You Shall Know Our Velocity

by Dave Eggers

  But we talked mostly about music and drinking. Hand had been to New York and that’s where Taavi wanted to be. Hand had seen both the Who and the Sex Pistols reunion tours, both in Milwaukee, and that just about killed Taavi. That Taavi Mets seemed in every way someone we knew in high school was a natural thing and a reductive and unfortunate thing—Or maybe this was good. What did we want? We want the world smaller and bigger and just the same but advancing. We don’t know what we want. I wondered if Taavi would want to come with us to Cairo and thought of asking him but thought against it. There was something so familiar about Taavi, maybe just something in the way he listened, or his little snorty chuckle, or probably it was the way he listened. His presence had begun to unsettle me. I liked Taavi but having him there, in that space between the front seats—it wasn’t right, really. I was afraid someone would see him there. He would know—

  This landscape was so familiar. The pine, the birch, the frosted road, the crows—

  Oh fuck we tried. We could have gotten there sooner. He was still alive when we got there. When we got up to that godforsaken hospital in Fond du Lac, he was still alive. When I first knew and believed he’d been in the accident, that a truck had crushed his car, I thought he was gone but then Pilar said he was alive, he was hanging on, on respirators, and I gasped. Hand and I drove up at 8 P.M. and got to the hospital at ten.

  Jack’s mom was there, but his father was in the car getting a blanket. Why was he getting a blanket? Hand asked. “He gets cold so easily,” she said. We couldn’t see Jack. We weren’t family and it was too soon. The room was crowded with doctors. Most of Jack’s vertebrae had been crushed and his spine had been nearly severed. There was almost no chance of repairing it. But was there or wasn’t there, for fuck’s sake? We stood in the hall. We sat in the hall. I rested my head on the floor. Was there or wasn’t there? The floor beneath me was cold but it was still and clean. The hospital was immaculate. I tilted my head and squinted across the floor, thinking I could make my sight travel the floor like a low-flying bird. The floor shone in a dull stupid way. Was there or wasn’t there?

  Jack’s mom asked Hand to check on her husband—he’d been gone twenty minutes. Hand did and came back with him and whispered to me that he’d found Jack’s dad kneeling by the trunk of the car, his hands over his head, on the hood, and Hand had stood above him for a minute or two before Jack’s dad had noticed he was there. Hand was telling me this and I was listening but was looking at a picture over his shoulder, one of a hundred in the hallway, all from the local arts center, watercolors by amateurs. The one behind Hand was a blood orange with a knife through it.

  Jack had been conscious when they brought him in. It was midnight and we were alone with Jack’s mom in the cafeteria and she told us. She was eating a banana and told us while chewing. She had such small eyes, lidless, slits cut from her face. Her forehead was lined heavily, the skin thick, the wrinkles like knife-cuts into clay. We loved her but now felt betrayed. She hadn’t told us this sooner and she wasn’t doing anything about anything. I was jealous of the paramedics. I wanted to punch them in the stomach and then stand over them, with my feet on their chests, and demand to know what he said. What did he say? Jack’s mom didn’t know. He was incoherent. Which was it, conscious or incoherent? Idiot mom. She was gone. Useless. Everyone had already given up. Jesus Christ, no one knew what they were doing. She went back upstairs.

  “She’s worthless,” Hand said. He was right. The father was huddled in a blanket in the waiting room and the mother was eating a banana.

  He was conscious when he came in. Goddammit, people, no one’s conscious when they come in and then—You can’t let go when someone’s conscious when they motherfucking come in. What were the chances that the doctors of Fond du Lac had any idea what they were doing? No chance. Jack’s parents were waiting for the doctors to do something. There was no time to wait. What the fuck were they doing?

  “We should find those guys,” Hand said. Outside the cafeteria, we used the payphone and yellow pages to call the private ambulance companies. No one would tell us anything, the fuckers—wouldn’t tell us if they had or hadn’t picked him up. We decided we didn’t need to know what he’d said. We’d find out later but for now it didn’t matter. We had secret meetings in the parking lot, Hand and I, kicking rocks and pulling branches from trees. Back in the hospital, Hand chased a doctor into the elevator and grilled her. Hand wanted to know more about the prognosis and treatment. No one would talk to us. “They fucked up,” he said to me. “They fucked up and they’re hiding something.” “What’d she say?” “Nothing. Which proves it.” The doctors knew more than they were telling us, and Hand was sure they could be doing more. They’d messed up and were covering it up. If he was conscious when he came in, he should be fine, Hand said. I agreed. He was conscious! They’d done something wrong.

