The Critical List

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The Critical List Page 18

by Wenke, John;


  On the sixth and penultimate day, a Sunday, Wakefield’s panicked wife shows up at the door. On the screen, the game is in sudden death overtime and the Dolphins are lining up to kick a field goal. The Bengals call time.

  “Open up, Bill. If you’re alive let me in. You owe it to me. Bill. It’s been thirty-four years. You need to come home. If you don’t answer, the police will come up. They’re downstairs. I don’t want to find your body.”

  It’s time to jump. With the cops out there, she won’t be the first to see the body. As quietly as possible, he rises from the chair. In his weakness, he leans on the arm and the thing tilts sideways. He lands face down amid a jumbled clatter.

  Mary weeps a sob of joyful, enraged grief.

  “Thank God! You idiot! Open up! Open up now! You’ve done enough to us. You’ve done enough. We’re sick of having you dead. It’s time to come back. I love you. Audrey loves you. Everything’ll be fine.”

  Wakefield stays down and crawls toward the open window.

  “Say something, damn it!” Her shoulder pounds the door. The walls rattle.

  Wakefield gets to the sill and settles on his haunches. Down headfirst. Like Marie. But he supposes Mary deserves a last word.

  “I can’t go back. I’m a killer. I can’t face Audrey or anybody. I was on watch. I let it happen. You don’t understand. You’re not a killer.”

  He’d lifted his eyes from the newspaper. His two-year old granddaughter was giggling and waving from the outside edge of the balcony. Before he could budge, she removed her other hand to clap and landed headfirst on the hardwood floor.

  With the baby convulsing on his lap, Wakefield sped to the hospital. Her skull was fractured, her brain swollen. They told him she’d need a miracle to make it. If he signed the consent forms, they’d try surgery. After they wheeled her away, he couldn’t stand being stuck inside his skin. He made his choice. Before going, he left a message on their voice mail.

  “You idiot! You left too soon. Marie’s alive.”

  “She’s a vegetable.”

  “She’s not. They were able to control the intracranial swelling. She’s conscious and knows us. She’s going home next week. There doesn’t seem to be any permanent damage.”

  On TV, the football sails through the uprights. The Dolphins win and the Bengals lose.

  Wakefield feels the air going out of him.

  “Bill! Are you there?”

  Standing up, he cracks his head on the slanted ceiling and slumps to all fours.

  “I was giving myself a week to get up the guts to leave. I was too weak to get it done.”

  “There’s nothing to get done. There’s nothing to do but come home. Open the door, damn you!”

  “How do I know you’re not lying?”

  “Bill! I’ve had enough. I’m telling the truth. Everybody thinks you’re a fool.”

  Wakefield’s head wobbles. Almost a week without food. Some water. He closes the shuddering window. He shouts over the noise. “Stop kicking the door. How’d you find me?”

  He was in Easton, a good fifty miles from Baltimore.

  “I hired a detective. You pulled some money from a MAC machine seventeen miles from here. For an idiot trying to hide, it was a dumb mistake. Yesterday, the detective found your car in the Wal-Mart shopping center and called me. I came down last night. The break came while we were canvassing the area. We went to a bar around the corner and happened to show that awful landlord your picture. The Follow man said you owe him a hundred and fifty bucks. For a hundred and fifty bucks, he’d tell us where to find you. I gave him the money, the creep, called the cops and rushed over here. Now open up! It’s over.”

  The Critical List

  While the right side of the car dipped into the yawning earth, my mind swooshed like a deflating tire. On the wheel, my hands went white-knuckle tight. I fought the gravitational suck of unwanted sleep. Blinking my eyes, steadying my wobbly head, I aimed the car into a Western Avenue parking space. It was like guiding a cantankerous elephant from behind.

  Directly ahead, pasted high on the hill, like a billboard advertising a better world, the Hollywood sign sparkled in January’s late low light.

  My first thought was, aftershock.

