by Sharn Hutton
Incredulous at Jerry’s ability to make a terrible situation even worse, but too angry to laugh, Adam grabbed at his arm and swung him sideways, away from the glass and the desk, across the room. Jerry took a faltering step, impeded by a low coffee table. It crushed his shins and felled him in a rag doll flop that splintered the inopportune table under his weight.
Adam stood, slack jawed and immobile, his vision snapping between the images in his mind and a painful reality playing out before him: Rachel’s shuddering shoulders as she clung to her child, to her sanity; Jerry’s search for purchase on the broken fragments of the table, slipping in his own blood—fear evident in his desperate scuffle to get up. McGinty’s laugh, “You wanted to know, man!”
Jerry managed to get to his feet and stumbled forward, arms wind-milling against gravity. Through the bathroom door he charged with increasing speed, out of control.
Adam saw him then: saw his head connect with the glinting metal of the bath tap; saw him sag to the floor, leaving his left arm flailed across the tub above. His palm, wet with exertion and blood, clung independently to the slick enamel. It squeaked and bumped its way across the surface. Ultimately losing the battle, it fell limp and lifeless to the cold white tiles.
Adam too sank to the floor, his head a tornado of conflicting emotion. He wanted justice and love, not this violence, not death. Jerry was his anchor, his earth.
Adam had flown high in an unscrupulous world of crime and money while Jerry took the earthbound path. He’d been idiotic, chaotic, but he’d achieved what Adam never could.
Adam was alone. More alone in that moment than ever before. Wealth was not the measure of a man’s success, he understood that now. He’d understood it, landing that shocking punch on the malevolent McGinty. There was no lasting happiness to be found while the devil held your soul. Jerry had found the Holy Grail: a loving wife, a new-born child. Why didn’t he get it?
Adam tore at his hair with both hands, folding his chest down to his knees, he roared in anguish. Eyes screwed tight to block out the world, his chest imploded with misery.
Tears came now. Unfolding his body, he let the spasms run their course. A torrent of uncontrolled sobs rushed from Adam’s heart. The flood washed thorough him, taking with it the sticky mire of deceit that had clung to him since his sorry plan’s inception.
It left behind it grief. Grief for the life he’d lost: the old Adam gone for good; grief for Rachel—she would never forgive him for this; grief for his friend.
Collapsed in ruins against the broken wardrobe door, he had a clear view of Jerry prone on the bathroom floor, blood pooling beneath his head. His arm lay flopped unnaturally behind his back, his fingers pointing toward the guilty maniac in the next room. What had he done? He couldn’t comprehend it.
Loss and desperation dragged a veil through Adam’s vision. Unseeing open eyes stared out into oblivion and then the numbness came.
FIFTY-FOUR
IT WAS A NEW CACOPHONY OF SOUND THAT BROUGHT ADAM BACK. Adrift in the tragedy of his own sorry story, he had lost all sense of time and reality. Now something was happening outside. Barely functioning, he stumbled to the window to see.
The Strip was usually awash with people and banks of neon that lit the dark desert sky. Tonight smoke billowed from the hotel opposite and six fire trucks blocked the road below. Their red flashing lights made an incongruous contribution to the wonderland of colour. Flames licked from the Monte Carlo’s 3rd floor windows.
People streamed frightened and disoriented into the street. They fled through the grand arches in their pyjamas and their Prada. Great snakes of police, guiding arms stretched wide, shepherded them away from danger, along the street toward the medic base camp set up two hundred meters away. Some ran, some screamed and cried, others ambled slow and shocked away from their personal horrors. Stretcher-bearing paramedics hurried past them, pushing loaded gurneys toward waiting ambulances.
Adam watched. The magnitude of what he saw danced beyond the glass. His mind was quiet and still: the centre of the tornado. Around him his emotions whirled, fast and invisible, cutting him off. As he stood the blood returned to his tingling limbs. His arteries reopened, recovering from the crushing uncomfortable position he’d held stupefied on the floor. He took a deep breath and turned to face the atrocity of the bathroom: Jerry motionless on the floor.