  Hand went to the twenty-four-hour Walgreen’s and came back, walking briskly down the corridor, nodding, squinting, ready. “What is that?” I asked. “You know what it is,” he said, pulling from the bag a minicassette recorder. I knew what he wanted to do. “You’re not gonna get anything if they know they’re being taped,” I said. “I know that,” he said, and then showed me the rest of the contents of the bag—a notebook, a bunch of bags of peanuts, a roll of white serrated medical tape and an ace bandage. “They won’t know,” he said.

  In the bathroom Hand held the tape recorder against his stomach while I taped it on with the medical tape and then wrapped the bandage around his torso to keep it in place. The doctors who’d fucked up would go to jail. Or the paramedics. They’d be sued for billions. They’d be ruined. He wore the apparatus for the next six hours. The button on the top right side of the machine had to be pushed to record. He would pretend to sneeze, turn away and push the button. It would work.

  But I didn’t think it would work. The door was closed to the room where Jack was and I didn’t know our next move. Every second we could have done something and we were waiting. We too were waiting. We were standing, blinking, waiting. We were thinking of things to do with our hands while we waited. Everyone was waiting. Only intermittently did the world give us tasks, in quick beautiful bursts, that we had to complete and feel electric and roaring while doing so. But here now we needed to act because only we could fix this. We couldn’t do fucking anything. You come upon a store that’s just closed. You see the lights on, you see the people still in there, putting things away, and you turn away, because a sign has told you to turn around. We’re so easily thwarted. We’re all weak and cowardly. But I want to pound the windows, to break the glass and thrust my hand in and turn the knob and let myself in—

  Hand taped conversations with nurses and orderlies, getting closer to the doctors. When he filled one side of the tape, we went back into the bathroom and unwrapped him and switched the tape’s side, and wrapped him back up. “You gotten anything good yet?” “Not quite, but I’m getting damned close. Everyone’s scared. They’re scared to death.”

  —Lord God, don’t you think I could use these things against you? Don’t you know that what you can do, I can do? Don’t you know that I can summon your own winds, move the plates of this earth, just as you do? This earth is not yours; it’s ours. Don’t you fucking know this? Why do you play with us when you know I will do the same, and worse, to you? I will bring the winds of your world to bear against you. I will take your winds and twist them and throw them to you. I will mix them with your oceans, I will wrench them together and send them up to you and watch you drown in screaming waters of the blood and bones of your favorites. Look at you. Look at you! You all hairless and white with eyes burning black and red—what makes you so sure I won’t hurt you the same way? What makes you so sure? I can take your skies and rip them in great swaths and crumple them, swallow them, turn them to fire. What makes you think I won’t stalk you to the corners of the earth and make you pay for this? What makes you so sure that I won’t bring it all back to you? I shall have waters of
blood cast you away! I will sit upon the mount and send judgment down upon you. You shall cleave to my house! Therefore shall evil come upon thee; and mischief shall fall upon thee; thou shalt not be able to put it off: and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou shalt not know! And what shall ye say in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which shall come from below? To whom will ye flee for help? And where will ye have your glory?—Oh Lord I am spinning and wet—I will forgive you everything before if you allow us this, if you allow us this. If you should allow us this, if you should invest us with the necessary strength and then clear our path, so shall I honor thee and praise thee across the earth. But if thee shall take him away I will know vengeance—

  “I’ve got an idea,” Hand said. “Get off the floor.” Hand had been on the phone with a few of his medical acquaintances in St. Louis, and found a place in Mexico that did experimental spinal cord surgery.

  “Where?”

  “Chiapas.”

  “No.”

  “I swear.”

  The vertebrae would be replaced by ceramics made from molds of the originals, and the spinal cord would be frozen first—Hand said hypothermal shock treatment—making it more accepting of treatment, to peripheral nerve grafts—

  “Insurance isn’t going to pay for that kind of thing,” I said. I was standing again now, and we were next to the blood orange painting. The painter of that orange was a lunatic.

  “So? You have money,” Hand said.

