The Jigsaw Man (11 page)

tesque, but for the most part I found them fascinating,

almost like I had somehow walked into one of the sci¬

ence fiction movies I'd enjoyed so much as a kid.

The highlights for me included getting to see the leg

that had miraculously survived for one hundred and

nineteen record days and when I got to shake the hand

of a severed woman's arm. I took hold of the hand as

one of the medical lab assistants punched in a command

on a nearby computer terminal. Almost instantly, the

hand clenched comfortably around m i n e , scaring the

shit out of me, and causing everyone else to laugh at my

reaction/Freaky, man!

After checking out the three spacious and efficientlooking operating theaters, we headed up to tour the

_ third floor. This floor was set up more like a posh hotel

than a hospital ward, with thick luxurious carpet on the

floor and beautiful paintings h a n g i n g on the walls.

This was where the staff lived and also where our bed¬

rooms were going to be for as long as our stay here

lasted. I was anxious to explore my room but Dr. Mar¬

shall gestured for us to stop at room 301 near the end of

the first hallway. He turned, and, when he talked to us,

his voice was barely above a whisper.

"This is Andrew's room. Your rooms are around the

corner at the far end of the building. You'll see your

names on the doors. There really isn't much else to see.

The fourth floor is j u s t for storage and empty space for

future expansion, but before you go get settled in, I

thought you might like to meet my son."

"Of course," I said. Everyone agreed it would be nice

to meet the guy we were here to help.

"Great. I'll j u s t check in on him first and see if he's

up for a visit. He's a little apprehensive about taking

your arms and legs. He thinks you'll all hate him for it.

Maybe you can set his mind at ease. It's the last t h i n g

he needs to be worried about right now. Just stay here a

minute and keep the noise down. I'll be right back."

The surgeon disappeared quietly into room 301 and

we waited patiently in the hall for five minutes. We

were starting to get restless when Dr. Marshall opened

the door and rejoined us.

"I'm afraid this isn't a good time for this. Andrew is

sleeping comfortably and I don't want to wake him. He's

on a lot of medication that tends to keep him pretty

drowsy. I don't want him moving around too much be¬

fore the operation. The nurse tells me that lately he's

been sleeping during the day, and up watching televi¬

sion most of the night.

"Fm going to take you in to have a quick peek but

you have to stay quiet. I want you to meet him more

formally, of course, but that will have to wait for an¬

other day. I'm sure you'll have lots of chances to talk to

each other over the next few months. Come on in."

We paraded into the room as quietly as possible and

gathered just inside the door. Andrew's room was huge,

his hospital bed easily thirty feet away from us, situated

beside a large three-paned picture window so he could

see the fields outside. Andrew was only a small lump

under the sparkling white bed sheets. He was bandaged

up worse than an Egyptian mummy, so much so that

I'd have never been able to guess there was a man on

the bed if I hadn't been told. An oxygen mask covered

his face, obscuring our view of his only exposed skin. It

was a sad, sobering sight, and at that m o m e n t I was glad

he was asleep because I wouldn't have been able to think

of a single thing to say to him.

The rest of the room was taken up with various mon¬

itoring equipment, medical supplies, and a mainframe

computer system. Thousands of tiny wires trailed from

the computer station over to Andrew's bed, where they

split in four directions to connect into the bandaged ar¬

eas where his arms and legs should have been. We only

stayed for a m i n u t e , but it was long enough for us to

realize this poor man needed our help badly.

"Pretty unsettling, isn't it?" Dr. Marshall grimaced,

once we were all back in the hall. "Maybe now you can

fully realize why I've been so driven to help him. He's

my only son. I hope he won't have to live his life in that

room much longer.

"I took you in there because I wanted you to see how

I've prepared his body to accept your donated limbs.

You noticed the fiber-optic connections? The same prin¬

ciple we talked about to keep your limbs alive once they

are surgically removed is applied to
his
body for the r e attachment procedure. I removed his deformed stumps

and have attached the fiber-optic network to all the

healthy nerve endings we could find. D u r i n g surgery,

I'll be hooking up these healthy nerves to y o u r healthy

nerves, and there should be a minimal amount of func¬

tion loss from your body to his. Essentially, given time

to heal of course, he should be able to get up and walk

away almost as if your donated limbs had been his own

right from birth."

We thanked Dr. Marshall for the tour and each ram¬

bled down the hall to find our rooms. We agreed to

meet back downstairs for supper at 7:00
P.M.
sharp. Ater the lunch we'd been treated t o , I for one didn't plan

on being late.

My room was number 332, halfway down the corri¬

dor. It was a lavish suite, which even surpassed the

splendor of the Four Seasons, where Blue J and I had

spent the night earlier this week. It was only half the

size of Andrew's room but seeing as I was used to sleep¬

ing in a Dumpster, this room far exceeded anything

that I'd ever need. I sprawled on the bed, flipped on the

boob tube, and watched a little mindless television for a

while, j u s t trying to mellow out from all the excite¬

ment. W i t h all the information swirling around in my

head, I didn't think I'd be able to relax, but within m i n

utes my eyelids were drooping. I didn't even try fight¬

ing it, drifting off for an afternoon nap.

W h e n I woke up it was already 6:11
P.M.,
which sur¬

prised me but still left me more than enough time to

have a nice hot bath before heading downstairs to the

dining hall. I was the last guest to show. There were

also twelve men and women I hadn't met yet, probably

staff, but they were eating at another table on the far

side of the room. Dr. Marshall and Drake both ate

with us.

