by Mike McKay
“Mark? Mark!” The voice from his left belonged to Clarice. Slowly, Mark turned his entire body to the left. This part of the hospital ward contained two beds and was separated from the rest of the room by a makeshift plastic film partition. Clarice was sitting on the nearby bed, dressed in an oversized skirt and man's pajama top, with both her hands supporting her pregnant tummy. Little Davy half-sat, half-lay on grayish pillows, and was playing with the little Thomas The Tank Engine model, dragging the toy over a wrinkled bed sheet.
“Mark! Finally! You are awake! Thanks God!”
“Hi, Clarice…” Mark managed to squeeze out of his throat in a desperate half-whisper, “is Samantha OK? And everybody else?”
“Oh, Sammy is fine. They patched her up and released on the very first day. Just a little acid burn. Mister Stolz and his Marty are also fine. Sammy said: not a scratch!”
It meant the dark part of Mark's memory was true. Relax, relax, the part of the brain started again. No worries. “Wait a moment, Clarice. Where am I? It must be a hospital?”
“Hospital, what else?”
“Why Davy is in here?”
“He had a little polio…”
“Little what?”
“Little polio,” she said it casually, as if her son had a little cold.
A little polio, the no-worries part of Mark's brain said. One of the common childhood infections, nothing to worry about. But the other, ever-worrying part of the brain kept coming with a question. “Will he… Will Davy be… paralyzed?” Mark managed the dreaded word.
“His arms are not affected, thanks God! The doctor said, the legs may still get better…” she moved away the bed sheet, and Mark saw that the toddler's legs were stretched on the bed and did not move.
“Shite! I am sorry, Clarice.”
“Actually, he's quite lucky. There is a polio epidemic going on in Houston. And cholera too. In our neighborhood, already seven or eight – dead… Funerals – every day… Lucky us, Mary and Billy managed to bring Davy to the hospital just before the floods… He was on a ventilator for a whole day; an ‘Iron Lung,’ they call it. Not everybody got a ventilator! First came, first served, this type of things.”
Oh, so lucky, the no-worries part of the brain said. There was an ‘Iron Lung.’ Some kids got polio, and could not walk. That would be normal to expect. Might happen to anybody. So what? No big deal. “Will he be able to walk at all?” the other part of the brain asked.
“The doctor said, we will only know for sure in about three weeks or so… Well, the other day, the rehab nurse was here. She said like this: you must hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.”
“For the worst?”
“If the legs stay paralyzed… If the legs stay paralyzed, she said, the muscles will tighten little-by-little, so the knees will twist, permanently.”
“Oh, so he will be just like that other ‘spider-boy’ down the main road. The one with the legs permanently twisted, like in a yoga lotus position? Did you see how he gets around? He has two little stools, and uses his arms. Davy can learn to walk on his arms too. No problems.” That was the no-worries part of Mark's head taking the initiative. Suddenly it came up with the brilliant suggestion: “better yet, we find Davy a skateboard! That would be just awesome!”
Clarice gave Mark a perplexed look. ‘Just awesome!’ was not too appropriate here, under the circumstances, the ever-worry part of Mark's brain said. But Clarice was not the one to reject any ‘brilliant suggestion’: “Yeah! The skateboard! That… should work, I guess… With the skate, Billy can take Davy to do the Loop, right?”
And Mark's no-worries part of the brain was racing to participate in the conversation. “Hey, Davy!” it said in the super-duper-optimistic tone, as one should always speak to the toddlers: “show me – Daddy's hands!”
Davy abandoned this tank engine for a second and wiggled his fingers.
“Here are Daddy's hands! Well done, Davy! Now tell me: who is your Daddy?”
“A vet!”
“And what do we say on the Loop, Davy?”
“Change for Vets! Change for Vets!”
Excellent, the no-worries part of the brain concluded triumphantly. The good news, Davy was still young. He would get used to his skate and would not even remember he could walk and run. How stupid, the ever-worry part disagreed. I was just told my grand-son might become a cripple – for life. Well, I just happily considered giving him a skateboard and sending him to do the Loop with his amputee Dad.
“How long… have I been here?” The ever-worry part of Mark asked. Why Clarice looked at me like I was crazy, he wondered. Just a little multiple personalities disorder. Not even a full-blown psychosis.
“Do you remember anything at all?”
“Nope. The last thing I remember was at the bloody gasoline plant… The Butcher blasted me with his damn shotgun. Although… No! I do remember something after that…”
He tried to concentrate. Apparently, he did not have a total amnesia. The memory preserved several disjointed episodes, but not in any obvious chronological order, and – exceptionally odd. For example, Mark somehow knew this very hospital ward had sixteen beds. At some point of time, he saw the whole room, or rather a small hall. That was before they had erected these makeshift partitions around the beds. Judging from the few remaining pieces of expensive designer furniture, this building was not originally a hospital, but some posh office. Open space for rent. Before the Meltdown, this hall probably contained cubicles and meeting bullpens for some unbeknownst office plankton.
