Sandman

by Sean Costello

  Peach answered uncertainly, then she was padding eagerly toward Jenny.

  “Come on, baby. Let’s go.”

  The cat made it as far as the oblong of exterior light that frosted the hallway. Then, ears down, it released a warning hiss that raised Jenny’s hackles.

  Jack was standing right behind her.

  Whirling, Jenny charged, the switchblade aimed at Jack’s heart. Jack side-stepped in the narrow hall, one hand arcing down, deflecting the blade’s trajectory. Anticipating his reaction, Jenny stabbed forward as her arm angled away. She heard Jack cry out, felt the tip of the blade find flesh before spinning from her numbed fingers. Head down, she continued her attack, plowing into him with frenzied strength, knocking him to the floor. Her nails dug bloody furrows in his neck, then she was kneeling astride him, fists buried in his hair, pounding his skull against the terra-cotta tiles.

  “You sick fuck. Leave—me—alone.”

  Jack stiffened then, his neck suddenly rigid, and Jenny realized through a receding red haze that since he disarmed her, he hadn’t been resisting her attack.

  “That’s it,” Jack said. “That’s the lesson. Do you feel it, Jen?”

  And in that moment she did: the terrible exhilaration of blood battle, the ravening lust for the kill.

  Then shock crashed over her and she released Jack’s hair. Jack dragged his fingers through the blood on his neck and war-painted Jenny’s face with it. Jenny tried to get up, but Jack pulled her close, pressing his lips to her ear.

  “You felt it, didn’t you,” he whispered, his breath sending cold thrills through her body. “Remember it.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “I intend to, sweetheart. I intend to.”

  He released her then and Jenny stood, ready to fight him again if she had to. Jack got up and opened the front door. His gi top had fallen open and Jenny could see where she’d caught him with the knife, a raw but superficial slash across his ribs.

  “You can go now,” he said.

  Jenny didn’t move. A finger of breeze curled through the doorway and tousled her hair. It felt clean and good against her face.

  Jack stepped away from the door. “Go.”

  Jenny hesitated, fearing a trick, then stumbled toward the open door. She brushed past him, expecting his hand to close around her arm, but then she was outside, standing on the porch, the night air cold, making her teeth chatter. Incredibly, she found herself turning back, approaching the door. This was her home...

  Jack’s face floated in the gap.

  “I need my car keys...and Peach...”

  “Go now,” Jack said. “As you are. Or we’ll sit some more.”

  Wisely, Jenny fled.

  It was four-thirty, Monday morning.

  * * *

  Jenny lost her footing on the lawn and fell. The grass was wet and she realized it was raining, a chill, misty drizzle. She regained her feet and stumbled onto the Parkway. The high beams of a passing cab speared her and she thought, an instant too late, of flagging it down. She waved her arms in the cab’s hissing backwash, but the brake lights remained stubbornly dark. She had no money anyway.

  She limped across the grassy median, darting glances back at the house, fearful her freedom was just another part of Jack’s tormenting game. But there was no sign of him. The lights were off, the house a brooding silhouette in the darkness.

  Once across the Parkway, she descended a set of steps to the bike path bordering the canal and leaned against the guardrail, gazing into the oily water. Within seconds she was asleep on her feet. She folded to her knees, the impact jarring her awake, and thought, I’ll just lie here a while...

  Then she thought of Kim.

  Oh, honey. Please be all right. I’m coming, baby. I’m coming.

  She pulled herself up on the guardrail and started along the lamp-lit path, hands fisted, teeth set with determination. It would be dawn soon, full light by the time she reached the hospital. And if Kim was dead and Jack had made her miss it, she would kill him. Somehow, she would kill him.

  At Wellington Street, downtown, The Parkway became Sussex Drive and Jenny thought, Richard’s gallery. If he was there she could use his phone, maybe borrow some money for a cab.

  Ten minutes later she was leaning on his doorbell. The door opened on its chain and Richard’s sleepy face appeared in the gap.

  “Richard. I’m so glad you’re here.”

  “Jen?”

  He opened the door and Jenny collapsed into his arms. He saw the finger-smears of blood on her face and Jenny told him it wasn’t hers. He swung the door shut and held her close.

  After a moment she broke the embrace, saying, “I have to use your phone.”

