by Dean Kutzler
“Accidents happen. Isn’t that right, Jack?” His uncle said looking at Emmerich who nodded in agreement. “Emmerich and I have some catching up to do Jack and I need you to do me a favor. I need you to stay here and play with your new toy while we attend to business. Can you do that for me, Jack?”
“Uhhuh.” Jack mumbled around his hand.
Uncle Terry handed him a fifty-dollar bill for hot cocoa and a muffin if he got cold or hungry and told him to stay in that spot and play with his new boat until he returned. Under no circumstances was he to leave this spot and if there was a problem he was to tell the man behind the stand. He said that he knew Jack was a big boy and could take care of himself until he came back. He asked Jack to promise to keep it a secret between the two of them.
“Okay, Uncle Terry. Cool!” Jack replied, pulling his hand from his mouth. The blood had already started to slow. He was pleased that his uncle trusted him like an adult. His father never took that kind of faith in him.
Jack played for hours with that boat, thanks to the stock of batteries his uncle had purchased along with it. When his uncle finally returned, they went back to FAO Schwarz to get the Millennium Falcon. His uncle said he deserved two presents for being such a good boy, but the store was already closed by the time they had arrived. Uncle Terry promised he would get him the spaceship, as long as he continued to be a good boy and keep his promise about their little secret.
It’s a funny thing how the brain works. Age, maturity level and experience play such a big part in our development at different stages in our cognitive awareness. A memory evoked and relived from the past rings different perceptions and understandings in the mind’s eye after a lifetime of experience-sharpened intellect.
Until the cab had driven past Central Park and triggered Jack’s memory of FAO Schwarz and the remote controlled toy boat, he’d forgotten all about his and his uncle’s little secret. Back then as a child, his uncle was the coolest adult, ever, for trusting him alone in the park for so long, when none of the other adults in his life—the maids, his parents—ever had or ever would.
Jack began racking his brain for more forgotten memories and time was running against him. He wasn’t sure exactly how long his uncle would be lucid and parenting skills weren’t at the top of the list for discussion for his last moments with Uncle Terry. He looked on as the cab flew past FAO Schwarz and made a left onto Madison, nearly bringing the metallic beast up on two wheels.
Harold saw the look on Jack’s face. “Don’t worry. We’re ‘bout halfway dare’. I woulda took Park Ave, but Vera told me they’re holdin’ a festival or somethin’ dere today. She’s takin’ Hilda, the ole battle axe of mutter-in-laws over dere and it’ll be jammed up with lookie-loos. My wife an her ole lady love those tings! Rummagin’ around a buncha old junk!”
He smiled at Harold’s attempt at levity. Jack was trying his damnedest to remember any other strange incidences with his uncle from the past. That day in the park had been so long ago and so forgotten. All of his memories, including that one, had been happy memories of Uncle Terry. He was the father that Jack’s father hadn’t been. He cherished Uncle Terry and now he was racing to get his chance at goodbye.
Harold barely missed sideswiping the ambulance pulling up to the emergency entrance of the hospital before the cab screeched to a halt. The ambulance driver was smirking and gestured something in the side mirror when Harold turned to Jack and said, “Best wishes for your uncle, pal, I mean Jack. I hope e’rything turns out alright. Vera sends best wishes, too. Or at least she will, when I tell her tonight.” He gave Jack a wink. “You want I should wait for ya?”
“No. I’m not sure how long I’ll be, but I want to thank you, Harold. It’s good to be home. Keep the change and take Vera to another movie.” Jack slipped a Benjamin through the window.
“Hey geez—whoa! You crazy, buddy? It’s only ten bucks.”
Jack jumped out and closed the door just in time to see an NYPD cop car pulling up behind the cab, lights whirling. He bent down to the passenger window with a remorseful grin and said, “Sorry. I hope that takes care of it.”
“Git goin’! Yer uncle! Yer uncle! I’ll take care a dis flat foot! Now go on!” Harold assured him, righting his golf cap and smoothing down his bushy eyebrows with a lick to his pinky and fore finger before running them over his brows like a devil sign to the forehead.
Officer Rodgers straightened his hat and left the cruiser with pen and pad in hand as Jack started towards the emergency room entrance.
