and hash out a compromise,” Attila said. “Experiments, run trials. A foray into what my brother and I want, to see what we can make fit with what you won’t.”

  “You’re not staying,” Sotto said.

  Attila struck first, then Piker. They’d tried to imagine for Sotto an aneurysm — and thus engender a real one — but it didn’t take.

  Sotto smothered them under giant gloves, slowly stealing from the brothers the unconscious function of breathing.

  Gasping, not knowing why there was such heaviness in their chests, they peeled from Sotto his name, his age, whatever memories were foremost and accessible.

  Sotto went down on one knee, curious as to where he was but overwhelmed with a reveille of danger. He recognized the two faces on the bed and forced the reality of each one’s death onto the other’s mind.

  The twins were divided but enraged at their solitude. Attila and Piker, fat from revenge, synchronous but without collaboration, inseminated Sotto with total loss. Coaxing from him all his senses. It was their most frontal attack, but neither anticipated Sotto was weak enough to fully succumb. Not without Kinkaid to help them. Either way, Piker would have preferred waiting for Kinkaid’s help.

  Sotto wasn’t as strong as everyone, everyone, expected him to be.

  Next they put a whine in Sotto’s head, low but with an exponential fortissimo.

  Sotto went down on the other knee, then onto his face. Menstrual-dark blood was gushing from his ears. One would aver, a result of the inner noise.

  The naked twins jumped from their bed and stood over him. They hugged each other, seeing now that the other hadn’t died. They took gigantic breaths as if coming up for air from a shipwreck. Their skin was gemmed with sepia nonpareils of sweat.

  Sotto was still breathing strongly, though on his face, down on the floor like that. Piker placed his bare foot on Sotto’s neck and stepped downwards until the man’s eyes stopped blinking, his chest stopped rising, his feet stopped kicking, his ears stopped bleeding.

  “Bastard would’ve stranded us in our own heads,” Piker said as he lifted his foot off and wiped it on the comforter. “We have to hide him. Not necessarily well, but hidden.”

  “Then what?” Attila said. “They’ll all know. Something this catastrophic? Anyone who reads will see it in our skulls like ink on paper.”

  They agreed to — without saying so aloud — to coevally, jointly, wipe the events from each other’s minds, later, after, so no one would know what happened, not even them.

  The girl they could easily leave on a street near the hospital Sotto had snatched her from. Her memory was like a sponge, in that it was diseased with holes and could be squeezed dry.

  back to top

  SIXTY

  Sunday, Sext

  Rook went into Calder’s room as Calder was putting on his socks. “Where you going?”

  “Finish the job,” Calder said.

  “Finish the job, job’s finished. Adelard’s voting our way.”

  “Not cause of anything I did.” His socks were on, now his shoes.

  Rook came in closer. “Client doesn’t know this. Far’s they’re concerned, we did what we didn’t. They won’t ever know, they don’t know from Stones, we keep the money.”

  “I feel like a thief for that,” Calder said.

  “Jesus wept, Calder. We find a new one, another one.”

  “I haven’t proven myself.”

  “All the same,” Rook said.

  “Are you listening?” Calder said. “Proved myself not just to Sotto but to me.”

  “You wanna make sure the Int gets passed.” Rook sat on the bed, perpendicular to Calder, facing the wall. “You don’t gotta be a John Henry,” Rook said. “Put the railroad hammer down, Cal.”

  “I haven’t demonstrated to this city I belong in this city.”

  “Faraday and Lundin, they’ll be after you now. Be better you go after them. That’s rational.”

  Calder said, “I’m not feeling rational. I spent the last two weeks trying to throw a Stone, effecting nothing, doing nothing. Vote passes, I’ll have done something.”

  “You don’t want me to help,” Rook said.

  Calder left the room with Rook on the bed.

  SIXTY-ONE

  Sunday, late Sext

  Later in the day, midday, I watched Calder bluff his way into St. Luke’s Roosevelt and up to the ICU. He found Tamm right off, on the second of the ICU’s two levels.

  She was sharing a room but who ever cares about the body in that other bed?

  Tamm’s torso had expanded from upper pelvis to lower chest as if she were pregnant. Her legs and arms and face — the parts of her left exposed by the gown and sheets — were terribly swollen, beyond bloated.

  The hair around her ears was shaven. Her skin had been washed of all that blood. There were no visible dressings but because Calder had seen her prone and wounded after the attack, he was well aware that under her gown she was taped up and stitched together. The wet rasping to her exhalations hadn’t changed, and her head was rolled to the side precisely as he’d found her in the apartment. She’d been intubated; the exterior end of an endotracheal tube was taped to her mouth.

  The machines she was tethered to, Calder recognized them all.

  She was in an induced coma.

