Touchy Subjects (14 page)

The lights changed but something wouldn't let Sam cross. Instead, he clenched his jaw and waded back against the tide of commuters. He picked a place to stand, near enough to the street person to get a good look at him, but not so near that anyone would notice. Besides, if he stood too close, the guy might wake up and take offense and bite him or something. A significant percentage of them were mentally ill, Sam had read in the
Street Times,
and no wonder, considering. But there was no sign of this particular guy waking up anytime soon. The blood from his mouth had trickled all the way round and under his chin, now, like some kind of Frankenstein party makeup. He had a dirty white beard.

Sam had no idea what to do, and frankly, all he felt was irritation. Where were human feelings when you wanted them? The timing was so inappropriate. Why couldn't this have happened on another winter afternoon, when Sam wouldn't have had a cold and so would have been able to respond like the person he truly was?

His eyes were dripping; he thought they might freeze shut. He unfolded his handkerchief and mopped at his face. An unworthy thought occurred to him:
Why did I look round at all when I should have kept my head down and run for the subway?

There was a foul reek of spirits coming off the guy when Sam bent nearer. It occurred to him to touch the guy, but he didn't know where. Or why, now Sam came to think of it. On a theoretical level, he knew that the rigours of life on the street would drive just about anyone to alcoholism, but he still couldn't help finding it gross.

"Excuse me?" he said, sniffing loudly so his nose wouldn't drip on the guy. "Sir?" How ludicrously genteel. "Mister? Are you OK?"

No answer. Sam's breath puffed out like white smoke. He made up a reply:
Sure I'm OK, mister; I love to spend my Friday nights lying on the sidewalk, bleeding from the mouth.

Sam was crouched beside the guy now. Commuters kept streaming past; nothing interrupted the flow on Bloor and Bay. They probably assumed Sam was some kind of weirdo friend of the guy on the ground, despite the Windsmoor coat—which was trailing in the gutter's mound of dirty old snow, he noticed, snatching up the hem. Now he wasn't upright and moving at speed, like the commuters, it was as if he'd left the world of the respectable and squatted in the mud. They'd probably think the coat was stolen. Damn them for a bunch of cold salaried bastards. It wouldn't occur to one of them to take the time to stop and—

And what, exactly? What was Sam going to do?

His nose was streaming now, and his legs were starting to freeze into place. He almost lost his balance as he rooted for his handkerchief. He ripped one leather glove off, reared up, and blew his nose. It made the sound of a lost elephant.

Quick, quick, think. What about first aid? Shit, he should have volunteered to go on that in-house course last year. Shreds of traditional advice swam giddily through Sam's mind. Hot sweet tea was his mother's remedy for everything, but it would be tough to come by; the nearest stall said
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. Whiskey? Hardly the thing if the guy was full of alcohol already. Put his feet higher than his head? What the fuck was that about? Sam wondered.

The guy on the ground hadn't moved. The blood didn't seem to be flowing at speed, exactly. It hadn't dripped onto the pavement yet. In films, bleeding from the mouth always meant you were a goner; the trickle only took a few seconds to grow into a terrible red river.

Sam shifted from foot to foot to keep his circulation going, like a hesitant dancer at an eighties disco night. Maybe, it occurred to him with an enormous wave of relief, maybe the blood on this guy's face was an old mark he hadn't washed off. If you didn't have a mirror you probably wouldn't even know you had blood on your chin. Maybe a bit of bleeding was the natural result of drinking methanol or whatever the cocktail of choice was these days. Well, not choice; Sam didn't mean choice, exactly.

But the thing was, how could he be sure? How was a personnel officer with no medical experience to tell if there was something seriously wrong going on here? He shouldn't call 911 on a whim. If they sent an ambulance, it might be kept from some other part of the city where it was really needed. They got these false alarms all the time; hadn't he seen something on City TV about it? And the homeless guy probably wouldn't thank him for getting him dragged into the emergency room, either...