  He led her to the extension in his office. Jenny’s hands shook so badly she misdialed the number twice before Richard punched it in for her. Her voice broke as she asked for the ICU...then she was on hold, knuckles white around the handset, tears streaming from her eyes.

  Watching her, Richard felt helpless. He wanted to hold her, take the hurt away, but he had no idea what was going on.

  Then she was speaking into the phone, trying to control the sob in her voice, asking if there had been any change in her daughter’s condition while doing her best to apologize for not checking in sooner. Then she was nodding, saying, “No change, then. All right, thank you...” She left Richard’s number, said she’d be in as soon as she could then made the nurse promise to call immediately if anything changed.

  After she hung up Richard led her upstairs, drew her a hot bath and undressed her as one might an exhausted child. Seeing her in her under things, his first instinct was to call a doctor—she was bruised and scraped, terribly pale—but Jenny rejected the idea in no uncertain terms. “No, Richard. No doctors. If you call a doctor, I’ll leave.” While she bathed, Richard showered in another bathroom, then got dressed and fixed them some tea.

  They sat at an oval table near the painting Richard had hoped she would see at his opening: Girl on a Swing. Jenny saw it now and said how beautiful it was. She sipped her tea, her eyes dull and unfocused.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Richard said.

  “No, I don’t. But I owe you that much.”

  “There’s no rush, Jen. We can talk about this anytime or not at all. And whatever your reasons for being here, you’re welcome to stay as long as you like. There’s plenty of room and...I’m glad to have you.”

  Jenny managed a wan smile. “Thanks, Richard, but I’d just as soon get this over with now. Then, if you don’t mind, I’m going to lie down someplace and sleep for a couple of hours.”

  Richard said that would be fine. Then he sat back and listened to Jenny’s story in shock and disbelief.

  * * *

  What Jenny had hoped to compress into a few minutes took over an hour, and Richard came out at the end of it feeling as drained as Jenny looked. He rose stiffly from his chair and opened his hand to her, helping her to her feet. He offered his embrace, and she accepted that, too. There were no further words and none seemed needed.

  When Jenny’s feet were firmly under her, Richard led her upstairs to one of the guest rooms, an angular, sunlit space with a gabled window overlooking a majestic scotch pine. He folded back the comforter on the antique double bed and covered Jenny when she lay down. Before leaving, he drew the curtains against the daylight.

  In the warmth of the comforter Jenny slid evenly toward sleep, lulled by the sweet sigh of breeze in the tree outside. She spent the next twelve hours there, in a deep, dreamless slumber.

  21

  TODD BRUBAKER, WHO WAS SIX, was determined to be brave.

  “Getting your tonsils out is no big deal,” his daddy had told him when the doctor said Todd needed his removed. “I had mine out when I was only four and in those days they put you to sleep with ether.”

  “What’s ether?” Todd had asked him.

  “Ether’s nasty stuff,” his daddy said, and Todd thought about that now, while the three other
boys in his hospital room snored around swollen adenoids. They were all his age, too, except for Timmy McNamara, who was only five. “They used to drip it into a mask and you had to breathe it into your lungs. It smelled like nail polish remover.”

  Todd wrinkled his nose. He knew what nail polish remover smelled like. “Will they use ether on me?”

  Daddy grinned and tousled Todd’s hair, thick and jet black, like his mom’s. “No way, partner. These days they give you a little needle in your arm and bingo. You’re out like a light.”

  Oh, boy. Needles.

  Todd hated needles. And he wasn’t too happy about going ‘out like a light’ either. The only place he wanted to go was home. But he didn’t complain. He wanted to be brave for his dad. He’d been doing pretty well, too, until that doctor came in last night. The one who was going to put him to sleep.

  “Hi, Todd,” the big man said. “My name is Doctor Fallon, and I’m going to be putting you to sleep for your operation tomorrow.”

  Todd didn’t like Doctor Fallon. The feeling was immediate and instinctive, akin to a fear of snakes or of deep water. If asked, Todd would have had trouble articulating the feeling...but there was something about the man’s eyes. They looked like glass. Like teddy bear eyes, Todd thought. Grizzly bear.