The electronic sliding doors opened like the maw of a giant beast. The loud grating sound from the door’s tract like a roar. A putrid smell of stale disinfectant wafted from the maw and blew over him like a hot summer breeze in Newark. As he stood gathering the courage to go in, nurses and patients bustled past inside in each direction.
This was it.
He’d labored so hard at getting to the hospital as fast as he could, unfortunately at Harold’s expense, and now the reality of the situation had caught up to him. A fresh wave of the nauseating disinfectant hit his face before the doors closed from his hesitation.
He took a deep breath, let go of his goatee and entered the death-stench of the emergency room waiting area. He weaved around the traffic of people and in to the reception desk.
The waiting room was full of patients, old, young and middle aged, from all different nationalities. There was a woman—oddly resembling Rachael Ray—sitting next to the bathroom holding her blood-soaked hand wrapped in paper towels.
He opened his mouth to ask the old nurse behind the desk for directions to room four in ICU when she looked up and called out in a raspy, too-many-Pall-Mall’s voice, “Mr. Kutzler? Mr. Kutzler?” Louder now, “Mr Kutzler? Mis-ter KUT-ZLER?!”
Before he had a chance to open his mouth again, a man—face beet red—burst from the bathroom with his pants around his ankles. He quickly shuffled his way to the desk and pleaded with the nurse, sweat pouring from his brow.
“Please, please help me! I can’t take it!” He moaned, wiping at the sweat.
“I understand that you’re in a lot of pain Mr. Kutzler, but please try to compose yourself. We put you at the top of the list when you came in and the doctor can see you now. And please, pull up your pants!”
The nurse hoisted her ample bosom with a haggard grunt and came around the desk to help Mr. Kutzler pull up his pants. Once he was zipped, she led him to one of the emergency examing rooms. When she came back, muffled moans of agony escaped from behind the door.
“Kidney stones,” she coughed. “They can bring a soul to their knees, make a grown man cry and make a sane person crazy. Painful little crystals!” the nurse said to no one in particular, coughing as she sat back behind the desk. Shaking her head, she finally addressed Jack, “Now what can I help you with? As you can see, we have a full house today. On a scale of one to ten, ten being the most intense, and one being the least intense, tell me what level of pain you’re in.” She regarded him as if he had been invisible.
“Oh, I’m not in any pain. I’m here—”
“The mental health ward is located on the fifth floor, down the hall from radiology.” She sternly cut him off with a cough, wiping at her mouth with a crumpled tissue she produced from the valley between her mountains.
“Ah, excuse me. I’m not a patient here. My name is Jack Elliot and I’m here to see my dying uncle, Terry Elliot. Can you tell me how to get to ICU?” He asked as politely as he could.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said trying to curb another cough. Then under her breath with an added eye roll she wheezed, “Coulda fooled me.”
“No—problem.” Jack was perturbed at her mental health judgment and rude attitude.
“It’s just that lately for some reason, we’ve gotten so many of them—you know what I mean—aah. Oh heck! Forget it!” The nurse said apologetically, more to herself. “It’s been a very hectic day here so far. ICU? ICU?” The old nurse reached into the pocket of her nurse’s un
iform and pulled out her dime-store glasses. Squinting at the computer screen and tapping on a few keys she said, “ICU—Go straight through those doors on your left, follow the red line on the floor until you come to a set of elevators. Take the elevator up to the eighth floor, then resume following the red line until you pass Geriatrics. After Geriatrics, you will make the next left and ICU is straight through the next set of doors. Press the button and someone will buzz you in.”
Jack started to head for the doors when the nurse shouted, “Wait! You need a visitor’s pass! Hospital policy.” She coughed in her hand before extending the pass to him.
“Thank you.” Jack said squinting at her as he snatched the germ-infested pass and headed for the doors.
“Sorry ‘bout your uncle!” she called out before the doors swung shut. “Why wouldn’t I think you’re crazy with that weird, arrow-straight goatee? Geez—you never know these days,” she said under her breath.
Anxiety washed over Jack as he trotted down the hall. The more he followed the red line, the dizzier he got. The dizzier he got, the sicker he became. Between the overpowering stench of stale disinfectant, flickering fluorescent lighting and the hospital’s clientele of sick and dying, scattered about the hallways sitting in wheelchairs or moaning on gurneys, he could hardly clear his head. He wasn’t having a panic attack. Not quite.
