Gord Rollo
Page 9
of myself. This was one of the best nights of my entire
life.
Unbe-fucking-lievable!
I curled into the wonderfully soft pillow and easily
floated off to dreamland like a baby cuddled to its
mother's bosom. I hadn't felt that comfortable and to¬
tally contented with life in a very long time.
)
C H A P T E R E L E V E N
Comfortable and contented or not, I only managed to
sleep until 4:07 A . M . I had to piss like a racehorse, and
when I returned to bed I tried my best to get some
more shuteye. Wasn't going to happen. I felt like crap
from all the booze I'd guzzled and my head was throb¬
bing like someone was beating on a bass drum stuck
between my ears. W h e t h e r I liked it or not, I was wide¬
awake. Rather than lie around suffering, staring at the
ceiling, I decided I might as well get dressed and go
find myself a cup of coffee.
Fifteen minutes later, I was digging t h r o u g h the
kitchen cupboards searching for some Java. I'd easily
found the coffeemaker sitting out on the gleaming
stainless steel countertop, but I couldn't locate any cof¬
fee to put in k. On my second search, I found a j a r of
Nescafe instant, and boiled some water in a pot on the
stove to make do. A big mug of double-strength with
cream, and I was feeling more or less h u m a n again.
I wondered what time Red Beard and the others had
finally called it quits. It was a safe bet their heads would
be feeling a lot worse than mine, whenever they even¬
tually crawled out of the sack. My guess, and believe
me I'm speaking from experience, was the other donor
boys wouldn't surface until lunchtime.
So where did that leave me? W h a t was I supposed to
do? It wasn't even five o'clock yet, and I was probably
the only person in the entire medical center up and at
it. Then again, maybe not. I was remembering how Dr.
Marshall had informed us that his son slept most of the
day, but was usually awake watching television through¬
out the night. Maybe this would be a good time to pop
upstairs and introduce myself. Couldn't hurt. If An¬
drew was awake, I'm sure he'd appreciate the company.
If he was asleep, I'd j u s t tiptoe back out without bother¬
ing him.
Up the stairs I went, taking them two at a time. I was
surprised to realize how excited I was to m e e t Andrew.
Part of it was simple curiosity, wondering what it must
be like to lie in that hospital bed all the time, but mostly
I wanted to set this poor man's mind at ease about re¬
ceiving our donated limbs. Yes, I wanted the money, but
I felt a real need to explain to Andrew that I believed in
his brilliant father and I was honestly thrilled to be able
to help him. He'd probably think I was full of shit, but I
could at least try.
As I entered the third-floor hallway, I caught a
glimpse of a tall man heading around the corner ahead
of m e , walking away from the front of Andrew's room.
One of Andrews doctors?
I considered calling out to the man, but I didn't want
to unnecessarily wake anyone up. H u r r y i n g to the cor¬
ner, [ was in time to see the tall man slipping into an¬
other room a few doors down the hall. I only saw the
back of him, as he was halfway through the door, but
what I saw sure didn't look like any doctor I'd ever seen.
He was too big, almost Drake's size, and his hair was
long, greasy, and wild.
Room 301 was unlocked, so I opened up the door
and, without knocking, quietly walked in. Andrew was
bundled up in his bed looking j u s t as small and pathetic
as he had yesterday; the computer terminals and video
screens were still nickering their various electronic
data, but I was taken aback there was no one else in the
room monitoring the patient or the equipment. You'd
think there ought to be someone in here with him. Maybe
the tall man really had been Andrew's doctor? Or his
nurse? N o t that it mattered; I could see for myself the
television was turned off and Andrew wasn't moving.
He was asleep, so I might as well get out before I dis¬
turbed him.
Two steps away from the door, my curiosity got the
better of me. I desperately wanted to get a closer look at
Andrew, and at how his father had managed to attach
all those rainbow-colored wires into his son's living
flesh. In my heart, I realized I was being a first-rate ass¬
hole. Andrew wasn't some sideshow freak people paid a
dollar to point fingers and laugh at—he was a sick, un¬
fortunate man whose life had been a living hell since
the day he'd been born. The least I could do was have
the decency to let him sleep in peace, but damned if I
didn't find myself slowly edging closer and closer to
Andrew's bed.
I felt weird sneaking around, really weird, like a clumsy
amateur burglar trying to build up his confidence be¬
fore attempting to steal his first wallet from a bedside
table. The best thing to do would be to cut the crap and
j u s t walk up to the bed and have a look. If Andrew woke
up, so what? Hadn't I come up here to introduce myself
anyway?
Get on with it, man.
Taking my own advice, I stopped inching around like
a fool, and walked over to Andrew's bed. Dr. Marshall's
son was n o t h i n g more than a small lump in the middle
of the large hospital mattress, even his face hidden from
me by the formhttmg oxygen mask he was wearing.
