The Losers (7 page)

“Mom?”

“She’s always been a delicate woman, you know, and I’m afraid all of this has been too much for her—your father’s death, your accident, all of it. She’s a little—well—disoriented. Her doctors say

that she’ll come out of it eventually, but it’s going to take time.”

“I’d better go home. I can get around now—a little. I’ll see if they’ll discharge me.”

“Uh—that’s going to be a problem, Rafe. You see, what’s happened is that your mother has—well, sort of retreated. I mean, she’s not catatonic or anything, but it’s just that in her mind none of this has really happened. As far as she’s concerned, your father’s away on a business trip, and you’re off at college. She’s perfectly happy—talks about you both all the time. The doctors think that it might be best to keep her that way for the time being. If you came back with your—on crutches, that is—she’d have to face things she’s just not ready to come to grips with yet.”

“I see.”

“I hate to have to be the one to tell you, but it’s better coming from me than from somebody else. Just give her a little time, that’s all. Write to her from time to time—that sort of thing. I’ll keep you posted on her progress.”

“Thanks for telling me, Uncle Harry.”

“That’s what family is for. If you’re not too tired, there are a couple of other things I need to discuss with you.” “I’m fine,” Raphael told him.

“Okay, Rafe.” Uncle Harry opened his briefcase. “Financially you’re pretty well off.” “Sir?”

“You’ll have a fairly comfortable income. Edgar—your
father—
had a number of insurance policies. Edgar was always very interested in insurance.”

“He was a careful man.”

“That he was, Rafe. That he was. The policies will cover all your medical expenses here and give you an income besides—not very big, actually. Walking-around money is about all. You’ll also be receiving Social Security disability benefits.”

“I’ve never had a job, Uncle Harry—not a real one. I’m not eligible for Social Security.”

“You worked for four summers at the mill back in Port Angeles.”

“That wasn’t a real job, Uncle Harry. The owner hired me because of my father—and because I was a football player.”

“They withheld Social Security from your check, didn’t they?” “Yes.”

“Then you’re entitled. Don’t rush out and make any down payments on any castles, though. What’s really got you set up is the settlement you got from the railroad.”

“Settlement? What settlement?”

“I told you about that the last time I was here. I had you sign some papers, remember?”

“To be honest with you, Uncle Harry, there are some big gaps in what I remember. The painkillers sort of erase things.”

“I suppose they do at that. Well, to cut it short, the railroad’s insurance company got in touch with me not long after your accident. They made an offer.”

“What for? It was my fault. I was drunk and driving too fast. It wasn’t the train’s fault.”

“You don’t necessarily have to make an issue of that, Rafe—not that it really matters now, I guess. The railroad didn’t want a messy court case. Jurors in this part of the country are a little unpredictable where railroads are concerned. It’s cheaper in the long run for the railroad to make an offer in any case where there are personal injuries. Those ten-million-dollar judgments really bite into company profits. Anyway, you’ll be getting a monthly check from them. I still wouldn’t get my heart set on any castles, though. If you don’t go hog-wild, you’ll get by okay. I’ll put the money—your settlement, your insurance, and your Social Security check all in the bank back home for you. You remember Anderson, don’t you?”

“The banker?”

“Right. He remembers you from the football field, and he’ll take care of everything for you. You’ll be getting a check every month. I put a few thousand in the hospital safe for you.”

“A few
thousand?”

“You’re going to have unusual expenses when you leave the hospital, Raphael. I don’t want you to run short. I’m afraid you’ll find out just how little it is when you get out on the street. You’re set financially, so you can just relax until you get back on your feet again.” Harry stopped abruptly and looked away. “I’m sorry, but you know what I mean.”

“Sure.”

“I’ll need your signature on a few things,” his uncle went on. “Power of attorney for you and your mother—that kind ofthing. That way you can concentrate on getting well and just leave everything else up to me. Okay?”

“Why not?”

“Mr. Quillian,” Raphael said to his therapist a few days later while resting on his crutches.

“What is it, Taylor?” the balding man in the wheelchair asked him.

“Did you have any problems with all the drugs they give us?” “Jesus Christ, Taylor! I’ve got a broken back. Of course I had a problem with drugs. I fought drugs for five years.” “How did you beat it?”

