The Donors (5 page)

He stood along the wall of the wet, dark cave. It was hotter than the hottest summer day. Probably as hot as the desert, except it seemed so wet that he felt steam in his mouth and lungs. The cave was totally black, but he could see anyway. He figured that was just the way dreams worked.

When he was younger his mommy used to tell him “Dreams are just like that” when he would tell her about scary nightmares. He guessed that was right. Dreams were just like that. He pressed himself against the damp wall and waited. They would come soon and he didn't want them to see him. He knew the dark wouldn't keep him safe but the less he was noticed here, the better.

Just like last time, he smelled it first. It smelled worse than moldy garbage, worse even than an awesome fart (his mommy called them poots, but all the bigger kids called them farts). Nathan thought it might be the worst odor in the world, except, of course, he knew he wasn't in the world. Then he heard them coming and pressed his small body tight against the hard wall. At least in his dreams his arm didn't have burns anymore, so it didn't hurt bad to reach up and pinch his nose shut. He breathed through his mouth—which didn't help ‘cause he could kind of TASTE the fart smell—and waited.

They made wet growls, snarling as they scraped their long claws on the hard rock floor of the cave. The taste against his tongue got so bad he thought he might barf. Nathan couldn't make them out yet, not even straining as hard as he could, but the grunting got louder and the glowing embers of their eyes bobbed closer, getting brighter.

As they materialized from the emptiness, Nathan found he could keep his fear small by remembering he was really in bed in the hospital—his mommy holding his good hand and touching his hair. If he thought about it hard enough, he could even feel her soft fingers on his head, smoothing his hair. It seemed weird to feel his mom's touch and smell the Lizard Men at the same time.

“Dreams are just like that,” he whispered to himself.

He could see them now. They were bunched close together and carrying something heavy between them. In the dark he couldn't be sure, but it looked like a body. And the body didn't move at all—a dead person? Were they carrying a dead body?

He felt his heart thumping in his chest, felt his fear grow in his throat and thought he might even cry. Nathan didn't want to see a dead person, not even Steve. The Lizard Men stopped. The one in the front, the taller one, seemed to sniff the air. As he watched, straining to see through the dark, he saw a long, red tongue slither out of the deformed dragon's head. It licked across a row of long pointed teeth and spit dripped from its dark green chin onto the ground. The creature hissed and turned in his direction, sniffing and pawing the air in front of it with a huge claw. The glowing eyes looked right at him but didn't seem to see him. The long, hideous snout sniffed the air again and the creature growled.

Nathan realized the creature was not seeing him but smelling him, smelling his fear. He closed his eyes tightly and concentrated with all of his might on the soft feel of his mother's hand in his hair. He could just barely hear her soft, sad voice, so far away that she seemed to talk to someone else in another room. But she told him everything was alright and that she was sorry. He held onto her voice, the feel of her fingers, and felt his heartbeat slow. The pounding in his head softened. His breathing didn't seem nearly so loud.

He opened his eyes to see the creatures grunt at each other, then move on, angling away to the other side of the cave. He felt sure they carried the mangled body of Steve. In his last dream they had dragged Steve behind them, only he had been alive and screaming. He could still remember the horrible screams as they dragged him down a long dark hallway by his ankles. He had writhed in pain and left a brown, wet trail of blood and vomit behind him. He had no doubt Steve's body would be a beaten, bloody mess.

He tried to be very still, tried to barely even breathe as they passed by. The gross fart smell burned his eyes, making them water, but he tried not to blink. It might be just a dream but Nathan knew it was also real. He didn't want the Lizard Me to know he could see them. As they passed, the shape they held between them became clearer and it was a body. But it wasn't gross or bloody.

And it wasn't Steve.

Nathan recognized the pretty face turned toward him, eyes closed, head bobbing as the Lizard Men walked. He knew immediately it was his favorite nurse. She had told him to call her Nurse Jenny and she always winked at him when she came by the room. She wasn't awake but he could tell that Nurse Jenny wasn't dead, either. Her face was contorted in disgust but not in pain—maybe from the smell. The Lizard Men held her arms and legs but they did so as gently as possible. None of that made Nathan any less terrified.

