Andy is the last to go. The nurses want to take his blowgun but he grips it tight.
Death grip, I think, because his shirt is saturated in bright red blood.
He waves at me as they take him through the glass doors to God knows where for God knows what.
I sit down on the concrete where a gunfight just happened and wait for Mona and Joseph to come out. The flies are fighting with the ants for blood and tissue. There isn’t nearly as much as it seemed a few seconds ago.
Mona doesn’t notice the puddles when she and Joseph come through the hospital doors. She’s not surprised to see me, but Joseph is.
He hugs me the way he did when I went for an anger-walk last night.
“Think you’re ready to man up?” Mona asks.
“Yes,” I tell her around Joseph’s hug. “I know exactly how to do it now.”
Joseph steps back and sniffs the air. His nose is not as good as Jake’s, but close.
“What is that, Chris? What’s that I smell?”
It could be blood, or gun smoke, but I don’t tell him that.
“It’s the scent of reliability,” I say. “We’d better leave before the New Flu crazies find us.”
The nurse’s hair needs a good shampoo. She’s pretty in a worn out, haggard sort of way in her green scrubs with the nametag that says, “Tammy,” and her white Keds that are starting to turn yellow. She’s worried about her daughter, who is home right now with her alcoholic husband, who used to be a painter back when people cared enough to paint their houses. Maybe she’s told me all these things, but I really can’t remember. I can’t remember anything, not even my own name until the nurse hands me a teddy bear and says, “ Karma, I want you to cough as hard as you can. Let those lungs know you’re the boss.”
I want to ask questions, but it hurts to talk. It hurts to breathe. It really hurts to cough, but Tammy pushes the teddy bear into my arms and makes me do it anyway.
“Got to get into a survival frame of mind.” Tammy’s eyes tell me she knows all about survival. It involves a lot of pain.
She makes me cough until I’m crying and reaching for the button that might release a drip or two of narcotic into my IV line if I haven’t already exceeded my limit.
I probably have reached that limit, because I can’t remember how bad the pain can get, or why I’m here.
Tammy says, “You have your whole life ahead of you, but first you have to get through this little rough patch.” She pushes Teddy into my arms again and makes me cough until the pain totally rules.
Until I remember who I am.
“Karma Chameleon Smith,” I tell her. “I’ve been shot.”
“You sure have sweetie.” She leans over the stainless steel rail of my bed and brushes a lock of hair out of my face. Her blue, non-latex glove comes away greasy. How embarrassing.
She reminds me I’m in St. Anthony’s Hospital, where the worst trouble in the world has already started. I’ve been shot on the bad side of Oklahoma City.
“Lots of gunshot wounds these days,” She points to another bed only a few feet away from mine. There’s a girl in that bed too, but she isn’t coughing. There’s a plastic tube in her mouth, hooked up to a machine that makes compressed air noises and beeps.
“You’re roommate’s headed south,” Tammy says. “Critical care is full, and our generator’s barely able to run all the respirators.”
She gives me a playful punch on the arm. “You’ll survive, Karma.” Another buddy punch to make up for all the coughing, and to prove she really likes me. “How did a pretty girl like you get such a funny name?”
“My mother picked it out.”
Those words make Tammy’s smile roll over. “Sorry sweetie. Sorry for your loss.”
The pain-killer must be all used up, because my chest feels like a brick fell on it. I remember how I stepped in front of the bullet meant for my almost boyfriend, and Mom stepped in front of me. Didn’t save me exactly, but she slowed the bullet down. It doesn’t feel real enough to cry, but I must be doing that anyway, because Tammy’s dabbing at my cheeks with a corner of the sheet.
“We’re out of tissues,” she tells me. “The hospital quit payin’ us, but we keep coming in. Helps pass the time while the world falls apart.”
The breathing machine keeping my roommate alive makes a monotone C sharp. Tammy walks around my bed and flips switches until it stops.
“This one’s gone,” She turns off the machines that kept the girl alive too long. She pinches IV lines and disconnects needles. “Guess you’ve got a private room now.” Tammy covers the nameless girl’s face with a sheet. “Anything more I can do for you?”
