Afterlife Crisis

by Randal Graham

  And while playing along is a thing that I’m always keen to do, I find it a dashed sight easier to do when I know what it is I’m playing along with. I prepared to unleash a few well-chosen words in order to put this point to Vera, but she shushed me with a gesture. She then increased our speed, hauled me through a couple of doorways, and then pulled me around a corner where we collided with a solid, fleshy wall of white polyester topped by a whiter pillbox hat.

  The fallout of this collision was a tangled mass of arms and legs, a dislodged pillbox hat, an impromptu, no-holds-barred wrestling match involving all three collidees, and a cry of “Matron Bikerack!” from yours truly.

  Of course you’ll remember Matron Bikerack.

  No? Oh, surely. She’s the boss-nurse of the hospice, the scourge of Detroit Mercy, and the sturdiest light-heavyweight to ever push a pill or chill a bedpan. Second only to Dr. Peericks on my list of hospice-based medical-louses-to-be-avoided, this Bikerack was not only a pain in the neck to end all pains in the neck, but also the Officious Meddler who had, more often than not, been the chief party responsible for making my time in the hospice a drudgery and a penance. She had an unmatched capacity to lower the boom on anything that might be loosely described as fun, remorselessly scuttling any attempt at merriment or frivolity in favour of the soul-crushing application of niffy ointments, stinging syringes, and other medical treatments that I daren’t name in mixed company. While I’ve frequently been assured that she means well, and that her efforts are aimed at boosting the mental whatsits of her charges, I maintain that she stands alone as a world-class damp rag, dark cloud, and party-pooper. I couldn’t begin to count the times that this sturdy enema-giver had gotten herself in the way of my legitimate aims and aspirations, though she’d never gotten in my way quite so literally as she had at the moment of going to press.

  Disentangling myself from the wreckage, I rose from the floor, dusted off the Feynman trousers, and extended hands to help all and sundry regain their footing.

  “Matron Bikerack,” I repeated, just in case the last one had been swallowed in the mêlée.

  She contrived to steady herself and seemed to sway a bit before regaining the power of speech.

  “What the . . . I . . . well I never . . . I mean . . . who in Abe’s name are you?” said the matron, taking a moment to glance around and absorb the scene. “And what are you doing running through the halls with . . . with . . . is that patient 89-427?”

  “It is!” said Vera, who seemed to have come away from our recent collision without any ill effects. “But call me Vera. That’s my name. And this is Rhinnick, my fiancé.”

  “Abe’s drawers!” said the matron, in an astounded sort of way, replacing her pillbox hat and taking a step closer to Vera. “I barely recognized you. Your burns — why, why they’re practically healed,” she continued, moving in for an even closer inspection. “Dr. Peericks told me you’d improved, and that your memories were returning, but I — well I had no idea that — wait, did you say ‘fiancé’?”

  “I did!” said Vera. “Rhinnick Feynman. And as much as I’d like to stick around and make more formal introductions—”

  “Rhinnick Feynman?” said the matron, now rotating on her axis and fixing me with a fishy eye. “The man Dr. Peericks called to help with Oan’s treatment?”

  She stepped closer, subjecting me to the sort of penetrating scrutiny which she had, during my previous sojourns at the hospice, generally employed in the examination of rashes and unexpected growths. At least, she had done so in the version of history known to me. Based on her dialogue thus far it was clear that this Matron Bikerack was yet another victim of the widespread epidemic of Feynman-centred amnesia, or someone whose previous encounters with yours truly had been blotted out by the Author without Him bothering to send me his latest revisions.

  “Y-y-yes, that’s me,” I said, inclining the bean.

  “And you just happen to be engaged to Oan’s roommate?” she said, still subjecting me to the fishy eye. “An awfully odd coincidence,” she added.

  “N-n-none odder,” I agreed. “But coincidences do happen. That’s why we have a word for them. And no one could have been more surprised than the undersigned when I learned — that is to say, when I realized — that the charred husk stationed in Oan’s room, staring off into space and chirping about two chairs, was really my old comrade-in-arms—”

  “Fiancée,” said Vera.