  Calder carried an armchair to her bed, put it down and sat down. He felt that he shouldn’t be here, he was trespassing. That despite their intimacies he wasn’t justified to see her in such degradation.

  Tamm was unconscious but she could hear underneath the cumulous density between her and the waking world. Calder plumbed the depths and found her listening but not responding. He gave the hook a few tugs but there was no reply.

  Calder decided to buy his seat with effort. They’d shared some secrets but all he knew of her were common experiences common to millions. He needed more than that to hold his candle. This coma vigil was a real vigil to him.

  A tether of like joys. History separate but together.

  Did you get into a lot of fights as a kid?

  Silence.

  Your parents get along? Mine did and didn’t.

  Silence.

  Brothers, sisters. You ne
ver said.

  Silence.

  I have four brothers and a sister.

  Silence.

  Any phases you went through, besides Goth? Maybe Barbie? Geek?

  Silence.

  Athlete? You have the build. Field hockey?

  Silence.

  Crushes on any teachers? Who hasn’t had one. Kiss any?

  Silence.

  Believe in ghosts? I do. We all got a relative who’s seen one.

  Silence.

  You never told me what your favorite food is.

  Silence.

  Ski? Parachute? Climb? Sail?

  Silence.

  Ever nap too much of the day and feel guilty?

  Silence.

  Stay up more than twenty-four hours? A whole weekend?

  Silence.

  Been in a hospital before?

  Silence.

  Had someone close to you die?

  Silence.

  Silence.

  Calder told her he’d brought his barber’s satchel, had used it to help get inside. He picked it up off the floor to show her.

  A veteran nurse came in, the kind with short hair and brisk, manly hands. She dragged the dividing curtain all the way round Tamm’s roommate, performed some ritual that required her saying, “Hush, hush,” and “Sweetie, just for a moment.”

  She left the curtain in place and came towards Tamm with a smile. “He’ll stop keening soon,” the nurse said, tipping her head in the roommate’s direction.

  “Couldn’t hear him,” Calder said.

  “Wishing for death,” she said. “In a hospital, think of it, wishing for to die. She used to be pretty,” the nurse said with a finger aimed at Tamm. “She will be again. People get hurt the way she was they turn into dirigibles, that’s why she’s so big there.”

  The nurse slid the room’s other armchair to the bottom of Tamm’s bed, sat down.

  “Shouldn’t you be making rounds?” Calder said. He was too exhausted to make her leave.

  “Honey, doctors make rounds. I’m a nurse right here. And I’ve got break. I kinda like spending time with comas, we get them so rarely.”

  Calder sat in quiet, hoping the nurse would correctly appraise the value of his privacy.

  “I worked at JFK Memorial for seventeen years. I’ll tell you about two people came through the doors. Give you straws to hold on to but also bad dreams. You” — she pointed at Calder — “shouldn’t be here.”

  “I have a right,” Calder said but with no conviction.

  “You snuck this far, you must feel you have a right, and that’s fine,” the nurse said. “First man, about drowns taking a bath. Don’t take baths, son, you’re marinating in your own dirt. A lapse, he coulda been sleeping, knocks the back of his head on the faucet? Comes in here with all the animation of a cartoon tree.”

  Tamm made a noise but didn’t move.

  “They do that, like a house settling,” the nurse said, which Calder knew. “So six months into his coma, Mr. Tree wakes up near ten at night, spitting up liquid. Doctors said it was pulmonary fluid or some excuse, but we all knew it was a bit of that bathwater he about drowned in.”

  “That isn’t possible,” Calder said. “Six months?”

  “Ask any nurse my age what isn’t possible. You’ll get a very narrow answer.”

  The man beyond the curtain slurred a few sentences in a dreary tone. The nurse ignored him.

  “The second one, she’s a woman. Did I say ‘First man’ before? Like they was both men? She comes in, a grandmother.”

  “But I’m supposed to buy this,” Calder said.

  “I been less than honest with you yet?”

  Calder was too tired to verify.

  “She’s got kids. She’s got grandkids. There’s brothers, there’s nieces. This woman had fans. They were in and out her room from breakfast till breakfast, like how airports never close. They let families do this if they want at JFK Mem. You know, the old saw, they can hear, comas, hear everything.”

  The nurse raised her legs, put her sneakers on the bed. One sole was worn worse than the other.

  “They’re reading to her, they’re talking to her. Played all kinds of music. Confessing, praying, laying their problems at her bed like she’s an altar. It was touching, how devout this family was with her.”

  Calder was mildly interested now, wishing this tale was told already but also curious how she would end it.

  “She’s grey, she’s weak as wet paper, wakes up, her first word she’s trying for a shout but she can’t muster one. ‘Stop.’ Twice more so her family can hear, then a dozen more times ‘Stop.’ Doctors had to put her out, sedatives. And that beats all, don’t it? Sedating a patient just come outta coma.”

