“Oh, and Mister Alvarez?”
“Yes?”
“If you need to urinate...”
“Come get a cup and a screen from you.”
“You do know the routine.”
Henry smiled and winced.
He’d been focusing on the pain until Peggy had mentioned urinating. The inside of his pecker burned like venereal disease. He wanted to go but knew he hadn’t had enough to drink. His bladder was protesting but not bursting.
A nurse called him into a side room ten minutes later. Her ID badge declared her name as Dora.
“OK, Mister Alvarez. I’m going to ask you some questions.” She gave Henry a tiny smile. “What brings you here this evening?”
“Kidney stone.”
“Oh.” Dora wrinkled a brow. “Already made the doctor’s analysis?”
“I’ve had them before. Save time you some time and a misdiagnosis.”
The first time Henry had had a stone, the doctors spent hours on the wrong area, focusing on his intestines because the pain was in his lower abdomen. Only when his kidneys had ached did they get a clue.
All the cartoons and comedians joked about pissing fire and screaming at the urinal. The reality was the pain came when the stone moved through the tiny ureter tube from the kidney to the bladder. That’s when the screaming and spinning circles on the floor happened. Once the little fucker reached the bladder, it was home free.
Another stab of pain. Henry winced and clutched the cold steel arm of the chair. He shifted in his seat – a useless gesture. Changing his posture did nothing to alleviate the discomfort.
“I know the drill.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“Just get me fluids and x-ray me and tell me if I can pass it at home or if you need to go in and get it.”
“I’m also sure you understand we have a protocol and a doctor needs to make those decisions.”
Henry meant to be knowledgeable and cooperative. He was clipping his words and being curt because he was clenching against the pain. He supposed he sounded like an asshole.
“Sorry. Just annoyed I have another one – away from home, too.”
“Certainly.”
Dora came around the desk. “Need to take your vitals.”
Pulse clip on his finger, thermometer under his tongue, the blood pressure cuff squeezed until Henry thought his arm would fall off. The red-hot ice pick sensation stabbed above his left nut and he thought he’d crack the thermometer, chew glass, taste mercury and spit blood. The moment passed.
“Really shot up there,” Dora commented. She undid the cuff and his aching arm was grateful.
“Bad timing. Bad pain right then.”
Dora returned to the computer station, typed in the numbers and a note about his pain. She nodded and let a courteous grin cross her face.
“You take a seat back in the waiting room and we’ll get you in for an examination soon as we can, Mister Alvarez.”
Impatience and pain went hand in hand. Henry tried to be a model emergency room patient. The herd thinned. Two wheezers and one hacker disappeared around the corner. Henry wondered how many beds they had in the curtained bays around the central desk of the emergency room. He hoped some people were being sent home with antibiotics. He knew how long getting a hospital room could take.
Commotion at the entrance dissipated Henry’s boredom. Two burly paramedics rushed a gurney through the opening doors. The woman pushed as the man leaned over the body, administering C.P.R. on the run.
“C’mon! C’mon!” The man uttered the phrase as a mantra.
Blood covered the pillow, oozing from a raw wound on the left side of the patient’s head. Jacket and shirt open, leather pants – one leg shredded – and heavy boots. A motorcycle accident. Not a surprise with the rain, though Henry was perplexed about the head wound. He thought Massachusetts had a helmet law but he didn’t ride motorcycles so it wasn’t a point he had checked before embarking on his business trip.
The crew and the accident victim disappeared around the corner where the noise grew louder. The remaining people in the waiting room sat in shocked silence. A few shook their heads in pity. Sick, they were all farther from death at that moment than the man on the stretcher.
Henry felt a lump of empathy, sympathy, and dread settle in his gut. The frailness of mortality crashed against his psyche. Anyone could have their head split open like an egg at any time. You never knew. He briefly pondered what his kidney stone would have done to a person one hundred – two hundred years ago. He thought of his kidneys blocked and filled to bursting and catastrophic failure as they burst. He squirmed in his seat and it had nothing to do with his current pain.