  I did. I did! I was thrilled with the idea of using it now. I’ll use that godforsaken money! I could use that money. The money had a purpose. I felt a divine order that I’d never known before. This was why I had been given the money. It all made sense. Of course it makes sense! There is order! A lightbulb, a windfall, now this.

  —Lord God this is your last chance.

  I was sure the Mexican treatment would cost exactly $80,000. This would work. It would be hard but it was possible. Sometimes there was work laid out before you and you had to thrust yourself into it and find your way out of it. I’d pay to fly Jack down there, however they did it. Was that some kind of helicopter? “A military plane,” Jack said. That we’d hook onto a military jet already heading down that way. Or maybe the cargo hold of a regular jet. I’d never seen a gurney on a plane. “It’ll cost more than $80,000,” Hand said. “All in all, the whole treatment will end up costing more like half a million.” “No, no,” I said, so sure. “It’ll be $80,000. It won’t be more.” There’s a reason. This was when there would be a reason. He let it go.

  It was only five o’clock in Hawaii so I called Cathy Wambat to make sure I could access all the money right away. It would take a day or two for the mutual funds, she said, and I’d be taxed. Fine, I said. How much in cash did I have? About twenty thousand, she said, in a money market. We hadn’t invested it yet. Good, I said. $20,000 would be enough to get us started in Mexico, for sure. They’d know we could afford the procedure, they’d know we were serious. What about cash? I said. How would I get that in cash? I thought they’d prefer to have it in cash, to be able to prove it, clearly and without hesitation. She suggested a wire transfer. They could do one within an hour, she said. I said okay but wasn’t sure. Would we have that hour? We’d know once we got to Mexico.

  The payphone rang. It was my mom. Cathy had called her and given her the number. It was two in the morning. I didn’t want to talk to her yet. Cathy hadn’t known why I wanted the money but called Mom anyway. I’m driving up, she said. I told her we were bringing Jack to Mexico and we’d be gone by the time she made it here. I begged her not to ask questions—the plan was still in the works. It would be hard but it could be done. She could fly, she said. I told her to wait until the next day—maybe she should meet us in Mexico. How would she get to Mexico from Memphis? she asked. I don’t know, I said. You’re wasting our time. I made her promise she wouldn’t tell Jack’s parents about our plans. They wouldn’t understand.

  Now how to get to Mexico? We knew it was too far for a helicopter. But how to get the military plane? Hand thought he had a connection outside of Kansas City, at Whiteman Air Force Base. So a chopper to Kansas? Too far. Hand remembered a guy he knew at the base in Peoria—someone in the Air Guard there. Peoria was much closer. A chopper to Peoria, then to Kansas? Or maybe a plane from Great Lakes Naval Base? No, no, we had no connections there. We’d have to drive part of the way.

  Fond du Lac to Peoria

  Peoria to Whiteman

  Whiteman to Mexico City

  But why Whiteman at all? Maybe we could skip Whiteman. But did they have jets at Peoria, or were those all propeller planes? Hand was mulling. Hand made more calls. Soon we were sure the doctors were hiding something. We’d seen them talking among themselves, looking concerned, and one doctor raised his voice, angry at the rest of them, then was hushed. They avoided us. They avoided our stares! There was internal dissent. Someone had fucked up. Now it was too late for them to fix it. We had to leap in.

  But the choppers and planes were falling through. Hand was calling his connections and getting no help. Regular people didn’t get flown around on military planes, and we’d need to be family to get him on a commercial jet. Maybe bribe an agent at the airline? Too big a risk. We knew we might have to drive him all the way ourselves. We’d probably have to. We’d rent a minivan. The drive would take about thirty hours, we figured. Maybe more? Forty hours. We’d call his parents from the road. They’d know it was the best thing. They’d know they’d given up but we hadn’t and that it was worth a shot. We had the money, we’d tell them. We had $80,000 and that would cover it completely. We’d have to be vague enough so they wouldn’t try to find us, stop us. They’d have lost their minds by then and couldn’t be trusted. They’d thank us in the end. We’d save Jack so they’d have to thank us. Would we get stopped at the border? We didn’t know. We could hide him. He could be sleeping. We’d lower the gurney so it looked like a bed. We’d bring lots of pillows.

