“You’ll go to sleep and when you wake up, you’ll be all fixed,” Mom said again and kissed his cheek.
Nathan felt tightness in his chest, like someone squeezed him too hard and a big-swallow-of-peanut-butter feeling in his throat. He didn’t say anything, because Mommy seemed so worried, but going to sleep was all that really scared him. He looked up again at the doorway as the man in the green pajamas tucked a bunch of papers under his pillow.
Please come, Jason. Please. I have to ask you something.
The bed started to roll and he jumped in response. His head felt kind of swimmy and he wondered if they put medicine in him to make him sleep already. The thought made him cry, but he turned his head so Mommy wouldn’t see.
I don’t want to go to the cave. Please don’t let me go there if I can’t get out when I want to.
“I love you, baby,” his mom said as he rolled out of his room.
“See you in a minute, Mommy,” he said, and thought he did a pretty good job of sounding brave.
Dr. Katzen said he wouldn’t dream in the medicine sleep, so maybe he wouldn’t go to the cave at all. Maybe he really would just drift off and wake up when his hand was all fixed up. He wanted to believe that with all his heart.
They’re not dreams at all.
He knew that was true but still, if a medicine made it so he couldn’t dream it might very well mean he couldn’t go to the cave, either. He didn’t know how it worked.
You’re such a little scaredy cat. If you go to the cave, just hide like before.
But what if they found him? What if they saw him and ran after him like before? Nathan had thought about that time a lot and something seemed weird about it. Why hadn’t the Lizard Man just bitten him with his sharp teeth? It almost seemed like he just wanted to scare him, make him leave the cave.
Maybe they’re scaredy cats. Maybe they’re scared of me. Did you ever think of that?
That didn’t seem likely. Nathan closed his eyes and felt his lower lip tremble. Just wishful thinking (like Mommy called it). He couldn’t think of a single reason why the Lizard Men, the creatures he watched tear Steve apart and leave him bleeding in the cave, would ever be afraid of a little five-year-old boy.
I’m almost six and I think they are scared of me a little.
You’re figuring it out, now. The bad creatures on Power Rangers get scared and they are much bigger than a Power Ranger.
The second voice in his head sounded like him, but he knew it was the other-him that helped him hear things he needed. He wished Jason were with him again.
A finger touched his hand. Nathan jumped and struggled to open his eyes, certain he would see his buddy smiling down at him. Why did it feel so hard to open his eyes? He pulled them open so he could see Jason, standing above him.
Dr. Katzen looked down at him instead. His lip quivered badly now.
“It’s okay, buddy,” Dr. Katzen said and patted his hand. “The medicine is making you sleepy. Just go ahead and rest. When you wake up it will all be over.”
Nathan struggled hard not to fall asleep. He opened his eyes wide when the narrow bed bumped to a stop. He looked up at three big round lights with handles, one of them blazing painfully in his eyes. He tried to raise a hand to block the powerful light, but felt too weak.
Stupid medicine.
“Sorry, little man,” a deeper voice said. A hand grabbed the light handle and swung it out of his view. He started to not be so scared though. That might be the medicine, he thought. He panicked as they lifted him in the air but he saw that they were just moving him over to another bed, this one even smaller. A round face, full of kindness, looked down at him.
“You okay, Nathan?” a soft voice asked.
He tried to shake his head ‘no’ but he just lay there and looked up at the stranger. The man wore a puffy blue hat and a green doctor mask.
“Just the medicine, big guy. Nothing to worry about.”
Nathan drifted off. He felt so tired. He could feel hands move his body around some, felt a warm blanket or something across his waist, but he couldn’t make himself care anymore. Then he felt a really warm, almost hot, sensation run up his arm from his wrist and spread across his chest and neck. His head felt really dizzy.
“That’s the other medicine, Nathan. Just relax and in a few seconds you’ll be asleep.” He looked up and tried to talk. He could feel his mouth moving, but he didn’t hear his voice—only in his head.
Please don’t let me go to the cave.
Darkness spread over him and Nathan couldn’t remember what he wanted to say or why he felt so scared. He tried to make sense of the words in his head…
Jason! Jason, please come find me!