This hospital, like many, was overcrowded and under staffed. The unified sound of pain and anguish spilled into the hallway from the patients’ rooms and added to the unnatural sadness that the dingy decor exuded.
Jack was getting a pit-in-the-stomach feeling. A strange sense of vertigo began to overwhelm him from building anxiety. Like a panic attack, but not quite.
The overturned hotel room, the crazy race to the hospital, the strange trip down memory lane at Central Park—all of these things had distracted Jack from the task at hand. There were no other obstacles to tackle or problems to be solved. Just like with his writing, his brain would focus on any other possible chore at hand to avoid the strenuous task of pulling pure creation from the air and putting pen to paper. Now that the race to the hospital was over, there was nothing left to do or contemplate except for his uncle’s fate.
He started mentally preparing for what he was about to see, going over all the good times with his uncle, thinking about what he was going to say. It felt like rehashing a big story idea in his head just before pitching it to the editor at the Gazette, but the stress was tenfold. Only this wasn’t a story to be sold and he wasn’t pitching to his editor. He wasn’t even sure his uncle was still alive judging from the severity of the doctor’s message.
In all his twenty-nine years, luckily he’d never dealt with a sick or dying friend or loved one. Nor had he ever been in a hospital of this magnitude. He wished Calvin were here. He wished he hadn’t fought and won on his staying home. Now he was like a lone sparrow, flying off into the distance over an endless sea with no land in sight.
“Hold that elevator!” Jack hollered, quickening his pace.
As he approached the closing doors, he saw a man in an oversized, black coat and hat, pulling the brim down to cover his face. Out of sight, out of mind.
“Damn! People are so inconsiderate.” Jack ran into the elevator doors, smudging the stainless steel with his nose. He glanced at the stairwell and decided he’d done enough stairs for one day and punched the elevator button. As he waited, he went back to thinking about what he was going to say to Uncle Terry. He hoped his father hadn’t gotten there yet. That was another stressful event to be had and hopefully not right now. He felt awful for feeling that way but couldn’t lie to himself.
When the elevator arrived after what seemed like an unusually long time, the front doors opened simultaneously with the rear doors on the other side of the cabin. A sickly looking old man in a wheelchair wearing a dirty teal hospital gown with his head twisted in an odd manor was waiting outside in the hall. An oxen-like orderly, who looked like he could single-handedly take out the New York Jets’ whole line of defense, wheeled him into the elevator and pawed at one of the buttons.
Jack got in at the same time and pressed the button for the eighth floor. He couldn’t help staring at the old man’s head. It was tilted like a curious dog when it sees something out of the ordinary. That cute curious cock of the head, ears at attention like an amphitheater, ready to interpret the foreign sight and send the appropriate signal to the brain. Eat! Run! Bark! Although this was a man, he wasn’t cute—curious cock and all.
As Jack got on the elevator, the old man twisted his head around, dramatically sharpening the angle even further. He peered up at Jack through decrepit eyes that were yellow and milky from cataracts from age. His head was so far twisted around, that his right eye nearly sat on top of his left.
He regarded Jack with a vicious sneer, showing a slit of rotted teeth dripping with discolored spittle. He looked at Jack as if he was looking at a writhing patch of maggots on top of a pile of excrement that had been sitting in the sun for several days.
Seeing Jack’s bewilderment, the orderly explained, “Mr. Jameson has an extremely severe case of spasmodic torticollis.” A big smirk beamed across his face, clearly proud of his medical knowledge like a little boy holding up a building block, saying, ‘bwock’, waiting for a pat on the head and to hear what a good boy he was.
“Oh,” Jack said, not knowing what else to say.
“Or to the lay—man,” the orderly nodded in Jack’s direction, “that’s wry neck!”
The elevator door closed and the cabin started its ascent. The carriage jerked and bounced causing the bad fluorescent lighting to buzz, then flicker on and off intermittently. The air was getting a little stuffy in the elevator and the temperature was starting to rise. When the lights buzzed out and didn’t return, the wretched old man started to wheeze.
