LUMP

by Claire L. Fishback

  Victoria looked up at me, pain in her eyes.

  “I’ve walked by injured people, sick people, people I can easily help with little consequence and forced myself to look away.” I hit my hand on the table. Victoria jumped. I met her eyes and said softly, “I can’t live like this. I can’t just ignore them.”

  “I know,” she said. “I want you to do what makes you happy.” She looked down at her plate and flipped a chunk of egg around with her fork. “I just don’t want you to get too hurt.”

  “Too hurt? What’s that supposed to mean?” I wasn’t sure what she was getting at.

  “I don’t want to raise a child alone.” A smile played at the corner of her lips.

  “A child?” It didn’t click at first. I looked at her and she was beaming. “Are you, I mean, we, are you . . .”

  “I’m pregnant,” she said. Her smile widened.

  “Wha—wow. I don’t know what to—you’re pregnant?”

  She smiled and nodded, then got up and rushed over to me. She sat in my lap and hugged me tight. She kissed my face all over, excited, so excited to have a baby with me. I cried. The thought of life growing inside her, life that we both poured in, it was overwhelming. I held her tight and didn’t want to let her go. She was glowing with happiness.

  She was six weeks pregnant when she told me. She wanted to be sure of it before she said anything. We went to dinner to celebrate, an elegant restaurant with a dress code. Victoria wore a long black dress with a slit up the side. I wore a tuxedo. We couldn’t help but smile at each other through dinner, a dance, and then dessert.

  “So, Victoria, RN, do you hope it’s a boy or a girl?” I asked her. I couldn’t help but smile when she looked up at me over her glass of water and grinned.

  “I don’t know. A girl would be nice.”

  “What would you name her?” I whispered, sliding around the table and sitting next to her. I held her hand and nuzzled her neck. She had never been so beautiful to me.

  “Christina,” she said with a giggle as I nibbled her earlobe.

  “Will you,” I started. She pulled away slightly and looked at me, her smile gone, her eyes full of expectation.

  “Will I what?” she asked.

  “I love you,” I whispered. I tucked a velvet box in her hand. “Marry me, Victoria.”

  She accepted, and we had a second dessert in celebration of our baby and our engagement.

  We left the restaurant with spirits high. We laughed about different and odd names we could name our children. She skipped along next to me like a little girl, and I swept her around and kissed her deeply, three blocks from our apartment.

  “We should buy a house,” I said into her neck as I dipped her.

  “In the country,” she said. “I want horses and a garden.”

  “Anything for you,” I kissed her again and when we stood up, Victoria screamed.

  “Hand it over,” the gunman said in a voice laced with insanity. He cocked his gun. “Hand over the purse.”

  Victoria threw her purse on the ground at his feet. My heart pounded. It was just a decorative purse; she had nothing in it but keys and a tube of lipstick. The gunman emptied out these two items and scoffed.

  “Give me your money, credit cards.” He looked at her hand that she quickly put behind her back. “Give me that ring.”

  “Please, sir, we just got engaged, let her keep the ring,” I said.

  “Shut up.” The gunman waved the gun at me. “Come on, missy, hand it over.”

  Victoria looked up at me, tears welled in her eyes. She pulled the ring off her finger and put it on the ground by her keys and the lipstick. When the gunman bent down to retrieve it, I brought my foot up and kicked him as hard as I could in the face. Victoria screamed.

  “Run, call the police,” I told her. She turned around and started to run when I was nearly deafened by the sound of the gun going off.

  I wasn’t hit, but when I turned around, Victoria, my Victoria, RN, was on the ground. I ran to her side, praying it wasn’t bad. Thunder clapped overhead, and it started to rain.

  “I’m hit,” she said. Tears streamed from her eyes, though she wasn’t sobbing. “I’m sorry,” she said. I lifted her into my lap and cradled her.

  “No, don’t. You didn’t do anything wrong,” I told her. “It was my fault; I shouldn’t have tried to be a hero.” My tears dripped onto the front of her gown.

  “I love you, Chris.” Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth and mixed with the rain drops.

