by Dan Taylor
“It’s all right,” I say, “it’s just heartburn.”
“Should I phone an ambulance?” one of them asks.
“No, there’s no need. Can you just get my medicine out of my jacket pocket?”
None of them replies. I look up, see them just hovering around, biting their nails and glancing at the barman as though he can save us all from this awkward situation in which some foreigner looks like he might be dying. An American, and a thin and relatively young one, at that.
“Never mind,” I say, then get the medicine out myself.
I take five of those things, and they don’t seem to be working.
At least not…at least not…
Before I can finish the thought, everything goes black.
51.
Hollywood…
ERIC CLARK HAS stripped down to his Superman briefs, and per Gerry’s request, has removed his prosthetic leg and put it far away from himself. He’s sitting on the edge of the motel room bed, his little pot belly bulging over the waistband.
He’s watching Gerry methodically take off her clothes, to reveal a classy set of lingerie.
She says, “Just to make it clear, I’m buying your silence with this act.”
Eric nods, barely listening. He’s licking his lips as though he’s a starving child who’s just seen a Ritz cracker commercial.
When fully down to her underwear, Gerry goes over to her briefcase, which is lying on the chair in the corner of the room. She stands in front of it as she opens it, making sure her ass blocks Eric’s view of it.
She ignores the rest of the contents and takes out a pair of handcuffs. She then shuts it before moving away from it.
She stands a short distance away and in front of Eric, dangles the handcuffs for him to see. “I’m a lady who likes to be in control, Eric. I assume you’re okay with me using these.”
Eric frowns. “Sure, whatever you say, Gerry.”
“Good boy.”
But Eric isn’t fully convinced. “You’re not going to do anything freaky, are you?” He looks around Gerry at the briefcase.
She raises an eyebrow. “Don’t worry about what’s in there, Eric. It’s just stuff.”
“Stuff?” He glances again.
“You know,” Gerry says, then makes her way over to Eric, sits on the bed next to him. “A rampant rabbit.” She looks down at Eric’s crotch, raises an eyebrow. “But it looks like I won’t need that this evening.”
“No.”
Gerry takes one of Eric’s wrists, and she bites his earlobe as she attaches one of the cuffs.
Excitedly, Eric says, “What else?”
“A horse whip.”
Eric shudders, and Gerry uses his lack of control to coax him up the bed, so that he’s lying on his back, his partially handcuffed hands near the posted headrest. Then he asks, “What else?”
Gerry pauses, leans in close to him, so that her breath washes over his face. “Do you really want to know?”
Eric’s nodding like a five-year-old who’s just been asked if he wants two scoops of ice cream instead of one.
She leans in, as though she’s about to whisper in his ear, affording him a view of her bulging cleavage, and then snaps the second handcuff around his wrist, making sure the chain connecting the two loops is around one of the headrest’s posts. Then she whispers, “XJMeMO3.”
Fully aroused now, Eric takes a sharp intake of breath. “Ooh, that sounds sexy.” And then he thinks a second. “Wait, what did you say?”
Gerry drops the pretense, and backs away from the bed. She starts getting dressed.
Eric says, “Why are you getting dressed, baby? And what was that last thing you said?”
Gerry buttons up her blouse as she says, “XJMeMO3.”
“What is that?”
“It’s something I’m going to give you.”
Eric gulps. “And why would you do that, Gerry?”
“Because I don’t want you talking.”
“Talking about what?”
She’s fully dressed. “About why I sent you to Oslo. About what I did to Cole.”
“But you were supposed to be buying my silence by—”
“Fucking you?” She snaps open the briefcase. “Don’t make me laugh.”
“I don’t get it.”
She turns around and looks at him. “Will you just shut up and start panicking already?”
“Panic about what?”
She takes out a pre-filled syringe, turns around, and then holds it up for him to see.
“Oh fuck! What the hell is that?” He starts bucking, pulling on the handcuffs.
“It’s something the nerds have stored away at the Agency weapons center. It’s a potent statin, originally developed as a cholesterol-lowering drug, but the boffins who cooked it up discovered it has interesting side effects.”
He stops panicking. “Like what? Death?”
“If I wanted you dead—”
“I’d be dead already?”
“No, I’d think of a better way of doing it than clearing your arteries out.”
“What, then?”
“Let me finish my story, first. The pharmaceuticals company who developed it couldn’t use it. Its main side effect turns out to be its main effect, and consistent, too. So they sold it to the highest bidder.”
Gerry cocks her head to the side. She can hear something. Like a gas leak. She looks at Eric to find that he’s pissing himself. A dark patch is spreading outwards from the center of his Superman briefs. He’s crying miserably. “What will that stuff do to me?”
She holds up the syringe with the needle pointing up, and taps the body of it, making sure any air bubbles float to the top, before she presses on the plunger, flushing them and some of the liquid out. The XJMeMO3.
“You’ll forget.”
He frowns. “I’ll forget what it’ll do to me?”
Gerry looks up, thinking about the paradox. “Yeah, kind of.”
“So what will it do that I’ll forget?”
“No, that’s what it will do. It will make you forget.”
