Me & Death (10 page)

I caught myself trying to touch my throat. “Did I really have a tube sticking out here?” I asked. You know, that would look kind of cool, walking down the street with a tube out your throat. Hold a cigarette up to it, take a drag, let the smoke out.

All right, maybe not too cool. But interesting.

“You started to choke in the ambulance, and the paramedic stuck a tube in so you could breathe,” said Dr. Driver. “Do you remember that?”

It hurt to shake my head.

“You’re a lucky guy, Jim. You could have died in the ambulance, or later on the operating table. Blood clots near the brain are tricky. But you came through. It’s incredible, really. There’s a lot we don’t understand.”

“How long have I been here?” I asked.

She checked my chart. “Admitted Tuesday afternoon, and it’s Friday now. That’s three days.”

“Was I in a coma?”

“Yes.”

“Comas are cool.”

She shook her head.

“You’ll be leaving the Intensive Care Unit soon. We’ll keep you in the hospital a while longer, make sure you can move on your own before we let you go home. Your mother says you’re twelve years old – is that right?”

“I’m fourteen.”

“I thought you looked bigger than twelve. I’ve got a twelve-year-old at home. In fact, you look pretty big for fourteen.”

She waited a sec, then said casually, “Your mother doesn’t visit very often, Jim. You two get on okay?”

I shrugged. “Not bad.”

“It’s just that most moms practically live here when their kids are sick. What about the rest of your family – dad, grandparents, brothers and sisters. Are they in the picture?”

I told her I had a sister. “But I don’t think she’s anywhere near the picture,” I said.

“Oh,” said the doc.

Next time I woke up I was in a regular room, with a mean nurse and a geezer roommate named Chester who wheezed.

The nurse showed me how to walk, pushing around a clear plastic bag on a pole. First trip was to the bathroom
down the hall. (I didn’t have a tube attached to my dick anymore.) She left me alone but came busting in when I screamed.

I was staring into the mirror. First time I’d seen myself since the accident. “I’m bald!” I cried.

“They shaved you for the operation,” the nurse told me. “Stop whining, you baby. It’ll grow back.”

Ma came to visit once but didn’t stay. I was on the fifth floor. That was a lot of up and down for her. I told her I was glad to see her.

“Are you?”

“Yeah.”

She coughed a couple of long, rumbly ones. Sounded like an old car starting in the rain.

“Can I ask you something then, Jim?”

“Yeah.”

I was sitting up in bed with my knees raised under the covers. She pushed her chair forward.

“What’s it
like
, dying?” she said. “Joanne Solarski from the pharmacy ran to the house and told me you were dead. Everyone said so. But you’re alive – you came back. So tell me, what happens? Are the stories right? Did you see an angel, Jim? Did you move toward the light? Tell me.”

I’d never heard her talk like this. Mostly it was
Don’t bother me now
, or
Has anyone seen my teeth?
Here she was, sounding really interested.

“I didn’t die,” I said.

“
Something
happened to you,” she insisted. “You’re different, Jim. Saying you were glad to see me, just now.
That didn’t sound like you at all. And you’ve been smiling. There – you’re doing it now. You didn’t used to smile this much. Were you touched by an angel?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I saw a TV show about a soul who couldn’t rest until she showed the cops where the missing child was. Do you have a mission like that, Jim? Someone to save?”

“I don’t know.”

“I bet you do. Who’s Marcie?” Peering at me.

“Marcie?”

“You’re smiling again. She’s someone, isn’t she? Marcie. You called that name out when you were sleeping.”

I tried to think back, but I was missing a connection. Wires in my brain hanging loose.

“It was probably a dream,” I said.

She stood up, checking her purse for cigarettes. “Well, I got to go. You look weird with no hair, Jim. Like a ghost, you know? Like you’re not here. That’s what Cassie thinks. She won’t visit, because she doesn’t think you are really you.”

“What?”

“I told her you were in the hospital, but she won’t believe me. She is sure you’re dead.”

My crazy sister.

“Well, bye, Jim.”

“Bye, Ma.” I struggled to my feet. Stood awkwardly beside my bed. “Thanks for coming by.”

“There you go, saying thanks. Something happened to you, Jim. You’re not the kid I used to know.”

CHAPTER 19

A
s the days went by I continued to act strange for me. Like saying thank you to the lady with the train-whistle breath who brought me my meals. I’d open my mouth to make fun of her, and then I’d catch myself and say thank you instead. Or like when Chester dropped his cane on the way to the bathroom and slowly toppled, like a tree cut down by a lumberjack. I was going to laugh, but instead I hurried over to help him. That seemed like the right thing to do, and yet it didn’t fit the me I remembered.

Or when I found my mean nurse crying, and I was sympathetic. We were outside, me with a smoke I’d borrowed from Chester’s pack and her with her cell phone. She was sitting by herself on a low stone wall, staring down at a text message, sniffing and swallowing. I went over and sat beside her on the wall and put my hand on her shoulder.