  I put my hand over her heart and closed my eyes. The bullet was lodged in her left ventricle. When I opened my eyes, she was looking at me.

  “I’m sorry . . .” she choked.

  “No, no, shh,” I whispered. I smoothed her rain-soaked hair and placed my hand over her heart, over the bullet wound, the other on her forehead.

  Her eyes widened. “No.” She gasped. “Don’t.”

  I shushed her gently. “I don’t want you to die,” I whispered, clenching my jaw. “You have to have our baby.” I held her tight and cried into her hair. “I love you, Victoria.”

  I took a deep breath, placed my hands, and proceeded to stop death from taking her away.

  I didn’t only heal to relieve pain; I healed to relieve the emotional anguish, the fears, the trauma of family and friends. I wasn’t afraid to die because death would take away the gift I carried, the curse of healing others only to be hurt by their pain.

  As I healed Victoria that night, I saw our life together, how it might have been, with our baby, a girl, at our house in the country. I wasn’t left with heartburn; I wasn’t left with torn valves. I was left as only a memory to those who loved me. I was remembered as the man who gave his life to heal others.

  Sounds and Silences

  HAROLD MCCREED PULLED into the gas station at just after 1:00 a.m., weary from driving all day. When he climbed out of his old Chevy pickup, his back cracked. The truck door mimicked this sentiment and protested with a grinding whine when he slammed it shut.

  He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, but the old pump didn’t have the option to use a credit card. In fact, Harold wasn’t even sure if the pumps were operational. He’d have to check inside.

  Clustered near the entry to the tiny convenience store were a band of shady characters. Two girls just over the edge of adulthood wore short skirts and midriff halter tops. They smoked cigarettes with bright, red-painted mouths. One whispered to the other and pointed in Harold’s direction. The pointer wore a short, fluffy fur jacket, despite the lingering heat. The thing might have once been white, but now it resembled the color of an old mattress, slept on by someone with incontinence.

  Off in the shadows to the right of the girls, outside the bright fluorescent lights spilling from the grubby convenience store, three man-shaped figures huddled together. They tossed glances Harold’s way every few seconds.

  Last, to the left of the entry, a man in a brown overcoat lay on his side. He may or may not have been dead.

  The old Chevy didn’t really need gas. It still had a quarter tank. It might get Harold to the next town, and even if it didn’t, he’d rather walk in the dark than approach the front of the store.

  He grabbed the truck’s door handle and pushed the button.

  “What’s the matter, mister?” One of the girls yelled. “Not lookin’ for a good time?” She let loose a horrible cackle. Harold glanced over his shoulder just as another scantily-clad girl stumbled out of the bathroom at the side of the building, wiping the corner of her mouth. A man came out behind her, zipping up his pants. Harold grimaced. When he turned back to his truck, the man who’d been laying on the ground stood next to him. Harold lurched backward with a guttural sound, like a thick gasp had stuck in his throat.

  The man’s eyes were wide and lined with concentric wrinkles. He pointed over the bed of the truck.

  Harold followed the gnarled finger.

  Across the street, the Sohvi Motel, a two-story, sickly sea-gree
n colored building, sat huddled among the pines. Harold hadn’t even seen it on his way in. There was no sign or anything.

  The man’s lips moved, his throat worked like he was trying to speak. Strange sounds clicked and creaked inside, but no words came out. Harold saw the man had a gruesome scar on his throat. As if someone had ripped his larynx out.

  Harold dug in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled five.

  “Thanks,” he said, handing the money to the man.

  The man grabbed Harold’s arm instead. His haunted eyes burned into Harold’s mind. He’d never forget them.

  “Dammit, let go of me. Take the money. Here, I have more.” He flung a ten, a twenty, at the man, and finally shoved him away hard enough to knock him onto his ass.

  Harold climbed into the truck and pulled across the street.

  The motel looked like the kind of establishment that would offer an hourly rate for the girls in front of the gas station. Right now, Harold would gladly pay for eight hours of sleep.