Though, the pain was impressive on its own.
He walked around when he could, clenching teeth when the pain stabbed extra hard. He sipped water from a bubbler. After he’d lost track of how many steps he’d taken, he decided the bubbler wasn’t enough. He pulled out his wallet, found some single bills. A sign indicated a vending machine around the corner from the bathrooms.
The slot gobbled his money. He considered, briefly, choosing a soft drink but the best thing for his body was water. He pressed the buttons, the bottled water thumped into the tray.
He groaned as another ice pick stab throttled his guts and groin.
“Jay-SUS!”
Henry closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the cool glass. He heard footsteps and a swish of clothing. He opened his eyes. In the reflection, he saw the nurse in the old uniform passing behind him.
He turned. She disappeared around a corner.
The kidney stone pain subsided to an aching throb. Henry felt an odd curiosity. He should return to the waiting room. He didn’t want to miss his name being called. But she had been at the old entrance. She could explain.
He vowed he would look around the corner and go no further. Just a glance, a moment. Then he’d head back to the waiting room and sit with the rest of the nocturnal invalids.
The blinding white hallway went on forever. A gurney was parked against one wall. Henry saw the soles of boots. The nurse was gone, the stretcher unattended. Henry felt a tug of morbid curiosity. He stepped slowly. He figured it had to be the motorcycle accident victim. No sheet covered the body but the man had to be dead. Henry had spent time in a hospital corridor when an emergency room overflowed but surely someone critically injured wouldn’t be shunted into a hallway.
The leather pants were gone. Cloth riding pants were tucked into knee high boots - more suitable for horseback than motorcycle. The boots were wrong. The man who’d come through the emergency doors had worn clunky motorcycle boots with squared toes.
It couldn’t be the same man but who else could it be? Henry hadn’t had a clear look at the face. The head wound had taken his attention. He looked at the man on the stretcher.
The left side of the man’s skull was a bloody ruin. The injury nearly identical to what Henry had seen on the leather clad man.
Henry glanced around, worried. He didn’t want to create a commotion. The staff must have known what they were doing. You don’t just forget about a cranial injury in an emergency room. No one could neglect their duty so badly.
“Hello?” The hallway swallowed Henry’s words.
The nurse couldn’t have gotten far.
“Hello?” He spoke louder but his throat squeezed the words to a higher pitch.
The man on the gurney twitched. Henry saw the head loll over onto the wound, blood seeped into the white pillow case. Then the convulsions started, legs kicked wildly, boots thudding haphazardly off the wall
“Jesus!” Henry leapt away from the gurney and ran for the emergency room.
“Nurse! Nurse! Someone! Anyone! Help!”
By the time he reached the waiting room, Dora and Peggy intercepted him.
“What’s wrong, Mister Alvarez?” Peggy asked.
“You’ve got to help!”
“What’s wrong, Henry?” Dora chose to use hi
s first name in an effort to calm him. “Are you in pain right now?”
Henry shook his head violently. “Not me!”
“Not you?”
“The motorcycle guy! The one who came through here!” Henry pointed around the corner. “They just left him in the hall! How the hell could they do that?”
The two women rushed off.
Henry staggered into the waiting room, groaned as the adrenalin shock ebbed and the kidney stone stabbed again. Sudden exhaustion battered his body and he collapsed into one of the chairs.
The pain persisted. He felt his hands tingling, skin growing cold. Nausea threatened, his body too stupid to know that even though his guts hurt, you couldn’t puke up a kidney stone.
He shut out the world, heard nothing but his own pounding blood vessels and white noise crescendoing in his ears.
“Mr. Alvarez?”
He grunted. He wasn’t sure he could open his mouth without vomit coming along for the ride.
“Mister Alvarez, are you alright?” He recognized Peggy’s voice.
“Pain has kicked up,” Henry said, his mouth clenched hard.
“Do you have a fever?” Dora asked. “Did you self-medicate before you came to us, Henry?”