They're not going to do anything nice to Nurse Jenny.

He watched them place her carefully on the ground against the far wall of the cave. The taller one stood up and gave a slight nod to the shorter, who then bent over the crumpled figure of his favorite nurse. Nathan knew that something very bad was going to happen to her. He felt his pulse pound and he sucked a thick fart-filled gulp of air into his dry throat. His stomach turned and to his horror he heard a thin sound escape his throat.

“NNuuhh…”

It wasn't that loud, but loud enough. The tall Lizard Man turned slowly in his direction and its eyes held his. Then, so fast that he gasped out loud, the creature darted toward him across the cave floor.

Nathan screamed, or thought he did, and spun around to run away, but there was nowhere to go. Instead, he turned back and saw the creature had cut the distance across the cave in half already. He balled his fists tightly by his sides and squeezed his eyes shut. With all his will he thought about his mother's fingers in his hair and tried desperately to go to her. Her voice grew louder but was no longer soothing. It sounded scared. “Nathan, baby? What is it, honey? What's wrong? Wake up, baby, please!”

His mommy's voice boomed louder and louder, but it was too late. He could smell the breath of the creature, searing and hot, on the side of his face. He opened his mouth wide and screamed.

“Mommy! Mommy! Help me! Please help me!” His voice ricocheted briefly off the walls of the cave and then changed. He felt a claw on the side of his face. He swatted it away and opened his eyes, not wanting to see the long, red tongue and sharp teeth, but unable to keep his eyes shut any longer.

His mother looked at him, her face flushed, anxious. Nathan looked around the room in a panic, searching for the Lizard Man. He tasted coppery blood in his mouth and looked back at his mom as tears spilled onto his cheeks. Nathan threw his arms around his mother's neck, barely feeling the sharp pain in his right arm and hand. He held her tightly and cried loudly, muffled against her neck. He wanted her to hold him and make all the bad things go away. He didn't care if it meant he wasn't a big boy right now.

“What is it, baby? What's wrong?”

He heard his own voice tell her the Lizard Men were trying to get him and felt stupid because he knew she wouldn't know what that meant, but he kept saying it anyway, over and over. Mommy would make it all better. She would help him. She would make him safe.

He felt his raspy breathing slow as he sobbed against his mother's chest. She had crawled halfway into the bed with him now and cradled him like a baby. Nathan wanted to stop sobbing, but he couldn't. Every breath brought another startling noise. He let her soothing words wash over him like a warm blanket.

“Just a bad dream, baby. Nothing is going to hurt you ever again, son. Just a dream. You're safe. Mommy's little boy is safe here with me.”

The words were magic and he started to calm down. The sobbing stopped. His stiff body relaxed, but he let her hold him anyway. He heard another voice from the doorway.

“Is everything, okay?” It was his nurse, the older one with all the Mickey Mouse characters on her jacket. He knew her voice but didn't look up. He nuzzled against his mother more intensely.

“Just a nightmare, I think,” his mother answered, her voice heavy and tired.

“I'm sorry,” the nurse said. “He's supposed to go to the treatment room for another debridement of his hand now.”

Nathan felt a new wave of panic explode inside him. He didn't want to go, not again. He didn't want them to scrape the bad skin off again. It hurt so much and the medicine made him feel horrible—like he was in a different kind of nightmare.

“No, Mommy. Please!” He whined. He held her tighter, not wanting her to let him go. “I don't want to go.” He knew he should be brave, but didn't care. He started to cry again.

“Can we wait just a little while?” He heard his mother plead. She was sobbing too and Nathan felt bad about that.

“Let me call the doctor and ask,” the nurse answered after a moment, but she didn't sound very hopeful that Nathan would get a break.

“Why don't you let me call him?” a new voice asked. Nathan recognized it immediately. This time he did look up and managed a little smile at Dr. Jason. He felt relief that his new friend was here. He wasn't like the other doctors at all. Jason smiled back. “Hey there, little buddy.” His friendly grin helped Nathan to relax a little more.

“Hi,” he managed to squeak.

He listened as his mommy told Dr. Jason about him waking from the dream, how it seemed too much to have him go to the treatment room right now.

“I'll take care of it,” Dr. Jason said.

