Crush (35 page)

Stacy has been apologizing every twenty minutes or so for the way she was treating me when Jamie first vanished. She’d better be sorry…the most calculating killer could not fake the wayI wail and flail as theyresuscitate him.

When at last his heart rhythm is regulated, theyhook him up to antibiotics to prevent infection and as abruptlyas theyshow up, theydisperse, all talking at once.

I won’t leave him, not for one minute, unless it’s to use the bathroom that adjoins his room to another.
I dispense liquid soap all over the pewter keychain I got him, use my fingers and nails to peel and scrub away the layers of dried blood and soil and bits of grass that hide its sweetness. It slips from my hand and my whole body leaps as I rescue it from being lost forever down the drain.
And that’s when the fatigue sets in and the numbness wears off, and I lean over the sink, tears rolling down my face, down the pipes.
Whycouldn’t I have saved
him
?!
I refuse to shower, because that would take longer than one minute. Mom stays and fretfully hobbles on her cane, back and forth from Jamie’s room to the cafeteria to get me drinks, food, whatever. When she gets too tired to hold her eyelids up, Stacy comes in and assumes go-fer duties.
Jamie shows some improvement over the next few days. The chest tube collects blood and drainage from his punctured left lung and the lasix(diuretic) helps Jamie drain the excessive fluids into his urine bag. His lungs sound better, the doctor says, and they begin to “wean” him off of the ventilator until he’s able to breathe on his own. Satisfied with what the chest tube has done for him, theyremove that too.
An article about Jamie’s beating appears in the
Sacramento Bee
. It describes his injuries in grotesque detail and accuracy. At press time, “no suspects have been arrested.”
Reporters try to sneak into the ICU to spy on us, to ambush us and tryto gather juicyinfo for their rags and their sixand eleven reports. Thank God for the nurses. They’re like dogs with bones.
During these several days, I talk to him constantly, wondering if he can hear me. I prayto God that these medical efforts aren’t all in vain, that he hasn’t suffered some irreversible brain cell death from all this trauma. He looks so small. He looks
dead
, laying there. Is he really in that shrunken gray shell before me? What’s on his mind as his body struggles to recover and mend? What was on his mind during those long, cold hours in that orange grove?
Why wasn’t I there for him? Why did he have to go through this
alone
?!
Unable to stand another minute without some respite, I decide to take a walk around the ICU floor. But that’s not enough.
Please, God
, I praycontinuously,
don’t let him die while I’m gone… and if he wakes up, keep him awake until I get back
. I have to stretch mylegs…I have to move…I feel grimy, myown bodyash a second skin holding in myheat. I need a shower in the worst way.
In the main lobby, I spy two elderly women, one small lady with short, curly silver hair sitting in a wheelchair, the other, taller, white-haired, kneeling before the wheelchair and stroking the silver-haired woman’s face. I think they’re lesbians, but theymight just as well be sisters or close ladyfriends. I pretend I know for sure, because I like to imagine they’re in love, and in it for life, whatever life has in store.
Mom limps up beside me and takes my hand. “How’s Jamie?” she asks.
“Same,” I murmur, myeyes not leaving the lesbian couple.
“Do you know them?” Mom asks.
“No…I think they’re lesbians.”
“Aw, you don’t know that for sure, Tammy.”
“I’m pretending that I know for sure,” I saysoftly.
Mom watches the two women for a long time. Then she says, “That’s what it’s all about, honey. Staying together through it all, never giving up.”
I’m never giving up.
If…when Jamie wakes up, I’m going to marryhim.

Around January 8th, I get a call from my landlord in L.A. I haven’t paid January’s rent and it was due on the fifth, so it’s either payor get out. I hate the idea of leaving Jamie, but the doctor says Jamie can onlystaythe verysame or improve. I know better. I may not be a nurse or a doctor, but I know anyone can suffer sudden reversal and die. I’ve listened too closelyto Jamie’s horror stories to be naïve.

Stacy and Mom both promise to keep a close eye on him, that one of them will be byhis bedside at all times. Stacygives me her key to Jamie’s house, and on the ninth, I drive down to my apartment and pack my things together. The stuff I can’t take with me, like furniture, I donate to the SalvationArmyand to the Purrfect Peace Cat Sanctuary. As I help them unload the van I’ve rented, I ask them how myold friends Wonka and Teddyare doing. Neither of them have been adopted, so I buy two cat carriers and adopt them both.

