Dying For A Chance (5 page)

            “Hmm, was it that Good, Bad and Ugly one?” That was the only one I'd heard of, my third foster father was a bit of a John Wayne fan and one rainy Sunday he spent the whole day watching old westerns.

            Nic slapped his forehead in mock frustration. “Oh man! I can not believe you don't know this.” He set my bag back up on the bed and looked at me with pity in his increasingly beautiful brown eyes. “You call yourself educated and you don't know A Fistful of Dollars?”

            “I don't call myself that.” I replied stiffly

            “Why not? What's wrong with you?” Nic plunked one elbow up onto the bed and propped his head into his hand. His brown eyes stared at me with such intensity I had to look away. I didn't owe him the story of my life. I slunk into the bed and played with the TV remote.

            “No reason, forget it.” I found some dull reality show and pretended to watch

            “Come on, talk.” he tugged on my covers and waited. I didn't pay any attention to him. “Or, if you're not going to talk I could take a trip down to room 245. I think it's almost sponge bath time for Ms. Hartman.”

            “You wouldn't.” I glanced at him

            “Ohhh I would.” He backed away from my bed and made for the door. He got to the opening and I was about to call him back when a nurse stepped through him. He faded and her movement sent wisps of him swirling into the air. It was the Burnt Out nurse, she peeked across the floor and scanned under the bed. When she caught sight of my purse sitting on the bed with all its contents she placed both hands on her hips.

            “Ms. Tern” I cringed, I knew what was coming. “You HAVE TO stay in bed. Dr. Swaresh...”

            And just like that, the Dr. walked into the room as if he had heard his name being called. He swept his warm eyes across the room and gave me a curious stare.

            “Dr. Swaresh, this lady refuses to stay in bed. I don't know what more I can do with her.” she threw up her hands and stormed out of the room. I was happy that she had left, what a cranky woman. That also meant the Dr. and I would have the room to ourselves, or at least I hoped we would. Nic hadn't come back since the nurse walked through him. I didn't worry about him, I mean what could happen to a ghost? That's when I noticed the doctor wasn't alone. Behind him stood a small woman in her mid fifties, tight bun rolled up her salt and pepper red hair and silver spectacles perched on her nose just at the bottom. I instantly longed to push them up for her. She clutched a thin folder and with one deft move flipped it open, one handed, and began taking notes inside it. She didn't even slow down from walking into the room.