“What, everything?”
“No, just the last three to seven days.”
“Oh, that’s not too bad.”
“I’m glad you think so.” She approaches him. “Hold steady now.”
“I don’t know about this, Gerry. I liked the first option.”
Gerry sits on the bed next to him. She starts putting his thinning hair back into place how it had been before he started thrashing and panicking. “Silly Eric. That option has expired.”
He thinks a second. “But there are things I want to remember from the last three to seven days. Like…like…”
“Like what?”
“It was my daughter’s tenth birthday five days ago. I’d quite like to remember that.”
“You might get lucky. You could only lose three or four days.”
“And my son had his first piano recital six days ago. I don’t want to lose that memory.”
“Again, you might get lucky.”
She goes to inject it in his arm, but he stops her. “Wait! I’m supposed to pick up milk on the way home. My wife will kill me if I forget!”
“Did you write a note?”
“No.”
Out of the blue, she tickles his armpit, distracting him, and then plunges the needle into his fleshy shoulder. When the syringe is empty, the effects showing immediately in Eric’s drooping eyelids, she says, “Then she’ll have to go to the store herself.”
She stands up and begins to walk away from the bed.
Eric isn’t quite ready for nap time. “You’ll never get away with this, and that was a shit line.”
She turns back to him. “You’ll forget you even said that.”
“What about this?”
“And that.”
“And this?”
“Yeah.”
“What about this?”
Gerry rolls her eyes. “You don’t really get this, do you, E
ric?”
He’s nearly unconscious now. He’s trying to blink away his tiredness, but in a matter of seconds he’ll be out like a motel room light. He’ll wake tomorrow morning, not remembering at least the day before he was sent to Oslo and the trip itself, and everything up until the point Gerry injected him.
But he’s got one last thing to say before the drug takes effect fully. “You should’ve made some quip about my wife being lactose intolerant. That would’ve worked…”
Now that Eric’s unconscious, Gerry goes up to him and pulls one of his nose hairs out, testing whether he’s faking or not. He doesn’t flinch, so she takes off the handcuffs.
She looks down at Eric, who’s now snoring away the memories of the last three to seven days. To herself, she says, “Why the hell did I tell him about it before I injected him?”
52.
“MR. HANCOCK. MR. HANCOCK, are you awake?”
I come to, feeling groggy. I instinctively know I’m in a hospital. Either that or it’s the funny smell that they all seem to have. I say, “Don’t kick me out of the bed. I’ve got insurance.”
I open my eyes, see a beautiful blonde-haired nurse hovering over me. “How are you feeling, Mr. Hancock?”
“I feel short of breath. I may require mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”
She ignores what I said. “Do you remember what happened before you were brought to the hospital?”
I think a second. “The heartburn, right?”
She backs up a little, giving me some space. “You complained of severe chest pains, and then you blacked out.”
I notice someone sitting in the corner of the room. It’s some dude who looks vaguely familiar. He’s holding a paperback novel in his lap, as though he’s just stopped reading. “Who’s that guy?”
She says, “This is the gentleman who phoned the ambulance. He’s sat by your bedside all night.”
I frown as I look at him. “Are you the barman?”
He says, “I am. I was worried about you.”
“Okay, that’s a little creepy, but kind, I guess. You can go now. I feel a whole lot better.”
The barman looks unsure before leaving the room.
I start getting out of bed, but the nurse stops me. “You’re not in a fit enough state to go anywhere, Mr. Hancock.”
“I feel fine.” I open up my hospital gown to show her my chest. “See? No heartburn. I think I’ll go now.” I look up at the clock on the wall. “If I rush, I might be able to make it back to the hotel before they stop serving breakfast.”
I pull the drip out of my arm and try to get out of bed. She pushes me back down. “Please, Mr. Hancock, this is highly irregular.”
“Says the nurse who has a drip in my arm because of a touch of heartburn.”
“You are not suffering from heartburn, Mr. Hancock.”
I don’t like the look in her eyes. I say, “Angina, then. I’ll head back to the States, and I’ll get my doctor to prescribe me something, and then all this goes away. Now, can you give me directions to the hospital taxicab stand so I can get on my way?”
“There is something I need to tell you before you can be discharged from the hospital, some matters we need to discuss.”
“If it’s about how I intend to pay for the treatment I’ve had, I’ll send the details of my employer.”
“That isn’t it, at all, Mr. Hancock. We’ve run some tests overnight. And we’ve come to a diagnosis.”
I’m suddenly aware I’m naked under my gown. “What kind of tests?”
“Some tests on your heart.”
“Go on.”
“I’m sorry to tell you you have relatively mild hypoplastic left heart syndrome.”
“Hypo what now?”
“It’s a heart defect you’ve had from birth. Quite frankly, Mr. Hancock, the doctors in this hospital are surprised you’re still alive.”
“No, my doctor back in the States would’ve found this out. I don’t believe you.”
“Our diagnosis is quite sound.”
I shoot her a skeptical look. “Are you sure it isn’t angina?”
“Quite sure.”
“Is that the type of quite that means that you are sure but are being polite, or the type of quite that means almost?”