...and then he drifted into the middle of the circling darkness and disappeared.
* * *
Jason dreamt of Jenny’s soft legs, her hips moving back and forth, until a voice interrupted. Nathan’s voice.
He didn’t wake up, but tried to switch dreams in his sleep; to hear the voice more clearly. He focused his mind, willing Nathan to speak. Just when he thought the boy wasn’t really there, he heard him again, faint, far away.
Please don’t let me go to the cave. Jason! Jason, please come find me!
Jason sat bolt upright in bed. For a moment he struggled, disoriented. Nothing looked familiar. Faint orange light from the dawn danced around narrow slits between towels hung over the windows. He searched for clues and started to think perhaps this was another dream, but then he caught the scent of Jenny, the soft flower-like smell on the sheets, and remembered exactly where he was.
Jason collapsed back on a big pillow and rubbed his hands across his face. He looked over as his eyes got used to the light and saw he was alone. There were no sounds from the bathroom and the door stood fully open. The bathroom was dark. He stretched luxuriously in the soft bed, breathed her scent in. Then the thought of Nathan’s pleading voice made him sit up again.
Real or not, the dream-Nathan’s voice sounded frightened and urgent. He couldn’t possibly ignore it.
Jason headed into the small living room while he pulled on his jeans and shirt. He hopped on one foot and tried to pull as he scanned around for a note from Jenny. It seemed pretty weird that she would just leave without waking him. Perhaps she had just run out for coffee or to the store to get stuff to make something for breakfast. The big clock on the bookshelf read seven-thirty. Could she have been called into to work?
In the bathroom he squirted some toothpaste on a finger (using her toothbrush felt dirty and wrong) and looked at himself in the mirror as he rubbed his teeth clean. He rinsed his mouth with tap water then headed back to the other room.
He scrounged in a narrow kitchen drawer for a pen and scrap of paper (they were always in the narrow drawers, right?) and scribbled a quick note to Jenny on a pharmaceutical-company notepad full of stickys.
I had to go to the hospital to check on Nathan. Meet me there if you can.
I miss you, even if that sounds silly. Hope you are okay.
-Jason
Jason jogged to the bedroom and put the note on her pillow (nice). Then he scanned quickly to see if her keys were in sight so he would know what to do with the door, then shrugged and he grabbed his keys. He would lock the door behind him. She would call on his cell if there was a problem. He wished he had her number so he could call her on the drive.
On the short drive to the hospital it finally hit him—Nathan probably had his surgery today. Shit! Why in the hell had he not checked with Katzen yesterday? He realized what a complete asshole he would be if he hadn’t seen Nathan before he went to the OR. He pushed his foot a little harder on the accelerator and sped just above the limit the short distance to the hospital.
He pulled into the parking deck and found a spot on the second floor pretty close to the stairs. His car sat crooked in his haste, but Jason didn’t bother fixing it. Jason sprinted down the stairs, nearly knocked into two middle-aged nurses, who gave long, exaggerated eye ro
lls in response to his mumbled apology, and then ran full speed through the glass walkway. The elevators felt like they took hours, but he walked into the Pedi-ICU only a few moments after parking.
“Can I help you, sir? We usually ask you to call in to see if it is okay for a visit.” Jason looked at an older nurse who looked scoldingly back at him as she approached. He realized he knew very few people in the Pediatrics Unit and that in his present state he didn’t look very doctorly. He started to explain whom he was when another voice interrupted.
“Oh, hi, Dr. Gelman.” He turned and saw a heavier-set nurse who smiled at him warmly. The hall-monitor nurse walked away. Jason looked at the new nurse’s ID, but the name didn’t ring a bell. “I’m Carol,” she said and put out her hand. “Jenny has talked about you a lot,” she said and winked at him. “I’m afraid she’s off today, though.”
“I know,” Jason said and felt a little awkward. “I’m actually here to see Nathan Doren—I took care of him in the ER.”