But Teddyhas attached himself to a prettyfemale cat named Pepper, a long-haired tortoise shell who looks like Mom’s cat Tillie. It doesn’t matter that Teddy and Pepper are both fixed. They’re inseparable, so on the eleventh, I bring all three kitties home. Between the gas, the van rental, the adoption fees, catfood and cat caddies, I’m out at least sixor seven hundred dollars, and just about as broke as the ten commandments. Mom can’t stop laughing when I call her to tell her about adopting three new “children.”

I call a guy to come change the locks and have new keys made. I am moving in without asking Jamie first, but there’s no
way
I’m letting him stay alone after this. Besides, his house is perfect for us. It’s two bedroom, one bath, with a nice, fenced-in back yard and a secluded front yard. There’s hardly any traffic on his street.

I carefully introduce our new family members to Misty, Sam, Tigger and Ginger, and linger a little while, watching how they interact. The two “groups” are receptive, but not overly friendly to each other. Tigger and Ginger laytogether on the couch. Mistyand Sam, as always, hog the two beige recliners. Teddy and Pepper, anxious over the smells and sights of their new home, retreat under Jamie’s bed. Wonka, the odd man out, is as confident and easy-going as I remember him. He decides the coffee table is his domain, and proceeds to stretch out over the autumn leaf table runner that, according to Jamie, has been there since before Halloween.

When I’m satisfied our family of seven will coexist without tearing each other to pieces, I head back out toward the hospital. On the way, I stop at Wal-Mart and spend my last hundred dollars on a bill of groceries. His cupboards will be full for the first time in ages. I also buy a soft, plushy, light blue velour throw blanket that catches myeye.

I return to his side and beg him to wake up. For three days, I talk to him, inveigle him, even browbeat him a few times. When he begins to cry while still in the invisible fist of his coma, I mutter to him, “Jamie, if you think I’m mad at you, I’m not…I’m not…this isn’t your fault. Don’t payanyattention to me…I’m tired, that’s all. I want you to come back to me…but if it’s too much for you…” I can’t bear what I am about to say. “If it’s too much…if your body is too damaged…go where you need to go…I don’t want you to suffer…I don’t want you to hurt anymore…”

I stop and let a huge sobbing jag pass over me. “…but Jamie…if you die…now…after all we’ve been through…I don’t know if I’ll make it.”

It’s a good old fashioned guilt routine, and I’m a shithead for using it. He’s had enough guilt in his life without me adding to it. But I can’t help myself. “If you die, I won’t make it, Jamie…I can’t lose you now. Besides, I moved into your house without your permission. I adopted three kitties in L.A. They’re waiting to meet you…they get along real well with Tigger and Ginger and them! Please come back to me, Baby…please…” I kiss and coax him. His mouth is gummy and his breath is stale, but I don’t care. “Come home…come back…come back to me…”

My surgeon, and a throng of doctors and nurses gather around mybed excitedlyas I gaze into Tammy’s eyes. I can’t stop smiling. I’m so happy to be home, I just kiss him over and over, clasping his hands, refusing to let go. Not being able to talk doesn’t matter to me at the moment. I can’t stop touching him as I make inaudible little “Mmmm, mmmm” vibrations in my parched throat, swollen and raw from the breathing tubes.

It matters to everyone else, including Tammy, and as they pipe one question after another, I notice that I still have pain, an ache, a spasm, inside of my neck, in the membranes and muscles. They’re so sore I can picture them, blood red, raw, like a fresh slab of steak.

They do swallowing tests and though it’s difficult, I’m able to gulp both solids and liquids without choking. They check for vocal cord and nerve damage, and find nothing.

“Do you know where you are?” they ask loudly, thinking maybe myhearing is damaged, and I nod, but I can’t tell them.
“Do you know your name?” Again, I nod.
Tammyasks me, “Can you write, Jamie?”
I nod
yes
and he gets me a notebook from the nurse’s desk. My right hand, arm and clavicle are broken, along with my right wrist. I can write very sloppily with my left hand. “What’s your name?” asks a nurse.
James Michael Pearce,
I write.
“Do you remember what happened to you?”
A jumble of transient faces and words…I see people with half their faces covered…I hear someone telling me Tammy’s not coming to help me.
But he’s here.
I smile up at him.
I write,
I don’t remember
.
“What’s your last memory?” mysurgeon asks.
I happily scribble,
Tammy is right. I met him in a grocery store when I was a baby
.

