Final Stroke (10 page)

SIX

The Chicago weather forecaster used a play on words a
stroker might use. “This March storm will march in from the coast, leaving snow in the mountains. However, three days from now the storm’s march will stall over northern Illinois, resulting in an extensive rain pattern with winds from the southeast and …”

“Lordy,” said Betty, the night LPN, as she turned down the vol
ume. “In a couple days every jet out of O’Hare will be buzzin’ this place. You guys better get a good night sleep while you can ‘cause we’re in for it now.”

As two men in wheelchairs made their way slowly out of the tele
vision lounge, Betty continued. “Guess the weather was perfect when they picked the spot to build this place. But that’ll all change this weekend. You guys sleep good now, especially you, Mr. Babe.”

Even though no residents remained in the television lounge and the two men in wheelchairs were well down the hallway, Betty kept talking while she restacked magazines left askew on an end table. “I hope it was all right to turn down the volume. I’ll leave it on in case
anyone decides to come back for the Late Show.”

As a commercial for Dodge trucks played soundlessly, Betty con
tinued stacking magazines, and talking. “That guy from the first floor isn’t even here tonight. Probably sleeping while he can. Yeah, every
body sleeping like babies just the way they should.”

When she finished stacking magazines, Betty sat back in one of the chairs, gave off a sigh, and stared at the large screen television. A commercial for Depends had come on and she smiled at this, shaking her head as she stood up and left the television lounge.

Now it was quiet in the third floor television lounge. So quiet, the music that had just started playing in one of the resident’s rooms could be heard down the hallway. It was melancholy music consisting of a solo violin wailing sadly in a minor key.

Sometimes, since his stroke, Steve would catch himself feeling an odd attachment to a man in the past. At first he assumed it was his father. Although he did not remember his father, he’d been told his father died when he was a young man. He’d also been told his father had dark brown eyes like his eyes and that the fixation might be his at tempt to recapture his own past. Perhaps, in his search for a con nection to the past, his mind had played tricks on him. Perhaps that was the reason for being obsessed with an odd array of males like the mysterious man with dark eyes and Dwayne Matusak and Sergeant Joe Friday and Jimmy Carter, and even Sandor Lakatos, the Hungar ian violinist. Perhaps his obsession with Lakatos was not a connection with the recent past, but with a distant past, his stroke having cleared the slate sufficiently so eventually he would be condemned to wander farther and farther back in time, farther and farther away from the
world to which he belonged.

Initially, Lakatos played alone, his violin weeping. But then the
czardas
began, the rest of the orchestra joining in until the finely tuned melody of earlier turned to chaos.

When the Lakatos tape ended and the cassette player turned itself off, Steve lay in bed staring at the ceiling. He thought of this final piece on the Lakatos tape as a metaphor for his stroke. First would be the single violin, minding its own business. Then would come the speeding up, many violins and clarinets and the cimbalom join
ing in. Finally the melody would change into the rapid whirl of the
czardas
finale. Within the whirl of music he imagined a weak blood vessel failing. He imagined that single blood vessel as a broken violin string, and he imagined the initial solo a wailing dirge made by violin strings for their brother whom they knew would eventually explode within his cranium. Even though he knew he had an ischemic stroke and not a hemorrhagic stroke, he still visualized blood vessels bursting in his brain.

Although the nightlight in the room was mounted low on the wall between closet door and bathroom door, and although it was aimed at the floor, the shine of the tile floor reflected upward. Some nights the nightlight was out, the high wattage bulbs apparently overheat ing because of the metal enclosure. When he first arrived at Hell in the Woods, he complained about nights without the nightlight while maintenance took their sweet time getting around to replacing the bulb. Once he even got out his pocket thesaurus and tried to come up with words to suggest to the maintenance man that it might be better if they used twenty-five watt bulbs instead of the hundred-watters he could see on the guy’s cart. That was back when he could barely speak and had to use the thesaurus to come up with words. Now that he was off the thesaurus and probably could manage to get out his suggestion,
he didn’t give a damn. Just like he didn’t give a damn about the stu pidity of building a rehab center ten miles from one of the world’s busiest airports.

The new guy who repeated, “H-A-W-K, Hawk! H-A-W-K, Hawk!” over and over wheeled past. When the guy was finally out of hearing, he heard Phil across the hall say “Jesus fuck,” in a low voice.