“Oh, I know,” the nurse said. “I’m afraid you just missed him. They took him down for his skin graft about thirty minutes ago.” Jason’s heart sank through the floor. “His mom might be in the surgery waiting room if you want to catch up with her.”
“Thanks,” he mumbled, feeling like a complete jerk-off. “I’ll head over there and wait on him.”
“Nice to officially meet you,” the nurse said with another conspiratorial wink. “Jenny is a wonderful girl.”
Jason smiled. “I know.” He headed through the automatic doors and out of the unit.
In the hall, Jason stood for a moment, unsure what to do. His concern about Jenny certainly got a boost when he hadn’t found her at work, but since he couldn’t think what to do about that, he headed to the OR to check on Nathan. Maybe she was at the apartment reading his note right now.
The OR occupied a large portion of the third floor and he took the stairs, unable to wait for the elevator. He avoided the waiting room, not wanting to get hung up with Sherry until he satisfied himself that Nathan was okay. After a quick call to Jenny’s apartment (no answer) he pulled on a pair of scrubs in the male physician locker room, tied on a blue hat and mask, and then headed down the short hall past Preop heading toward the main OR rooms. He walked up to a tech in scrubs on his way.
“Hey, bud—can you tell me what room the skin graft on Doren is in?”
The tech pointed at the big dry erase board without breaking stride. “Check the board.”
Jason saw the name halfway down next to the attending surgeons name from the burn service. Room fifteen.
Through the narrow window of the door to room fifteen, Jason saw Sheila Katzen, who stood beside Nathan’s outstretched arm. The arm and hand looked tiny surrounded by the blue drapes and he thought how it kind of looked mummified, painted all brown with the betadine prep. He couldn’t see Nathan’s face because of the drape pulled up to separate the operative field from anesthesia. Another small square of brown broke the field of blue a little farther down where his thigh had been prepped to take a small piece of skin for the graft to his hand—the donor site. Sheila closely examined his hand, which bled a little where she had debrided some more dead tissue off. Jason pushed through the door and Sheila looked up.
“Hey, Gelman,” she said and returned to her inspection of the little bleeding hand. “What are you up to? Finally giving up on being the hospital gate keeper and considering the switch to a real doctor job?”
Jason enjoyed the endless and expected rivalry between ER and surgery. “Nah,” he said. “I’ll keep my life outside of work, thanks just the same. How’s our boy?”
Sheila smiled with her eyes. “Doin’ great. This should only take a half hour or so. You want to scrub?”
“No,” Jason said and moved around the table to the anesthesia side of the drape. He looked at Nathan’s face and felt a lump at the sight of him with a tube down his throat and his eyelids taped shut. “I’ll just hang out with him up here if it’s okay with everyone.”
“Fine with me,” Sheila said and the anesthesia doctor, whom Jason did not recognize, just shrugged and looked bored. “Let’s get the graft,” Sheila said to the team scrubbing with her and moved down by the exposed square over Nathan’s thigh. Jason decided the last thing he needed was to see them slice a bloody piece of his little guy’s thigh skin off with their electric cheese-knife. He bent over beside Nathan’s head and whispered in his ear.
“I’m here, buddy. I’m so sorry I’m late.” He felt a little rim of tears in his eyes, but they stayed off his cheeks. Nathan’s cheek felt cool when he touched it lightly. The ventilator hissed and the little boy’s chest rose. Jason looked up and saw the anesthesiologist looking at him curiously.
“He related to you?” he asked. He seemed a little uncomfortable now with Jason’s presence.
“No,” Jason answered, though it felt a little like a lie. “No, I just took care of him on admission.”
“The ER guys are pretty touchy-feely,” Sheila prodded. “Jason here does this with all of his patients, which is why he always looks like shit.”
Jason chuckled but said nothing. He hadn’t showered or shaved and he hadn’t gotten a hell of a lot of sleep, either. He felt pretty sure that he did, in fact, look like shit. He thought of a couple of witty responses, but instead just gently stroked Nathan’s cheek.