  “—was really my old fiancée, Vera Lantz, for whom I’d been searching for years and years.”

  “Weeks,” said Vera.

  “Weeks,” I agreed.

  I didn’t seem to have assisted matters. The fishiness of the matron’s gaze intensified.

  “We do have to be going,” insisted Vera.

  “Going where?” said Matron Bikerack, crossing her arms and pivoting — if pivoting means what I think it does — into a position between Vera and the only road to freedom. “Dr. Peericks hasn’t signed any discharge orders,” she added.

  “There isn’t time,” said Vera, who, apparently keen on getting our show on the road, proceeded to kick her pace of speech up a notch or two, landing somewhere between Auctioneer and Regimental Sergeant Major. “Not today, at any rate,” she began. “I presented Dr. Peericks with our marriage license so Rhinnick could sign off on my release. You know, responsible family member accepting responsibility, that sort of thing. Anyway, that’s all been attended to but Peericks didn’t receive my paperwork until after business hours. So he just gave me another day pass and told me to push off until tomorrow. I’ll come back for the final discharge papers then. Here’s my pass.”

  Pausing for breath, Vera hastily withdrew a piece of paper from the recesses of her costume, waved it briefly before the matron’s eyes, did something resembling a half-curtsy, and turned to leave.

  “Not so fast!” said the matron. “Let’s have another look at that pass.”

  I couldn’t blame the old disaster. There was an obvious sort of shady, dubious-rumminess in Vera’s behaviour, and the speed with which she’d flourished her paper at Matron Bikerack invited suspicion. It occurred to me in a flash that this Vera, keen as ever to keep my quest on course, had falsified the data about Peericks allowing her to vacate the hospice, and that the putative — do I mean putative? — day pass might not withstand careful investigation. I could see this was a moment that called for action.

  But what action? That was the q. As the matron stepped toward Vera, hand outstretched, my mind returned to my last escape from the hospice, when I’d facilitated my own departure by beaning the uncooperative Dr. Peericks with a book, much in the same way Vera had beaned Jack with a heavy ceramic pig containing coins. And while the act of bringing heavy objects crashing down on a subject’s head is one that shouldn’t be cultivated as a habit, it occurred to me this might be another instance where a bit of upper-slope-clubbing might be indicated. But where the beaning of Jack had been attended to in an apartment featuring heavy piggybanks, and the beaning of Peericks had unfolded in an office holding a wide assortment of sturdily bound books, the present encounter was situated in an open, sterile hall containing nothing that might serve in what you might call a bean-biffing capacity.

  On further reflection I was glad to have found myself weaponless, for it occurred to me that, while the assaults on Peericks and Jack had occurred in circumstances that practically cried out for a bit of justified beaning, the bonneting of Bikerack could be regarded as unsportsmanlike in the circs. I mean to say, there she had been, shuffling along in a corridor and minding her own business, only to be waylaid by a pair of speeding escapees. Topping off the encounter with a final, parting shot to the matron’s melon seemed offside. I therefore ditched the notion of further physical confrontation and gave diplomacy a go.

  “Aren’t you the same Matron Bikerack who attended to Ian Brown?” I said.

  “Ian Brown?” she said
, turning. “Ian Brown? Why, yes, he was a patient here a few months ago. He escaped with the help of a DDH Guide and a gang of Napoleons. That’s the gang that stole my pass card!”

  Here she paused to shimmy a bit, wiggling as though the memory had made her itch, and I regretted that my little attempt to distract the old juggernaut had dredged up an irksome slice of her recent past. I contrived to redirect the conversation.

  “Ah yes,” I said, “well, I crossed paths with Ian Brown some time ago, and he assured me that his entire recovery and present well-being could be laid squarely at the feet of Matron Bikerack, nurse extraordinaire, and one whom Ian said, and I quote him verbatim, could easily out-Florence any Nightingale. ‘Abe’s gift to mental health,’ I think he called you.”