In one of the memories, Mary ran along the aisle between the beds. Instead of her arms, she had wings, like a giant crane bird, and she was flapping them in the air. Mark was afraid that at some point Mary would take off and bang her head on those false ceiling panels. She obviously had no experience of crane-flying. Clarice was probably thinking about the same safety issue. She was rolling after Mary in the form of a record-breaking head of Swiss cheese, and was trying to grab Mary's wing to prevent the ill-conceived flight… In another memory episode, a huge cuttlefish swam through the ward from bed to bed, like in an aquarium. The cuttlefish was light-purple, with several red spots, and it looked very professional in the metal frame glasses and with a stethoscope, casually draped over the slimy body. The cuttlefish swam to Mark's bed, raised an X-ray film with one of the tentacles, and said reassuringly, “ah! Boo-boo-boo!” Then, it released a cloud of black ink and swam to the door.
There was yet another memory episode, in which Mark, Chief Medical Examiner Alan Moss, and an unknown Deputy were driving along the Beaumont Highway. For some unbeknown reason, they did this not in a car, but in a ‘Zodiac’ inflatable boat. The outboard engine would sneeze and stop once in a while, so the Deputy would curse it and pull the cord to restart. He explained to Alan something about the wasted O-rings and the water getting into the engine oil. Alan did not pay any attention to the Deputy's complaints. Instead, he kept telling some nonsense to Mark. Something along the lines that he was always happy to see Mark in the morgue, but only as a visitor, and by no means – as a client. Then, as Mark remembered, the Deputy drove the boat through the doors of some dilapidated three-story building and moored the little craft to the railings at the base of an inundated staircase.
Then Mark realized the ‘Zodiac’ boat episode should be the first in the sequence, immediately after the Butcher shot him at the synthetic gasoline plant. Moreover, this particular episode was not a hallucination. The Beaumont Highway was probably flooded, and that was why Alan and the deputy were on the boat and not in a car. The dilapidated three-story building was this very hospital. As for the other memories, clearly, they were a by-product of some home-brew painkiller in this IV bottle above his bed.
Mark closed his eyes and concentrated a bit more. There was an episode which he could not clearly cut into either the hallucination or the reality category. Mark was seemingly in an operation theater, with a huge bright lamp above him and a thin oxygen tube running to
a two-pronged thingy plastered to his nose. “Should we give him a mask?” somebody asked. The voice was strange: devoid of the higher frequencies and coming slowly, as from a slowed-down sound recording.
“Na-ah… He'll be OK.” That was another male voice, also like from a slowed-down recording. A man in the surgical scrubs bent over Mark and pulled down Mark's left eye-lid. Every faster move left a color trail in the air.
“Frankly, I am impressed. What do you use?” The first voice again.
“RPBP number 5.”
“Never heard about. What the hell is that?”
“You are behind the modern medicine, colleague!”
“On the goddamn Dumpster, no wonder we are behind the modern medicine. Do we have time to read?” Oh, this surgeon is from the Dumpster, Mark concluded. One of those chainsaws.
“He is pulling your leg, Roger.” Now it was a female voice, but also slowed-down. “RPBP stands for Red Pill Blue Pill! And the number five is one of their latest achievements.”
“You mean, a designer drug?”
“Yep, man. Our local stuff. Still, better than the Morphine, vintage of 1992. From the emergency reserves. Unlike the French wines, the Morphine doesn't get any better with the age. Only – more and more expensive.”
“Well, but do you know what is actually in this drug?”
“Nope. That's a trade secret. But the maker has the dosage charts at his website, very professional. And we never had problems with the quality. All top-notch.”
“Addictive?”
“You betcha!” the man replied instead of the woman, “But so is the Morphine. We can't complain. Yesterday, I was extracting a ten-inch splinter from the guy's tight. Heavily septic, as you may imagine. Not sure, if we can save his leg either. So while I was doing my thing, he was telling me the difference between a hippo and a giraffe! I asked him: any pain? And he says: we are on safari, man. A little pain should be expected. Happy as a cucumber.”
“Perhaps, I should tell my boss about this wonder drug. Don't forget to give me the contact for this Red Pill Blue Pill fellow.”
But of course, Mark though. On the Dumpster, there are so many unhappy wounded! Crying, yelling, begging to save their arms and legs. It would be so much nicer to give them this RPBP number five drug instead of… whatever they are currently using. So you can chop the arms and legs from perfectly cucumber-happy patients instead.
“By the way, Roger,” the second voice said, “I wanted to say, thanks for coming. Without you – we would be totally screwed today.”
