He felt like a five hundred pound slab of something old and tired, washed up on a dark beach on a hot night. At the outer limits of his perception he sensed dull pain and feared that this pain would sharpen once he fully woke up. He mentally turned away from the physical world and the sensations that awaited him there and returned to the darkness and comfort of oblivion.
The next time he approached consciousness it wasn’t subtle or accompanied by an option to refuse. His left leg was screaming with pain and there were voices and bright light. He was catapulted from sleep into a place that he didn’t know and in which he didn’t want to be. He wanted to go back to the nothingness where the pain couldn’t follow. Someone was touching his leg and making the pain worse.
“Please, stop!” he shouted as he opened his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Beaumont, I’m almost finished. Doctor will be here in just a moment and can increase your pain medication if you like.”
Lance couldn’t see what she was doing to his leg and he lacked the strength to sit up and get a better view. He looked around the room and determined that he was in a hospital, but he didn’t know why and couldn’t recall where he had been last or what he’d been doing.
“What happened to me?” he croaked. Fear of the unknown constricted his throat and his mouth was very dry. He looked at the bedside table and saw a green pitcher and a clear empty cup. He tried to reach toward the table with his right hand but couldn’t, and the effort caused him more pain.
“Let me get that for you. You must be thirsty,” the nurse said and covered his legs with his blanket, then stepped over to the table and poured water into the cup. She unwrapped a flex straw, bent the tip at a 45 degree angle and placed it in the cup. She brought it to Lance’s lips and as he sipped through the straw, the door to the room opened and a man wearing a white doctor’s coat and a tie walked in.
The nurse said, “Doctor is here now. He can answer your questions.”
Lance was irritated at the common nurse speech which omitted the word “the” or the doctor’s last name when referring to the doctor. But at least she hadn’t asked him how “we” were doing.
“Good morning, Mr. Beaumont. I’m Doctor Crandall.”
Lance didn’t feel as though it were a good morning at all. As far as mornings went, he thought this one was a contender for Shittiest Morning Ever.
“What happened to me?” he asked for the second time. The nurse set the cup down on the table and quietly left the room after looking at the doctor and receiving a nod.
“You’ve been in an accident.”
“Do you mean someone spilled a glass of milk on me, or do you mean I was in a car wreck?” Lance asked. He was not at all in the mood for vagueness or euphemisms. In his mind, an accident was something you did unintentionally, like knocking over a vase or bumping into someone.
The doctor smiled briefly. “You were in a collision with another vehicle and you’ve been hurt pretty bad.”
Despite the fuzziness of his mind, Lance was still fixated on nuances of proper speech and thought to himself, “I’ve been hurt pretty badly.” He wondered how good this doctor could be at saving lives if he had trouble with basic English. He stared at the doctor and waited for him to continue.
“Another vehicle hit yours at a high rate of speed, causing you multiple injuries - the worst of which was from a shard of one of your ribs entering your heart. You nearly died. Well, technically, you did die, briefly. Your heart stopped for a short time. But we were able to bring you back, and repair the damage. That’s the good news. You’re going to live.”
Lance’s drugged mind conjured up an image of someone blowing a party horn and confetti falling down onto a group of silent, morose looking people. This image almost made him remember something that actually pertained to him but he couldn’t quite reach it, like trying to think of a word or name that just won’t come to mind, but you know that you know it. “And the bad news?” he asked, still wondering what people at a party might have to do with him.
“In addition to damaging your heart, you’ve injured your neck, broken your left arm in multiple places, fractured your left arm, and your left leg was basically crushed. After you’ve had a chance to begin recovering we can discuss options regarding your leg. Right now though, I think it would be best for you to rest as much as you can and let your body work on healing. We don’t have to make a decision just yet.”
Lance was alarmed, and now he felt like resting was impossible, at least mentally. Options? Decision? “Are you talking about amputation?” he asked with his eyes wide open and his heart fighting against the medication to beat rapidly.
“That is one option. But as I said, it’s not the most important thing as of right now. The first –“
“Maybe not to you!” Lance cut him off angrily. “It’s not your leg. What’s the other option?”
The doctor frowned, realizing he’d handled this badly. He wished he hadn’t said anything yet about the leg. He was straddling a fine line trying to keep his patient’s pain level to a minimum without lowering his blood pressure too much.
“I know this is upsetting, but it’s very important that you try to put this out of your mind as much as you can for now and just focusing on resting. “
“Just give it to me straight, Doc.” Lance wanted to say more, like that he could take it, and he wasn’t a child, but he was suddenly exhausted and pain was making itself known in so many places now he couldn’t even isolate the areas to form a simple statement indicating where he hurt. He squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth as he tried to fight through the pain.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Beaumont, we’re going to – “
“Lance!”
“Excuse me?” the doctor asked.
“Call me Lance, dammit. Every time you say Mr. Beaumont I think my dad just walked in.”
“Yes, of course, Lance. We’ll have to discuss this later. It’s your increase in blood pressure and adrenaline that is causing you increased pain. I need to increase your medication, and you need to rest. I mean that. Nothing is more important right now than you resting and letting your body work on healing.”