  Huddled under his thin hospital blanket, Todd corked a thumb into his mouth. His daddy got upset when he did that, sucked his thumb like a baby, but Daddy wasn’t here right now.

  A nurse came in and headed for Todd’s corner bed. She had something in her hand. It looked like a needle. Todd tried to make himself small.

  “Morning, Todd,” the nurse whispered. She was pretty and had big hooters. That was what Brad in bed three called them last night. Todd told him the proper name for them was breasts and Brad called him a homo. Brad was bad—Bad Brad, Todd thought, and smiled a little—but he was kind of cool, too.

  Todd returned his attention to the nurse. Nurse Hooters, he thought, and smiled again. He wished he could wake up Brad and tell him. Then he saw what the nurse was holding.

  It was a needle, all right.

  “I want you to turn on your side,” the nurse said. “I have to give you a little pick before you go down for your surgery. It’ll help you relax.”

  Todd hesitated, then turned on his side. The nurse pulled down his jammies, adding embarrassment to his list of indignities. A wet tissue brushed his buttcheek (another term he’d picked up from Brad), and cold fingers pinched his flesh. Todd tensed.

  “Relax, sweetheart,” the nurse said. “This won’t hurt a bit.”

  The needle went in and Todd cried out. He couldn’t help himself. Ashamed, he buried his face in his pillow. They lie here, too, he thought. That didn’t hurt a bit; it hurt a lot.

  A few minutes later a porter came in and helped the nurse bundle him onto a stretcher. The commotion woke the others and the three of them watched him go. Their silence reminded Todd of a western he’d seen in which a gang of notorious train robbers were led one by one to the gallows. Brad’s bed was nearest the exit, and as Todd coasted by he saw no playful mischief in his new friend’s eyes. Now there was only fear.

  The porter wheeled Todd to a bank of elevators and pushed the call button. As the doors slid open and the porter rolled him inside, Todd felt a pure and murderous fury for his dad, for exposing him to this terror and for making him face it alone. “Sorry, kid. Can’t be there in the morning. Got an important meeting I can’t miss.” His mommy would have come no matter what, but she lived in the United States now, in Utah, with another man.

  The doors closed behind them, seeming to suck the air from the enclosure. There was an old woman on board, stooped over a walker, and she turned her rheumy eyes on Todd. “I got four boys, all had nice black hair like yours when they was your age,” she said. Her bent fingers brushed Todd’s hair and a trembling sadness glazed her eyes. “The oldest one’s dead now. The cancer got him. The rest is all bald.”

  A bell tinged and the elevator came to a stop.

  “This is it,” the porter said.

  Todd closed his eyes. And surprisingly, he began to drowse.

  * * *

  Jack stood in the ENT suite with his back to the door and removed an unmarked vial from his lab coat pocket. He drew up ten cc’s of the amber fluid it contained and squirted it into the Pentothal dispenser on his table. Then he filled four syringes from the dispenser and arrayed them on the anesthetic machine.

  At five minutes to eight he asked the circulating nurse to bring in his first patient. It was the first day of elective surgery since the closure and everyone was eager to get underway.

  The patient was a six-year-old boy named Todd Brubaker, booked for a tonsillectomy. The nurse picked up his chart at the front desk, studied it briefly, then spoke to the ward clerk.

  “I don’t see a hemoglobin on the chart,” she said. It was a hospital by-law that a surgical case could not commence without a hemoglobin measurement on the chart.

  The clerk picked up the phone and dialed the lab. “Busy,” she said. “I’ll try again in a minute.”

  But the minute stretched into five, the clerk answering a dozen other calls in the interim, and when she tried again the line was still busy.

  The nurse said, “Can’t you bring it up on the computer?”

  The clerk pointed at her station’s blank screen. “Still down.”

  “All right. I’ll take the kid into the room and get him set up. Call me when you get the result.”

  * * *

  A cool hand touched Todd’s forehead, stirring him from his drowse. “Time to go, sweetheart,” a nurse said. “Is your mommy or daddy here?”

  Todd shook his head, resisting the urge to pop a thumb into his mouth. Tears sheened his eyes, but somehow he kept them from leaking out. “Do I have to get another needle?”

  The nurse started pushing his stretcher down the hall. “Well, we have two ways we can put you to sleep. There’s the needle—and it’s a pretty small one, not as bad as your pre-op needle—and the mask. If you take the mask, it’s like blowing up a balloon.”