Since I’m the only living patient in the room I answer. “Hand me that teddy bear again and help me to the bathroom.” There are some things a girl has to do for herself, even when the world is coming to an end.
• • •
News all comes from rumors now that television and radio are gone. People used to worry about electricity and the strength of the dollar, but now it’s the New Flu.
“First outbreak started in Tulsa.” Tammy smiles like that’s some kind of Oklahoma accomplishment. We had Will Rogers, and Neil Armstrong, and the first domestic terrorist bombing, and the first F10 tornado. Now we have the New Flu.
Tammy adjusts my IV, which is dripping mostly saline and some kind of anti-retrovirus drug into my veins. The saline keeps me hydrated and the antiviral keeps me safe from AIDS, because I’ve received five units of blood, and nobody can be sure of the blood supply any more.
“Now we’re out of blood,” Tammy says. “But that’s OK, because the ambulances quit running, so people mostly die when something happens.”
She says it’s best not to think about those things. “Especially with the New Flu coming.” She sounds happy about the brand new disease that might send hundreds of patients to the hospital. “If they can find a way to get here. And really sick people always do.”
The New Flu starts with nausea but turns into schizophrenia.
“Nothing like it ever was.” Tammy crosses herself Catholic style. People do that all the time here at Saint’s. It used to be a Catholic Hospital, so I suppose it’s natural.“Religious riots and mass suicides, like the whole world’s turned into Jonestown.”
I don’t know what Jonestown is, so Tammy tells me all about the Reverend Jim Jones, the guns, the cyanide laced Kool-Aid. It started in California and spread to Guyana, where everybody killed everybody else.
“But New Flu started in Tulsa.” Tammy doesn’t know where Guyana is, but Tulsa’s only ninety miles away. “So pretty soon there’ll be cases in Oklahoma City.”
She crosses herself again and walks over to the only window in my now private room and stares at the sun until her eyes fill up with tears. She wipes her scrubs sleeve across her face and tells me how the antiviral drugs in my IV will protect me from the flu. That’s the good side of getting shot.
“The Lord works in mysterious ways.” Tammy looks at me for almost a minute without saying anything. She shifts her head from side to side so she can see me better through her tears.
“Right.” I cross myself, the way I’ve seen her do, so she’ll know I think the Lord is mysterious too. I wonder if we’ll be having Kool-Aid for lunch.
• • •
Tammy walks into my room holding a shampoo bottle full of water. She dabs a little on a cotton ball and draws a cross on the only window in my room.
“Holy water,” Tammy says. “I’m a Baptist, but I have a lot of respect for holy water. It’s been around for centuries. If it didn’t work people would have given up on it years ago.” She puts a little on her fingertip and traces her lips. “So every word will be a prayer. If I was a vampire, this wouldn’t be possible.”
I nod my head instead of speaking because I don’t have holy water on my lips.
She draws a holy water cross on my forehead. It smells like shampoo. I can’t stop myself from saying, “Cleanliness in next to godlin
ess,” but I cross myself after I do, so she’ll know I’m not making fun of Jesus.
“You have visitors,” she tells me that like it’s bad news. “They have to wait outside until I sanctify the room.”
Tammy’s getting pretty weird, but she still knows how to be a nurse, and I’m still hooked up to IVs full of real medicine to protect me from real germs, which are a lot more dangerous than vampires. I don’t have to cough anymore, but she lets me keep the teddy bear.
“Won’t be a minute,” Tammy says to someone in the hall. She sprinkles the soapy holy water in the doorway. “Be careful,” she tells the hallway people. “The floor is very slippery.” Then she turns to me and whispers, “You be careful too, Karma. They’re Indians.” She hands me the bottle of holy water, in case they attack.
• • •
My almost boyfriend Joseph comes through the door first. He doesn’t slip and fall, but he sniffs the air like a suspicious dog on his way to the veterinarian’s office. His mother, Mona, follows him in. She looks suspicious too, like she always does.