“I’ve kind of gotten attached to this one,” he said—like that gross understatement explained it all. “He’s been through a lot.” The truth in that simple statement sobered the room and no one else said anything. The anesthesiologist checked his machine and monitors, nodded to himself, and settled back in his chair. Sheila tested the electric graft knife, which made Jason jump a little. Nathan’s delicate chest rose and fell when the machine commanded.
“I’m right here,” Jason said again.
* * *
The sound of Jason’s voice and the soft, though far away, feel of his hand on his cheek made Nathan’s pulse stop pounding in his ears. He knew where he was, could feel the wet heat on his skin and smell the moist dirt that he laid in. He had been afraid to open his eyes, but hearing Jason’s voice made him feel a little bit brave. He would be okay. Maybe he would even be able to leave if he wanted, since he could feel and hear Jason.
Don’t count on it, Ranger. Time to Power Up.
Well, even if not, knowing Jason sat with him made it a little bit not-so-scary. Nathan opened his eyes slowly and found himself right where he knew he would be—on his side in the dirty cave. He had not expected to see one of the sticky-looking purple puddles right next to his head, and seeing it made him sit up quickly. Nathan saw immediately that he lay right beside a little stream of the reddish-purple goo which ran down the wall and made the puddle near his face, and he scrambled to his feet.
As he looked around, he saw more little purple streams running down the walls and he wondered what that meant. It kind of looked like the cave had begun to bleed. The rise where he could look down into the big room, where the Lizard Men seemed to feed, was just a few paces away and Nathan wanted desperately to check and see if Jenny was there. But he felt a lot more afraid this time; the burning question of whether he would be able to escape back to Jason if the creatures saw him tugged at him, and he stood a moment, unsure what to do.
There looked like a little passageway just behind him that branched off in another direction, and for a moment he thought about maybe scurrying down that narrow path and just hiding until his surgery was over. But even before his in-his-head voice called him a scaredy cat, he knew he had to make sure Jenny looked alright. He hoped she wasn’t there at all, but knew she would be.
Nathan walked slowly up the slope of the path and maneuvered awkwardly around the purple puddles, which seemed harder to avoid this time. Up on his toes he sneaked around what he now thought of as cave blood and tried not to get any on him.
At the rise he dropped down again on his naked belly, relieved and happy that he saw no blood pudd
les, and sneaked up the last few feet to the rise. Then he peered over the edge.
Again Jenny lay naked and sweaty, writhing slowly in the corner. The man with the bashed-in brains had fallen over and looked gray and old, a dark stain around his head in the dirt. Nathan heard the soft noises from the Lizard Men, who bent over Steve’s barely moving body. Their dinosaur heads leaned over Steve’s and now and again they grunted at each other. The eyes in those demon heads glowed a lot redder today, and he wondered if that meant they really had grown stronger.
The taller creature leaned over suddenly and pointed one impossibly long, black claw at Steve’s bare belly then pushed the claw into Steve with a little spurt of dark blood. Slowly, the demon dragged the claw downward and Steve’s belly split open with a little splash of bloody water. His guts rolled out of him and fell in a pile, like thick gray sausages, beside him in the dirt. The sound of Steve’s cry bounced off the walls and pounded into his head and he balled a dirty fist up and shoved it into his mouth to stifle a scream.
Nathan tried to force away his fear, but the creatures didn’t seem to notice the smell of him this time. Instead they focused only on Steve as they bent over and started to feed. Nathan felt sick and scared and thought he might spit up. He wanted to slip down from the ledge and hide, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the horrible sight in front of him and he wanted to watch to make sure they didn’t feed on Jenny next. He suddenly felt alone and way too little.
Help me, Jason. Please come here and help me.
* * *
They were back now. He had passed out for most of the cold, wet washing of his belly—his terror taking him away—and then checked in for a moment to see how things came along. Now the towels seemed all in place, tucked in a tight square around his exposed belly, and his eyes stared at the white and black checkered ceiling while his ears listened to the clink of metal on metal. Now and again the ceiling seemed to shimmer, slowly take on the darker image of the ceiling of a cave, then faded slowly back to his familiar checkerboard. He thought the pulse in his temples would explode his head right off his neck and prayed something would burst in his brain and he would die quickly.
The Donors Page 13