The doctor steps back in confusion. “What’s he talking about?” he asks Tammy.
“Baby…you remember now?”
I think I dreamed it. When I was out.
“What’s your latest
real
memory?” a nurse asks flippantly. Tammyscowls at her.
That was a real memory,
I write. As for my latest waking memory, I put down,
Tammy and me eating breakfast. We had toast and jam. We talked about him having to go to L.A. soon to get his stuff moved up here.
“That was the morning of the attack,” whispers Tammyto the doctor, but I hear him.
Attack?
I envision faces, half covered in the collars of sweaters, jackets, hoodies. I write down what I see and everyone nods thoughtfully. That’s it.
“What do you do for a living?” asks mysurgeon.
Nurse.
They all nod at each other, looking relieved.
Yes, I’m in here. My brain isn’t damaged. I just can’t talk.
“Why?” theyask.
I don’t know.
Just to be absolutelycertain, theygive me vision tests to see if I can correctlyidentifycolors and shapes. Theyhave me do basic and intermediate math problems.
Don’t bother with calculus
, I write, and they chuckle. They do a CT of my brain and see no bleeds, no herniations, no lesions.
Having to use myleft hand to write and do calculations, I tire easily. Actually,
everything
is wearing me out, ergo my temper is volatile. I spend most of mydays and nights trying to sleep on the inhospitable hospital bed. I bitch at the nurses nonverbally when theywake me up to get myblood pressure, to walk the hallways or to take a shower.
I tryto be nicer to Tammy, bless his heart, but when myright arm throbs or my head aches, I answer more snidely than intended. When a nurse tells me my IV is infiltrated and I have to be stabbed with another damn needle, I throw things---empty kidney basins, a hairbrush, my notebook a few times----and aim silent screams at the ceiling. I get overly hysterical when Tammy tries to be of help by raising the head of my bed and all it does is make me feel dizzyand nauseated. When I’m particularlytired, my left leg drags, and the doctor says that might be from brain injury. So theytake me all over again to do a cat scan of myhead and of course, theyfind nothing.
Please get me out of here
, I write.
Tammysays, “Soon, Baby,” in his sweet, saintlyway. Argh!

The day I’m discharged to home, January 27th, they sit all of us down, me, Tammy, Stacyand Peggy, and tell us that aside from some short term memory loss, they deduce no discernible permanent damage. I’ve simply become a mute. “We’re pretty sure the cause isn’t physical or organic,” they say. “We may be wrong, but we believe the cause is psychological.”

I keep seeing a towering figure with a face obscured by a dark-colored hooded pullover. I keep seeing flashes of light in a dim background, like lightning in a coal black sky. I write all this down again, but again, no one remarks.

“It’s likelyhe’ll speak again,” the doctors say. “But it will have to be in his time. With the emotional trauma he experienced, his muteness might be elective.”

What are you guys talking about
? I write, and hand my scribbles to Stacy.
But theygo on talking like I’m not there. I cut myeyes in silent outrage and resolve not to communicate with any of them for the rest of the evening.
“Not necessarily,” replies the doctor. “The mind is tricky, delicate. More than likely, Jamie will be able to speak after he processes what happened to him.”
“He can’t even
remember
what happened to him,” Tammy

“He’s probably repressing,” the doctor says, his voice low, but I hear him. How noisy does he think this office
is
anyway? “In which case, you…” He indicates Tammy, “…need to be prepared for him to need your emotional support. He’s probably going to have nightmares, night terrors, hallucinations…He’d benefit from counseling…there are wonderful support groups too, for gays and lesbians who have been harassed.”

I simply sit there, seething at them. Physical therapy for my smashed right hand, wrist and arm is arranged, and I fume all the way out to the car. I won’t even talk to Tammy, and naturally, he keeps asking me what’s wrong. Finally, I take mypad and pen and write,
Why should I talk to any of you? You all acted like I wasn’t there every time I asked a question!