A moment later, he came back into the room. Nathan looked at him and his heart raced. He was scared of going, but hopeful that his friend could make everything okay.

“Here's the deal, pal,” Jason said seriously, but Nathan saw he was smiling and held onto that. “The other doctor said we can wait a little while but only if you let me do the treatment myself. Is that okay?” He sat on the edge of the bed and put his hand on Nathan's still-shaking shoulder. Nathan thought he seemed surprised when he threw his arms around his neck (he felt the pain in his arm and hand a lot more this time).

“Yes,” he said. It wouldn't be so bad with Dr. Jason, he thought. But it would still hurt.

“Thank you so much, Dr. Gelman,” his mom said.

“Who wants a cookie?” Dr. Jason said. He sounded a little uncomfortable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jenny found it hard to sleep during the day, no matter how long or tiring her night-shift may have been. She darkened her apartment as best she could—hung towels over the curtain rods to block some of the sunlight that leaked through—and wore a “napping mask” over her eyes. Nonetheless, she usually struggled to fall asleep and found it hard to stay there once she had accomplished her goal.

Not today. She immediately fell into an exhausted slumber and woke from a dream around two hours later. It was a great dream. The quiet and handsome Jason Gelman had been making love to her, his luscious mouth kissing her face and neck.

She woke feeling giddy and slipped into her forgotten PJs. She had collapsed on her bed earlier wearing only her underwear from the night before. Then she donned her sleep mask (the towels really didn't quite do it), burrowed deep under her covers and fell easily back to sleep, thinking how great it was that she had only one night shift left to go in this cycle. After tonight she could cease the vampire life for a while. She tried to resurrect her sexy dream of Jason Gelman, but she knew that almost never worked out.

But she did dream again. She floated through the dark, suspended by strong hands, as she glided through what felt like a sauna. She kept her eyes closed, mostly because she knew she was supposed to, and let herself be carried through the wet heat. She felt very detached, emotionless. She remembered a book she once read by an author who claimed he had been abducted by aliens as a child, on multiple occasions. This seemed very much like what he had described but she felt no reason to be afraid.

I'm just having a dream, and not a scary one at that.

Then why don't you open your eyes, girl?

I'm not supposed to…

The steam-like heat soaked her pajamas. Beads of sweat ran down her face and neck, but she kept her eyes firmly shut. At one point a swell of anxiety built up inside her, a momentary panic, but it quickly disappeared. She let her head sway back and forth as she floated through the dark. Then she felt herself being gently set down on hard, uneven ground.

A horrible smell surrounded her and she couldn't shake the feeling that it was somehow familiar. A part of her brain screamed its importance. Another part, much stronger and eerily beyond her ability to control, soothed the feeling away, and in her dream she felt sleepy.

A cold, bony hand on her face sent a jarring alarm through her nerves. There was something there, something she should have remembered, but it eluded her memory. The cool touch should have felt soothing on her hot skin, but it felt wrong, frightening. The urge to sleep then became so powerful that she couldn't have opened her eyes even if she had wanted to. She no longer did.

“Dreams are just like that,” she heard a child's voice whisper.

As she slipped deeper into the unknown, the cold became less uncomfortable. Inside her dream she had another dream, lying on the uneven floor of a hot cave. It was like a slide show of brief images, horrible pictures…

Memories, my dear. Your memories.

Horrible memories from somewhere—

Your childhood. Remember your poor brother?

—from her childhood. She saw her father silhouetted in the doorway late at night and fought the familiar fear exploding inside her. She could smell him, his liquor breath, as he got on top of her. She remembered her poor brother, lying on the floor in the kitchen with his face bloodied, his legs unmoving. He had cried, begged her to help him. She still felt the fist across her face that had dislocated her jaw when she had attacked the man. The man who had paralyzed her little brother…

The images played on and on. She sobbed as she lay on the hard, wet floor.

Then the familiar voice told her how to make things right. She couldn't change her past, but she could help stop the terror for another child.

Isn't that why you wanted to be a nurse, to help people? Is there anyone more deserving of your help than an innocent little boy?

