Like People in History

by Felice Picano

  "Hi. Dr...." I couldn't see her name plate. "Room 1265. He's running a terrific fever. I've used ice. Alcohol rub. Everything. He needs—"

  "Veselka?" she asked, baffled.

  "Loguidice. Matt."

  "Soon as I can! We're up to our ears today. Keep him cool. Don't let him sleep."

  "Can't you give him anything to fight it?"

  "To fight what?" she asked.

  "Whatever's giving him the fever. An antibiotic?"

  "It's... The virus itself is giving him the fever," she said as though explaining what should have been so evident. "When it's this late... he's got no immune system left. There's nothing that'll work anymore. Look, keep him cool. I'll be there as soon as... Promise!"

  There at the door to the room was the orderly. But that wasn't an ice blanket. It was merely a rubber foot-wash tub filled with ice.

  "No ice blanket." The orderly shrugged. "This is plenty ice." "What'll we do with it?"

  As the orderly set it down, he motioned with his hands: "Tub."

  He meant put the ice in the half bathtub, and put Matt in the tub.

  That took the two of us a good ten minutes, as Matt was now burning up again and raving and flailing about. We did get him sitting down in the square little tub/shower and got it filled with ice up to his chest. His head kept falling to one side, and I had to sit on the widest side of the tub and hold Matt's head. Soaking wet with sweat, it stained my pants, my shirt, soaked right through to my skin, to my thudding heart.

  "Nice.... Thanks," Matt would occasionally utter, but I heard as though from a distance and said, "Forget it" from an equally great distance. All I could hear clearly, hear with a chill colder than any ice bath, were the resident's words: The virus is giving him the fever. This late he's got no immune system left. There's nothing that'll work anymore.

  Nothing'll work anymore this late. Disasters abound. Nothing'll work anymore this late. Disasters...

  "Lis...nn... Roger, Lis... nn."

  "I'm listening."

  "Lis... nn. Fav... or. You said... fav... or."

  "I remember. I said I'd do you a favor. Anything, Matt! Why not ask me a little later, okay? Do you need it now? Can't it wait?"

  "Can't... wait! Now... favor."

  "Okay."

  "Parents... bring... here."

  "Your parents? Bring them to the hospital?"

  Matt slumped a bit and his eyes closed in fatigue, but he could exert enough tension with his fingers on the palm of my hand to communicate yes.

  "They've not been here yet, right?" Matt signaled no. "They know you're here?" Yes and no. "Meaning yes, but not what for? Do I have to explain... what? How you got sick? That you're gay? How much do I tell them, Matt?"

  "Explain... sim... ple... peo... ple... But they'll un... der... stand. 'Xplain... I... die!"

  "I can't do that. I won't tell them that."

  Matt signaled yes.

  "How?"

  No answer to that. But after a while, Matt spoke again, "Add... ress!" He gestured toward the other room.

  "I'll find it. And as soon as this fever is gone, I'll get them. Tomorrow?"

  Matt signaled yes.

  "Tomorrow then," I said, begging for him to stop, change the subject. "Let's take your temperature."

  A half hour later, when his temperature had dropped to ninety-nine degrees, Matt began to shiver. I lifted him awkwardly, wrapped the shivering body in a towel, half pulled, half carried him back to bed. He'd just gotten there when the resident arrived. She was looking as harried as before.

  I sat back in the visitors chair, aware of how gingerly I was touching every single object around myself now, as she took Matt's temperature again and asked questions and took his blood pressure.

  "He always says no to the machine," she reported.

  "Machine?" I asked.

  "No iron... lung!" Matt said.

  "That's our only recourse if he goes out during fever..."

  "No... lung!" Matt repeated

  "If he says no, then no breathing machine!" I said from close up, so Matt could see and hear clearly. "Don't worry, I won't let them put you on a breathing machine," I assured Matt, even though the resident shook her head. Already Matt's skin was less clammy, warming up. She'd brought more alcohol, and together we rubbed him down. I tried to catch the resident's eye, but she never looked up. As we reached Matt's legs, she stopped at the false one.

  "Vietnam. Medal of Honor," I explained.