How long had he lain there? Adam dropped to one knee by his side. Jerry’s body lay contorted, his cheek resting in a pool of glutinous scarlet. He reached out a tentative hand to touch the curls of hair slicked to the bathroom floor. Hard and surprising. Adam withdrew, clasping his hands together with steepled fingers.
Adam listened, at first disbelieving, to the sound of tiny shallow breaths. Jerry was breathing. He’d been so sure his friend was dead and that he was to blame. Now he nursed a spring of hope in his chest. It wasn’t too late.
“Jerry! Jerry? Can you hear me?” Adam patted his cheek.
No words came.
“Jerry! Jerry! Come on, buddy!”
A soft groan rumbled deep within and Adam pulled Jerry up to clutch him to his chest. He was cold, freezing cold. He pulled the bath sheet from the rail and swaddled him as best he could. He had to find help. Shaking, Adam scooped him up and hurried out of the room.
Jerry’s hair brushed against the bedroom door as they jostled through and left a bloody smear on the door frame opposite too as Adam swung around to pull the door closed.
He jabbed at the lift button with his elbow and watched impatiently while the indicator above the doors continued to read ‘G’. With the lift stuck or held on the ground floor, Adam’s feet itched to be on their way, the weight of Jerry pulling at his shoulders. He strode out for the stairwell, pushing the door open with his back, and focused his mind away from the burn that was rising in his thighs. He’d descended several floors before realising that he had no plan and when he finally made it out into the lobby, the scene was one of mayhem.
Guests and gamblers alike were fearful of the fire raging in the hotel opposite. Afraid that it could spread to touch them too, they were making good their escape, streaming through the lobby and out onto The Strip. Adam was swept along with them.
An anarchic combination of curiosity and panic sucked the people out into the street. Their eyes saw only the burning building and the victims running from it. They had no time for their fellow gawkers, jostling each other and stepping on toes. Adam found himself amongst them, washed along the river of voyeuristic suffering straight into the back of a police officer.
The officer spun around, easily agitated and over stressed, but his face softened when he saw Adam carrying Jerry, when he realised, erroneously, that he was carrying a victim. Adam was a citizen assisting the injured and the officer moved aside to let them through. A few steps on and a bustling paramedic took Jerry from his arms.
No words were spoken. The silent contract of a medic’s responsibility for life assumed, he laid Jerry on the gurney he’d been hauling and turned his back on Adam to check his patient over.
A thousand men’s disaster had brought good fortune for just one. Jerry would be safe now. Adam could detach. Sirens and shouting filled his ears and fed the cyclone, giving it momentum, lifting it over him. He backed away. Too many people, too many faces filled with horror. They knew, knew him, knew what he’d done and it burned. Smoked stung his eyes and squeezed his throat. He pushed back against the tide of people, not caring if they yelped or cursed. He had to get away.
FIFTY-FIVE
HANDS CLAMPED TIGHT OVER HIS EARS TO KEEP THE NOISE AT BAY, Adam pushed through the gawking crowd. Mesmerised by the unfolding scene, their urgent need to escape the hotel had dissolved into paralysed curiosity. Immobile beings that blocked the sidewalk and served no purpose, but to witness. Adam kept his head down and eyes in slits. His head was full, no room for more. Just the pavement—that was all he needed to see, to know that there was still the ground beneath his feet, while his head spun and the tight bel
t of pain around his chest hunched his shoulders. The sirens pierced his brain in shrill daggers and he sank away, into himself, but still he staggered on. “Watch it, buddy.” A man: his face screwed up and angry. Adam looked into his eyes, unable to connect, then lurched away to leave their meaningless encounter behind.
The Strip was full of people, no matter where you went and looking on uptown the crowds continued. Adam couldn’t bear to be amongst them: brushing shoulders, inhaling their used breath, shrinking with guilt beneath their stare.
A corner gave an opportunity to turn away and Adam took it. Less people on this route. He felt the empty air around him and it soothed the crush inside his head, but still there were people.