“Self what?”
“The pain, Henry. Did you take something for the pain?”
Henry shook his head, the motion aching with the pounding and throbbing. His head was getting worse. The kidney stone stabbed furiously. There was nothing but white noise. He wouldn’t open his eyes, couldn’t. Everything was too bright.
Was he getting a migraine? He’d never had one before. Goddammit. A migraine and a kidney stone.
“Is he okay?”
“Who?”
“The motorcycle driver!”
There was silence. He slitted one eye open against the light. Peggy was gone, returned to the reception desk. Dora gazed at him with a mix of pity and a touch of anger.
“That man was D.O.A. You shouldn’t have wandered into the emergency ward, Mister Alvarez.” Dora had stopped the informality of using his first name.
“I didn’t. I didn’t go near the beds.”
Dora pressed on, her anger rising, clipping her words. The patients and staff do not need such a disruption.”
“I saw him in the hall.”
“We don’t leave the deceased in the hallways.”
Henry held his tongue and didn’t mention he had also seen the man spasm on the gurney. He sagged back in the uncomfortable chair and gave up arguing.
“Will I be seen soon?”
“Yes, Mister Alvarez. We’re very close to getting a bay open for the doctor to have a look at you.”
* * *
The circle of round lights glared down. Henry closed his eyes. He shivered. He felt a draft. Why didn’t hospitals issue proper pajamas rather than stupid johnnies that never stayed on correctly?
He opened his eyes again. Masked faces of nurses came and went from his view.
“The doctor will be here shortly,” a green mask said.
X-rays had shown the kidney stone to be too large to pass. Henry had missed the cut off by a millimeter. At least there would be no incision. He didn’t relish the thought of waking up with a sore pecker. Whenever he mentioned his previous experiences with stones, someone always brought up the idea of sound waves and a hot tub. Sit in the bath and get the stone smashed from the outside. Nice idea. No one had ever offered him the option.
Up they would go.
He tried not to squirm.
The doctor arrived - a urologist named Keppler whose bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows glowered over his surgical mask. He looked over the equipment, traded nods with his staff.
“OK. Mr. Alvarez. We’re ready.”
A blue mask loomed over his face.
“I’m your anesthesiologist. I’ll start you with a little something to take the edge off.”
Henry watched the hypodermic needle slip into his I.V. bag.
He didn’t feel the next needle prick at all. He hadn’t noticed the anesthesiologist leaning over his right arm.
“OK, Mister Alvarez.”
A numbing chill crept up his arm.
There was an odor. A strong, sweet smell with a chemical undercurrent. Rum? Almost. Sweet as rum but somehow a thinner, more ethereal scent.
She was there. The nurse with the cape and the old-fashioned hat. White mask over her face. She pressed a wad of cotton against his face and the medicinal smell filled his nostrils, invaded his lungs, moved through his blood.
He tried to scream. His tongue was a lump of useless flesh.
The nurse leaned in closer. Her face pale, her eyes beautiful. An odd brown tone colored her hair. She was a sepia photograph moving through the real world. She heralded salvation and death.
Her heavy, white cotton mask fell away.
Henry screamed and fell into darkness.
* * *
The world rushed into Henry’s consciousness. He saw light and heard muffled sounds. He was too weak to open his eyes. He focused on his hand, his fingers, down to his pinky. He fought off the returning sleep and put all his will into his little finger. It twitched.
“Mister Alvarez? Henry?”
“Wha…?”
“You’re in post-op, Henry. Just take deep breaths. It helps work the anesthesia out of your system.”
Breathing was the only activity Henry could manage, so he took the nurse’s advice.
Once he felt returned to the real world – albeit tired – he remembered the surgery room. He remembered the smothering. Panic momentarily washed away fatigue. He glanced around.
There were eight beds. Five were empty. Two slumbering patients occupied the others. Two nurses – a man and a woman in proper, modern scrubs, monitored the ward.
Of the caped nurse, there was no sign.