When Steve turned on his side away from the glare of the nightlight, he realized he hadn’t taken off his leg brace for the night and hadn’t put on his hand splint and almost muttered, “Fuckhead,” the way he might have done a couple months back. Stroke victims often resorted to swearing when they became frustrated. His version of this had been to call himself, “Fuckhead.” But that was back in the hospi
tal, before he came here and began conversing like a somewhat normal fuckhead thanks in part to Georgiana, who everyone called George despite the fact that she was quite a cute gal.

As he lay in bed he couldn’t help thinking about Marjorie Gianetti and her conspiracy theories and the circumstances surrounding her death. That damn puddle on the floor outside the activity room, the overlooked blood specks on the doorjamb near the spot where gurney tracks led toward the door to the loading dock. Why had Marjorie broken her routine and gone down to the activity room without her wheelchair to hold onto? What about the rumor that Marjorie slipped in a puddle made by a resident, when in reality it was only water on the floor? If someone on staff spilled water, wouldn’t they have simply wiped it up? Maybe that was it. A staff member spills water, fails to clean it up, starts a rumor about a resident “accident.”

A couple weeks earlier at rehab, Marjorie had gotten hung up on the phrase “fly in the ointment,” and right now that phrase seemed apt. Of course Marjorie often got hung up on things. When he first met her, she’d said, “Make me whole,” over and over. He thought she
was referring to her brain, like making her brain whole again. But an aide named Pete who sat in on a rehab session in Georgiana’s rehab room one day said it was something Marjorie’s husband might have said, being that her husband was in organized crime. “Make me whole is like, pay me in full in the mob world,” explained Pete.

Getting hung up had been Marjorie’s biggest hurdle when it came to getting out what was on her mind. When she wasn’t saying her Buster Brown in a shoe jingle, or a meaningless litany in which she rattled off roads she probably read in a road atlas, she’d repeat phrases over and over. Georgiana would ask her name and Marjorie would say, “Fly in the ointment.” The next day she’d answer the same question with another cliche like, “Cat got your tongue?” The next day she’d say, “Keys to the kingdom,” or, “It’s a wonderful life,” or phrases he’d never heard of like, “Max the fly.” Other times she’d say, “Poor Jimmy Carter,” over and over while in tears.

After a few days of this, Georgiana tried to get into Marjorie’s head and apparently discovered the origin of one of the phrases. Using notes and books around the rehab room, Georgiana got Marjorie to concur that “Max the Fly” had been the title of a children’s book she’d read to her son. But when Georgiana tried to find out what “Fly in the ointment” meant, Marjorie went off on another tangent, repeating the phrase “black sheep” over and over until she was so upset she broke down in tears and started repeating Jimmy Carter’s name again.

Of course who wouldn’t be upset in this place? Especially when you can’t make yourself understood. Like now. A woman dies and no
body seems to give a damn about the cause. Maybe it has to do with age. The older you get, the less likely folks want to know why you’re sick, or why you died. Even if it was an accident, someone should at least be collecting information for a report. Or is the doctor’s statement on the death certificate all it takes when someone’s in a nursing home?

Maybe having some of Marjorie’s husband’s old cronies crash out of their nursing homes for one last hit wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

The circumstances seemed juvenile, piss on the floor and kids ar
guing.
He did it! No, I didn’t! She did it!
Finally, when he could stand it no longer, Steve reached out to pull his wheelchair close to the bed, put on his robe, and began the struggle to transfer himself on board. Although he could use a walker, and even a cane on his better days, he still got around much faster in his wheelchair.

The hallway lights had been dimmed for the night. Across the hall were the stroboscopic flashes of Phil’s television, Phil probably asleep with headphones on. Steve leaned forward in his wheelchair to peek around the opening of his door. The nurse at the station held a clipboard while sorting packets of medication into trays. The appear
ance of her there, holding a clipboard, combined with the word
station
, triggered a memory of a train station, the nurse becoming a station master, a telephone ringing in another room becoming the sound of a locomotive bell, the flash of Phil’s television becoming the flash of crossing signals. In this memory a man bends to shake his hand. For a moment the rooms along his side of the hall become private rooms in passenger cars. But then the phone stopped ringing and the mo
ment was gone.