Another corner and a quieter street. He straightened up and slowed his pace. All but deserted: better still. A tramp in a doorway shouted out, “Too loud for ya! Ya crazy fucker, you get away from me!” He swung a paper-wrapped bottle to his lips and took a greedy pull. Adam tried to focus and remembered his hands clutched to his ears. He let them fall and dragged his eyes from the filthy wretch squatting on the floor. Music thumped from the bar a few doors on, but the mass of voices no longer pressed against his senses. The beat felt familiar, like somewhere to lose himself.
Swarthy men in ripped jeans and faded fashion spilled out of the bar onto the street, one unfortunate pushed around between them. A flurry of swinging fists and punishing feet exploded in a noisy drama up ahead as Adam continued to approach. The victim pulled himself out of the scrum and ran, scratching at the floor with his fingernails to gain momentum. In seconds he was sprinting and one of his aggressors pulled a gun from their waistband, loosing off a couple of pot shots that missed and made his comrades laugh. “Yeah, you better run,” he crowed.
The door to the bar stood open and Adam turned before the huddle on the pavement and wobbled through its grimy frame, the need for alcohol suddenly all-consuming. The man with the gun watched Adam’s progress and raised an eyebrow to his friends. They followed him inside.
FIFTY-SIX
JERRY FELT HIS STOMACH DROP AND VIBRATIONS THAT RATTLED HIS TEETH TOGETHER. It brought him up from the depths of unconsciousness. A swish he recognised as sliding doors and then the rattling stopped, to be replaced with swift motion and the squeak of rubber on lino. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. His eyes were closed and his mouth was dry. He couldn’t see them, but he knew that they were there: an indefinable presence of humanity that encircled and lifted him, that laid him out.
A man’s voice, “Unknown male, approximately forty years old. Significant head trauma to the upper right side, cause unknown. G.C.S. score of 4, resp’s 14, pulse 85, BP 200 over 100.” And then a woman. “My name is Doctor Delacruz. You are at Canyon Springs Hospital. Can you hear me?”
Jerry tried to speak, but only rattled air in the back of his throat.
“Can you open your eyes?”
He knew he could, but somehow couldn’t find the command.
Fingers touched his face and probed his scalp. “Facial blood has come from the cranial injury only.” Light flooded into one eye without form or explanation. “Right pupil is blown. Are there any injuries to the rest of the body?”
“Lacerations to both palms, forearms and back.” The man again.
“No signs of smoke inhalation. Breath sounds are good bilaterally. Thank you, crew. Nurse Cosenza, intubate and get our John Doe on oxygen. Nurse Neill set up BP, cardio and sat’s monitors. Let’s get him anesthetised and taken up for a CT. Then call Neurology and let Doctor Applebaum know we’ve got another one for him.”
Jerry felt the movement in the room, heard dragging trolley feet and the pop of plastic packaging. His clothing fell away to be replaced with cold air and sticky pads against his skin.
A needle scratched at the back of his hand and a flood of tingling ice crept up his arm.
“Where did you pick him up?” the woman called out. “The Monte Carlo,” came the man’s reply, quiet and distant now. “Everybody’s coming from the Monte Carlo.” The cool wave sloshed over Jerry’s shoulder and swept away the world.
FIFTY-SEVEN
THE NEXT HE KNEW, JERRY DRIFTED OUT OF A CLOUD OF MORPHINE. He still couldn’t move and his eyes were still closed, but he didn’t think that he was dead: he could hear people arguing.
Surely in Heaven it was all harps and angel song? And if he’d landed up in the other place, then it really wasn’t sufficiently hot to match his preconceptions. Perhaps irritating arguing for an eternity would be hell enough? He just needed Isabell to pitch up to nag him and that would probably swing it.
“Of course I don’t have the notes. If I had them then I wouldn’t be asking you, now would I? This is shambolic, Nurse Bowman—”
“Brown.”
“Nurse Brown, right, that’s what I said.”
“I think they might be at the desk, Dr Applebaum.”
“Well go check, go check.”
Jerry’s feet dipped down and to the side, as if someone had sat beside him, and in the peace that followed Jerry allowed his mind to drift in the fluffy cotton wool of prescription narcotics. His eyes rolled and brought him back when the doctor started to speak.