She saw Nathan in his hospital bed with the bulky dressing on his arm. She heard him cry in the treatment room as the doctors peeled dead flesh from his mangled hand. She felt sad at first, but then became aware of a white-hot rage that grew inside of her. As the voice spoke she let her anger reach a hellistic crescendo.

She listened more carefully to the instructions telling her what she would do.

 

*  *  *

 

Steve must have passed out at the sight of the man called Clark. It seemed like only a split second, but when his eyes came into focus again, the thin, white face with its hidden eyes and slit of a mouth no longer stared down at him. So he waited. He wasn't sure for how long. Time spent staring at a white ceiling with its black lines was very hard to measure.

By the time Mr. Clark came back, a woman with a mask and blue shower cap on had put a rigid tube in his mouth, which sucked the vomit out. She had cleaned up his face.

The hissing had faded to background noise and the periodic pressure of his lungs being filled with air no longer freaked him out, though it felt no less miserable. The feel and taste of the plastic tube, which went through his mouth (it was cool on his tongue and had the rubbery taste of a balloon), drove him crazy. The more he tried to force his mind to something else, the more he found he could only think of that damn snaking tube in his throat.

He guessed it was attached to some kind of breathing machine
.
He couldn't get used to not being able to move, although he had gotten good at blinking, thank god
.
His eyes were so dry they felt like little particles of glass were peppered over them. He could move them a bit if he strained, although they would drift back to center after a few seconds.

Before Mr. Clark's return, he had heard an intermittent smattering of other voices whispering around him, saying things he couldn't understand. They talked about a medicine, he thought,
sucking
, or something like that, and about changing how it
dripped
. One voice kept mentioning how many
twitches
there were. They also talked about blood and
typing and crossing
, whatever that was—something to do with his blood, he thought. And then they disappeared as he stared at his tiled ceiling. He listened to the sickening hiss and tried hard to see
anything
other than that goddamn ceiling.

And then Mr. Clark entered again. Steve felt an icy set of fingers on the side of his face. Then the damned hat-covered head, with the thin smile and the shadows where eyes should be, leaned over into the center of his vision.

“Mr. Prescott,” he said slowly. “I'm sure you are wondering what is going on.” He paused, nodded so that his shadowed face bobbed in and out of Steve's field of vision. “Yes, I thought so. Well”—he disappeared but the voice continued—”you will figure it all out in due time. I am sure we will come to understand each other very soon.” He paused and Steve heard a rustle of activity. Mr. Clark's voice changed, talking to someone else. “Is the succinylcholine back? Is he light enough to blink?” Another pause. “Good.”

Mr. Clark leaned again into view, silhouetted in backlight from above. The thin lips parted and the dark, red tongue darted in and out as he spoke.

“Mr. Prescott, are you sorry for what you have done? If you are, I would like you to blink twice, please.”

Still this bullshit!?

He assumed the pale freak meant Sherry and her little brat. Could it really all be about that?

Holy shit, how friggin' crazy is this? What the fuck is wrong with these people?
It was an accident, goddamnit.

Steve's face flushed with anger. He wanted to clench his jaw, to scream at his captor, but he couldn't. So instead he stared at the wet, thin lips and seethed, breathed it with each mechanical
HISS
of the ventilator. Mr. Clark leaned back out of view.

“Well, Mr. Prescott,” Clark sounded excited. “I see from your idiotic and ignorant expression that you are not sorry for the pain you have caused. So we'll begin.”

Again Steve heard the sounds of muted activity from all around him. He heard the clatter of metal on metal, like tools being assembled. What in hell was going on? The muffled chatter and a flurry of activity around the room disoriented him. He heard more clinking of…
surgical instruments?

Oh my god, No! Surely not. Oh God, please help me!

Steve stared at the ceiling,
his
ceiling as he thought of it now, and listened to the clatter of the unseen crowd. He occasionally struggled out a slow, hard blink when the dryness of his eyes became unbearable. A pale halo surrounded the white of the ceiling. With all of his concentration, he tried desperately to decipher the incoherent conversations. His face was hot and his heart felt like it might jump out of his chest. The beeping sounded very fast now, marching out the staccato rhythm of his elevated heart-beat.

Please…!

“What size gloves?”

“Seven and a half.”

“Just one suction.”