The doctor reached for the I.V. bag hanging from a pole beside Lance’s bed and made an adjustment. Lance immediately felt the pain subside and his muscles relaxed.
“I want you to take a deep breath.”
Lance did so and felt a slight pain in his chest that didn’t concern him too much. He felt very tired and out of focus. He closed his eyes. He just wanted to sleep. As he drifted off, the image of someone blowing a paper party horn returned. He watched in his mind as the curled end of the horn unfurled and confetti fell down around it and he thought, “It’s my birthday.”
***
Lance was blissfully unconscious for a while. As soon as his brain waves began to approach the theta state, Devon began projecting events into Lance’s mind from the previous evening. Lance perceived these projections as dreams. He was at the steakhouse – the one he was heading to when the other car crashed into him. He could see Kim and Tom sitting at a table, talking, drinking and laughing. Lance could not sense where he was in this dream. He was not at the table with them. The third chair was empty. Tom and Kim were the only two sitting there.
He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it seemed like he could hear everyone in the restaurant talking all at once. He could hear noises from the kitchen and the hand dryer in the bathroom. He could hear every sound in the restaurant but he couldn’t single out just one thing and focus on it.
Kim and Tom looked like they were flirting and having a great time. Watching them looking so happy together made him feel kind of sick and a little sorry for himself. They were smiling and enjoying each other’s company while he had lain mangled inside his smashed up car, bleeding and unconscious. Happy birthday to me, he thought.
He looked at Tom’s hand reaching for a glass on the table and as Tom curled his hand around the glass and began to draw it toward him, it beca
me a stick-shift lever that Lance was pulling down into second gear. Kim was in the passenger seat and had reclined it all the way back. Her shirt had ridden up a little and her belly button was exposed. Tom shifted into third gear and moved his hand from the gear shifter over to Kim’s stomach. He lightly traced the back of his fingers across her tan skin.
Lance thought, “What the hell?” and became even angrier as Tom’s hand slid up under Kim’s shirt and fondled one of her breasts. Lance was relieved when Tom took his hand away to shift into fourth gear, but then he put his hand right back where it was and Lance didn’t want to be in the car with them anymore. He watched Kim pull her shirt up over her head and toss it on the floor beside Tom’s bed. Tom took off his own shirt and tossed it on top of hers, then walked over to the side of the bed and dropped down to his knees.
He traced the back of his fingers across Kim’s stomach again. One way, then the other, then he slowly drew lazy circles upwards toward the bottom of her breasts. His fingers gently grazed the soft flesh and then trailed away again. Then he started kissing her stomach and ribs, slowly and softly. Lance watched, fuming. His best friend and his fiancé. He couldn’t believe this was happening. Not again. Dead embers of a nearly forgotten fire surged back to life.
When Tom went from kissing to licking, Lance had seen more than enough of but couldn’t stop watching and he couldn’t say anything because he wasn’t there - even though he was. Tom licked Kim’s tanned skin from her belly button up to the bottom of her left breast and then he started sucking. When he finally pulled away, he looked at what he had done and smiled. He had left a hickey about the size of a quarter. He started to lower his head again, this time going for Kim’s nipple and Lance slammed some kind of door in his mind and opened his eyes and saw his nurse looking down at him.
“Oh! I’m sorry. I was just going to check your pulse. Did I wake you?”
“No!”
Lance was breathing hard and feeling every bit of the shock, anger and outrage that he felt in that terrible dream even though he was awake now. He thought it was ridiculous for him to be feeling an emotion over something that had only occurred in a dream. But it didn’t feel like a dream.
The nurse let go of his wrist and wrote something on a chart. “Doctor still wants you to rest, but he did say it’s okay if your visitors sit with you for just a minute. I’m sorry it can’t be longer, but you really, really need to rest and sleep if you can. Okay, Sweetie?”
Lance nodded. The nurse walked out. Several seconds later the door to his room opened and this time Tom and Kim came through. “Oh my God, Lance! Are you okay? What happened to you?” Kim rushed to his side, looking him up and down and grimacing. “Oh, baby! What happened?”
Kim was wearing the same clothing he had dreamed she was wearing. Lance felt like this partially confirmed to him that what he had seen was more than just a dream, even though he still thought it was illogical. He knew what clothes Kim wore and he knew that his sub-conscious could have easily created a dream in which she would wear the clothes he liked to see her in most. It proved nothing. But he was holding back explosive anger. He smiled at her and said, “I’m pretty messed up. Come here.”
She came closer and Lance put his hand on her stomach and quickly slid his hand upward, lifting her shirt as he did so. As he exposed her breasts, she shrieked and pulled herself backwards away from him while pulling her top back down. She was only exposed for a second, but that was long enough for Lance to see the hickey. He already knew how it got there.
