Deathgrip

by Brian Hodge

  “Check it out,” he told Calvin and Hobbes during Channel Two’s Ten O’Clock News. He saluted the disinterested gerbils with a half-full ale. “We made the tube again.”

  Paul no longer worried over being connected with it, the very last development he would want. Immediately after the healings, apprehension had been knee-jerk quick. Some keen-minded reporter would somehow sniff him out as the common link between every miracle patient. Just as quickly, though, calm reason had quelled that fear. His visits had attracted little attention at the time — of interest only to the serious KGRM fan — and he hadn’t always found conscious people to realize he’d been there at all. Regardless, assuming someone did manage to place him in every room, what then? Even the trashiest of tabloids wouldn’t go far enough out on a limb to guess the truth.

  The Channel Two news story wound toward a wrap, the photogenic face of Stacy Donnelly replaced with a tracking shot of her leaping across the burnished floor of a dance studio. Human interest postscript, here’s how she lives happily ever after, and Paul toasted the TV with his ale.

  Case closed, now what next, what encore for this minion of miracles? The day was far off indeed when he could feel remotely justified in hanging it up and feeling the smug satisfaction of a task well done. Assuming such a day ever came at all.

  It would likely be at least as long before he so much as understood what had singled him out for this. Why me, HOW me? The obvious explanation pointed toward something divine. Certainly those he had healed and their families were leaning in that direction. Barnes Hospital and the others were without a doubt fine institutions in the science of medicine, but not a one made claims of same-day service for someone rolled in on the critical list. And the odds of each kid independently possessing some uncannily fast regenerative ability, well, those were too astronomical to calculate.

  So. Eliminate chance, eliminate the inevitable skeptic’s claim that the whole episode was an elaborate publicity hoax, and only one reasonable alternative remained. Divine intervention. Paul was comfortable with that. Perhaps all part of some greater whole, a lesson to be learned. For himself, for now. Perhaps for others later on.

  The lesson learned thus far was that no greater task existed on earth than to help others, no expectations of reciprocation. Too bad more of such high-visibility preachers didn’t approach the concepts of God and the hereafter from that angle. He’d always had major problems with those who took the usual route, the afterlife as some sort of celestial country club, and pulpit ravings as to how we first and foremost should feel inherent guilt over being human to begin with. As if we had another choice. This from the same fellows who, away from the camera eye, gleefully submitted to their own human urges with secretaries and bargain-boulevard hookers.

  Magic hands, where to take them next. The answer came a couple days later while skimming the Post-Dispatch in David Blane’s office. He spotted a feature on a woman named Candace Oliger, the director of volunteers at St. Francis Medical Center, and the success of her program. He paid a visit to St. Francis and volunteered his services, and promptly had his enthusiasm hosed down a bit upon learning he would have to undergo the standard classroom training required of all volunteers. Two weeks’ worth. So much for instant gratification.

  Training consisted of learning the layout of the hospital, for starters, then an overview of the departments, and from then on it was mostly common sense psychology and practice on dealing with patients. Smiles and optimism are good; running for the nearest door at a chronic malodorous whiff is bad.

  He passed indoctrination and got to choose his assignment from a number of options. Working in the gift shop, or patients being discharged. Delivering flowers and mail and so on to individual rooms. Running staff errands. Escorting patients between departments. More.

  He opted for patient deliveries, maximum contact with as many sick ones as he could get his hands on. And when Candace Oliger asked what kind of shift he preferred, and how frequent, he told her to put him down for afternoons on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Say, four to six.

  She blinked rapidly while making notes, we have a live one here; definitely a heavy schedule as volunteers went. But there was only so much radio he could throw himself into, and these were days when he hungered for more, some kind of fulfillment beyond the airwaves. Lay that one at the tanned feet of a beach-blonde named Lorraine.