  We asked again but they said it would be at least another twelve hours before we could go in and see him. “He’d want to see us,” I told the doctor, and she nodded, and agreed but then said it would be twelve hours. We’d lock her in the closet. They were working on some of the lower vertebrae, then had to relieve some pressure on the brain stem, and then—

  It’s 3 A.M. We went to the parking lot again, to race. We were so wired we needed to run. We raced from one end to the other, dodging parked cars, under the lights that give us each six speeding shadows. The finish line was over a low hedge, rough, black—we had to jump it to win. There was work to be done but not yet; the time would come. When Mexico wakes up we’d call and let them know we’re coming; when Jack stabilized we’d take him. But for now we’d have to fill the hours without sleeping and we ran around the parking lot and Hand imitated the way Jack runs, chest first, chin jutting out like he was forever at the finish line.

  At 5 A.M. we were back inside and Jack’s mom came in from the ICU. She said Jack’s mental activity was minimal and was diminishing hourly. What does that mean? I asked. She said it meant that he didn’t have any noticeable cranial activity—did she say cranial? that’s not even right—that he was fading. She didn’t say brain dead. She said his mental activity was receding, something like that. Hand wanted more details but she didn’t have them. She and her husband weren’t asking the right questions. We needed to be in charge. So they did an MRI? Hand asked. Of course, she said. He’s not responding to any stimuli, she said. That doesn’t mean anything, I said. You can’t measure mental activity. You can’t! I said. You’re right, Hand said. Jack’s mom left and Hand said he’d once read some journals to the same effect and that I was probably right. No one knew anything about mental activity. Can’t measure it. Inexact science. Hand and I gave her words almost no thought.

  Hand went to the Walgreen’s again and got an atlas and plotted the best route down. We asked a nurse, our age, black and sturdy, how long each IV lasted. We’d need at le
ast six of them, we figured. We’d bring ten. We asked if they had any portable respirators, respirators that could run on some kind of generator and into a car. Hand had been sure that they had portable kinds of every machine, and all had to be able to function in case of a power outage. She explained that the hospital had something that might be able to work if rigged properly. They had them in ambulances, after all. We’d go to the hardware store for wiring in the morning. When did everything open? Hardware was usually at six. The hours went quickly until five, then stopped. Between five and six we slapped ourselves to stay awake, alert. There was no news.

  At 6 A.M. Hand went to the hardware store and came back with hundreds of dollars in extension cords, electrical wiring, copper cable—I didn’t ask—and a small generator. At 7:30 I left to rent the minivan. We weren’t that far from the Enterprise so they picked me up. It took too long. I waited in the parking lot for half an hour, cursing them, planning to ruin their van. A young bright cheerful guy with his polo shirt-collar turned up brought me to the office and twenty minutes later I was in the hospital lot, with a minivan the color of grape juice and we were removing the seats. The two back seats had to be taken out but to where? We left them on the sidewalk, planning to hide them in the woods across the street. So many other things had to be figured out. My car, which we’d driven up, would be found by the cops and they’d tow it and keep it once they knew we’d taken Jack. Did I care? I couldn’t decide. No, I didn’t care much. I moved it to the back of the lot, anyway, behind the building, near the dumpsters, still expecting to lose it. I grabbed what I could from the backseat and brought it to the minivan. The van was a strong car, and we could go fast. We could get a ticket in each state and still be fine. Just part of the trip. Wouldn’t have to sleep or stop, with two of us driving. The terrain would get warmer as we got closer to where we’d bring Jack to have him saved, to have him wake up and say Shit, guys, where the fuck am I? and we’d tell him the story, and he’d be so amazed, but then not so surprised. As he recuperated everyone would come down and visit, and eventually we’d wonder if we should, hell, maybe stay down in Mexico after all, the three of us. Land down there would be so much cheaper than even Phelps, right? Damn right it would be cheaper. Maybe Jack would be fragile afterward. He’d be like Kennedy, where he’d be playing touch football and be fine that way, but also brittle, never quite robust again. Kennedy! Damn, that’s who he looked like! Or was it just his hair, that neat part he wore? Or was it just the name they shared? I was trying to think, and was shielding my eyes from the new sun, low and screaming at me, watching as Hand was jogging back from the woods, where he’d hidden the seats. It was getting hot already, so early, when Jack’s mom came out of the hospital doors and toward us with her hands clasped over her head—