  “Is it ether?”

  The nurse laughed. “No. We haven’t used ether in years.”

  “Is it stinky?”

  “A little. No worse than your socks after you’ve worn them a couple days.”

  Todd gave a small chuckle. “That’s pretty bad, but I think I’ll try that. I hate needles.”

  “Okay, sweetie.”

  The nurse rolled him into the operating room and Todd propped himself up on his elbows. There were shiny tools on stainless steel carts, bug-eyed lights floating over an operating table, and a scary looking anesthetic machine that made Todd think of the Star Wars movies he’d seen.

  He said, “Is all this stuff for me?”

  But no one seemed to hear him. They were all business now, shifting him onto the table, attaching stickers to his chest and a blood pressure cuff to his arm.

  He heard someone call for Dr. Fallon. He wanted to ask if there was someone else they could call, some other way he could get his tonsils out without that glassy-eyed man putting him to sleep.

  Then Jack came into the room, and in this clean, well-lit enclosure his eyes looked normal, his smile warm and confident, and Todd wondered why he’d been so afraid of the man.

  “Okay, young fellow,” Jack said. He snugged a tourniquet around Todd’s arm. “Have you ever been bitten by a mosquito?”

  Todd tried to protest but his mouth refused to work.

  “Oh, Dr. Fallon,” the nurse said, and Todd wanted to hug her. “Todd and I discussed it and he’s decided he’d rather have the mask. I told him you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Well, I guess you lied to him then.”

  He began flicking a vein on the back of Todd’s hand. Todd looked at the nurse and saw her face flash red with embarrassment.

  This time Todd didn’t cry out, but it hurt. It was no mosquito bite.

  The doctor hooked up the intravenous tubing and tap
ed it into place. Todd saw a syringe in the doctor’s hand that looked like it was filled with pee.

  Is he going to squirt that stuff into me?

  Jack poked the needle through the rubber injection port nearest Todd’s hand. “Okay, big fella. You’re gonna go off for a little snooze.”

  Todd thought, Daddy, I’m afraid...

  The desk clerk’s voice squelched over the intercom. “Dr. Fallon?”

  “What is it? I’m about to induce a patient.”

  “I was just on the phone with the lab. Apparently there was no blood drawn for a hemoglobin on your patient, Todd Brubaker.”

  “Oh, cripes, I forgot,” the nurse said. “Sorry, Dr. Fallon, I forgot to mention...”

  She looked at Jack and her words trailed off. He was clearly furious, but there was something else, a flash of petulance that made her think of her eight-year-old son when she told him it was time to go to bed, and for a second she was certain he was going to go ahead with the anesthetic anyway.

  She said, “Dr. Fallon? Shouldn’t we wait?”

  Jack removed the needle from the injection port, capped it and replaced the syringe on his table. Then he started for the exit. “I’ll be in the lounge,” he said as he brushed past the nurse. “See if you can find me a patient who is ready.”

  * * *

  “Todd? Wake up, sweetheart. I have to take a blood sample.”

  They’d returned him to the waiting area and he’d drifted off again, slipping into a pleasant dream about his mom. He looked up at the girl with heavy lids, two thoughts floating in his mind at the same time: Great, another needle, and, Around here I’m everybody’s sweetheart. This time he barely felt the needle.

  When the girl left, Todd saw Brad go by on a stretcher. This morning Brad wasn’t so cool. Brad was crying—screaming, more like—and he looked exactly like what he was, a very frightened six-year-old boy.

  Good luck, Brad, Todd thought, and went back to the dream about his mom.

  * * *

  Brad West was logged into the recovery room at 0855. His color was good, he was breathing normally through an oral airway and his pulse was a smooth one hundred and six beats a minute. The recovery room nurse turned him on his side and gave him oxygen by mask. Once she was satisfied he was stable, she turned her attention to the patient Dr. Yao had just brought in, a thirty-year-old woman who’d had an arthroscopy. She checked on Brad every few minutes and was mildly surprised, though not alarmed, to find him still asleep a half-hour after his admission. Some kids reacted that way to anesthetics, though most were at least half awake and bitterly complaining before ten minutes had passed.