Now, I'm no doctor, and no one ever accused me of be¬
ing a genius, but I could tell right away that something
was w r o n g with this picture. It was dark, but enough
moonlight filtered in through the nearby window for
me to clearly see Andrew wasn't breathing. No matter
how deeply a person is asleep—even people that are
comatose—you can still count the n u m b e r of times
they're breathing by watching their chest rise and fall.
Under the thin wool blanket covering him, Andrew's
chest wasn't moving at all.
Oh my God... he's dead.
The first thought to race through my head, and I'll
admit I'm not real proud of it, was: Fuck. There goes my
two million bucks down the drain. Dr. Marshall will never
cough up the coin now. Not when there's no—
Then I glanced behind me and noticed the video
display screens over on the wall. Every last one of them
showed Andrew's various life signs as bang-on normal.
Heartbeat, blood pressure, body temperature, oxygen
saturation levels; everything reading in the normal
range. I turned my attention back to the man in bed,
leaning over to really get a good look at his chest. Noth¬
ing. N o t h i n g at all.
Grabbing a corner of the wool blanket, I slowly
peeled back the covers to see if I could get to the bot¬
tom of this strange mystery. I i
mmediately figured out
the problem, but in doing so, received one of the big¬
gest shocks of my life. The reason Andrew wasn't breath¬
ing was because Andrew didn't exist. Under the oxygen
mask and tightly wrapped sheet, the man in the hospi¬
tal bed was a plastic fake—a department store manne¬
quin with its arms and legs removed.
"What the fuck is going on?" I whispered out loud,
no longer worried about waking anyone up.
Looking around for answers, none were readily
found. The video monitors still spewed forth their "ev
erything's normal" nonsense. The uncountable num¬
ber of colorful wires—supposedly attached to Andrew's
nerve pathways—still snaked across the room only to
end in four tangled knots hidden beneath the sheets. It
was crazy. This entire setup was nothing more than an
elaborate sham, a cleverly designed ruse, the reason for
which I couldn't quite get my head around. Why would
Dr. Marshall do this?
Before I could even guess, I heard the sound of a
toilet flushing in a nearby room. Don't ask me how, but
I instinctively knew it was the tall, greasy-haired man
I'd caught a glimpse of a few minutes earlier. N o t a d o c
tor. N o t a nurse. But one of Drake's security team,
taking a break while guarding room 301 from any wan¬
dering eyes. He was supposed to be here, making sure
no one tried to get in, but he'd wandered off to answer
a call from M o t h e r N a t u r e or maybe have a smoke and
stretch his legs. I'd j u s t happened along at the right time.
D u m b luck.
I might have been wrong, but I wasn't planning on
sticking around long enough to find out. I trusted my
instincts, better safe than sorry, and bolted for the door.
I hit the hallway r u n n i n g , flashing by the washroom
door just as it started to open. The security guard only
caught a view of my backside, and I was halfway down
the hall before he started screaming at me to stop. Yeah,
right. I ran like the wind, p u m p i n g my arms and legs as
if the h o u n d s of Hell were nipping at my heels.
I could hear the guard—I was sure that was what he
was, now—yelling frantic orders to someone else. Prob¬
ably using a walkie-talkie to contact Drake, or someone
else from security. I wasn't looking back to find out.
Instead, I turned on the j e t s even more, flying around
the corner leading to the guestrooms. I had a brief m o -
merit of panic trying to dig my room key out of my
pocket on the run, but I managed to yank it out in time,
I had j u s t enough of a lead on die guard to safely make
it into my room, lock the door behind me, and turn off
the lights before I heard his heavy footfalls race by and
continue on down the hall.
Phew! That was cutting it close.
As I undressed and climbed back into bed, I couldn't
help but think about what I'd j u s t seen, sorting through
the events of the last hour trying to make some sense of
them. I wasn't having much luck.
There was a knock at my door, and before my heart
had a chance to leap into my throat, Drake came charg¬
ing into my room without waiting to be invited. Obvi¬
ously he had his own key. He was dressed in a dark green
bathrobe and r u n n i n g shoes, and from the look on his
face I could tell he was surprised to see me lying in bed.
Right away, I knew he'd had me pegged as the culprit,
but his tall, greasy henchman had probably informed
him the suspect was still on the run. Barging into my
room, planning to find it empty, had been Drake's way
of confirming it was definitely me causing all this com¬
motion. N o w he wasn't sure what to think.
"Mr, Fox, are you ... are you all right?" he said.
He was squirming and it looked good on the bastard.
I wasn't about to let him off the hook. I wanted him
thinking it had been someone else prowling the halls to¬
night. Let him chase his tail elsewhere, in other words.