  “Stop?” Calder said.

  “Stop, stop. She could hear the whole damn family the whole darn time and got no rest. Nine months of that, and it’s torture. And it’s true.”

  Calder was too curious not to find out.

  It was true, or the nurse believed it to be.

  “Your wife? Fiance?” the nurse said. “She’ll rally here, her body, and they’ll banish her to a clinic like JFK. She isn’t even gonna see Recovery. Not for a long time, maybe ever. Or they’ll cart her upstate, hospital in a women’s prison, she don’t have any insurance and the state-run hospitals being what they are. Overcrowded.”

  “You’ve been so kind to keep me company,” Calder said. “I was wondering, could you check if a friend of mine was brought here as well? I think he was. He was in the same accident.”

  “His name?” she said.

  “Briggs.”

  She returned to the room with a swiftness Calder thought unnatural.

  “He is,” she said. “Next floor down. Might have to sneak your way in there, too, though.”

  “Thank you,” Calder said. And he fucking meant it.

  Calder felt compelled to resume testing Tamm but the nurse was making a home of the armchair again.

  He was no longer calm and wanted the nurse to vanish.

  “Your son does hate you,” Calder said.

  “My son does what me?” Her feet slipped off Tamm’s bed and crashed to the floor with a squeak.

  “Your son,” Calder said. “How couldn’t he, the things you did to him? Should I list them?”

  She ran from the room as if it were about to collapse.

  Calder asked Tamm twice as many questions as before. He kept getting the same answer.

  back to top

  SIXTY-TWO

  Sunday, early None

  “I’m gonna buy one of these when I get an apartment,” Hoone said. “Mattress, it’s slim but soft.”

  He was lying on an unmade Hill-Rom, raising and lowering the top half of the hospital bed with the controls on the side panel. He also used the buttons to control the television, and he also poured himself some water from the plastic pitcher on the table next to him.

  “Craftmatic,” Hoone said. “Television. Nurses when I want one. Go to the bathroom in bed if I like. Room service for meals. Friends come see you, you don’t gotta go and see them. Why don’t more people go to hospitals? They’re like hotels with better service.”

  “Because they smell,” Lundin said. He was in the armchair between Briggs and the door. “People are dying to your left and your right. There’s no fucking privacy. They can stick a tube up your most tender places any time of day. And there’s such a thing as staph infection.”

  “I beg to differ, staph paranoia was created by the media so we’ll watch the news more often.”

  Briggs said nothing, heard nothing.

  His left hand, the one Calder had ground into the floor, was suspended on pipes and pulleys. It was the size of a beefcake tomato and just as red. Where the straining bandages let you see it. The thing was stabilized with thin rods — about two dozen — making the hand also look like a pincushion.

  The cigarette burns on his face were filled in with ointment and covered with gauze and tape. His left eye w
as past rescue, so he was wearing a patch. He was intubated as well, and there were tubes coming out his gown leading to various bags hooked to his bed’s skirt. There was a line of snot from his nose that neither Lundin nor Hoone wanted to wipe.

  See, Fish, you should be grateful. I didn’t say happy, but grateful. That Faraday wasn’t as thorough with you as Calder was with Briggs.

  You still got your instincts, motor control, control over your bodily functions. The ability to talk and the ability to listen.

  Maybe not your other abilities, your talents. Faraday took them from you. But you got the rest. You’re a functioning human being. Maybe not your memories, but your body and most of your mind.

  Any of this seem, sound, familiar to you? At all? What you’ve heard so far, anything?

  No? Faraday will be pleased.

  Lundin had paid for Briggs’ roommate, a kid and his rhinoplasty, to be moved into a room of his own.

  “Last time I was in a hospital,” Hoone said, “I don’t think it was this one.”

  “Quit playing with that bed.”

  “I had diarrhea it was Biblical. Gastrointestinal distress nothing, I was fighting for my life,” Hoone said. He sat up, facing Briggs and Lundin. “Dead serious, my guts were melting. My skin was dry. My face. That’s how much water I lost. And it was fire-water coming out, honest to goodness, and I’m not talking alcohol.”

  “Why would you go and tell me that?” Lundin said.

  “We’re in a hospital. You share stories.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “It’s the same as a veteran’s club. You reminisce. Ever been in a hospital?”

  “Not for myself, no,” Lundin said.

  “For someone else, then. How about, I’ll bounce you another one, then you bounce me one back.”

  “You really were famished for conversation on the road,” Lundin said.

  “I was twenty-seven, twenty-eight. I’d made a pact I’d try every street drug by the time I was thirty. Honest to God.”

  “With who?” Lundin said.