Some hours later, they wheeled Henry into a hospital room. The second bed was empty. No roommate was expected. At least, not that evening. Henry muttered a thanks.
He slept. A real sleep of exhaustion and lack of rest and perhaps a touch of flushing out the last of the anesthetic drug.
A male nurse, square-faced and tan, woke Henry.
“Need to check your vitals.”
Henry proffered an arm to the squeezing blood pressure cuff. The room tilted a little.
“Crap. What did they gas me with?”
“We don’t use gas anymore.” The nurse laughed. “We just give you a shot.”
Henry remembered the needle in the I.V. bag, the one he hadn’t felt in his arm. Had they injected his arm?
“But that smell.” Henry shook his head, the memory strong enough he felt smothered again. He took in a deep breath to dispel the sensation. “The stuff packed a wallop.”
“You must be a little disoriented. From what they tell me, you’ve had a long twenty-four hours.”
A memory rose from Henry’s past.
“My mother. My mother had her tonsils out when she was a child. On the dining room table. A doctor who made house calls. He gave her ether. She counted from ten backwards and didn’t finish before she was out. She never described the odor though. An ether soaked wad of cotton.”
“Ether?” The nurse put on a casual smile that didn’t hide the growing concern on his face. “Do you think we’re savages? Ether went away, long before gas did! Have you been reading historical medical journals?”
Henry forced a casual smile of his own.
“No, no. I guess I’m jumbled up, like you said. I’ll get some rest now, if you’re finished.”
The nurse’s expression relaxed.
“I’m all set. You go ahead and get your rest.”
Henry slept, drifting between heavy slumber and near wakefulness. A few nightmares bolted him upright, heart racing. He could not remember details of the dreams. He suspected the cause, sepia-haired and white-masked. He dismissed those recollections as soon as they appeared.
He felt the urge to piss and it was real, not a phantom
sensation from a kidney stone. For that, he was thankful. No bedpan convenience for him, he was expected to get up and move. The room was quiet, evening settling in. He shifted off the bed, clutched the I.V. stand, and wheeled it along to the bathroom.
He pissed through the mesh and paper colander – a precaution in case they might catch some stone fragments to analyze. Post-op blood colored his urine with a rosy tinge. The stinging wasn’t too bad.
He heard someone in the room. Nurses always picked the best times to check in.
“Out in a minute,” he said over his shoulder.
He washed his hands, checked that his johnny covered his front and his ass cheeks, and paused at the threshold into the room.
He had a roommate.
“Dammit.”
Whoever had brought the patient had disappeared quickly. The patient wasn’t hooked to any monitoring equipment and neither were they I.V.ed. The bed had been switched. The buttons, railings, heavy frame absent, it wasn’t a bed at all. It was a gurney.
A chill crawled down Henry’s spine. No one could have walked out with that bed in the time he had taken to piss. They would have needed to dismantle it.
Half the room had changed. Not Henry’s half. Where the separator curtain would have demarcated the territory, the floor tiling changed from uniform beige to alternating brown and white tiles. Tiles he had seen in that lost, mysterious entrance hall where he had first arrived. Only now he recognized the brown was sepia. A three-dimensional photograph overlaid on half his hospital room.
He stepped forward, I.V stand’s plastic wheels clacking across the floor.
His head started to ache. The same white noise throb he’d felt in the waiting room. It got worse the closer he approached the room division. It wasn’t an evenly distributed headache pain. The left side of his head felt warm and wet, scraped raw. He put his hand there, pulled it back to look, expecting blood but his hand was clean.
The man on the gurney had the same wound. The same man. The one abandoned in the corridor with the out-of-place clothes and boots. Not the man who’d come in through the emergency doors clad in leather and modern motorcycle boots but this phantom.
She entered through the door. Henry knew she would. For some reason her dark cape retained its navy blue color but the rest of her was a sepia portrait walking tall, shoulders back and head high. She stood beside the gurney and stared at the prostrate man.
Wicked Haunted: An Anthology of the New England Horror Writers Page 8