  No bitterness, still, yet after a while it seemed as though bitterness might have been preferable, because then at least the feelings would be strong. Instead, day after day, all was chatty and amiable and completely surface level, vapid exchanges of formulaic friendship. Nothing was true and deep anymore, as if some huge barrier had been unspokenly declared, a line of death. We cross it, we talk of tumbling into bed that night, and we die. Let us instead dwell on weather, and music, and the wisdom of TV Guide.

  For Lorraine’s sake, maybe it was safer that way, with fewer dangers of recurrent behavior. Maladroit philosophy, you won’t drown if you don’t get your mouth wet. But he was alone and selfish, yes, proclaim it to the world, some occasional reminiscing now and again would be agreeable. A little mutual reassurance that it had been grand, it had been glorious, it had been soothing balm on a night of too much pain.

  But it was her choice, takes two to have a conversation, and whenever she wished to come to terms with the fact that, yes, she had breathed her ecstasy into the mouth of another, he would be there to listen. Meanwhile, life awaits.

  And so there he was, on a Monday afternoon, pacing through the softly gliding electric-eye doors of St. Francis. Ready for his maiden voyage through its halls, and he touched, and he held, such harmonic empathy from these exchanges of flesh to flesh, making brief open books of these lives he had no right to peruse unless he could improve them…

  Room 217

  This man named Ted Brandmeier, who at forty-three took greatest pride in that he felt as fit as he did at twenty, and whose weekend fast-pitch hardball game had ended with a trip to St. Francis. An inept slide into home plate had turned tendons, ligaments, and muscles into shredded cabbage. So much for attacking life with the gusto of a domestic beer commercial, here in this brewery town.

  This is how it starts, getting old. You start falling apart, piece by piece, and that was the engine of the scariest train of thought Ted had ridden in quite some time.

  No disappointment when the mail arrived, several stiff envelopes, plenty of cards. More than half bore the delicacy of feminine handwriting, and he couldn’t wait to get into those.

  The mail had been brought by some guy, irritatingly young. Energetic in jeans and a knit pullover, and yet you couldn’t hate him for his youth when he seemed so damned concerned about your welfare. Not out of apparent obligation, but a genuine desire to hear the answer. And when he swung his hand in for a quick soul shake, sure, you could begrudge him a little, but respect him too.

  Hell of a firm grip…

  Room 269

  This man named Arnie Dubrinski, addicted to television, to food, not necessarily in that order, and the body within was fast approaching shutdown.

  The doctors had given him a word-picture to chew on. Picture the inside of a pipe running with a regulated liquid flow, its walls closing steadily in with the accumulation of residual filth until the pressure reached the danger zone: Arnie’s circulatory system. The man himself, a three-hundred-pound cholesterol dumping ground, a prime candidate for balloon angioplasty to open up the clogged arteries around his heart.

  Comfortably lethargic in his bed, multiple chins bunched atop his upper chest as he dropped off to sleep during a cartoon rerun, and someone entered. Someone with a build a fraction of Arnie’s, pausing at bedside, setting down a solitary envelope bearing his sister’s return address, the only one who bothered returning his prodigious flow of letters.

  Arnie huffed in his sleep as the figure rested one hand on his marshmallow-soft shoulder, and a little bit of Arnie began to melt inside. Like a marshmallow over the flame. Mere
ly what did not belong, draining from arterial walls, running like candle tallow into his bloodstream to be voided with the rest of his wastes, and his great heart had not known such rest in years…

  Room 332

  This woman named Julie Hyde, keeper of monthly ritual. A few days after the end of her period, with husband off at work and kids at play, she would seclude herself in the bedroom. Topless, reclining on the unmade bed, and, palm to nipple, working a slow circular path around each breast.

  The dreaded paydirt had been struck this month, the mysterious lump. Followed by the whirlwind of consultations and fear: gynecologist, mammogram, then ultrasound, and finally the grim recommendation to see an oncologist, specialist in tumors. Every rung up the ladder had decreased the odds that she was merely the butt of a physiological prank involving a simple fibrous cyst.