“To be frank with you, colleague, I didn't want to come at all. Think about it: in three bloody years, I got myself a proper shore leave. Not one of those forty-hours jokes. The problem with these shorty ones: first you sleep for twenty hours, and then you drink for twenty hours. And after this, you find yourself back on-board, sailing south, with a headache, and nothing to talk about.”
“Presumably, this time, you will have plenty to talk about.”
“Yeah, right! Went for a four-week shore leave, and ended up going from hospital to hospital. As if I have not amputated enough arms and legs at the Dumpster.”
“Oh, that's hard reality of life, Roger. The Circus animals can't live in the wild. They only know how to do the Circus tricks.”
While the medics were talking, something complex was going on at Mark's right side. He did not see what was actually done there because of a little gray screen installed over his right shoulder and also his spinal collar. There was the figure of one of the men. The guy was in the purple surgical scrub, and his shoulders above the screen were moving constantly up and down. He was performing fine manipulations: something careful, but fast. The second man appeared, holding a boat motor starting cord, with a shiny handle at the end. Ah, they had to start one of those little shiny chainsaws! Why the hell they didn't have the Barney and Friends on their scrubs? That couldn't be right.
The shiny chainsaw did not want to start. The man in the dull, no-Barney, scrubs pulled and pulled the shiny handle. The other man was pouring something, presumably gas. “More?” he would ask once in a while. “More!” the other would answer and pull the handle again and again. The O-rings were wasted, and the water got into the oil, Mark decided. No, why there should be water? This was a chainsaw, not a boat motor! The problem must be this poor-quality, diluted with nobody knows what, bootlegged gas.
“The next time, you better buy the gas from Frederick Stolz,” Mark informed the hapless surgeons.
“A friend of yours?” the second doctor asked.
“Yep. An excellent guy. And a PhD, by the way… Has his own petrochemical plant. The Syntegas.”
“Do you feel… anything?” the first doctor inquired.
“That damn collar. A bit tight.”
“Ah! OK, it can be easily fixed,” the second doctor assured Mark. He made a swift motion with his hand. Strangely enough, the latex glove was smeared with blood: “Give him another five cc, IV push.”
“And you gents, should consider getting yourself the Barney and Friends surgical scrubs. With all due respect, yours – are so damn boring,” Mark suggested further improvements. The surgeons looked at each other and nodded. They surely came to consensus. This operation, they would manage somehow, but for the next one, – they should be replacing their boring no-Barney scrubs with the appropriate attire.
Then, the surgeons continued their chainsaw starting attempts. Suddenly something snapped inside the chainsaw. ‘Oh-oh, now we are in trouble,’ Mark thought. But the surgeons understood the chainsaw maintenance. After dumping some broken parts into a plastic bucket under the table, they started filing and tightening, and patching, then, satisfied with the fix, the first said: “OK, looks excellent. Let's close it up.”
“Did… You… Fix… It… Gentlemen?” Mark asked. After the nurse applied a syringe to a little rubber port in his IV drip, everything was even slower.
“To… A… Degree… Man… To… A… Degree…” the doctor talked slower too, and his boring purple scrubs left boring purple rainbows in the air as he moved. “You did very well. Now, you will get better. Look, I am real sorry for the amputation, but nothing else we can do.”
Real sorry for the amputation? – Mark thought. Ah, that first doctor. He was a chainsaw from the Dumpster all-right. A chainsaw with a chainsaw! So funny! What did they do at the Dumpster twenty times a day? He tried to move his arms and his legs, but the limbs were not there. I must be a ‘Quad’ now, Mark realized. Perfectly. Stumped. Interesting, would they give me a Purple Heart? In the FBI – unlikely. But who would need those Purple Hearts anymore? Only the sissies, who could not show the real battle scars… And I had been in the anti-sissy camp since my defection to the Confederates.
Then, Mark suddenly remembered that all his kids: Michael, Samantha, Pamela and Patrick, were also ‘Quads’ now. Only William, he still had the legs. What a waste. But he was always so independent. Preferred it his own way. Very well. Being a bit different from the rest of us would not hurt at all. He was very skilled in this collection business and would probably hold the Collector of the Month for a little while, despite having his pair of legs. But he could not compete with us, the real ‘Quads,’ in the long run. Mary and Clarice would load us on the cargo trike each morning and bring all five of us to do the Loop. Not five, six, he corrected himself. Not to forget their little Davy, with his permanently twisted in a lotus position legs and his brand-new skateboard. He saw the trike stopping at the busy corner. Clarice, at the driver seat, shining them a warm smile. And Mary had already placed a piece of recycled cardboard on the pavement, and was lifting Mark from the cargo platform. Without arms and legs, I must be reasonably light, Mark thought. Portable. Easy to lift and carry. No problems. Or should I say: no probs?