“Another. Another. What can we see? U-huh. Yes. Hmmm.” He shuffled his position, and leant on Jerry’s leg. “Cerebral contusion, but the pia-arachnoid membrane does not appear to be ruptured. No subarachnoid haemorrhage.” He took a slow nasal breath. “He’ll have to go to theatre. Make ready to transport, Nurse Bowman.”
“Brown.”
“Brown. Right, that’s what I said.”
The doctor got up and continued to talk, but his voice was more distant. “Applebaum … space in theatre … neurological team … decompressive craniectomy. Bump it, we’re on our way.”
That sounded significant, but Jerry hadn’t quite caught it all. His brain was too tired and someone was making a right old racket next to his bed. Cables clonked against steel and plastic rustled and cracked. Then he was moving.
The bed squeaked along and came to an abrupt halt, the sound of tumbling containers rattling a few feet away. Doctor Applebaum spoke, closer now.
“For goodness sake, Nurse, we can’t have any more patients sustaining injuries whilst actually inside the hospital. The press are already full of it. We’re walking the plank here, you know.” He paused for a slow breath and continued, more composed. “Oh. No. No. Let’s leave the fittings behind and just take what we need, hmm? Steady as she goes. Theatre three.”
The ping of a lift door closing and stomach dropping motion. Fingernails drummed on a rail.
“Just two more years, Nurse, and I’m retired. Two more years to keep this rabble afloat and it’ll be all golf days and tequila sunsets from then on. No more aching tiredness. No more responsibility. No more accusations. This is the safest bet on our John Doe. A craniectomy will relieve the pressure inside his head, while the brain’s swelling over the next few days and, if we put him into a barbiturate induced coma, brain activity will be at a minimum to aid the healing process. There are no guarantees, of course, but it’s the best I can come up with.”
They rolled out of the lift and continued to trundle for a minute of two, Jerry couldn’t judge the time, but they were stationary when he was aware of Applebaum speaking again. “Nurse Bow- -rown. Brown—ha. Prep side room thirteen for our Mr Doe. Nice and quiet, tranquil and unstimulating. Lose the hubbub. Keep the traffic around him down. All these extra people from the Monte Carlo, all these extra germs.” He paused for another unnaturally long breath. “Of course, tidy it up in there. Get rid of the cleaning equipment. Mop, bucket, broom: they’ll need another home. Maybe the cleaner could actually take them. We do have a cleaner right? Of course. Ha. Seriously though, low stimulation. Keep the station banter for the canteen. Shhh.” Jerry imagined his finger at his lips.
Nurse Brown yawned. “Absolutely.”
FIFTY-EIGHT
ADAM SWALLOWED DOWN THE SICKLY BURN AND CLOSED HIS EYES.
“Now, sugar, why don’t you come along with me?” She leaned in to be heard above the music and purred into his ear. Adam shrugged away the pink-talonned hand on his shoulder and looked back to his drink.
“I can make it all better, honey,” she persisted.
“No, thanks.” Adam stared down into his glass, the last of the amber liquid swirling with a twist of his wrist. He knocked it back and signalled to the barman for another.
“Rita can make anything better. Rita got magic power.” She pressed herself against Adam’s side, looping a leg around him and pressing her breasts against his arm. She smelt of peppermint and sweat. Adam shrugged his shoulder up to dislodge her and turned his head to briefly look her in the eye.
“I said no thanks. There’s nothing you can do to help me.”
Rita stepped back and brushed herself down. “Well ain’t you just the pity party.”
“Yeah.” Adam took a sip from his new drink.
“Who’s this bum you talking to, Rita?” The voice came from behind him and Adam craned his neck around to find the pot shot-happy gunman from the street. He curled his lip at Adam and looked him up and down. He wore black ripped jeans and a grey marl T-shirt bearing a complicated Aztec design. It was dark with sweat in drooping ovals beneath his armpits and down the centre of his chest. His hair was black and shoulder length, swept back in a greasy slick from his forehead. He jutted out his chin when he spoke and Adam saw McGinty in his hooded eyes.