After Death (5 page)

“Pick me up at ten o’clock-Pick me up at ten o’clock-Pick me up at ten o’clock…” She mumbled.

Before Frank could ask, Fernando explained.

“That’s Lidia — Talks to herself all day, all night, whenever she’s awake. Says the same thing over and over; pick me up at ten o’clock, pick me up at ten o’clock.”

“Why? What happened at ten o’clock?” Frank asked and Fernando couldn’t help but notice the genuine curiosity on his face.

“Story is she got stood up at the altar when she was young. “ Fernando shrugged. “Who knows, might be bullshit.”

They continued on, turned another corner in the worn maze of now beige tile against beige-walled hallways.

A tall old man with long legs and longer arms that stuck out of a worn black suit approached them using his walker. He was one of the few patients not wearing hospital-issue pajamas and even went so far as to sport a wide-brimmed black felt hat tipped rakishly at an angle. Even in the threadbare suit, he somehow seemed dignified and almost stately.

Fernando spoke quietly to Frank as the old man made slow progress towards them.

“Here comes old Eli. See the earphones?”

Frank waited for Eli to close the distance a bit and sure enough, there were the two thin wires discreetly running from his ears across the suit and connected to a large walkman clipped to his belt.

“He loves rock and roll…” Fernando continued. “…listens to KHIT all the time. Walks down here same time, every day. Then goes back to his room, plays crossword puzzles. Guy’s great at crosswords. Kicks my ass every time.”

Eli reached them and waved a veiny hand languidly towards Fernando in greeting. He fumbled at his walkman and finally managed to turn it off.

“How ya doin’, Fernando?” He asked with a friendly smile.

“Just hangin’, Eli. What about you, man?”

Eli shrugged with an air of contentment. “Fine. Fine.”

He leaned forward and peered at close range at Frank’s face for a moment, then turned back to Fernando and stared into his.

“That your brother?”

Fernando couldn’t help a laugh — after all; he was clearly a tan-skinned Mexican and Frank was even more clearly a straight-laced, pale-skinned, white guy.

“No, he’s takin’ Rod’s job, Eli. Eli, this is Frank. Frank, Eli.”

Eli extended a trembling hand and shook with Frank. Fernando watched Eli use the moment to further search Frank’s features, not letting go of his hand. Then he asked Frank almost jokingly:

“Can think of a lot of places I’d rather be, Frank. What’s your excuse?”

Frank smiled. “Just needed a job.” He replied but Fernando noticed a slight hint of awkwardness to his words — as if he was unsure of his answer or feeling guilty or..?

If Eli noticed, he didn’t let on. He let go of Frank’s hand and stared at him, eyes twinkling.

“Play crosswords, Frank?”

Frank shrugged. “A little.”

Eli flashed a big smile. “Room 14A. Be there or be square.”

He gave Frank one last lingering look, tipped his hat, and winked. Fernando chuckled; the gauntlet had been thrown — He’d done the same challenge with Fernando when they’d first met.

Eli continued on his way, the walker tap-tapping-tapping down the hall. Frank glanced after him then raised a questioning eyebrow towards Fernando. Fernando laughed and spoke softly.

“He’s a trip, huh? Ready to meet some others?”

Frank nodded. “Sure.”

Fernando turned away and smiled — this Frank seemed like he meant it, he was starting to like him despite himself. He guessed that if this one stuck around a while, it’d be kind of cool to have someone to talk to on breaks. It was one thing to be friendly with the patients, it was another to have a fellow employee to hang with. After all, the fact of life with these people was that they were there for a reason. Most of them were very ill and on the way out. The average life expectancy once they were admitted was not more than two years for men, two and half for women. Fernando had seen so many come and go in his three years, he’d learned not to get too attached. Whenever he thought of that, he always thought of Scott Murphy.

Scott Murphy had been, Fernando confirmed later, the oddest case in the history of the Westholme Convalescent Hospital. He’d been admitted at the startling age of 36, completely paralyzed in both legs and one arm. He had been a wealthy lawyer and Frank was shocked that he would’ve decided to live here, of all places. Scott explained to him on one occasion that although he had money, he wasn’t making what he used to and that he’d rather conserve and spend it where he really needed to. As a result, he opted to pay extra to have his own room and a computer, and hispeed internet, and a multi-line phone system, and even a fax machine installed so that he could continue to work in his current state. He was on the phone almost all day, every day, handling his law business from his bed, his good arm working like mad to juggle call-waiting and dialing and, of course, eating — always eating.

The doctors that he flew in (another area that he had no problem splurging on) were the top specialists from exotic countries all over the world. They would examine him on a regular basis for the physical reasons of his paralysis — but despite test after test, they never found any.

During this time, Scott and Fernando started hanging out — at first because Scott wanted to play chess when he took a break from his work and would grab anybody he could get to agree — but after a while he realized Fernando didn’t play too well so they just talked instead. An uneducated Mexican from TJ and a high-powered attorney didn’t have much in common except for one thing — they both liked food (and it showed with both of them) — so that’s what they talked about most of the time; food. Occasionally, Fernando would even sneak something special from the kitchen or bring Scott a left over donut from the Nurse’s station.

It was on Scott’s birthday that Scott decided to tell Fernando his strange history, after he’d somehow managed to smuggle in some brandy and cigars and he was pretty hammered, his large round face flushed and sweaty. It was an odd story and Fernando would never forget it.

Scott said he’d been happily married for a little over two years when his undiagnosed “disease” hit. Fernando almost interrupted him and asked why he’d never seen Scott’s wife visiting but something held him back. It turned out, it was the right move.