  Here she shimmied again, as though a feather had been drawn up her spine or her spirit had been gripped by irresistible island rhythms. I couldn’t recall her having been a compulsive wiggler during our past associations, so I imagined this was some new tic or habit she had developed in recent days. Perhaps another of the Author’s strange revisions.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, rather excitedly, suddenly wriggling like a hooked halibut.

  I’m a keen observer of human behaviour, and I perceived that something was amiss. Vera, too, seemed to sense that this sudden mobility on the part of Matron Bikerack might be a sign of trouble brewing.

  “Are you all right?” said Vera.

  The matron didn’t respond. Or rather she did, but her response didn’t come in the form of anything you might describe as language. She grunted something that may have been a word but seemed to be focused on other things. She redoubled her shimmying efforts and started tugging forcefully at her nurse’s uniform in a way which seemed to suggest her supporting structures and guy-wires might have become entwined. Her troubles seemed to localize in the vicinity of her bosom, and she pulled repeatedly at the pectoral regions of her uniform in a manner that risked the hospice’s PG rating.

  My gaze drifted chestward — not for any unseemly purpose, but only, as you’ll understand, because of this matron’s ongoing struggle. And once my gaze had settled at ground zero, as it were, I perceived the source of the matron’s trouble. For when she tugged, a gap appeared in the field of view, revealing slightly more of the matron than I was accustomed to drinking in. And what I saw was an eyeful. For what emerged from that gap was the last thing I might have expected: a small, familiar furry face blinking dazedly and looking as though he’d recently seen things that would now and forever be emblazoned in his memory.

  “Fenny!” I cried.

  “GAH!” cried the matron, or something that sounded like “gah,” as Fenny, now nestled in the valley of doom, started scrabbling toward the summit of Mount Matron in a frenzied bid for freedom.

  The matron cried aloud again, but I paid no heed to her hullabaloo, my sympathy and concern being earmarked for the tiny, intrepid hamster who now perched himself mid-bosom and dodged the matron’s grasping hands. I daren’t imagine the perilous passage he’d just made, making his way bravely through dark and secret paths, only to emerge to the open spaces where ham-sized hands flailed wildly and sought to fling him from the perch where he now nestled. I won’t say that my next act strictly qualified as chivalry, but it wasn’t intended as non-chivalrous, and it had the virtue of having been motivated by the same primordial force which compels the mother bear to charge ahead to save her young with no regard for self.

  I reached out for Fenny.

  The matron swore and swatted my hand.

  Fenny leapt as far as his little legs would take him, and he alighted on the matron’s neck.

  This seemed to be more than she could take. For this matron, now cursing and gyrating like a furious ballerina, did a final series of frenzied pirouettes before collapsing in a heap on the very tiles from which she’d arisen minutes before.

  I remember thinking that it was an impact like this one that did in the dinosaurs.

  Fenny did the shrewd thing, escaping the avalanche narrowly and legging it up the hall in an every-creature-for-himself sort of way, somewhat encumbered by various ropes and strings and things which had entangled themselves about his person during his ordeal. I gave chase, Vera bringing up the rear. We left the matron in our wake, now snorting like a gas explosion and cursing a good deal — as was natural for a person in her posish — but showing no sign of any continuing interest in the bona fides of Vera’s documentation.

  Providence, in its wisdom, gifted hamsters with short legs, so I was able to overtake the little chap in the space of ten or twelve strides — counting mine, not his, which would have numbered somewhere in the hundreds, if I’m any judge.

  I scooped him up. And blow me tight if the little chap hadn’t — as he had done so many times before — escaped from a hideous peril while at the same time doing his part to save the day. For in saving his own skin, in escaping the hidden sights that lurked beneath yon wall of white polyester, and in risking his reputation as a preux chevalier and gentlehamster by treading in places where no rodent ought to tread, Fenny had hooked his jaws upon a perfect solution to our troubles.

  He wiggled free of the things encumbering him and, registering no small measure of triumph, spat the perfect solution into my hand.

  “What’s he got?” asked Vera, and I forgave the grammatical slip, for what my tiny companion had purloined, what this prince among diminutive furballs had just released from his jaws, left me gaping in wonder.