Supper was wonderful. We had seafood chowder,

then our choice of pasta primavera with boneless chicken

strips or pork chops with applesauce. Being a pig, I had

both. I also drank the better part of a bottle of expen¬

sive red wine. Nobody seemed to care. Eat, drink, and

be merry, I guess.

After the meal, Dr. Marshall raised his glass to make

a toast.

"To my new friends," he said. "Together, we make

history."

There was some laughter and a cheer from everyone

at the table; then Dr. Marshall said something else that

made us cheer even louder.

"We only have one more thing to do today. We have

to sign a contract with each other. Anyone interested in

getting rich? Yeah? Well, let's go make each of you mil¬

lionaires. How does that sound?"

Pretty damn good tome.

I followed Drake and his boss out of the dining hall

and back to the glass-domed atrium.

An older secretary with a wrinkled brow and her hair

tied up in a tight bun passed out our contract forms, in

triplicate, and we signed them after giving them the old

once-over. Everything looked fine to me and, by this

time, I suppose that I trusted the doctor.

Once the papers were collected and the secretary

shuffled away with them, Drake had us sit with him

one at a time in front of a fax machine. On the p h o n e ,

he was talking to a representative of the First National

Bank down in the Cayman Islands. Grand Cayman was

a popular choice for anyone wishing to wire-deposit

large amounts of cash into an offshore bank account.

Their strict laws of nondisclosure made it virtually

impossible for anyone—like say, the United States In

ternal Revenue Service—to stick their noses into the

accounts and start asking questions. Dr. Marshall had

previously set up these accounts and Drake was passing

on the final information to activate them in our names.

The fax machine started spewing out confirmation that

I was now the holder of a bank account with an im¬

pressive balance of $2,000,000.00 in cold hard cash.

I held the document with shaking hands, reading it

over four times to make sure it really had as many

zeroes as I thought it did. I couldn't believe it. Yester¬

day I was a penniless, street loser—today, a multimil¬

lionaire.

After the last of us received our confirmation pa¬

pers, we went back to the dining hall and had one hell

of a party. Dr. Marshall and Drake left the four of us

to it and soon we were sloshed out of our minds and

whooping up a storm. If there's one t h i n g homeless

people can do best, it's party like there's no tomorrow,

especially if someone else is picking up the tab for the

booze.

W h e n I left the party, the others were still hard at it

and Red Beard had started to sing. Terribly, I might

add. That's when I knew I'd had enough. It must have

been around eleven o'clock when I stumbled upstairs to

call it a night. It was a good thing they'd put my name

on the door because damned if I could remember my

room number. Anyway, I made it into bed, flicked off

the light, and happily basked for a few minutes in the

alcohol-induced glow. .

"I'm a millionaire!" I rejoiced. "A goddamned mil¬

lionaire. I can't bloody believe it.
Yaahooooo!"

I laughed and laughed and could hardly get control

of myself. This was one of the best nights of my entire

life.

Unbe-fucking-lievable!

I curled into the wonderfully soft pillow and easily

floated off to dreamland like a baby cuddled to its

mother's bosom. I hadn't felt that comfortable and to¬

tally contented with life in a very long time.

)

C H A P T E R E L E V E N

Comfortable and contented or not, I only managed to

sleep until 4:07
A . M .
I had to piss like a racehorse, and

when I returned to bed I tried my best to get some

more shuteye. Wasn't going to happen. I felt like crap

from all the booze I'd guzzled and my head was throb¬

bing like someone was beating on a bass drum stuck

between my ears. W h e t h e r I liked it or not, I was wide¬

awake. Rather than lie around suffering, staring at the

ceiling, I decided I might as well get dressed and go

find myself a cup of coffee.

Fifteen minutes later, I was digging t h r o u g h the

kitchen cupboards searching for some Java. I'd easily

found the coffeemaker sitting out on the gleaming

stainless steel countertop, but I couldn't locate any cof¬

fee to put in k. On my second search, I found a j a r of

Nescafe instant, and boiled some water in a pot on the

stove to make do. A big mug of double-strength with

cream, and I was feeling more or less h u m a n again.

I wondered what time Red Beard and the others had

finally called it quits. It was a safe bet their heads would

be feeling a lot worse than mine, whenever they even¬

tually crawled out of the sack. My guess, and believe

me I'm speaking from experience, was the other donor

boys wouldn't surface until lunchtime.

So where did that leave me? W h a t was I supposed to

do? It wasn't even five o'clock yet, and I was probably

the only person in the entire medical center up and at

it. Then again, maybe not. I was remembering how Dr.

Marshall had informed us that his son slept most of the

day, but was usually awake watching television through¬

out the night. Maybe this would be a good time to pop

upstairs and introduce myself. Couldn't hurt. If An¬

drew was awake, I'm sure he'd appreciate the company.

If he was asleep, I'd j u s t tiptoe back out without bother¬

ing him.

Up the stairs I went, taking them two at a time. I was

surprised to realize how excited I was to m e e t Andrew.

Part of it was simple curiosity, wondering what it must

be like to lie in that hospital bed all the time, but mostly

I wanted to set this poor man's mind at ease about re¬

ceiving our donated limbs. Yes, I wanted the money, but

I felt a real need to explain to Andrew that I believed in

his brilliant father and I was honestly thrilled to be able

to help him. He'd probably think I was full of shit, but I

could at least try.

As I entered the third-floor hallway, I caught a

glimpse of a tall man heading around the corner ahead

of m e , walking away from the front of Andrew's room.

One of Andrews doctors?