  She shook her head, her lips quivered as though about to say something. Then, regaining her composure, "If he gets too hot, find an orderly and put him back in the ice. 'Bye, Matt."

  He did get too hot, a half hour later, and I did find an orderly, and we got Matt back into the tub, with more ice. But after a while, the ice was insufficient, and the orderly went for more, and when he didn't come back in a while, I reluctantly left Matt and went for more myself, heading for the seventh-floor cafeteria kitchen.

  I cajoled it out of a caf worker who needed someone to be nice to her, and I returned with a big bag. The orderly had come back already and was there at the bathtub with Matt, filling it up with ice.

  Wait. That wasn't the orderly. It was Alistair.

  "What are you doing here?" I asked.

  "I always come here at... What time is it exactly?... Six-thirty. Every night. Don't I, Matt, darling?" Then back to me: "Are you going to just dangle that ice temptingly or can we have it here for his poor hothead!"

  And when I began taking the ice out, Alistair said, "I've been expecting something like this. You know it may go on for hours! Days!"

  "I'm staying," I said.

  "Of course you're staying. And so am I," Alistair said.

  "Nice... thanks....," Matt murmured, totally out of it.

  The bouts of fever and chills alternated closer and closer in time, until finally, around seven o'clock, even the night resident looking in as he took his watch recognized the seriousness of Matt's condition, and after my pleas and Alistair's only slightly veiled threats, the resident managed to get Matt onto a gurney and down into Intensive Care. Alistair carried his jacket and I the few items in the empty plastic ice tub, alongside the gurney, helping to push and steadying the hat rack of intravenous fluid lines the young medico had inserted into Matt's wrist: "Septra. It's potent enough, although who knows what good it'll do now. And sugar solutions to keep his electrolytes balanced."

  Whatever combo it was, it worked. Within an hour, Matt—now attached to a heart machine and an electroencephalograph (though without any breathing apparatus other than his little wall-to-mouth oxygen tube)—showed signs of fever abatement. Within three more hours, the resident came by the two chairs dumped at one end of the Intensive Care Unit hallway, which served as a lounge, and told us, "Aggressive treatment sometimes pays off. Fever's gone. He's stabilized. We'll keep him here all night. And if there's no return of fever, we'll return him to his room tomorrow morning."

  We could leave, the resident said. But, of course, we couldn't leave, wouldn't for hours more, not until we were thrown out, except for a quick hop to the seventh-floor cafeteria, about to close for the night, then back to the ICU hallway to wait. To say the least, I was astonished Alistair was staying so long.

  "Don't you have some heterosexual to deflower?" I asked.

  "That is so beneath you, Cuz," he said, looking up from his copy of The Amway News, "I won't even reply."

  I chose not to point out that he already had replied. Instead I hunkered down, prepared for a long wait.

  "You could go home and go to sleep, you know," Alistair said. "I promise I'll never tell a soul."

  "I'd rather have sharpened bamboo hammered under my fingernails," I replied.

  "That could be arranged. Just kidding. But you don't—and I am not being snide—don't look your usual fabulous self, Cuz."

  "I've had a bit of a day," I admitted. "In fact, I came here to relax."

  "Wrong move," Alistair said.

  He listened t
o my tale of theatrical woes and betrayal, listened with more interest and niceness than he'd expressed in any matter in my life in a long time—so much so, my distrust grew and I finished off recounting the horrible day by asking, "So you've been seeing Matt since when?"

  He could have easily—and correctly—accused me of bitchery. Instead he said, "The beginning. Eleven months ago."

  "Eleven months ago."

  "When he was first hospitalized with Pneumocystis."

  I realized that I'd not asked Matt anything about his illness. I knew nothing really about his recent life. What a jerk I'd been. "Here?" I asked.

  "Another hospital. Second bout was eight months ago. Then, three months ago, the CMV began. Then this time. And, of course, all the time in between. Luckily I retired just after the first hospital stay and decided to become a stock market whiz kid, although some have suggested I'm already approaching my sunset years. So I had time to keep an eye on him."

  I had no idea how to ask it, so I just blurted it out: "You two lived together?"