  I showed his prize to Vera.

  “Abe’s drawers!” she said. “The matron’s lanyard.”

  “With her new pass card affixed!” I said, goggling. “The little chap must have heard the matron mention her pass card when I asked about Ian Brown. Reasoning, no doubt, that this pass card was just what his old pal Rhinnick needed in order to pry himself from the slavering jaws of doom, he wasted no time in risking all to plunder the matron’s trove, as it were, in order to make off with the swag.”

  Vera eyed me skeptically, but I paid no mind. I had collaborated with this rodent before and knew of his unmatched capacity for fishing buddies out of the soup. But never before had he faced such jeopardy, never before had he showed such enterprise, or made such supreme sacrifices when rallying ’round and steering me clear of the bludgeonings of fate. It makes one wonder why such a fuss is made about those half-a-league, half-a-league onward chaps who rode into some valley or other. They didn’t have to face the unspeakable shame of clambering through a gyrating matron’s undercarriage. Heroes they might have been, but Fenny stood alone.

  I looked down at Fenny reverently, much moved by the lion heart in his hamster frame, and patted him on the head. He blinked at me, twice, and I knew he understood my depth of feeling.

  Within two shakes of a hamster’s tail we had taken our leave of Detroit Mercy, making appropriate use of the matron’s card and a handy employee’s-only exit. Thanking Abe for tiny friends, we bunged ourselves into Jack’s car, placed Fenny in a place of honour upon the dashboard, and set our course for freedom.

  Chapter 16

  “Set a course for freedom!” I cried, as we drove on.

  “Sounds good to me!” said Vera. “Where to?”

  “What do you mean ‘where to’?” I said.

  “I mean where do want to go?”

  “To Norm Stradamus’s hideout. At least I presume that’s where you’re taking me. You told me that, in the wake of your meeting with Dr. Peericks, television had shown the way, and that your soothsaying machinery had directed you toward the next waystation on our quest, which I presumed to mean the new and hitherto hidden HQ of Norm Stradamus.”

  “I didn’t exactly say that,” said Vera.

  “Whatever you said, that’s where we ought to be headed. So as I was saying, set our course for Norm Stradamus and don’t spare the horses. First star to the right and straight on ’til morning. Continue givin
g the machine all of the gas at your disposal.”

  “I don’t know where Norm’s hideout is.”

  “But in the hospice you said—”

  “I know what I said in the hospice. I was lying. I had to get you out of Detroit Mercy and into the car.”

  This unmanned me. I mean to say, however skeptically one regards the babbling of garden-variety fortune tellers, palm readers, astrologers, and other purveyors of cryptic bilge, this particular soothsayer had always been a credible source. It’s true that her prophesies and predictions could be opaque at times, or even misleading if carelessly misinterpreted by the unwary, but out-and-out lying wasn’t in this Vera’s nature. Whether she’d been a Girl Guide I couldn’t say, but her behaviour up ’til now indicated a good egg, and one who could be trusted with state secrets. Why, I’d always thought her word could be counted on more reliably than my own fingers and toes.

  “But why lie?” I asked. “You could have just asked me to come along and I’d have gladly—”

  “There wasn’t time for explanations. I had to get you out in a hurry.”

  “But why? That’s the matter that needs threshing out. I can readily understand the desire to put a healthy slab of terrain between self and hospice, but why the sudden urgency? Why all of this up-tempo, shake a leg, prestissimo charging about? It’s not as though we were paying for hourly parking.”

  “I had to get out of there before Peericks woke up and sicced the Hospice Goons on us.”

  This perplexed me. I’d known Peericks for years and years, and he’d never been known as an on-the-job napper. I pressed for particulars.

  “What do you mean ‘before Peericks woke up’?”

  Here she paused, as though reluctant to explain. She fixed her gaze on the road ahead, swallowed hard, and took on board a couple of extra lungfuls of air.

  “Dr. Peericks was asleep?” I said, pressing the matter.

  “In a certain sort of way,” said Vera, trailing off.