  None of the windows were lit except in the entry. He didn’t care if it was shit hotel or the Ritz Carlton. At 2:00 a.m., and fourteen hours on the road on a flat bench seat with springs poking him in the ass, he’d sleep in a coffin with a dead body, as long as it wasn’t a zombie.

  Harold grabbed his duffel bag off the bench seat and went inside. He squinted against the harsh, yellow light. Soft music crackled out of wooden speakers in the corners. Harold cocked an ear. Sounded like “The Girl from Ipanema.” He sidled over to a fountain sitting in the middle of the lobby. It could be a lovely feature, if water were running through it. The bottom was choked with cigarette butts and chewing gum. Harold snorted when the shine of a nickel caught his eye.

  The only wishes that came from this wishing well were STDs and unwanted pregnancies.

  He wasn’t usually so cynical, but lack of sleep does a number even on the best folks.

  “You want a room, sugar?” A low, sultry voice came from beyond a polished cherry counter, which was the only thing in the lobby that seemed clean.

  Harold turned. It was then he noticed the woman standing by the counter, and the smoke coming from the cigarette. She took a drag, then deftly flicked the thing into the fountain where it smoldered before going out. She took a sip of an amber-colored beverage. Harold thought she was already standing, but when he approached, she unfolded herself from a creaky leather chair.

  Harold was not a small man himself, at six feet tall. She was just as tall with an additional five or six inches of head-wrapped hair. She peered at him with bottomless, almond-shaped eyes. A smile full of straight but nicotine-stained teeth pulled across her face.

  “Is this “The Girl from Ipanema”?” he asked, pointing vaguely at the ceiling. His voice caught in his throat, and he cleared it.

  “Indeed, it is.” She leaned forward over the counter, and the stretched-out V-neck collar of her shirt hung low. He peered at two cinnamon-colored mounds within. Bra-less. Something told Harold she always got what she wanted.

  “Sharzhad Sohvi,” she said.

  “Excuse me?” Harold asked, unsure if it was a sneeze or another song title.

  “My name,” she said. “Sharzhad Sohvi. This here is my establishment.” She cocked a shapely hip and placed her hand on it. “Now do you want a room or not?”

  She had an Angela Basset-type of assertiveness to her that he admired.

  “Yes, please. One night.” He pulled out his wallet.

  “A hundred bucks. Cash only,” she said. “There’s an ATM across the street.”

  Harold had just the required amount in his wallet. Thank God he hadn’t thrown anymore cash at that homeless guy. He handed it over. She placed a key with a tag the size of his palm in his hand.

  “Take the elevator to the second floor, sugar. Your room is all the way at the end of the hall.” She pointed to a set of tarnished brass doors.

  “Thanks,” Harold said. He scribbled his name on the next blank line of her leather-bound register, then made his way to the elevator.

  “Can’t run,” she said in a low voice.

  Harold turned. “Excuse me?”

  “Can’t run,” she said, pointing at the ceiling. “Lee Williams?”

  “Oh, right.” Harold turned back to the brass doors.

  “Don’t go to the thirteenth floor.” Sharzhad let out a barking laugh.

  Harold didn’t get the joke, if there was one. The motel only had two floors. He took his duffel bag to the elevator and pushed back the outdated metal accordion door, cringing at the screech of the metal. Sharzhad’s cold laughter followed him inside. When he reached to press the button for the second floor, he paused.

  There were no buttons. Just a lever with three characters. L, for Lobby he presumed, 2 for the second floor, and written on a scrap of paper and taped to the wall, 13. Ha. Thirteenth floor.

  Harold rattled the accordion door shut and moved the lever to the second position. The exterior door sealed him inside.

  A chilly draft came from above. Harold glanced up. A missing ceiling tile left a gaping black hole to the elevator shaft. Harold looked at each corner for cameras out of habit, or maybe from a guilty conscience. The elevator had yet to move. His eyes darted to the black space in the ceiling, drawn to it. What was up there in the elevator’s cavity?

  Nothing but greasy cables and emergency ladders. And cold dark.