She snapped the phone shut and took off her glasses to wipe her eyes. And I patted her shoulder and said, “There there.”

I am not kidding.
There there
, like I was her dad or something.

She didn’t tell me to put out my cigarette. She sniffed and said I was a good kid. And that men were shits.

“You’re right about that,” I said.

Turned out she was upset because her boyfriend had just dumped her. “I should have known when he called me
Zelda baby
last week. Zelda baby! He tried to cover it up, saying he thought he was phoning his sister, and her name is Zelda. But he doesn’t have a sister. He’s stupid.”

“I’ll say.”

She patted me on the cheek. Her hand felt soft. With her hair a bit messed up, and her glasses off, she looked okay. “What’s your name if it’s not Zelda?” I asked.

Bertha, she told me.

“Bertha.” I was going to say that’s a nice name, except it isn’t. I mean, it really isn’t. I didn’t know what to say next, but it didn’t matter because I let out this giant fart. Hospitals are big on bran muffins and stuff like that, and … well, there was no smooth way to pretend it didn’t happen. The fart ripped the air apart and then rumbled on and on, like a long thunderclap. We froze, both of us, like statues, and there was just the noise and gas.

And we laughed and laughed. Bertha was crying, she was laughing so hard. I felt awkward, but sort of pleased, you know, for taking her mind off her troubles.

I was not used to feeling like this.

Bertha fanned the air. “And I thought your cigarette smelled bad,” she said, still laughing. “You’d better go back inside, Jim.”

I had a visitor that afternoon during the soap opera. Chester was in his bed, and I was in the chair with my feet up. We had the TV angled so we could both see it. We’d
been watching
Life After Life
all week. Chester was really into it.

The knock came near the end of the episode. I turned. A woman in a kerchief and sunglasses stood in the doorway.

“I’m looking for Jim, the young man who was run over,” she said.

“That’s me.”

She hesitated. “I don’t want to interrupt.”

“Come on in, ma’am,” said Chester. “Sit on Jim’s bed there and watch the end of the show with us.”

“Really?”

I lifted my feet off the bed. She took a step forward. “Well, if you’re sure.”

She took off her glasses and sat neatly, her plastic shopping bag in her lap. She watched with a frown on her face, like she was studying the soap opera in film school.

“That Raven is something else,” said Chester. “What a hellcat!”

“Sure is,” I said.

“What’ll Brick do for an alibi now?”

“Don’t know.”

“The girl in the wheelchair is Brick’s sister,” he explained to the lady in the kerchief. “Her name’s Tintoretta. She could give him an alibi for the time of the murder, but her evidence might not be alleged in court because she can’t talk.”

“Allowed,” I said.

“Huh?”

“You said alleged. You mean allowed. Her evidence might not be allowed in court.”

“Oh, yeah. She talks by blinking her eyes, ma’am. One blink for yes, and two for no. Like this would be: no.”

He blinked twice.

“I see,” said the woman.

“Alleged, eh?” said Chester with a sidelong glance at me. “Jim here is awful sharp. I have trouble keeping up with him.”

He struggled up from the bed and said he was heading outside for a smoke. Normally he’d have a nap now, but he was giving me some privacy. He was okay, Chester.

I stayed in my chair. The lady got to her feet, faced me.

“I came to say I’m sorry, Jim,” she said. “I’m the one who ran you over on Tuesday. Do you remember?”

I shook my head.

“Oh.” She sniffed. “Oh, dear. Well, it was my fault, and I wanted to apologize. I’m not normally an aggressive driver, but I was upset, and I didn’t look where I was going. As a matter of fact, I was on my way to the hospital. Not this one – St. Joe’s, in the west end. My daughter, Marcie, was dying.”

Something was tugging at my memory now, like a dog worrying at the blanket, trying to pull it off you. “Marcie?” I said.

“I took her in with a bad fever, and they kept her overnight. I went home in the morning to change, and
they called me to say she’d fallen and was unconscious. When I ran you over I was hysterical. I was afraid I’d killed you and that my daughter would die before I got to see her.”

She twisted the plastic handles of the shopping bag, remembering.

“Marcie got better, but I was still worried about you. I’ve been calling the hospital every few days. When they told me you were out of danger, it was like I got my life back too. I wanted to see you and say I was sorry.”

She opened the bag on the table next to my bed. Inside were grapes, black, firm, and round.

“Marcie loves grapes,” she said. “I thought you might too.”

I had a good feeling about this lady. It’s like when a song starts on the radio. You don’t recognize it from the intro, but you know you like it.

“Can you forgive me, Jim?” she said.

My head and hand and body hurt, I had a hole in my throat, and I couldn’t remember the past three days. But I had this feeling about her.

“Sure,” I said.

CHAPTER 20

L
ate that night I woke up with Bertha standing beside my bed.

“Are you all right, Jim?” she whispered. “You were moaning.”