She thinks a second. “The first one.”
I look around the room, trying to take all this in. After ten seconds or so, I say, “So I’ve got some sort of heart condition. I didn’t see that coming. Is it bad?”
“I don’t want to answer that, but one of our doctors can recommend a treatment plan and offer a prognosis.”
I sigh. “It would make a whole lot more sense if one of your doctors was having this conversation with me instead of you.”
“Should I go get one?”
I glance at her ID badge. “No, Ingrid, just stay with me and hold my hand.”
She hesitates but then does. There are a couple awkward long moments, during which we avoid eye contact.
My palm becomes sweaty, so I let go. Then I ask her, “Tell me more about this heart condition. Explain it to me like I’m the drunk clown at your six-year-old’s birthday party.”
“In simple terms, half of your heart has abnormal blood flow—”
“In English, Ingrid. You lost me at abnormal.”
“I suppose you could say you have half a heart, Mr. Hancock.”
I look at her wide-eyed. “Oh fuck off!”
53.
I’M ON MY CELL, talking to the receptionist at my doctor’s office.
I say, “What do you mean he’s taken early retirement?”
“Like I said. Dr. Jennings took early retirement.”
“So he’s not my doctor any longer?”
“Mr. Hancock, he’s not anyone’s doctor any longer.”
“Can I have his cell number? This is kind of an important matter.”
“I’m afraid I can’t give that to you. I can make an appointment with your new primary care physician—”
“Lady, a foreign doctor has just diagnosed me with a heart defect I’ve had since birth. Dr. Jennings has been my doctor for as long as I can remember, and some Norwegian just diagnosed my condition overnight. I could sue Dr. Jennings, and probably the whole office, for malpractice.”
She sighs. “Not this again.” Then she gives me his number.
I hang up and immediately ring Dr. Jennings.
When he answers, he sounds drunk. “Giles speaking.”
“Dr. Jennings?”
“Well technically it’s Mr. now, but yeah, speaking.”
“This is Jake Hancock. You remember me, right? The guy who you said had heartburn.”
His tone changes. “Oh hi, Jake. How are you?”
“Turns out I’ve got half a heart. Well, only half of it functions properly, but you know what I mean.”
“Yeah…about that. So, your test results came in.”
“Did they really? I didn’t know.”
There’s silence a second. “My bad, Jake. I passed on your diagnosis to your new primary care physician. He was supposed to phone you. Didn’t he?”
“Do you think I’d be lying in some hospital bed halfway across the world if he had?”
When he speaks next, his voice sounds distant, as though he’s holding the phone away from his ear: “Hey, baby, will you give it a little wiggle for me?”
Then a female voice says, “Up yours, granddad!”
I say, “Dr. Jennings?”
“Here.”
“Well, what do I do? I mean, do I need an operation or something?”
He sighs. “You’ll have to take it up with your new primary care—”
“Will you people stop saying that.”
“Which people?”
“You and the receptionist. Look, Dr. Jennings, you got me into this mess, and you’re going to get me out of it.”
“I’m not sure I did get you into this mess.”
“Oh, you totally did.”
“It’s a genetic
disorder…”
“Let’s disagree to agree. Why didn’t I know about it until now?”
“Could be that it was asymptomatic up until about a month ago, having been exacerbated by some environmental factor. Have you recently taken up smoking?”
“No.”
“Have you recently taken up any physical activities that are particularly taxing?”
“I played squash a few times, but I barely broke a sweat. Wait, could a lack of sex have done this? I haven’t been getting as much recently.”
“That could be it, at a stretch. The physical exertion of coitus could’ve kept your heart healthy.”
“But you just implied that lots of exercise could’ve made it worse.”
“Look, Jake, I’m a GP, and I was stoned for most of the lectures on the heart and its conditions. Give me a break.”
I sigh. “So how do I get this fixed? Please tell me my heart isn’t a ticking time bomb.”
“Relax, it’s not that bad now, but it seems to be getting worse.”
“Saying ‘relax’ was not the way to start that sentence. What the hell do I do?”
“You need an operation, stat.”
“Stat?”
“Quite soon you need one. I know a guy. He’s the best heart surgeon in the tri-state area.”
“And he’s going to what, give me a new heart?”
“He’s just going to fix the existing fuel injector that you have.”
“Fuel injector?”
“It’s the way I explain anatomy to my patients—car metaphors for men, baking metaphors for women. Relax, my guy will get that baby purring again in no time; it’ll be like your fuel injector was never deformed in the first place. Get a pen and notepad.”
I look around the room. “There isn’t one.”
“Okay, I’ll go ahead and tell you his name and number, anyway. Dr. Harold Hampton, 800-Aortic-excellence.”
“Can you spell that?”
“A-O—”
“Slow down, Doc. You skipped over Harold and Hampton.”
“They’re spelled as you’d imagine.”
I commit it to memory. I’ll write it down as soon as I get my hand on a notepad and pen.
Then he says, “I’ll phone ahead, send him all the scans we did on your heart. But you need to phone and arrange the pre-surgery appointment to discuss your options.”