“Beat it? Beat it, boy?” Quillian exploded. “You
never
beat it. Sometimes—even now—I’d give my soul for one of those shots you get every other hour.”

“All right, then. How did you stop?”

“How? You just stop, boy. You just stop. You just don’t take any more.”

“All right,” Raphael said. “I can do that if I have to. Now, when do I get my wooden leg?”

Quillian looked at him. “What?”

“My peg leg? Whatever the hell you call it?”

“Prosthesis, Taylor. The word is prosthesis. Haven’t you talked with your doctor yet?”

“He’s too busy. Is there something else I’m supposed to know?”

Quillian looked away for a moment, then looked back, his face angry. “Dammit,” he swore. “I’m not supposed to get mixed up in this.” He spun his wheelchair away and rolled across the room to a file cabinet. “Come over here, Taylor.” He jerked open a cabinet drawer and leafed through until he found a large brown envelope.

Raphael crutched across the room, his movements smoother now.

“Over to the viewer,” Quillian said harshly, wheeled, and snapped the switch on the fluorescent viewer. He stuck an X-ray picture on the plate.

“What’s that?” Raphael asked.

“That’s you, Taylor. That’s what’s left of you. Full front, lower segment. You don’t have a left hip socket. The left side of your pelvis is shattered. There’s no way that side of you could support your weight. There won’t be any prosthesis for you, Taylor. You’re on crutches for the rest of your life, boy. You might as well get that down in your mind.”

Raphael stood on his crutches, looking at the X ray. “All right. I can live with that if I have to.”

“You still want to try to get off the dope?”

“Yes.” Raphael was still looking at the X ray, a horrible suspicion growing as he looked at the savagely disrupted remains of his pelvis that the shadowy picture revealed. “I think it’s time I got my head back together again.”

ix

“There really wasn’t any alternative, Raphael,” the doctor told him. “The damage was so extensive that there just wasn’t anything left to salvage. We were lucky to be able to restore normal urinary function.”

“That’s the reason I’ve got this tube?” Raphael asked. “The catheter? Yes. That’s to allow the bladder time to heal. We should be able to remove it soon. There’ll be some discomfort at first, but that’ll pass and the function will be normal.”

“Then there was no damage to the—uh—”

“Some, but we were able to repair that—to a degree. That’s a pretty tricky area to work with. My guess is that even if we’d been able to save the scrotal area and one or both testes, normal sexual function probably couldn’t have been restored.”

“Then I’m a eunuch.”

“That’s a very old-fashioned term, Raphael,” the doctor said disapprovingly.

Raphael laughed bitterly. “It’s an old-fashioned kind of condition. Will my voice change—all that kind of thing?”

“That’s mythology. That kind of thing only happens if the removal takes place before puberty. Your voice won’t change, and your beard won’t fall out. You can check with an endocrinologist periodically if you like, but it won’t really be necessary.”

“All right,” Raphael said, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. He’d begun to sweat again, and there was an unpleasant little twitching in his left hip.

“Are you all right?” the doctor asked, looking at him with concern.

“I can live with it.” Raphael’s left foot felt terribly cold.

“Why don’t I have them increase your medication for a few days?” the doctor suggested.

“No,” Raphael said sharply. He lifted himself up and got his crutches squared away.

“In time it’ll begin to be less important, Raphael,” the doctor said sympathetically.

“Sure. Thanks for your time. I know you’re busy.”

“Can you make it back to your room okay?”

“I can manage it.” Raphael turned and left the doctor’s office.

Without the drugs he found that he slept very little. After nine, when the visitors left, the hospital became quiet, but never wholly silent. When he found his hand twitching, reaching almost of its own volition for the bell that would summon the nurse with the needle, he would get out of bed, take his crutches, and wander around in the halls. The effort and the concentration it required to walk helped to keep his mind off his body and its craving.

His arms and shoulders were stronger now, and Quillian had given him his permanent crutches. They were called Canadian crutches, a term that seemed very funny to Raphael for some reason. They had leather cuffs that fit over his forearms, and they angled slightly at the handgrips. Using them was much less awkward, and he began to develop the smooth, almost stately pace of the one-legged man.