Scott went on to tell him how he’d courted his wife for over a year before she agreed to go out with him. He said at first she told him he just “wasn’t her type” and he got the gist that what she really meant was that he was “a bit too round for her”. Fernando laughed when he heard it put that way. Determined, Scott said he started working out every day and watching what he ate. It was hard. He said he was a pressure eater and his job at the powerful LA law firm was nothing but pressure. Still, he stuck to it and eventually lost over 48 pounds.

Fernando remembered Scott’s face when he told him this part of the story. Here was this very large, round and splotchy-faced man confined to a bed but still aglow from the mere memory of when he had been different. It was like he was talking about someone else entirely — someone he used to really admire.

Scott went on and said that, apparently, his guess had been right about the obstacle to their courtship because soon after his weight loss, they started dating and soon they were inseparable. Not long after, they got married and everything about their relationship was great — for almost exactly two years.

Fernando remembered the scary darkness that covered Scott’s face at this point in the story. Scott kept shaking his head drunkenly side-to-side and mumbling and cursing vehemently between repeating the words “two years” and his face flushed a bright red — like it was about to burst. It was the first time Fernando had ever seen him so angry and out of control. After a while, he seemed to calm some and finally continued, but his voice continued to quaver throughout the rest of the story.

He told about one evening after he’d had a particularly tough day in court. He’d come home exhausted and was just aching for a little quiet time to lie down. He said it had probably been the worst day he’d ever had working for the firm, if not his life; everything had gone wrong — the opposition had sliced him up and made him look like a fool and he was sure he had lost his important case in a way that was sure to be very expensive for the firm. The exorbitant salary that he had grown accustomed to and his partnership in the company were almost certain to be things of the past and so, with only the deepest need for rest on his mind, he had gone quickly up the stairs of their shi-shi apartment to his bedroom.

At this point in the story, Fernando remembered that Scott had paused and actually
apologized
. He said he knew this part of the story was totally cliché but there was nothing cliché about it when it actually happened to you.

And then, with a deep gulp of air, as if he were about to dive underwater, he continued. He said that he opened the door to find his beautiful wife in bed, and actually
infiligranti
, with a guy he thought he recognized from the gym. How he’d been able to place him from the angle he was viewing, he couldn’t say — but he was right.

Scott had paused there and downed the last of his brandy and flashed a thin smile. He said he knew that he could’ve reacted a hundred different ways to his discovery, and that as he told Fernando, when he allowed himself to think of it (which wasn’t often, he confessed), he regretted he hadn’t been more confrontational. It was one of those ironies about himself he said he’d tried to accept — he was perfectly willing to look someone right in the eye as an attorney and proceed to rip them apart in the name of the law, but in his private life, he shied away from such things and usually took the path of least resistance. He said he could have done so many things to one or both of them — and they/she would have absolutely deserved it. Instead — he just turned on his heel and walked back down the stairs, as quickly as he’d come.

He said he remembered walking out the front door of their luxury penthouse apartment, walking down the plushly carpeted hallway and wondering if Stephanie (that was the name of his wife) had planned all this since two years was when an ex-wife really collected big-time from an ex-husband in a community property state like California. She would almost definitely know this from working at her paralegal job for almost exactly a year — which was coincidentally the time period the court used to calculate her portion of family earnings in the divorce settlement. He said he remembered thinking these
exact
things as he rode down in the elevator and stepped out into the elegant lobby and made his way towards the stiffly posed doorman in front of the large glass doors.

Escape
, he said he remembered thinking.
I just have to make it through those big glass doors and I can make my escape
.

And then he said he remembered falling.

There was no obstacle, no step he didn’t see, he said he just fell — Right on his face — Unable to even raise an arm or a hand to protect himself.

He said he just laid there, dazed for a moment, like a fish that had accidentally flopped onto dry land and had no strength to return to its natural habitat. He said he hadn’t been hurt, at least not in the usual way, since the lobby carpet was nice and thick and had cushioned his impact quite well. His primary pain, one that he said was far worse than anything physical he could ever remember, was the absolute agony of
all encompassing embarrassment
.

Get up, you idiot!
He remembered thinking, he told Fernando, but his legs wouldn’t listen and neither would his arms.

And that was that.

Scott shrugged. He never walked again, he told Fernando, the color returning to normal in his face. It had taken almost a year of therapy to get the one arm working but his other appendages remained permanently useless. Those things attached to his waist
looked
like legs and the other attached to his shoulder
looked
like an arm — but they were actually just heavy decoration; meaty dead weight.

Scott’s story, motivated no doubt by a lonely birthday confined to a hospital bed and too much brandy, bothered Fernando for days stretching to weeks.

He felt like he’d heard something maybe he wasn’t supposed to. But now that he had, his curiosity was set in motion. He found himself trying to eavesdrop on the doctors that came to visit, and he justified his behavior by telling himself that if he knew more about Scott’s situation, maybe there was some small thing he could do to help.

About a month later, Fernando managed to overhear the doctors discussing how they’d eliminated physical trauma and the West Nile virus and several other rare possibilities and seemed to have come to the conclusion that the cause was strictly mental. The idea that the brain could simply turn off different body parts was scary to Fernando — it was just one of those things that didn’t make sense to him and he had a hard time believing it…

He was still trying to work out if he should talk to Scott about it when he came to work the following Monday (he had that weekend off) and found Scott’s room empty. He asked around and found out that, sometime late Saturday night, Scott had taken several bottles of sleeping pills that he’d somehow managed to acquire (it was being investigated), and being a smart guy who apparently wanted to make sure he got the job done, had also taken something else first so that he wouldn’t throw up all the pills.