Vertical

by Rex Pickett

  She laughed at my hyperbole. Then she grew reflective. “Remember when you were little and you had the two burst eardrums?”

  “Yeah,” I said, amazed at her recall. “That was painful.”

  “They wanted to hospitalize you, but I wouldn’t let them take you.”

  “How come?”

  “Because I was so afraid you were going to die,” she sniffled.

  “What’s with you and hospitals?”

  “I was a nurse. People don’t come out of hospitals. Even little boys. They can get blood diseases, staph infections. I’ve seen it.”

  “A lot of people come out of hospitals, Mom. You did. Three times.”

  “I bet you wished I had died. Doug told me that.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s the one who conned you out of all of your money, Mom. Why would you believe him? It is true that Hank and I wanted to put you on a no-code,” I admitted. “And you wouldn’t be here if I had. And you know what?”

  “What?”

  I squeezed her shoulder. “I’m glad we didn’t.”

  She smiled at me and tears leached from her shut eyes. The day had lingered on, way too fucking long, and I was worried about making our scheduled destination.

  chapter 9

  Through the tinted windows of the dental clinic, the Rampvan loomed into view and braked to a halt in front of the swinging glass-door entrance.

  “They’re back,” I said to my mom, rising from my chair. “I need to talk to Jack. I’ll have Joy come get you.”

  I opened the fenestrated doors and it was so cripplingly hot it was like sticking my head into a bladesmith’s forge. Joy emerged from the passenger side, produced a flame from a small disposable lighter, took one urgent hit from her half-smoked joint, snuffed it out in her little Altoids tin, then walked up to me.

  “My mom’s inside,” I said.

  “Did they take out the tooth?”

  “No. But they gave her some Novocain, and antibiotics. If it starts hurting, we’ll find another dentist.” I jerked my head in the direction of the clinic. “Fucking dentist was an asshole. But, she’s fine now. I’ve got to have a private word with Jack, so go inside and keep her company for a few minutes. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Get Snapper out of the back and take him in with you. That’ll make her happy.”

  “Okay.”

  She gathered up Snapper from the back, leashed him, and then disappeared inside the clinic.

  I climbed into the passenger seat and found Jack behind the wheel, his normally florid face drained of blood. Glancing down, I noticed that he had an ice pack planted on his crotch and was pressing down on it with his left hand.

  “What’s the verdict?” I asked.

  “Just what you diagnosed, Miles. Acute case of priapism brought on by an overdose of Viag.” He shook his head disgustedly to himself.

  “So, what does that mean?”

  “Well, apparently, there are two kinds. Low-flow and high-flow. I have low-flow, which means I have blood trapped in the… erection chambers. It’s the worst of the two.”

  “The worst?” I asked with mounting alarm.

  He must have been focused on what was going to happen next because he didn’t amplify.

  “What do they want to do?”

  “I ice it overnight and if it doesn’t subside, they do a procedure called an aspiration.”

  I nodded, feeling sorry for my friend. Even the urge to find the humor had deserted me. “An incision to release the blood?” I ventured.

  “Not exactly,” he said, his Ray-Bans concealing his eyes and the anguish that must have been emanating from them. “With a huge syringe they insert a needle into my cock and draw the blood out.”

  I visibly winced. “Fuck, Jackson. Fuck.”

  “And,” he added, “if it doesn’t go down, and I don’t go through with the procedure, they told me I risk ED problems the rest of my life.” He finally turned to me and said in a plaintive voice: “I’m forty-two, Miles. I’ve got at least a couple thousand more fucks left.”

  “Maybe it’ll go down,” I said, affecting hopefulness I didn’t believe.

  “I fucking can’t believe this,” Jack whined. “They wanted to do the aspiration right there and then.”

  “Maybe it would be the prudent decision,” I said. “I’ll go with you. I’ll be with you the whole time. I’m your friend, dude. You’ve been through a lot of shit in the past couple of years. And I don’t want to see you go flaccid for the duration if that’s what you’re risking. Fucking’ll kill your life-spirit, man. Let’s just grit our teeth and go in and man up.”