  I remembered how it felt when a big one had hit Northridge, flattening apartments, blowing up gas lines, fracturing water mains. Beautiful homes teetered and crumpled. Thirty miles from the epicenter, the studio caught fire and flooded. At home, I lost most of my glasses and plates. For days, off and on, the ground grumbled; bedrock slabs sidled into tenuous repose. Out here, you try to be braced for anything—torrential rains, wildfires, race riots, psycho stranglers. But even “old hands” are never quite braced for shuddering pavements and quavering walls.

  Through the windshield, not a single panicked face turned skyward. The humdrum pedestrian muddle was broken only by an ecstatic Rollerblader. Mother Earth was staying put.

  Next, I figured my wheel had come off. With my forehead beading and my palms clammy cold, I pushed out and felt my way around the hood. Each step was precarious, wooden, like my sister Loni’s ten-month-old son. During my holiday visit east, Thomas had pawed his way along the couch and tumbled between chairs. I staggered back from the fender and expected to see the tire tilting from the axle. But it was right in place, bolted and dirty. Behind the car, up the street, there was no crater. Western Avenue was merely a skein of webby cracks.

  I flopped into the driver’s seat and wiped my forehead with my sleeve. There was something wrong with me. I had almost passed out. Shadowy faces leaned close, these silent killers—aneurysm, embolism, heart failure. Stroke. In the dark lurked row on row of diseases and syndromes I knew nothing about.

  In forty-five minutes, I was supposed to meet Delilah Faye at The Blasted Tomato. She was a fairly new actress on Dawn Becomes the Darkness, the popular soap I’m head writer for. Delilah plays Tiffany Morganchild, an anorexic, suicidal, lesbian lawyer, who is defending Dawn Desiree, the star of the show. By day, Dawn is a successful Beverly Hills interior decorator. By night, she runs an escort service to the stars. Dawn is currently under indictment for attempted sexual mutilation, malicious mischief, and conspiracy. One of her girls had been beaten by a TV news anchor who resembles Brian Williams. Dawn invited him to her office to discuss a damage settlement. She got him comfortable and then, while screaming rape, tried to castrate him.

  By now, I was feeling closer to normal. The sweating had stopped, and I only felt a little shaky. I wanted my day simply to resume—a few drinks, some laughs, and maybe dinner, then home alone. It wasn’t much, but what can you ask of Wednesday? Besides, for some months now, I had been laying off the mayhem. I was getting to the age—forty-seven—when I looked forward to putting my pajamas on and reading myself to sleep. I was working through Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend and had left off where Mr. Boffin inexplicably turns nasty. It occurred to me, though, that I might actually be sick—I never got sick—and, even worse, I might drop dead. People did that. Suddenly. Even in-shape people like me.

  I checked the mirror, set the gear, and pulled away. With hands gripping the wheel, I headed to the emergency room of UCLA Medical Center.

  I leaned forward and put my face through the sliding plastic window.

  “I felt the world swoon and I started sweating. All over.”

  “Again, sir, I can’t admit you till I get your information.”

  The pudgy forty-something black woman was copying my insurance card. When she was done, she shooed me away.

  “Please have a seat. Someone will be out for you.”

  Across the room, an old man with a gray face and sparse white hair stared at the clock. A young woman pushed a stroller back and forth with her foot.

  A wheelchair barged through double doors. It was pushed by a large black orderly with shaven head and green surgical fatigues. Ms. Harrison
pointed at me. I waved off assistance and sat down. We whizzed through double doors and down a long linoleum corridor. It opened into a room with a row of curtained cubicles. We stopped. He pulled open a corner. A gurney was inside.

  “Take off your clothes and put that on.”

  He pointed to a white gown with gray stripes. Behind me, rings rattled as the curtain closed.