And then Sam looked at the guy on the ground, really looked for the first time; he felt a wave of nausea roll from the toes he could no longer feel, all the way to his tightening scalp. The man lay utterly still, not even shivering in the hard air that seemed liable to crystallize round them both any minute now. Sam was not repelled by the guy, exactly; what turned his stomach was the sudden thought that he himself, by some terrible knot of circumstances such as came down on successful people all the time, might someday end up lying on an air vent with people stepping round him and an overeducated ignorant prick in a Windsmoor coat standing round inventing excuses for not making the call that could save his life.

Sam reached for his cell phone, but the pocket of his coat was empty. At first he couldn't believe it; thought he'd been robbed. Then he remembered laying it down beside his computer after lunch. Today of all days! His head was made of mucus.

He dialed 911 from the phone box at the corner. He was afraid they wouldn't believe that it was an emergency—that they would hang up on him—so he sounded inappropriately angry, even when he was giving the address. "The guy looks seriously ill," he barked.

It hadn't occurred to Sam to wonder what he would do once he had made the call. He hovered outside the phone box, as if waiting for another turn. In a sense, there was nothing else to do now; the proper authorities had been called in, and Sam was just a passerby again, with every right to head home to his condo and nurse his cold. But in another sense, he thought with self-righteous gloom, he was the only connection. What if the ambulance never turned up? What if the medics couldn't see the guy on the ground because the human traffic was too thick?

A sneeze shook him like a blow from a stranger. With grudging steps he walked back to the guy on the ground, who hadn't stirred. It occurred to Sam for the first time that the guy might be dead. How odd that would be, for such a dramatic thing not to show on a human face, except by this discreet ribbon of blood and a certain blueness about the lips. He thought maybe he should see if there was any sign of life in the guy, but he couldn't decide which bit of dirty raincoat to lay his hand on. If he wasn't dead, Sam should keep him warm; yes, that was definitely to be recommended. Sam stared around to see if there was a department store on the block. He could buy a blanket, or one of those rugged tartan picnic rugs. He would be willing to pay up to, say, $100, considering the seriousness of the occasion; $125, maybe, if that was what it took. But the only stores in view sold lingerie, shoes, and smoked meats. He blew his nose again.

Take off your coat
, Sam told himself grimly. He did it, wincing as the cold air slid into his armpits. He was wearing a wool-blend suit, but it wasn't enough. This was probably a crazy idea, considering his own state of health.

He laid the Windsmoor over the man; it was stagy, like a gesture from some Shakespearean drama. No response yet. What if the warmth made the guy wake up, and Sam had to make conversation? No sign of life, nor death, either. The coat lay too far up the guy's body, so it almost covered his head; it looked like the scene after a murder, Sam thought with a horrified inner giggle. He stooped again, took the coat by its deep hem and dragged it delicately backwards until it revealed the dirty white beard. Sam's keys slid out of a pocket and caught in a grating; he swooped to retrieve them. Jesus, imagine if he'd lost his keys on top of everything! Then he remembered his wallet and had to walk around the guy to reach the other pocket. Passersby might think he was picking the pockets of a dead man, like a scavenger on a battlefield.

He let out a spluttering cough. He could just feel his immune system failing. This cold would probably turn into something serious, like post-viral fatigue or something. He should sit down and try some deep breathing. But where? The heating vent in front of him would be the warmest, but it would look so weird, a guy in an $800 suit squatting on the sidewalk beside a bum. But then, who did he think would be looking at him? he asked himself in miserable exasperation. And why should he care?

Sam let himself down on the curb at last. It was so cold on his buttocks, through the thin wool, it felt like he had wet himself. He stood up and kept moving, jigging on the spot. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been out in January without a winter coat. Like one of those squeegee punks who lived in layers of ragged sweaters. Was that snow, that speck in his eye, or just a cold speck of dust? He rubbed his leather-gloved hands against his cheeks. His sinuses were beginning to pulse.

Twice he heard a siren and began preparing his story—which in his head sounded like a lie—and twice it turned out to be police, zooming by. After a quarter of an hour he no longer believed in the ambulance. His shoulders were going into tremors. For a moment he envied the guy on the vent, who looked almost cozy under the Windsmoor coat. He considered borrowing it back for a few minutes, just to get his core temperature up, but he was afraid of how it would look to passersby and afraid to touch the guy again, besides.
The bum probably brought this on himself,
he thought very fast.
What goes around comes around. These people get what they deserve.