“Is there blood available?”

“We're going to need epi-soaked gauze at the donor site.”

“I'll set up the electric cutter. Do you need the mesher?”

“No, but make sure the bovie is at 30.”

“Go ahead and prep.”

Steve felt a sudden shock of cold liquid on his right thigh and groin. Hands began to scrub his leg with the freezing solution. He felt it dribble down the inside of his thigh. There was a tug and then a burning in his dick. He tried desperately to shift his eyes downward, to see what was going on, but they only obeyed his command briefly. Nowhere near long enough to see anything. He really wanted to know what they were doing to his dick. The beeping sound of his heartbeat accelerated.

What the hell is happening? If I'm about to get an operation, why am I awake? Christ, I can feel everything! Don't they know that? How can I tell them?

The beeping banged into his head like a nail.

“Wow, he is really tachycardic.”

“Well, go figure.”

“Towels please.”

“Towel clips?”

“No, thanks.”

He felt warm towels laid across his crotch, then on his thigh, just above his knee. Then more on his inner and outer thigh.

“Ok, let's get it done. Two pairs of pick-ups please. Thanks.”

Steve could not contain his terror but he had no way to release it. He heard a clinking of instruments and felt a hand pressing on his skin.

My god, this can't be happening. Please fucking stop. Please, please, please…

“Ok, hold the skin taunt right there. That's it.” He felt the metal instrument pulling both up and down on his thigh, the skin between stretching tight. A tear trickled down his cheek into his ear.

“Electric blade.”

Blade? BLADE? Please, god, NO! NO! NO!

A mechanical whirring sound, like a power tool spooling up, echoed in the room. He felt like he might vomit again; his stomach tightened. A flash of cool pressure on his leg startled him and then…

An explosion of pain jolted low on his leg. It spread upward as the pitch of the tool became lower, slower. When the whirring sound sped up again, the pressure stopped and the piercing torture relented, replaced by an unbelievable burning over his entire lower body. The sensation of being lit on fire was so overwhelming that Steve expected at any moment to smell smoke. Never in his life had he imagined anything so excruciating. Every nerve fired, trying to mobilize his muscles, to get him to move away from the source, but he remained still. He tried to scream, but the agony echoed silently in his mind instead. He looked in vain for any outlet.

“That's a good piece. Put that in some saline.”

“There you are.”

“Right here?”

“That's it, right next to the first cut.”

Pressure on his thigh again. This time more to the inside. The horrible whirring sound.

Please, stop! For god's sake, not again!

The vacuous screams inside his head were followed again by the pressure and then by the sharp, ripping up the inside of his thigh and the terrible burning.

“Another good one.”

“Man, he's really bleeding.”

“Get some epi-soaked sponges on the site.”

“Want me to hold pressure?”

“Guess you better.”

A hand pressed roughly right where his leg burned
.
His pain ratcheted up two notches, the beeping boomed louder, and Steve felt sure that his brain would explode if he couldn't move immediately. But only his chest moved, outside of his control, with each
HISS
of the breathing machine.

“Here's the epi.”

He heard a sound, like the pump of a squirt bottle, and then a cool wetness on his thigh. For a second it soothed the pain, but then the fire rose in intensity, and the room went black. Steve drifted. The voices around him became faint, the beeping softer and softer and softer…

 

*  *  *

 

Jason looked at the clock for the tenth time in eight minutes. His almost feverish desire to get out of the ER did nothing to make the damn thing go any faster. He stood next to the patient board and scribbled a final few notes in the last two charts of patients with pending items. He repeatedly looked down the hall for his relief; the infamous Dr. Dietrich. Jason didn't know if it was a desire to see (and maybe talk to) Jenny or his nearly desperate need to check on Nathan that drove his manic desire.

There was something very different about Nathan, something they shared other than scars. The afternoon had been tough on their new friendship (or whatever it was). It had been easy to talk Sheila Katzen, the General Surgery third year resident on the burn service, into letting him do Nathan's debridement. Hell, Sheila didn't want to do it any more than he did. Scraping and scrubbing dead skin off someone held no glamour or glory, and anyone who didn't feel agony when that patient was a crying child should probably not be allowed to mingle in a civilized society.