He looked at Tom who tried to hold his gaze but found that he couldn’t and so he looked at the water pitcher beside Lance’s bed. “I forgave you once, you son-of-a-bitch, but never again. Get out of here and out of my life! I HATE YOU!!” Tom immediately turned and headed out of the room. Kim was backing away from the bed in fear. She stopped when she bumped into the wall behind her.
“Lance. What are you talking about? What’s the matter, baby?”
“Shut up. Just shut up! You have the nerve to lie to me when I’m lying on what could’ve been my deathbed? I loved you more than anything and that just proves what an IDIOT I’ve been! Just get the hell out of here. I never want to see you again!”
“Lance, I… I…”
“GO!” he screamed as loud as he could. Kim stood frozen with her hand covering her mouth and tears running down her face. She couldn’t move. The door opened and the nurse rushed in.
“I’m sorry, but I need you to leave. We thought seeing friends would help him, but this…. I need you to leave now.”
Kim broke the spell that had her momentarily paralyzed and started to walk toward the door. When she reached the door, she turned back to Lance and said, “I’m sorry, Lance. I’m so, so sorry.” The nurse put her hand on Kim’s back and gently nudged her through the doorway and shut the door as soon as she could. She quickly made her way to the equipment that was emitting a rapid series of beeps.
“Mr. Beaumont?”
Lance had his arm across his eyes and was crying hard, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
“Mr. Beaumont, honey? I need you to take a deep breath for me.”
“Go away.”
“I will, sweetheart. But first I need you to take a deep breath and let it out slowly. I can’t tell you how important it is for you to stay calm and relaxed right now.”
Lanced tried to take a deep breath, but it hitched three times before he exhaled. He tried to roll over and cried out in pain. “Fuck!” he yelled in frustration. He wanted to turn over and bury his face in his pillow and try to shut out the world and the horrific reality that he wanted no part of right now.
“Please try again. Just one deep breath for me. I’ll be right back.” The nurse quickly exited the room. Lance felt a deep, heart-wrenching pain welling up from inside of him, overshadowing his physical pain for a moment and then the two sources of agony combined into one hellish, unbearable chorus of anguish that obliterated all thought, all reason, and any remaining will that Lance had left to live. Then his heart monitor stopped beeping and switched to one continuous monotone.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
The next time Lance awoke, it was a week later. After the medical team at St. Jude’s had gotten Lance’s heart going again, the doctor decided that he couldn’t take any more chances and he put Lance into a medically-induced coma to keep him stabilized.
***
An Accounts Payable clerk named Bob Gorlecki in Akron, Ohio was sitting at his desk, working on his computer, processing vendor payments and wishing he was somewhere else. He was bored with his job but had no willingness to look for something better or even different. So each day he came to work and he did what he was expected to do while his mind drifted and his typing slowed until eventually he was just sitting there doing nothing but daydreaming. Then when someone entered his office, he’d snap out of it and resume working; acting like a busy little bee until the person left and then the process would start all over again.
He was currently entering payment information for a vendor called Beaumont Security Systems. As Bob began the process of issuing a check, Devon scanned his mind, looking for obsessions, vices, problems, fears, hatred, etc., and within just a few seconds he found something he might be able to use.
Once a year Bob went to Las Vegas, Nevada to visit a brothel named Sheri’s Ranch in the neighboring city of Pahrump. He told his wife that the Vegas trips were for annual seminars about accounting, and she believed him. She had no reason not to believe him and she also liked having him gone for one week each year. On the outside, Bob was a decent husband and father who provided for his family, kept his lawn in good condition, was friendly to neighbors and voted straight Republican every two years.
But on the inside, well hidden under the social veneer of a boring but nice suburban family man, Bob had a secret longing that his wife could never fulfill. So he treated himself to an annual indulgence in Nevada that he told himself didn�
�t hurt anybody.
Bob liked his women big. His wife was what he referred to as a “big, beautiful woman” and that was just the way he liked women. But he doubted that he could ever talk his Southern Baptist wife into fulfilling his secret desire. Even if he could, it still wouldn’t be fully satisfying. His wife was Caucasian and his fantasy involved a big, beautiful, black woman.
This year’s trip was still four months away so he was surprised when he suddenly started thinking about it and recalling previous trips with amazing clarity. He felt like his mind had somehow instantly turned into a movie screen on which scenes of his past encounters were being played back in much more vivid recall than he’d ever had before. In addition to watching his own memories, he could even feel the sensations he had felt when living these experiences the first time around.
Bob’s typing began to slow down. He was barely focusing on his computer screen. As he became aroused, his eyes started to glaze over, his respiration slowed and his heartbeat increased. He had just started typing the dollar amount to be paid when his hands became still with his fingers barely hovering over his keyboard and he closed his eyes, watching the mental movie of his experience last year with Kwaneshia.
Devon left Bob for a moment and paid a visit to another employee named Shirley who had sorted the incoming mail a while ago but had put off delivering it while she played an online game called Farmville. Devon made her think, “I really should get back to work - or at least give Bob his mail before he comes out here looking for it and catches me on Facebook.”
Undermind: Nine Stories Page 18