Sam knew this was madness; he must be running a fever. He blew his nose again, though his handkerchief was a wet rag.

He felt a moment of pure temptation, melting sugar in his veins. All he had to do was pick up his coat, shake it off, put it on, and walk away.

He very nearly cried.

Thirty-two minutes by his Rolex by the time the ambulance showed up. He wanted to be gruff with the paramedics, but his voice came out craven with gratitude, especially when they said no, the guy wasn't dead. He begged them to let him climb into the ambulance after the stretcher. They seemed to think this was a sign of his concern and reluctantly agreed, but the truth of the matter was that Sam was too cold to walk. He would have got into any heated vehicle, even with a psychopathic truck driver. Also there was the matter of his coat.

At the hospital the staff didn't tell him anything. The doors of the ward flapped shut. The last thing Sam saw was his coat, draped over the end of the trolley. It occurred to him to ask for it back, but he couldn't think how to phrase it.

It turned out they really did call people John Doe, like in the movies. The forms were mostly blank, even after Sam and the receptionist had done their best. Sam was staggered by all the things he didn't know about the guy and couldn't begin to guess:
age, nationality, allergies.
He left his own name and address, as well as a little note about his coat, and set off walking to the subway. He was streaming from the eyes, the nose, the mouth, even. The dark night wrapped round him.

He knew he should feel better now. He had been a civic-minded citizen; committed what his Scout Leader had called a Good Deed for the Day; displayed what editorials termed "core Canadian values." So why did he feel like shit?

"Bad day?" asked the owner of the corner shop as he sold Sam a carton of eggnog.

Was it written that plain on his face? Sam nodded without a word. Only halfway down the street did it occur to him that, compared with nearly dying on the pavement, his day had been almost a pleasant one.

Sam waited till Monday before calling the hospital. He went down into the park to call, so no one from the office would get curious about his query. No, said the receptionist—a different one—she was not authorized to report on the condition of a patient except to a party named as the next of kin. Sam explained over and over again about John Doe not having any known kin. "I'm as near to kin as anyone else. You see, I'm..." But what was he? "I called about him, originally. I called 911," said Sam in a voice that sounded both boastful and ashamed.

The receptionist finally figured out which particular John Doe they were talking about. She relented enough to say that the patient had discharged himself that morning.

"What does that mean?"

"I'm not at liberty to say, sir."

Sam let the phone drop back into place. Guilt, again, that twinge like whenever he went on the leg-curl machine at the gym. He should have visited the hospital yesterday. What would he have brought, though? Roses? Grapes? A bottle of methanol? And what would he have said?
Here I am, your saviour?

Maybe in the back of his mind Sam had been thinking it would be like in the movies. An unexpected, heartwarming friendship of opposites; he would teach the street person to read, and in return would learn the wisdom of life in the rough. Who did he think he was kidding?

Sam went back to work with a poppy-seed bagel.

He got over his cold. He took up racquetball. He gave up on ever seeing his coat again, though he did keep one eye out for it on the various homeless guys downtown.

One evening, while watching the news, Sam dimly remembered something from Sunday School about having two coats and giving away one. On a whim, he got up and opened his closet. Twenty-six coats and jackets. He counted them twice and he still couldn't believe it. He thought of giving away twenty-five of them. A dramatic gesture; faintly ludicrous, in fact. Which one would he keep, a coat to clothe and protect him in all seasons? Which one outer garment would say everything that had to be said about him? Which was the real Sam?

He shut the closet.

Always after that he thought of the whole thing as the Coat Episode—as if it had happened on
Seinfeld.
It was like touching a little sore that wouldn't heal up, every time he remembered it. What good had he done? There was no such thing as saving someone's life. You couldn't make it easy for them to live or worth their effort. At most what you did was lengthen it by a day or a year, and hand it back to them to do the living.