  With backside fully exposed, I climbed up, knees first, and swung my bum on to a crackling paper sheet. A nurse took my temperature and blood pressure. A technician extracted four vials of blood. Ten minutes later, Michael Collier, a physician’s assistant, listened to my story and examined me. He scoped my chest and back, tapped my knees with a hammer, and flashed a light into my eyes. He made me count his fingers. He said nothing and left, brusquely, snubbing me like a real doctor.

  A half hour passed with nothing but emergency room sounds—codes and names crackling on the intercom; wheezing from a distant cubicle; the wailing of a boy with a gashed head; a woman puking and calling to God. It occurred to me I was in a low-level triage area, as close to the hospital siding as you can get.

  I was already forty minutes late meeting Delilah Faye. I didn’t have her number in my phone, but she used the same service as one of my ex-wives. I called and left a message for Delilah that I was in the emergency room. I also needed to find a bathroom, but I didn’t want to miss someone important. I was expecting to see a neurologist or at least a real doctor. I poked my head out. Way up the corridor, nurses were hurrying in and out of a room. To my left, at the end of the curtains, I saw an alcove with vending machines and rest rooms. I scampered on tip toe as though I were sneaking across somebody’s lawn at midnight. Right after I got back on the gurney, Collier yanked the curtain.

  “Just checking to make sure you’re still alive.”

  When I didn’t laugh, he said, “Just kidding.”

  “What’s wrong with me?”

  “The tests haven’t come back from the lab.”

  “Do you think I have a brain tumor?”

  Collier laughed.

  “I think you have two. One for each hemisphere.”

  “What!”

  “Just kidding. Frankly, I don’t think you have anything.”

  “I have to have something. I almost blacked out.”

  “I’ll see you when the tests come back.”

  For an hour, I heard hospital noises, and then he returned.

  “You can go,” he said.

  “What do you mean, go?”

  “You’re okay. You’re one of the healthiest people I’ve seen in months.”

  “That’s not saying much. People come in here and die.”

  “Some get patched up and we turn them loose. We also get hypochondriacs all the time. They’re usually pretty healthy.”

  “You think I’m a hypochondriac?”

  “No, I think you had a near syncope.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You almost fainted.”

  “I know that, but why?”

  “Probably your blood pressure dropped. It can happen to anybody. Maybe you didn’t eat breakfast and you’ve been going all day on an empty stomach.”

  “I had breakfast and lunch.”

  “Maybe you’ve been under a lot of stress.”

  “I’ve been feeling better than I usually do.”

  “Any of the big three lately—death, divorce, unemployment?”

  “Actually, well, two out of three.”

  “Which ones and how recently.”

  “Late last October, my divorce went through.”

  “Was it rough?”

  “Actually, it was the easiest one. My third.”

  “Geez! What else?”

  “Both my parents have died within the year. In March, my mother died of lymphoma. Two weeks after that, my father had a heart valve shut on him. It turned into cardiac arrest and they put him on a respirator. His kidneys went. He got ARDS. He basically conked out.”

  “The two deaths could do it.”

  “To tell you the truth, I feel almost as close to them now as I ever did. I believe in ghosts—spirits—whatever you want to call them. I think we’re crowded by the dead.”

  He was frowning, his forehead all wrinkled. “What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a writer.”

  His forehead bunched some more.

  “What do you write?”

  “I write for Dawn Becomes the Darkness, the soap.”

  He brightened.

  “When I work nights, I watch that show. My wife loves it, too. It must be interesting work.”

  “It can be a great release—foisting imaginary disasters on to imaginary people.” I made sure we gave rich celebrities the problems of ordinary people—substance abuse, percolating despair, chronic confusion, never enough love. Over and over, we dramatized how having a lot of money only gave people more ways of making themselves miserable. As far as daytime TV went, it was a winning formula. “The bottom line is, I felt fine. There was no reason to faint. It just almost suddenly happened.”

  “Did you get inside a hot car? That’ll do it sometimes.”

  “I’d been driving for thirty minutes. Maybe it was the smog. I had my windows open.”