  "Not since Europe. Matt's been house-sitting Count Ugo's pied-à-terre in the U.N. Plaza. But naturally, whenever he wasn't well, I spent time with him."

  "Weren't you ever going to let me know?"

  "I knew you'd find out soon enough. That night at Casa Mercadente, after the atrocious memorial? That was when you first found out, wasn't it? No wonder you fled like Cinderella at midnight. But you do understand why I personally couldn't say a word?"

  "Because Matt wouldn't let you?"

  "Darling! Wake up and kiss the carnations! Because I felt so fucking guilty about Matt being sick!"

  "How's that your fault?"

  "Well... I don't know that it is my fault. I only thought if I'd not... you know, interfered with your relationship at the Pines when I did..."

  "There's no proof of that, Alistair. I'm now hearing the incubation period may be seven, ten, twelve years. A hepatitis test was done in '76. Four hundred gay men in New York and San Francisco. They've just tested the frozen blood for HIV. Twenty percent of the samples showed it present. Back then! Anyway, you saw how guys threw themselves at Matt. He couldn't beat them off with a stick. It could have happened anytime."

  "I still feel somewhat guilty."

  "Well, good! Keep feeling guilty."

  "Which is why I want to know more about Bob Jeffries's bankruptcy."

  "I don't follow."

  "Not for nothing, Puss, but all those junk bonds I've been buying and having my stockbroker sell—by the way, he's a simply ghastly human being. Cute as shit. But perverted! You don't know the half of it! And of course, he thinks like a machine. And naturally in return for all of his money-making for me, I've occasionally forced myself to submit to his less outre fetishistic whims. But anyway, as a result of all that, I've simply tons of cash! So why don't I just buy the theater company and fund the show for its run?"

  "I can't ask you to do that. Besides, there's no guarantee you'll make money. Or even break even."

  "Roger, Roger, Roger! I just told you I've simply oceans of cash. I don't need to make money. On the other hand, I could use a good investment loss."

  "Really?"

  "Cross what's left of my heart. Do you know I'm still wet," he added. "That child's hair does absorb sweat!"

  "Aren't junk bonds terrible risks?" I asked.

  "The worst. They're virtually nonexistent. Paper written against paper. Which is why the take is so high. Until someone pops the balloon, but Guy—that's the name of my darling little shoe-licking fiend of a broker—insists we've got maybe a year or two before the shit hits the fan. So say yes, Roger, let me buy the theater company."

  "On one condition."

  "A condition! I don't believe this! Here I am, saving your ass, not to mention your entire theatrical career and..."

  "That you don't fire the male ingénue and take his role until two weeks into the play's run."

  "When all the reviews are in." Alistair picked it up instantly. "Max, you sly puss! Okay. Deal! I'll have them come re-review it for me."

  "One other thing... not a condition! There's this supposedly straight man in the cast...."

  "You're not going to make me promise to keep my hands off?"

  "Would I subject you to such temptation? Not at all. I just want you to make a videotape when you get him."

  "Well... videotapes are awkward. Would audio do?"

  Another silence developed. And again, although sitting right next to each other, we fell instantly into our own worlds of thought—his, I thought, probably, like mine, about Matt Loguidice. When we did speak again, several times Alistair seemed to begin a sentence, or he'd lead up to a place where the inevitable next topic would have to be the past that still stood between us: a past in which, for all intents and purposes, Alistair had stolen Matt away from me. Stolen him away, and then not even been able to keep him—which made it seem all the more a gratuitous act, an act of perfidy, of pure destruction. The six years since that had occurred, although a long time, still wasn't enough to have healed it, or for scar tissue to have formed. So each time it seemed that Alistair might broach the topic and even hint at asking forgiveness, I was prepared simply to get up and walk away. Because I knew I couldn't forgive him. Not with Matt the way he was. Even though I could forgive whatever poor schmuck it was who'd infected Matt. He'd probably suffered, or would suffer, enough himself, might even be dead already by now.

  At nearly three in the morning, Matt was deemed awake enough to say hello to us, and although it was supposed to be only one of us at a time, of course we went in together.