  This morning, the biopsy, the surgeon removing a bit of the lump for diagnostic purposes. A thousand prayers offered, a thousand novenas recited, a thousand candles lit. And the resounding thoughts of amputation and deformity, of being somehow horribly diminished. She thought she had advanced well beyond the notion of basing femininity on the biological endowments of her chest. Not so, apparently, now that theory had been supplanted by reality.

  He set a bouquet of carnations and roses on her bedside table, this unexpected visitor, even paused to spruce them up. Then told her goodbye, as if sensing by intuition or eye contact that, no, not in the mood for conversation at this moment. A simple goodbye, then a pat on the wrist — the sheer presumptuousness! Then she reconsidered; she’d been on the receiving end of enough cheap low-grade feels to know he wasn’t trying to cop one. No. He was just being kind before moving along. Familiar voice, too, though she couldn’t seem to place it.

  Julie Hyde, a good news/bad news proposition lying ahead of her. A finding of malignancy in the biopsy mass, with its accompanying reaction of tears and anguish and cries to Heaven, why, why? Followed by the answer to prayers, her doctors unable to find a single trace of cancerous cells so prevalent in the newly healed biopsy incision.

  Eviction…

  And the maiden voyage sailed on, the memories always there with every room Paul entered. The nightmare photo album of recollections made more intense by time. Good times forgotten because by the end, there were none, only the bad remained. Here’s Dad sprouting his tubes and wires; here’s Dad lying in the ravaged wasteland of his own flesh; here’s Dad trying so gamely to leave his only son with proverbs and paternal wisdom enough to last a lifetime. His most lasting legacy being the thick miasma of decay and the misery of cannibalizing himself from within.

  And, oh, all the things Paul knew he would miss about the man, of course they were there in living color, but all the things he never thought he would yearn for were there too. I want to be yelled at for curfew. I want to be grounded and sulk for half a week, I want to be teased about that girl sitting two aisles across in homeroom at school. Just once more, just once more. I want to be pulled from playtime to help with one of your endless chores around the house, and I never hated them as much as I let on, because you were there then, YOU WERE THERE, and damn you, DAMN YOU NOW YOU’RE NOT…

  And I so much want to know what you would think of me now.

  But neither pain nor tears nor the death of Dad shall stay this carrier from his appointed rounds.

  Chapter 10

  Morning sun, glaring even before breakfast. Beneath it, Donny Dawson paced steady laps in his pool until his arms felt ready to fall off. A faith healer without arms, aye, now here was rich laughter. It was nearly as funny as a faith healer without faith.

  His pool was a fifty-foot baby blue rectangular oasis from the cares and concerns of everyday life in general, and more specifically, running the ministry that bore his name. Both of which could bear down with horrific pressure if you let them. He lost himself here, the water, the deck of dark blue and tan tile. Swim, bask in the sight and scent of the walk-through gardens, and the most jaded of hearts had to soften. The sickest of souls had to heal.

  Wednesday, the final day of July, the last full day to be spent at home for nearly two months. Tomorrow The Arm of the Apostle show would be hitting the road in full force, three buses’ worth. Donny and Gabe, singers and musicians, camera crew and technical staff, ushers and assistants to handle the collection of crusade offerings and herding the carefully selected infirmed near the front. One big happy rolling family, with one goal uppermost in mind: Save those souls and let them feel the blessings that come through giving.

  Most of the trip’s itinerary had been planned from Gabe’s desk, Donny’s own input down to an occasional afterthought. Gabe had engineered the countless little details with stunning proficiency. Renting the auditoriums, contacting affiliate churches for publicity, setting up advertising and mass-mailed invitations, making hotel reservations. It was a formidable list, and Gabe had again proved himself Donny Dawson Ministries’ most valuable player.

  The route had them leaving Oklahoma City and dropping south into Dallas for tomorrow night, to tape the kickoff for Sunday’s broadcast. Then east to Shreveport, Louisiana; Jimmy Swaggart country. Onward, eastward through the southern states until they could boomerang west. After Nashville, they would travel north to Louisville, Kentucky, then Evansville, Indiana, then St. Louis, and work their way back to Oklahoma City.