  If there’d been buttons, he would have pressed the 2 again, maybe several times in a row. He tried to move the lever back to L, but it wouldn’t budge.

  He looked up again. Sure, this time, something lurked above, peering down at him through the square hole. Harold moved out from under it.

  Still the elevator didn’t move. It didn’t have a red emergency button either. Just the cold brass lever. He tried it again to no avail.

  A slight breeze wafted down from the ceiling. The kind of breeze made when someone walks by. His eyes jerked up to the patch of dark. Harold squinted. Was there something there? He swore there was. Something blocking the space now. Couldn’t he see a faint light from somewhere in the shaft before?

  The elevator doors opened with a ding that made Harold’s butt cheeks clench. He gripped the handles of his duffel bag and backed out of the elevator with his eyes on that black hole.

  Safely across the threshold, he turned around. Every other light down the hallway flickered. Half of them were out. Perhaps it was an illusion from the strobe effect, but the hall seemed to stretch much farther than the size of the hotel. Harold looked at the tag on his key and made his way down the hall to find his room.

  The quiet of the place made his ears yearn for sound. Sure, it was after two in the morning, everyone would be asleep. But there was a complete lack of sound. No hum of electricity. Even the usual susurration of foot on carpet was absent. He looked down at the grimy, chaotic carpet pattern.

  The hair on the back of his neck rose and he turned around. The only consistent light on the floor came from the two sconces flanking the elevator, which remained open. A creepy-crawly feeling came over him. There was something there, watching him. He walked backward down the hall, only glancing away from the elevator to check the room numbers by the doors. The flickering lights started to give him an ocular headache. He had to force his eyes to stay open. No blinking allowed.

  As Sharzhad said, his room was all the way at the end of the hall.

  Harold glanced away from the elevator to stick his key in the lock, then darted his eyes back to it. He turned the knob. The door creaked open on rusty hinges so loud after so much silence. At least he knew, now, he hadn’t gone deaf.

  The light right outside his room flickered.

  Harold backed into his dark room and closed the door. He fumbled for a light switch, found one, and flicked it. The steady light, though sickly, was a relief. He threw the deadbolt and the privacy bar, just in case.

  In case of what?

  Whatever was in the elevator. The metal bar fell off the wall and thunked on
to the threadbare carpet. Well, the deadbolt would have to be enough.

  The room smelled of stale smoke. Two double beds took up the majority of the living space, along with a dresser topped with an old tube TV. The remote was nowhere to be seen. Between the beds sat a small table with a phone and a single drawer. Inside, he knew, would be a Bible. He had to check. Harold pulled the drawer open and took a step back.

  No Bible.

  For some reason, despite his lack of religion, this made his throat go dry. He swallowed hard, and when the dryness didn’t go away, he went to the bathroom, turned on another sickly light, and drank directly from the tap. He let the water run for a few seconds, just to hear the sound, then turned it off.

  The room was a little stuffy, so Harold pulled back the curtains to open a window, only to find a solid wall.

  “What kind of crap is that?” he wondered aloud, if only to hear his own voice. Harold opened his duffel bag and pulled out his spit kit, then a folder, bent and creased and worn. After brushing his teeth—the bathroom was surprisingly spotless—he sat on the bed farthest from the door and opened the folder.

  Inside were a collection of photos of women, stealthily taken from the shadows. Women who didn’t know they could be seen from their windows. Women who cheated on husbands.

  Harold always kept one photo from his cases for his file. For his scrapbook, he liked to joke to himself. Behind the stack of loose photos, in a manila envelope, were three pictures of his own wife. Or, ex-wife, given the circumstances.

  Photo number one: Bent over while their neighbor pummeled her from behind.

  Photo number two: Her frightened face with blood trickling from her temple, hand held aloft against her attacker.

  Photo number three: Her lifeless eyes.

  Harold had stowed the crowbar he bludgeoned her with in the traitorous neighbor’s trashcan, then got the hell out of there.

  “We had you over for barbecues,” Harold remembered whispering as he watched the man fuck his wife. He remembered the scorn burning his conscience when the sight of them turned him on.