  He laughed. “What can I say? You have no symptoms. If you get some symptoms, call your doctor.”

  “Something happened.”

  “Well, it’s not happening now. Sign here.” He offered the clipboard. “You can put your clothes on and leave. I need to get back. You know, it’s funny. Ever since the last wildfires, there have been fewer accidents but more shootings. How do you figure?”

  “Where do I sign?”

  I was three hours late and Hollywood reminded me of a cemetery. Those pavement squares of autographed handprints made the vestibule of Mann’s Chinese Theater seem a mortuary. On the Walk of Fame were more funereal slabs—obituaries inscribed in concrete—scuffed with shoes, splotched with bird lime. All the dead stars, these black holes: Judy and Duke and Betty and Tyrone. A few blocks away, in the Roosevelt Hotel, more than four decades ago, Janis Joplin took an overdose and died.

  I turned off Hollywood Boulevard and plunged into The Blasted Tomato. Happy Hour had expired. The smoky de-luminated lounge was a sunken scatter of driftwood booths and castaway tables. Along the far wall, an ornately carved, darkly stained facade encased the beveled mirror, ranked shelves, and sparkling bottles. A mob huddled around the long bar and high-back chairs.

  I didn’t think Delilah would be there, but I gave the place a spin. I sauntered among tables, peering into noisy groups, sizing-up couples, and sweeping past lone rangers.

  After climbing the lounge’s steps, I went to the bar’s far end. From under a gargoyle, I had a full view of the crowd. I saw a few faces I knew—some technical guys from the studio, a booking agent who once represented Pia Zadora, a lawyer who made a fortune getting DWI offenders off the hook. A former girlfriend and I spotted each other at the same time. Sondra Slade did the weekend weather for KOKU-TV. Her sudden smile was an open wound, jagged and pulsing. I waved. From under her puffy bleached bouffant, she stuck out her tongue. She pulled some guy’s necktie. His jerking head obstructed the line of fire. On a normal day, this would have been amusing, but it wasn’t a normal day. I was waiting for the room to fall away and me to tumble into a black hole.

  I skirted the sunken lounge, nudging my way through the boozers. A hand clamped my shoulder. I turned. Nate Newell was reaching across a talking couple. A bearded man was analyzing Spielberg and dinosaurs and the woman was nodding her head, eyes glazed over.

  “David! Long time, no see.”

  I had seen Nate just last Friday, but he seemed not to remember. He had been drunk and ranting against the Pulitzer Prize committee. For the third time, he had gotten passed over. Nate was
poet-in-residence at USC and supposedly gifted, though I couldn’t tell. To me, his poems read like poor prose slashed into arbitrary lines. Five years ago, I met him while taking part in a USC symposium on “Daytime Television and Psychosis.” One angry older student in army fatigues, kinky black hair, and ratty pubic beard shook his finger and accused me of exploiting human misery for profit. I replied seriously, ranking myself with physicians, lawyers, and morticians, but the crowd laughed, as though I were joking. The student was hooted down, as moral voices often are. Since then, Nate and I have become pretty good friends.

  “Where you sitting?” I yelled, pulling away.

  “Back there, in the corner. Let me buy you one.”

  “I’ll be right back. I stood somebody up. I need to call and explain.”

  I was drifting away, waving, and he was smiling. He wasn’t drunk. He was happy to see me.

  “I was in the emergency room for three hours.”

  My instinct for the straight cut left him nattering.

  “What happened? Nothing’s wrong, is it?”

  He’d have to wait through the commercials.

  “I’ll be back in two minutes.”

  To get some quiet, I headed down the corridor toward the rest rooms. Above where the pay phone used to be hung an erasable graffiti board with its display of slogans, allegations, solicitations, and graphics. I found that Moby Dick is a social disease, that Debbie does do Debbie, that I should call Cockrobin (GSWM) for risky sex, and that poorly drawn penises still resemble misshapen balloons.

 

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