  He was silent a long, clock-ticking moment. “Fuck, man, a needle two inches into my cock?” He shook his head at the horrific image. “Like something out of a Wes Craven movie. This is surreal shit, Miles.”

  “You know what my mom says?”

  “No, what?”

  “She told me the drag about getting old is that all they do is stick needles into you.” Jack managed a laugh. “Come on,” I said. “I’m sure they’ll give you a powerful local and you won’t feel a thing.”

  Jack slammed both hands on the steering wheel a couple of times. “All right, fuck! Let’s get it over with.”

  I climbed out of the Rampvan and went inside to retrieve my mother and Joy. After Joy had transferred my mother and Snapper into the back, I pulled her aside in the blistering heat and said, “I’ve got to take Jack back to the hospital. He’s got a… condition that needs to be attended to. It’s no big deal.” She nodded. “Can you drive?” She nodded again without saying anything. “You have a California Driver’s License and everything?” I asked.

  She looked at me, reasonably irritated with being condescended to. “I have a car, Mr. Raymond. You saw it.”

  “Right!” I slapped my forehead, remembering we had met her at her car what seemed liked weeks ago. “And don’t call me Mr. Raymond, Joy. Jesus.”

  “I can drive.”

  “Okay, you’re going to drop us off at the hospital and then I want you to check into the Courtyard Marriott I booked for tonight. The address is already inputted into the GPS. It’s not far. Jack and I’ll take a cab there once they’re done with him. All right?”

  “Okay.”

  “Make sure my mom gets a glass of wine–just one!” I said, straightening my index finger for emphasis. “Take her down by the pool. And, you, take a swim or something. Relax, okay? You’ve been working hard. And you’re doing a great job.”

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Miles,” she said.

  “And not Mr. Miles either,” I said with affected pique. “Miles. Just Miles.”

  The little wake-and-baker giggled.

  We climbed into the Rampvan. I sat in the back with my mother who cradled a panting Snapper in her lap, petting his head and talking to him as if he understood her and they were conversing in some polyglot stroke victim/canine lingua franca. Joy took the wheel, moving the seat forward, while Jack, sitting shotgun, opened an ale and chugged it. Joy looked over at him before starting the car.

  “What?” Jack said, dismayed by her icy stare.

  “I no get DUI,” she said.

  “Oh, fuck,” Jack said, sounding, unreasonably but not entirely without reason, peevish. He drained the bottle, handed it back to me, then smiled affectedly at Joy. “Feel better?”

  Joy just looked straight ahead, turned the engine over and drove us over to St. Agnes Medical Center. She dropped us in a parking lot fronting the ER.

  “Where’re you going?” my mother said in a rising tone of fear. “To another wine tasting?”

  “No, Mom. This is a hospital. I told you, Jack’s got a minor emergency…”

  “What?”

  “He has a hemorrhoid that needs to be removed, okay? We’ll meet you back at the hotel in a few hours. Joy’ll take care of you.”

  “Joy can’t take care of me all by herself,” she wailed.

  “She has, she can, and she will,” I said adamantly.
“Now, stop your caviling or I’m going to turn this ship around and take you back to Las Villas de Muerte.” I said it forcefully, the stress of the torrid day exploding out of me.

  “Don’t threaten me with your fancy words,” she shot back.

  “Try to be cooperative. We’ve all got our issues here.” I closed the van’s sliding door on her before she could launch into more protests. I circled around to the driver’s side and murmured to Joy, “Don’t listen to half of what she says. The stroke changed her into someone she would be appalled to see if she were normal.”

  “I know,” she said. “I work with them. Remember?”

  “Okay. Just give her a glass of wine and she’ll come around.”

  As Jack and I got out of the van, my mother, ill-tempered that I was abandoning her, yelled, “I hope your butt feels better, Jack.”

  Jack, not exactly looking forward to the aspiration, shot back, “Thank you, Mrs. Raymond.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and added in a rising tone, “I hope you enjoy your afternoon in your wheelchair!”

  My mother flipped him off. Jack looked at me, shaking his head. “What the fuck’s up with Phyllis?”

  “She thinks you’re a bad influence on me.”

