Summer Eighty-five

Summer Eighty-five

You’re not the first Falcon hero to scale Bowman’s Tower with a panoramic lens. We wait all year for a day like today, a fauvist fantasy, maybe rapture; post-modern way to say red and yellow if you’re a patron-of-the-arts. The autumnal equinox illustrated this year with readier maple and rowdier sycamore, though you might leave that open for debate with the pointillists before making an actionable case.

Clyde’s footsteps biffed on the iron stairwell and then buffed on the carpeted corridor. A solemn gilded-brass door gave access to a charmless hallway where asbestos hibernated under vestige leadfree applications of neutral beige. He did not know which room it was, enervated by this dreadful calm. He was the only person in the corridor. He could have entered nearer registration where nurses and orderlies propagated. Could have asked for the room number from Lars’s sister Debbie. Clyde remembered to fuck all hospitals. 

Couple of smooth guys, we, something good about to happen, I mean something truly heroic to a couple of smooth guys nursing Guinness or Black Russians; same our parents hoisted one time or another. Provident we had waited, secretly waited, worshiped our parents secretly while waiting.

So difficult to watch, the way they berated you, is that you or the cat -- your own flesh and blood, God, you made it look painless. Although you might want to rethink Frenching at her own wedding reception, just saying, you lost yourself behind some sort of boundary a pain-in-the-ass to step back over. Don’t splinter your ass on the penalty bench.

There was no discernable activity within a thirty-foot radius, yet the corridor was too well-lit for the mortuary. The nurse’s call broke the surface calm followed by a closed latch and then quick swish-swish that traveled down the opposite corridor. Clyde headed in that direction.

At your mother’s funeral, sorry about that, really, sorry. We stood down the driveway, beyond the strictures of mourning. Smart ass, I was. Left a bristle down your spine, remember?

The nurses’ enclave was just a few paces more. Nurse Silvia portrayed a Nurse Ratched worthy of Miramax. No summons rocked her equilibrium, no medical file tried her patience. 

“What are you doing here?” Nurse Sylvia’s nostrils gesticulated – state your business.

“I’m looking for my friend admitted yesterday, here. Lars Larson.”

“Did you check registration? We’ve got miles of corridors. Medicine by floor. We do cardio here. What’s he admitted for?”

“Cranial contusion or hemorrhage.”

“ICU is the other side of the building. Registration will show you.”

“Can’t you look up his name in the register?”

“Different server. You want Who’s Who. We got Google.”

“Can you call the desk and find out, please?”

“This ain’t the Hyatt. You gotta go down to registration to find your friend, Lars Larson.”

Nurse Silvia rose from her orderly perch and laid her palms on the desk.

“Do self-inflicted wounds go to the same place as the others?”

They say, at first, you had botched it, un-botching it, even, at first, they say. Did all they could, though; should come out of it anytime. Maddening fluorescent ceiling panels; fluorescence and all the bandages. This massive hemorrhage, see, your kick-ass anoxic coma.

“Honey!” Nurse Silvia slipped from behind the counter to stand beside him. She placed her hands on his folded arms. “Time’s a wastin’. Let me walk you.”

Jessica, ICU head nurse, wore spectacles at her widow’s peak as she keyed “Lars Larson” into the search engine. Pointing backhanded by index finger, “Around this corner. Through the double-doors. Bed 15F.” She continued to read, “He’s not cognitive, but you can say hello to his sister.”

You’re the invisible man. Only the tubes get out. That time, you backed your father’s station wagon across the field, back-end off the ground and rebound, thought I was watching demolition derby. If there had been a cliff you’d gone over; then women would come after you to nurse elaborate plans to get caught in the drama. There were takers. Second guessers. Beach intimacy. Your backyard pool, the sudden chill and bulge. Nothing remembered would screw up the future. That was the promise never dispelled. Why would I want to? Any other person would have bailed years ago. At least the gauze covers your ugly mug.

Debbie stood so that she could reach the water bowl on the articulating tray and blot his shoulders to kneecaps. 

“The insensate can get dehydrated. The nurse said I could wet his arms and legs.” 

“I’ve never seen him this quiet.”

“You’re Clyde, from Ewing.”

“Vandergrift. With an T. You annoyed us until it was annoying.”

“Yeah, had to shape gentlemen out of you, before the clay cracked up.”

“Hard to form, from what I understand. Especially with decent aim.”

“Now, that’s a low blow. Did you know he owned a firearm? Never really a healthy option growing up, barbs and blunt insults enough to contend with.”

“The tempers. I was spared, mostly. I remember the looks.”

“They kill brain matter, just like Canadian Mist.”

You’re dressed-for-success, boxers, if you only had an agreeable woman there beside you from yearbook updates, social media headshots, warm body to populate double dip in the mattress. It’s an interactive list, you insert photo, and play carnal what-if. What’s next? This compulsive Deer Hunter gambit, splitting a quart of Old Grand Dad. No forethought to how it was going to end, not well. Always guessed some bizarre, inoculated scandal was your legacy. No matter the trajectory, yeah, I see that. You’re Loki incarnate, to be perfectly honest, you got the extra Y chromosome.

“Were you at Mom’s funeral?”

“I circulated once. Stood most of the time down the driveway with him, staked out, as always, for twisted behavior.”

“Did you learn something? Any giveaways? No one saw him regularly.  Back and forth Atlanta to Cincinnati. Seemed to be headed in the right direction.”

“That Bank of America job was a highpoint. Big things opened-up after that. Tasted blood in the water. Barnum was his idol.”

“I thought he had met someone. Started to take himself seriously. Take stock, and all.”

“Last one I heard was a nurse or hygienist. They did a lot of nighttime sailing.”

Your encoded vitals populate colored sectors on the monitor, a three-digit measure, conveys status quo. 

“They keep waiting for fucking brain function. Imagine. Beyond the sleep state. Healing doesn’t register. But a change would be a symptom of that.”

“If anything was possible, he’d be mooning for closeups.”

The impossible to you was never a setback, until now. The engineer just put his mind to it. Specialists under contract were prospering at this very moment. Progress was not common knowledge. Capital at risk. Stakeholders first dibs. Something you always knew, make the investment when you want results. Relationships. Leverage. You must be as creative in defense as unspeakable heartlessness on offense. 

Is that you or the cat -- your own flesh, and your own blood, God, you make it look painless. You didn’t think all the way through this time in fantasy, no ecstasy, countless ways to say tempt me now.