  Matt looked completely exhausted. "I was hallucinating like crazy," he managed to speak hoarsely through the chipped ice in his mouth. "It was stronger than acid!" He tried a thick, chapped-lip smile. "Look at you two!"

  "Garbo's back!" Alistair threw his upper torso at me so suddenly I was forced to catch him. "And Redford's got her!" he finished the line, pursing his lips at me.

  "Together again," I mocked. "Through thick and mostly thin." I pushed him aside and went closer to the bed. "You feeling any better? I'm sorry you had to suffer like that."

  "Depends on what you call suffering," Matt replied. Despite his voice, his eyes were clear, bright, almost mischievous. He was himself for the first time all day. But he began to blink again, as though sleep were overtaking him.

  That was when Matt repeated that I'd promised to go get his parents and bring them to him. And with Alistair standing right there, what else could I possibly say but of course I would?

  Not long after that, Matt stretched, yawned, and was asleep in an instant.

  "Larchmont, next stop," the conductor called out.

  Larchmont, Mamaroneck, Rye, Port Chester, then into Connecticut— I knew the stops from the years I'd taught part-time in a New Haven prep school. On occasion and without any explanation at all, the late morning train I regularly took four days a week would transform itself from express into local until it reached the state line. This afternoon, I wouldn't get that far, I wouldn't even reach Rye. I'd be getting off at Mamaroneck and from there finding a taxi or wandering around until I found 172 Foothill Drive, home of Mr. and Mrs. Loguidice. I would be returning with them, helping them onto the 4:24 to Manhattan, taking them directly from Grand Central Station to the hospital, to Matt.

  Would they agree to come with me? Would they grasp how this could happen to their son? How it was happening all over the city? the country? the world?

  Matt said they would. "They've heard me speak of you so often, for so long.... They trust you," he'd argued this morning when the resident returned him to his room and bed without all the monitoring devices attached (though there they were, lurking under the plants, replacing one chair, still in the room). "You've got to tell them what's happening," Matt said.

  "You tell them!" I flared up. "I'm not telling them anything."

  Exasperated, Matt sighed. "I've already told them. I'm not sure they believe me. You've got to explain
or they won't come! They hate hospitals. They're afraid of doctors. They've had bad experiences. If Grandpa were alive... I'm depending upon you, Rog! Go! Bring them! Once they see..."

  At last I agreed. It was too late to argue. Matt was so close now. Why give the Other Side an edge against him? Why not make it as easy as possible for him? Help him however... maybe he'd stay a bit longer.

  I couldn't believe I'd agreed to do this.

  No, that I could believe. After all, Matt had asked. How could I deny Matt anything? No, what I couldn't believe was that there was a need for it, that even I had to admit there was a need for it. Some twenty-six hours ago, I would have scoffed at the necessity. But then that was before yesterday.

  "Mamaroneck! Mamaroneck Station! All those departing, please check your seats and the nearby floor for any belongings. Have a good afternooooooon!"

  Matt said the house was five minutes away. Once past a few blocks of small shops, it was a delicious, early spring walk—forsythia, magnolia, trees all in bloom, the sky pale blue, with the lightest whisper of clouds. It reminded me of a little town on the south shore of Long Island. I might have been a teenager, walking home from high school again, coming from a pal's house where we'd done homework together. The large houses—Colonial, mock-Tudor, French gray brick, sprinkled with a few huge old Victorians—were just like the ones where I'd grown up. The air fresh with new growth. I might have been sixteen again, visiting my brand-new friend Matthew for the first time. Excited at seeing him at home. Scared at meeting his parents. Afraid they might not like the way I looked or dressed or behaved, and would say no, after all, Matthew couldn't come out with me this afternoon, so sorry. And probably not tomorrow either. Or, yes, he'll be right down. Have some cookies, milk, or soda pop. Sit right here. And then Matt would have bounced in, holding a football, looking amazing at sixteen, not filled out yet. Maybe not as perfect as he'd become, but still a bit awkward, slightly flawed, say his ears sticking out a little, his already tight-fitting chinos... and Matt and I wouldn't have had merely our few short years, but more, twenty-four years together: a whole life.