            “Samantha, this is Dr. Ilyena Gannushkin. She is our chief psychiatric officer.” Dr. Swaresh introduced the small woman who suddenly seemed a whole lot more threatening than just a moment before.

~~~

            “Good afternoon, Ms. Tern.” her words rolled out together in a mix of accents. Maybe Russian, Polish or something like that. I'd seen a few spy movies.

            “Hello, Dr. Ganyu...Ganyushky...” I stumbled over the foreign name and silently berated myself for not being more worldly.

            “Please, call me Ilyena” her smile sat behind those metal spectacles and didn't get much further than the end of her nose.

            “Something I can do for you?” I was already nervous that he'd brought in a psychiatrist, it had only been 3 minutes and already my palms were swamped.

            “Oh no, Samantha. It's what I can do for you that I'm interested in.” That smile peeked out from under her nose again. “How have you been feeling?”

            It was the one question everyone asked. Every nurse, every housekeeper, every doctor....how are you feeling? Made me want to scream when I heard it. I decided not to scream at the nice doctor lady, I thought she would take it poorly.

            “I'm doing alright.” What did she want me to say? I had an idea why she was there, I mean throwing my purse across the room and screaming at imaginary people tends to get the doctors all edgy. So, my problem was this. How do I evade the questions of my insanity, prove to everyone else that I was not going crackers and at the same time continue this bizarre new relationship with Nic? Then again, what was this thing with Nic anyway? How long was he staying, why was he staying, did he want something from me? I glanced up at the doctors and realized to my horror that I had been staring at my bed covers and moving my lips silently throughout my entire inner monologue.

            Dr. Ilyena paused from scratching notes on her second sheet of paper. She gave me a decidedly knowledgeable “uh-huh” and tapped the end of her nose with her pen before continuing to scratch her notes.

            I leaned back on the bed in a sigh, this wasn't going well.

            “Who is this? She looks like my third grade math teacher.” Nic's voice was the last thing I had hoped to hear. I glanced carefully around, shifting in my bed to mask my movements. He was sitting just behind Dr. Ilyen and looking around her at the notepad she held.

            “Ohhh man” his chuckle was devilishly pleased. “You are soo getting locked up.” I gave him a secretive 'shut up' stare.

            “Seriously Sam, she's got your padded cell at the loony bin already booked.” he moved back and forth in his chair, whistling his annoying cowboy tune. Dr. Ilyena coughed to get my attention, I hadn't realized I'd been staring at her shoulder.

            “Ms. Tern, I understand that you've gone through something very difficult.” she placed the notepad on her lap and for the first time since entering the room actually looked at me through those metal frames. She had kind eyes, genuinely kind eyes and that surprised me.

            “I have a feeling that you're still going through something very difficult. I'd like you to tell me about it.” There it was, she was calling me out. Like one of Nic's Sunday afternoon movies. Dr. Ilyena stood at one end of dusty main street with her clipboard and the sun glinting off her spectacles and I stood at the other with nothing but my 'open at the back' hospital gown. Dr. Swaresh ahem'd to clear the tension when I didn't speak up right away.

            “Samantha, I apologize for the suddenness of this conversation. I asked Dr. Ilyen to join us because I felt you could use another person to speak with.” his warm hands held mine for a minute and I looked into his deep dark eyes, willing him to take away this dangerous woman.

            “We can have this conversation another time, when you're ready.” he nodded to Dr. Ilyena and she politely thanked me for my time and promised to come back the next day. I sincerely hoped the building would get struck by lightning before that. Dr. Swaresh stayed behind.

            “We still have something very serious to consider.” he seemed to be preparing for something, he settled himself in the chair and took a deep breath, still holding onto my hand.

            “When your car was struck during the accident a piece of metal entered your back.” I shifted uncomfortably thinking how that must have felt. It was odd not remembering.

            “You had an operation shortly after arriving in the hospital to remove it. The piece was very close to your spinal column.” I placed my hand at the back of my gown and felt around, sure enough there was a long gouge there. Nic appeared at the foot of the bed, his face was drawn and he looked incredibly serious.

            “Samantha” Dr. Swaresh held my hands tighter. “We were unable to remove all of the metal pieces before damage was done.” My stomach dropped into fourth gear and started to spin in slow menacing circles. My leg, the time I had tried to step off from the bed, it had held back. I didn't think of it at the time. Could it be permanently gone? I pushed the covers off from my leg and tried to make it move by sheer force of will. It sat there selfishly failing to twitch even a toe. I was certain that just yesterday it was moving, perhaps sluggishly but nonetheless it was still moving. My eyes searched around the room in a panic, I don't know what I was looking for. Dr. Swaresh gave me a comforting pat on the hand. Nic gripped the edge of my bed and caught my flailing look, he held it there confidently.

            “Breathe” he repeated over and over. “Look at my eyes and breathe Sam”

            The rising panic in my chest threatened to overwhelm the small grasp of reality I held onto. Dr. Swaresh went on about my leg, his opinion on what surgery would be best and what the percentages were for success. In a monotonous drone I heard him say that the piece was slipping further across my spine. It had already severed the peripheral nerves which had caused the sluggishness and they needed my permission to operate again in hopes of removing it permanently. I stared into Nic's eyes and blew air in and out of my lungs which pumped furiously. Wasn't the accident enough? Fate had taken away Nic's life and now it seemed determined to keep taking things away from us. I felt a bond between us, we'd both been victims here and no one understood what we had lost except each other. I asked Dr. Swaresh to excuse me so I could process this new information.

            “What am I gonna do?” I hated the way my voice shook. I wanted to be strong in front of Nic. Here he was a cripple for life and I was being a big ninny about the possibility of becoming the same thing. I scrubbed at my eyes to get rid of the welling tears and stared down at my legs. There didn't seem to be any difference, left to right they looked identical. I tried again and again to make the left one move. It stubbornly refused. I laid back on the bed and closed my eyes.

            “You're going to be fine” Nic's voice wasn't mocking or laughing anymore, he was soft and serious. His cold hands wrapped around my cheeks and took away all the heat and pain. My mind raced. What could I do with useless legs? What was I capable of? I thought of Nic and how he must have felt as a kid. I wondered what he had wanted to be when he grew up, a firefighter, a police officer? I never had those big dreams but even my small ones were being taken away. I wasn't strong enough to handle something that huge. Big embarrassing tears escaped from the corners of my eyes and soaked his hands, still holding my face. I looked at him through the distorted water.

He was so young, I couldn't remember what it was like to be 19, I knew I hated it. No one treated you like an adult except when you did something wrong. His expressive eyebrows drew together in tender concern and held up those velvety brown eyes that I could see at this distance were speckled with gold. He had soft cheeks, just barely shadowed with a scruff of facial hair and it framed his perpetually grinning mouth. We were so close, I felt like I was being pulled with a magnet towards him. I blinked away the tears and realized where my mind had been heading. Ridiculous!

            “Thanks, Nic” I slipped my head out of his hands and used the blanket to dry my eyes. “I wish I could be as confident as you.”

            “It's alright, I have enough for the both of us.” His grin made my heart beat a little faster. That's when I realized that I was clearly going crazy. It was probably for the best that Dr. Swaresh had brought in the psychiatrist. A ghost shouldn't be making me feel emotional, a 19 year old ghost shouldn't be making me feel...I didn't even admit it to myself. The one thing I was sure of was that I was severely messed up and my bizarre reaction to Nic wasn't helping. I decided to do something stupid. I can't explain why I did it, it's the one thing I wish I could take back. But, there you go, that's life. You don't always know the right door when it's banging away in front of you.

            “Nic” His cool hands dropped down to hold mine and the look in his eyes was playful. I coughed a little to clear my throat from the crying and tried not to look straight at him. “Is there...I mean, could I have some time on my own?”

            He nodded his head “Of course, of course... I'll give you a few minutes”

            “No, wait.” He stopped mid-turn. “I mean. Longer than a few minutes...Is there someplace you can go? Do you have to stay here?” I started to regret the way that had come out. My stomach knew I was being awful and spun to make me pay for it but I didn't listen. Nic looked down at his chair, his hands opened and closed a few times.

            “Yeah” He spun his chair towards the window without looking at me and seemed to disappear in between the rays of light. I tried to call after him but it was too late.

            “I didn't mean....don't...” he was gone, “I'm sorry” I whispered. I hoped he had heard.