He haunted the halls of the hospital during the long hours of the night, listening to the murmurs and the pain-filled moans of the sick and the dying. Although he realized that it might have been merely coincidence, a series of random occurrences of an event that could happen at any time, Raphael became persuaded that most people die at night. Usually they died quietly, but not always. Sometimes, in the exhaustion with which he sandbagged his craving body to sleep toward the morning of each interminable night, he wondered if it might not somehow be
him.
It seemed almost as if his ghosting passage down the dim halls, like the turbulence in the wake of a passing ship, reached in through the doors and walls to draw out those teetering souls. Sometimes in those last moments before sleep he almost saw himself as the Angel of Death.

Once, during his restless midnight wandering, he heard a man screaming in agony. He angrily crutched his way to the nurses’ station. “Why don’t you give him a shot?” he demanded.

“It wouldn’t do any good,” the starched young nurse replied sadly. “He’s an alcoholic. His liver’s failed. Nothing works with that. He’s dying, and there’s nothing we can give him to relieve the pain.”

“You didn’t give him enough,” Raphael told her, his voice very quiet, even deadly.

“We’ve given him the maximum dosage. Any more would kill him.”

“So?”

She was still quite young, so her ideals had not yet been eroded away. She stared at Raphael, her face deathly white. And then the tears began to run slowly down her cheeks.

Shimpsie noted from Raphael’s chart that he had been refusing the painkilling medication, and she disapproved. “You
must
take your medication, Raphael,” she chided. “Why?”

“Because the doctors know what’s best for you.”

He made an indelicate sound. “I’ve got the free run of the hospital, Shimpsie,” he told her. “I’ve been in the doctors’ lounge, and I’ve heard them talking. Don’t bullshit me about how much doctors know. They’re plumbers and pill pushers. I haven’t heard an original thought from one of them since I’ve been here.”

“Why do you go out of your way to be so difficult?”

“It’s an attention-getting device, Shimpsie.” He smiled at her sweetly. “I want you all to remember me. I quit taking the goddamn dope because I don’t want to get hooked. I’ve got enough problems already.”

“There are programs to help you break that habit,” she assured him. Her voice was actually earnest.

“You’ve got a program for everything, haven’t you, Shimpsie? You send a couple of orderlies to my room about nine times a week to drag me to meetings—meetings of the lame, the halt, and the blind—where we all sit around spilling our guts for you. If you want to fondle guts, go fondle somebody else’s. Mine are just fine the way they are.”

“Why
can’t I get through to you? I’m only trying to help.”

“I don’t need help, Shimpsie. Not yours, anyway.”

“You want to do it ‘your way’? Every client starts out singing ‘My Way.’ You’ll come around eventually.”

“Don’t make any bets. As I recall, I warned you that you weren’t going to enjoy this. You’d save yourself a lot of grief if you just gave up on me.”

“Oh no, Taylor. I
never
give up. You’ll come around—because if you don’t, you’ll stay here until you rot. We’ll grow old together, Taylor, because you won’t get out of here until I sign you off. Think about it.” She turned to leave.

He
couldn’t
let her get in the last word like that. He absolutely
couldn’t.
“Oh, Shimpsie?” he said mildly.

“Yes?”

“You really shouldn’t get so close to my bed, you know. I haven’t gotten laid for a long time. Besides, you’ve got a nice big can, and I’m a compulsive fanny-patter.”

She fled.

Finally, when the craving for the drugs had almost gone and the last dressings had been removed to reveal the puckered, angry red new scars on his hip and groin, when the Christmas season was upon them, Flood finally came to visit.

Their meeting was awkward, since there was very little they could really talk about. Raphael could sense in Flood that stifling unease all hospital visitors have. They talked desultorily of school, which was out for the Christmas holiday; of the weather, which was foul; and of nearly anything else except those uncomfortable subjects that by unspoken mutual consent they avoided.

“I brought your luggage and books and your other stuff,” Flood said. “I decided to get an apartment off campus next semester, and I was pretty sure you wouldn’t want the college to store your things. They tend to be a little careless.”