“This place is really strange,” Joseph says.
“It doesn’t look too bad if you just got shot,” I tell him. “After that, everything’s an improvement.”
He takes my hand in his for a second, but lets go when he sees Mona watching.
“It’s OK,” Mona says. “You can hold hands with a girl who saved you from a bullet.” She smiles at me like it no longer makes a difference that I have no Choctaw blood.
It’s always been important to Mona that her one-eighth Choctaw boy doesn’t hook up with a no-eighths Choctaw girl like me, so letting us hold hands is a breakthrough.
“Mom’s got an idea.” Joseph rolls his eyes, but he keeps his voice under control, so only he and I will know he thinks the whole thing’s crazy.
Mona is full of crazy ideas, like the white man’s world coming to an end, and Indians taking over. Only now that idea doesn’t seem so crazy after all.
“Indians are immune to the New Flu,” Joseph says.
That’s one of the rumors Nurse Tammy told me. “No Indians in the riots or the mass suicides, or any of the new religious movements springing up around the country.” Tammy figures Indians are in league with the devil because of all their whooping and dancing.
I wonder if Tammy’s listening from the hallway, and that must be pretty obvious, because Mona leans out the door and looks both ways.
“All clear.”
“Mom wants you to be her sister in blood.” When Joseph tells me this, I reach for the bottle of holy water.
Joseph shows me a knife with a transparent green glass blade and bone handle. “Cheyenne War Society knife. Made it myself. The obsidian is really Coke bottle glass, and the grip is cow bone, but other than that, it’s totally authentic.”
Mona says. “A two-hundred-dollar value when the Internet was working.”
She takes the knife from Joseph and draws a red line across the thickest part of her palm, just below the thumb. Before I can call for help she takes my hand and cuts me in exactly the same place. She presses her cut against mine and mumbles something under her breath. It might be Choctaw words, but it probably isn’t, because according to Joseph, the only Choctaw Mona knows is how to say goodbye.
When it’s Joseph’s turn, he saws the glass blade back and forth across his palm instead of making a clean cut. Mona holds his hand and mine together like she’s pronouncing us husband and wife.
Only she says, “Now you are brother and sister in blood.”
I pull my hand away, even though it’s probably too late. Joseph’s sister is the last thing I want to be.
“What’s that mean?”
Joseph doesn’t look like he knows for sure, but he tells me, “You’re a Choctaw now. Rolls don’t matter anymore.”
Mona cleans the knife off on my bed sheet and wraps it in a red bandanna.
“Keep it safe,” she tells me. “An Indian is nothing without a knife.” She sets the bundle on my bed beside the bottle of holy water.
“I’ll leave you two alone for a few minutes, then Joseph and I have to go.” She walks out the door. I can see her shadow on the wall, cast by the hospital lights using the last of the generator electricity.
Joseph leans forward and kisses me on the cheek. Then I kiss him on the forehead. Then he kisses me on the mouth. Then I kiss him on the mouth and include some tongue.
Just when things are getting really interesting he tells me he and his mom are leaving town.
“The family has a cabin in the Ouachita Forest,” he says. “We’re heading there today.” He tells me I can join them when I’m well, and that shouldn’t be too long, because I kiss like I’m in perfect health.
The Ouachita Forest is two hundred miles away. Nobody has gasoline, and there are no buses anymore. “How will you get there?”
“Indians know how to walk,” Joseph says. “Especially Choctaw, because we all walked to Oklahoma almost two hundred years ago.”
He tells me I can find him again, because we’re brother and sister in blood. He kisses me again to show we’re not brother and sister in any other way. Joseph is my for-real-boyfriend now, even if it won’t last very long.
“It’s time, Joseph,” Mona says from the hallway. Her shadow turns ninety degrees. She’s speaking toward the door without looking inside, because there are things a boy doesn’t want his mother to see.
He kisses me one more time and walks to the door. He waves to me and I see the cut on his hand that will pull us together again someday. My name’s Karma after all. That must mean something.