  “Oh, I’m a bad influence on you!”

  “Just ignore her, man, okay, she’s had a bad day.”

  “Oh, she’s had a bad day?” Jack raged. “She’s got a fucking little abscessed molar and I’m about to let some asshole Fresno doctor plunge a needle into my dick!”

  Joy drove the Rampvan off. I hooked an arm around Jack and pulled him toward the entrance to St. Agnes’s ER. “Come on, man, it’s going to be fine. You’ll be back in action by the time we get to the IPNC where there’re going to be tons of hedonistic chicks drunk on wine.” That didn’t seem to cheer him up.

  Jack just gritted his teeth and let himself be escorted into the ER.

  Inside, after Jack re-acquainted himself with an admitting nurse who had evidently seen him earlier, the doctor who had examined him was resummoned. He was a young, nerdy-looking man with black-framed glasses and the pallor of those who rarely see the sun.

  “Let’s just do the aspiration, Doc. I don’t want to risk not being able to achieve an erection the rest of my life.”

  “He lives to get laid,” I joked.

  The doctor didn’t laugh. Laughter had no place in his job description, or his training. “All right,” he said. “Come with me.”

  After Jack’s vitals were checked and some blood was drawn, the white lab-coated physician led us into a small OR outfitted with diverse medical equipment. Jack was instructed to lie on the examining table. The doctor spoke into a speakerphone and asked for a nurse. A moment later, a gorgeous, curvy black woman appeared in a crisp white nurse’s uniform. She was as cheery and ebullient as Jack was disconsolate and disconcerted.

  The doctor and the nurse–Latisha on her nametag–conducted a little sotto voce colloquy and I watched Latisha’s eyes widen as she was apprised of Jack’s condition and what the procedure was to entail.

  After the doctor was finished getting Latisha up to speed on the course of action, she approached Jack. “So I understand you’ve got an acute case of priapism?”

  “Yeah,” Jack growled.

  “Viagra, huh?”

  “I don’t really need it,” Jack said, a little disingenuously. “I’d had a little too much to drink, but…”

  “You wanted to impress your woman,” she said, finishing his sentence.

  Jack laughed in spite of himself. “Isn’t that our job?”

  “Okay, we’re going to have to strip you down, Jack, honey, and let the doctor see what he’s dealing with here.”

  Jack reluctantly pushed his pants down. As the waistband crossed the threshold of his crotch his still gigantic cock shot upright, as if spring-loaded, and surged vertically toward the ceiling, an exotic plant growing in time-lapse photography.

  Latisha reared back when she saw it and brought a hand to her mouth in an effort to suppress her astonishment. It wasn’t just the size, but how the purpled veins stood out, turgid tributaries coursing down a thawing snow-capped mountain. They visibly throbbed, the mass of blood that had pooled there seeking an egress. His cock quivered in mid-air like an arrow that had just struck a tree. “Oh my Lordy,” Latisha said, unable to constrain herself. “I bet that hurts.”

  “Fucking A it hurts, sister.”

  Latisha laughed so hard, her prodigious boobs shook. “Oh, I bet.”

  The nerdy Dr. Reid returned to the OR bearing a syringe with a needle that looked like something used on livestock or pachyderms, some beast with such thick skin it required a needle a quarter-inch wide to inject whatever meds the vet had to introduce into its bloodstream. And the syringe, itself, was nearly the size of a wine thief. Hell, a turkey baster!

  Jack got a glimpse of the gigantic syringe and a look of horror clouded his face. “Holy shit, Doc, you didn’t tell me you were going to use a horse hypo!”

  “I’m afraid, Jack, after re-looking at the CT scan, that so much blood has pooled into your genital chambers that we’re going to have to go in a little deeper.”

  “How much deeper?”

  The doctor held his thumb and forefinger about three inches apart, then, recalibrating, widened it to four.

  “Shit. All right,” Jack grumbled, accepting the doctor’s explanation, “let’s get it on.”

  The doctor turned to Latisha. “Go ahead and numb him up,” he said.

  Latisha approached the procedure table. With surgical-gloved hands she squeezed an analgesic from a silver tube onto her index finger. Then she spread it over the head of Jack’s penis, moving in slow circles around the opening. “Tell me when you can’t feel my finger anymore, okay?”