"What's going on, Drake? Christ! You scared the
crap out of me. W h a t ' s the matter?"
"Nothin', Mike. We had a report of a fire on the
third floor. I was j u s t checking things out. False alarm,
of course. Go back to sleep. Sorry I woke you."
And with that he was gone, more confused and an¬
grier than ever. I could relate. I was pretty confused
and angry myself. It simply didn't make sense. So there
I lay, staring at the same ceiling Fd been looking at less
than six hours ago when Fd gone to bed a happy, con¬
tented man, with one question swirling around and
around in the storm building within my head: If Dr.
Marshall could he to us about his supposedly invalid
son, what else might he be lying about?
C H A P T E R T W E L V E
They say breakfast is the most important meal of the
day. Maybe so, but it's also the most nerve-racking, sit¬
ting around trying to keep a poker face while your hosts
know someone at the table knows far more than they
are telling.
"And how did you sleep, Mike?" Dr. Marshall's tone
of voice was light and jovial, but his eyes were dark and
intense.
He's knows that last nights intruder had to be one of us,
and he's smart enough to have it narrowed down to two
people. The greasy-haired guard saw someone running away
from room 301—running—and since Red Beard and Wheels
are confined to their chairs, they're off the hook. That leaves
either Bill Smith or me. He's sizing me up, testing the wa¬
ters to see if Til crack.
"Me? I slept fine. W h y ? " I answered.
"Oh, no reason. I'm j u s t glad Mr. Drake didn't dis¬
turb you too much, that's all. Sorry about him barging
in on you like that."
I nodded and shrugged my shoulders, reaching to
grab another blueberry pancake from the silver platter
in front of me. I wasn't hungry—I'd already eaten my
fill—but I needed a minute to think, and filling my face
was as good a way as any to avoid having to make con¬
versation. Luckily, I wasn't alone at the table. Besides
Dr. Marshall and Drake, all four donors were present,
I'd been wrong when I figured the other three party
animals would sleep the m o r n i n g away. I should have
known none of these bums would ever willingly miss
a free feed, nasty hangover or not. Concentrating on
pouring thick maple syrup over my pancake, I decided
to let them do the talking for a while.
Maybe I should j u s t confess it had been me in An¬
drew's room last night, confront the doctor about what
I'd seen in room 301 right here in front of everyone. If
Dr. Marshall had a valid reason for lying to us about his
imaginary son, let's hear it.
I wouldn't do it, of course: I wasn't that stupid. The
last thing I wanted to do was tip my hat a n d A o m e clean
with them. Why would I? They obviously weren't be¬
ing honest with me, so why should I be with them? N o ,
it would be far better—far smarter—to bite my tongue
and sit in the bush for a while. I needed to figure out
what game Dr. Marshall was playing, before I could
make my next move.
If telling us the sob story about Andrew was a harm¬
less ploy to make us feel better about donating our
limbs, fine. I could live with that. But if something else
was going on around here, something darker than the
rosy picture currently being painted for us, then I planned
on slipping out the back door as quiet as a mouse, disap¬
pearing before anyone caught wind I was on to them.
That was the real problem, wasn't it? Even seeing
what I'd seen, and knowing what I knew, I still had no
idea if things were on the up-and-up here. Had I walked
into a lucky gold m i n e , or stumbled into a sinister trap?
Should I stay here and take my chances, or sneak away
and miss out on all that money? Tough call, but seeing
as there was no way Dr. Marshall or Drake could know
which one of us had been in Andrew's room—they could
guess, but they couldn't be sure—it seemed safe enough
to stick around for a while. Safe, as long as I kept my big
mouth shut and my eyes and ears wide open.
Easier said than done, of course. W h e n I looked up
from my plate, Drake was staring at me hard enough to
make me bruise. Our eyes locked, and I could tell he was
trying to intimidate me, break me by staring me down.
It was going to work, too. I found it terribly hard to
maintain eye contact with this semicivilized Neander¬
thal, and I j u s t knew if I looked away first, Drake would
see the guilt in my eyes. So I quickly thought of some¬
thing to say to him, hoping to deflect his attention
elsewhere.
"So, did you manage to put out the fire?"
Without breaking eye contact, Drake replied, "There
was no fire. I told you this morning it was a false alarm."
N o w he was really staring down my throat, as was
Dr, Marshall. Both of them were actually leaning for¬
ward in their chairs, hovering above me like birds of
prey ready to tuck their wings and swoop in for the
kill.
Fuck, Fuck, FUCK! N o w what was I supposed to do?
"Fire? Hey, what are you guys talkin' about?"
It was Red Beard butting into the conversation, tak¬
ing a break from cramming whole sausages into his cav¬
ernous mouth, unknowingly saving my ass with his