  Just so many pushpins on a mental map, though, as Donny knifed through the water. Six laps, end to end, rest. Six more, rest. Six again. The world focused sharp and narrow each time he slid forth, bubbles and turbulence and foam.

  He had thought of calling Gabe, trying to catch him before he left home, tell him to bring his trunks, join in for a quick morning swim. Might do him wonders. Donny hadn’t bothered, though, it would do no good. So far as Donny knew, during the five years Gabe had been in his employ, he hadn’t so much as dipped a single toe into the pool. Fear of water? This was possible, given what Donny had learned of his teenage years. But Donny had baptized Gabe himself, and it hadn’t seemed a problem then, so who knew? Perhaps he was overly modest about exhibiting his body, even with trunks. Gabe did seem very private in that regard, certainly no sin, always buttoned up in those crisp clothes, like armor. Such modesty, a rare virtue.

  Not everything could be pieced together from the routine background check Donny had run on everyone he allowed to get very close. You do not entrust a ministry of this magnitude to strangers with potentially harmful secrets or hidden agendas. Hence his periodic reliance on an Oklahoma City private detective agency, specialists in discretion and contemporary personal archaeology. Digging up the dirt and peeking under the rugs.

  Five years ago, when Gabe first crossed his path at a rally, he had checked out fine. A bit beyond the routine, but nothing too abnormal. Orphaned at age four, a ward of the state of Michigan. Respectable grades in high school and college, although there was that incident with the drowned girl when he was seventeen. Clearly her own fault, though the repercussions probably still lingered. The trail dead-ended a month after college, for two years, the last thing to turn up being a one-way flight to Glasgow, Scotland. Not to worry, though, lots of American college students knock about Great Britain and Europe after graduation, although two years seemed unduly long. He had had the money, though, insurance from his parents that had collected a pretty penny in interest. The trail picked up again in 1984 after the two-year sabbatical, back from Scotland, and Gabe had gone to work at a Chicago brokerage firm. A fast-track reputation was quickly earned, an utterly nerveless trader willing to take risks that truly separated the pros from the pikers. Two years, Gabe had held that job. His emotional breakdown was inevitable, in retrospect, for Donny had the omniscience of an angel. Gabe Matthews in college: business major, philosophy minor. Anyone could see that the two separate halves making up his whole would someday clash.

  After swimming, Donny toweled himself off, slipped into a light cotton robe that hit him at the knees, kicked his feet into thongs. Thus girded, he return
ed to the house. Several days’ accumulation of dirty dishes in the kitchen sink. Housework had fallen well below par since the dismissal of the maids. They were a regrettable casualty in this, but it would not do to have them dusting off Mandy like a piece of furniture. He bypassed the sink without a second glance, bypassed the second floor entirely.

  Third floor. His morning vigil with Amanda had become as automatic as his first cup of coffee.

  Edie Carson, the day nurse, was reading some fluttery romance novel when he came in, and she quickly marked her place, set the book aside. After a month of duty, the nurses still seemed to feel that pang of guilt when he came in and found them reading, as if they were wasting his time and money. He should ease their worries — have no fear, ladies, we both know Mandy doesn’t require much more than routine maintenance. But there was something very powerful in that wielding of guilt; it elevated him, let them know who was truly in charge. You didn’t waste a thing like that.

  She asked him how swimming was this morning. Pleasant conversation, meaningless. You couldn’t see these nurses every day and not get acquainted, at least marginally. Best to keep things superficial, though. They had no business knowing more.

  Edie stood, ready to head down for the break that came this time every day, and grabbed her own coffee mug. She smoothed her skirt. White uniforms were pointless, given the nature of this job, and could only draw unwanted attention.

  “Before you go, Edie, I want to ask a big favor from you.”

  “Oh. Yes sir?” Standing at attention, her usual glance up from below, peering shyly past the bangs of her short hair.