  “Okay,” Jack said, staring at the ceiling. “You know, sister, if you used your other hand for support, you might get better coverage,” Jack suggested in a lame attempt at a joke.

  Latisha giggled, but kept up the application of the analgesic as the harried doctor waited, no time for banter, testing out the syringe. Now and then she would glance at Jack’s terrified, ghostly-white face, waiting for an answer.

  Finally, Jack said: “I think it’s pretty numb now, sister. Roll over and let doc take over.”

  She laughed and backed away from Jack’s turgid member.

  The doctor said to her, “Have tape and gauze ready, Latisha.”

  “Right away, Doctor,” she said.

  The doctor approached Jack, brandishing the mammoth syringe like some mad scientist in a black-and-white horror movie. “I’m not going to mollycoddle you, Jack. You’re going to feel pain. A lot of pain. We could do general anesthesia and put you under, but you’d have to check in, stay overnight…”

  “I get it, Doc. We’re on the road. We don’t have time for that. I made a mistake, I’ll take my medicine. Let’s just get it over with,” he finished sourly.

  The doctor locked eyes with Latisha, who nodded. Dr. Reid returned his attention to Jack’s, uh, problem area. With the syringe and four-inch needle pointed downward, vertically, he could have been a toreador, his sword over the shoulders of an exhausted, slouching bull, preparing to administer the estocada.

  He paused, saying to Latisha: “Could you steady his penis for me, please?”

  Wordlessly, she came forward and grasped hold of Jack’s cock with her strong right hand and held it upright–not that it was going anywhere!–in a fixed position. The doctor initiated the slow insertion. When the needle was a half-inch in, Jack started screaming bloody murder. The spate of profanity that spewed from him would have caused a Catholic archdiocese to prepare the flock for the Rapture.

  “Holy motherfucking Jesus fucking suck my dick Christ THAT HURTS!”

  Dr. Reid, ignoring Jack’s avalanche of imprecations, kept pushing the needle down the middle of the quivering shaft.

  Jack’s face looked more terrified than the subject in that painting “The Scream.” “Fu
ck, man. Fuck me. FUCK!!”

  When the doctor had the needle halfway in–easily two inches–and with Jack still cursing a blue streak and his upper body writhing like someone who had been struck by a Taser–he drew back very slowly on the plunger, using his index and middle fingers. Blood blossomed in the syringe. As the doctor continued to withdraw the plunger, the blood kept rising, keeping pace with the plunger. When it was three-quarters full, a look of concern darkened the doctor’s face. He kept withdrawing the plunger, but now more slowly. “God, I didn’t expect this much,” he muttered, trying to maintain his professional aplomb, but growing manifestly worried with each CC of blood he drew from Jack’s cock.

  Jack, his eyes covered with one hand, oblivious of what was going on, threw his head back and forth like some convulsing clairvoyant in the face of a vision of biblical floodwaters drowning the earth.

  “Have you ever done one of these aspirations before?” I asked the doctor.

  “No,” he said, his voice tense. Without looking at Latisha, he said, “You’d better get the gauze ready.” Latisha nodded. When the plunger reached the end of the syringe the doctor stopped. It become apparent that he didn’t know what to do next, as if he hadn’t been trained for the complication rapidly arising–so to speak–in this procedure. As the blood threatened to burst the syringe I noticed that instead of withdrawing the plunger he was now pushing down on it as if fighting an inexorable current, a tsunami in microcosm. “There’s a lot of pressure,” he said in an even more anxious voice. “I’m going to have to take it out, Latisha. You got the gauze?”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  Dr. Reid furrowed his brow as if debating the repercussions of the evasive maneuver. But before he could act, the plunger launched itself out of the syringe, a small, albeit powerful, projectile. Freed of its obstruction, blood pumped out of the syringe in a thick arcing stream. Dr. Reid freaked. “We’ve got a bleeder! WE’VE GOT A BLEEDER!”

  A more composed Latisha intoned, “Take the needle out, Doctor, so I can staunch it.”