I hide the Cheyenne War Society knife under my pillow before Tammy comes back into the room. I take a big swig of holy water so she’ll know I haven’t made a pact with the devil. It tastes like Jesus is washing my mouth out with soap.
• • •
Back in the old days, hospitals used to kick you out before you had a chance to get well. Now they want to keep you forever.
Tammy says, “It’s dangerous outside,” and I know it is, because I see the smoke in the air from all the fires in Oklahoma City, and I hear coyotes singing to each other in the night.
“They’ve come into town to dance with the devil,” Tammy says. None of the nurses go home anymore. They just sleep in empty hospital beds and pray. The generators have used up all the fuel, so the hallways are dark and the only light at night comes from homemade alcohol lanterns that look like Molotov cocktails.
“The Indians call coyotes tricksters,” I tell Tammy. “They have lots of stories about them.”
The only coyote stories Tammy knows about are Road Runner cartoons. She doesn’t want to talk about Indian stories. She doesn’t want to talk about me leaving the hospital either. I’m unhooked from the IVs and it hardly hurts to breathe, but whenever I mention going home, Tammy says, “Not yet.”
I spend most of my time thinking about Joseph and Mona, even though my dad is probably wondering what happened to me. Tammy says he isn’t waiting for me back home, because the National Guard evacuated everyone.
“And then the soldiers left,” Tammy says. “No one knows where they went.” It’s her theory they are fighting a war with Texas.
The nurses all wear pistols strapped on over their scrubs now. Tammy has an old time six-shooter and two bandoleer bullet belts across her chest like Pancho Villa. She looted it from the Bass Pro Shop a few days ago. She says it wasn’t stealing, because the owners were so far away and danger is so close.
“God will understand,” she says, crossing herself the way she does now after almost every sentence.
Sometimes God tells her what to do like he’s talking on a supernatural citizens band radio. According to Tammy, he speaks with a southern accent and knows every 10-code that ever was invented.
“I ask if I should keep you here, and God says 10-4.” Tammy says that means yes. “So this is your 10-20 for the time being.” Her eyes don’t track the way they used to, and I don’t think God’s vo
ice is the only one she hears.
It’s time for me to go.
• • •
A girl in a hospital gown doesn’t look like she’s going anywhere, especially if she’s carrying a teddy bear. I practice walking the halls at night, when nobody thinks I’d go outside. I have a homemade alcohol lamp and my teddy bear, and a pair of clinic shoes that Tammy gave me because of all the germs on hospital floors.
“They told me I should walk,” I say to anyone who asks what I’m up to, and this sounds pretty reasonable, because they always want you to walk in hospitals. Nobody tells me to go back into my room, because I am just following orders, and I’m carrying a stuffed animal instead of a gun.
After a few days, I can go pretty much anywhere I want to in the hospital, and nobody looks surprised. I spend a lot of time in the lobby where relatives used to wait for patients to check in and out. There are glass walls instead of windows, so I can see how dark it is outside.
The cafeteria is a popular place at night, because there is still one generator going that keeps the freezers working. There is soda pop, and Jell-O, and ice cream, and popsicles, and lots of other food that doesn’t need electricity.
St. Anthony’s has plenty of food in storage, like someone planned for the end of the world a long time ago. No one cares if I eat all the dried meat and dehydrated fruit, and candy bars I want, and they don’t notice I’m replacing the stuffing in my teddy bear with turkey jerky, and dehydrated apricots, and granola.
Teddy’s pretty fat, so he holds a lot of food, and still has room for my authentic Cheyenne War Society knife and my bottle of soapy holy water. Every night I stroll through the lobby looking to see if the moon will give me enough light to run for it.
I’ve never paid much attention to the lunar phases and the full moon comes a lot slower than I think, but finally it happens.
Tammy walks up behind me while I’m trying to figure out exactly how much light there is.
She says, “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
“He really does.”
I mean every word of that, because there is a pack of coyotes outside the hospital lobby and they are yipping at the moon in the most mysterious way possible.
Sacred Alarm Clock Page 11