“Relax Mr. Jameson. It’ll be okay. It’s just the elevator. It’ll be on in a sec. You know this happens all the time.” The oxen-like orderly reassured his patient in the dark.
An odd crackling sound followed by ruffling dominated the darkness of the elevator in an instant. The familiar stench of disinfectant was replaced by a pungent odor that smelled like an abscessed wisdom tooth ready to burst. The stench carried an acrid humidity as it blew across Jack’s face in short bursts. The walls were closing in on them. It was the sense of space suddenly becoming occupied in the dark. A change in the acoustics. That difficult feeling to describe, like a sixth sense of space.
The elevator jerked and bucked. The overhead-lights made a loud zapping noise, so loud that Jack half expected to see sparks and the smell of ozone flooded the elevator. When the lights finally flickered back on, Jack was staring directly into the bulging iris of a slimy old eyeball.
His face was a hair away from the old man’s. The man’s nose was tilted so far around Jack could see wiry black hairs blowing in and out of his nostrils with each putrid breath.
“Yerrrrr too late!” the old man wheezed. He was standing up in front of his wheelchair, pushing up on the arm rests for balance as he strained to get closer to Jack’s face. His head was tilted at an impossibly upside down angle. “Yer too laaaaate!” He hissed, planting a fresh lumpy wad of amber saliva on Jack’s face. “They come! They come and they can’t be stopped. Won’t be. Ever! Never!”
“What the—?” Jack felt the wetness of the old man’s eyeball and grease from his lumpy nose against his face. He’d bumped into it when the lights had come back on because the old coot was that close.
“Jee-sus Fuck-ing Christ!” Jack yelled, losing his temper, wiping the spit with his sleeve.
“Tooooo late! It can’t be stopped! Never!” The old man was yelling. His upside down head was turning purple from all the exertion or lack of oxygen from the impossible tilt.
“What the fuck is wrong with him? What the hell is he talking about?” Jack was still wiping at his face.
“Calm down Mr. Jameson! Mr. Jameson! Sit back down!” The orderly unorthodoxly s
hoved the wheelchair behind the old man’s legs causing him to sit back down. “I’m sorry mister. He ain’t done nothing like this before. I think the lights freaked him out or something.”
The old man started wheezing harder and thrashing about in the wheelchair, attempting to stand. His face turned a serious shade of crimson and discolored spittle dotted his dirty hospital gown. He wobbled his head back and forth like he was trying to straighten it out. “Mr. Jameson! We’re almost to your floor. It will be okay.” The orderly pleaded, restraining him to the chair with a beefy paw. “I’ll make sure they replace the lights when we get you back to your room. Right now you have to calm down. Stop working yourself up before you get hurt.”
The elevator thrummed to a stop at the fifth floor and the doors slid open. The orderly wheeled the old man out and said, “Sorry again about that mister. I really don’t know what got into him.”
The doors started to close and Jack saw the old man stretching around to look back at him. His face was returning to a normal color but the sneer he previously regarded Jack with was replaced by a frightened look.
“Now I see what that rude nurse was talking about.” Jack said to himself as the elevator resumed its ascent. The little escapade with topsy-turvy had once again distracted him from the inevitable. He was just minutes away from seeing his uncle.
What do you say to someone that is dying? Especially someone that you love and care for? ‘See you on the other side?’ Maybe that worked for Ozzy, but that wasn’t helping here.
The elevator bounced the rest of its way up to the eighth floor with the lights on for the duration. Jack got off and resumed following the dizzying red line to the Intensive Care Unit.
On his way past Geriatrics, he came across a tiny elderly woman—easily in her nineties—standing by herself up against the wall in her bare feet. She was no more than four and a half feet tall, eighty pounds soaking wet. Her hair was a magnificent oddity, full and abundant for a woman of such age and the color was the brightest silvery gray Jack had ever seen on an old blue-hair. It was impossibly gleaming as if by sunlight, despite the windowless hallway, and it hung to the floor in pin-straight locks that must have taken countless hours for the nurses to do. Her complexion, once a pure porcelain, now resembled fine cracked bone china, weathered, but beautifully enhanced from the passing of time. Her features were of a stately manor in respect to her small stature. Her eyes were set deeply into her face and had been closed as if she was taking a little break from walking.
