VELOCITY

by Jude Hardin

  “Did you want a whole sandwich, or just half?”

  “Half.”

  She kept asking him questions, and he kept responding with one-word answers. The exchange went on for several minutes, and Kei finally walked away from the counter with some kind of meat and some kind of cheese topped with lettuce and tomatoes and spinach and cucumbers on some kind of bread. He headed straight for the checkout aisles, completely forgetting about what he’d come for in the first place.

  Several weeks and a dozen or so sandwiches later, he finally worked up the nerve to ask her out.

  “Mr. Thrasher?”

  A pretty young woman in scrubs stood at the entrance to the examination rooms. Clipboard, purple stethoscope. She smiled, held the door open with her shoulder as Kei rose and grabbed his gym bag and marched forward. He followed her to an area with a big 3 painted on the wall, climbed onto the padded table while she pulled the curtains around.

  His finger was throbbing.

  “I’ve been out there for five hours,” he said. “I need something for pain.”

  She looked at her clipboard. “I’m going to get your vitals and ask you a few questions, and then I’m going to draw some blood. After that, the doctor will—”

  “I don’t want to wait that long,” Kei said. “I need something now.”

  She sighed, looked annoyed. Kei knew what she was thinking. Another addict seeking narcotics.

  “Are you allergic to anything?” she said.

  “No.”

  She snapped open the curtain and walked away.

  Kei’s first date with Anna was like something out of a dream.

  A wonderful dream.

  They ate dinner at a nice seafood place, and then they walked along the beach holding hands in the moonlight. Kei couldn’t remember what they talked about, but he could hear the waves gently lapping the shoreline and he could smell Anna’s long black hair and he could feel the breeze coming off the Gulf. They stopped and kissed and he held her tight and never wanted to let go.

  The nurse came back with two white tablets in a little plastic dosing cup.

  “What is this?” Kei said.

  “Ibuprofen.”

  She handed Kei a cup of water. He swallowed the pills. She took his blood pressure and temperature, inserted an IV in his left forearm, drew several tubes of blood for the lab.

  “You’re pretty good at that,” Kei said, referring to her skills with a needle.

  “I get lots of practice.”

  She said it in a cold, matter-of-fact way, as if she didn’t enjoy her work very much. Maybe she was just having a bad night, Kei thought. She started him on normal saline at 100 ml an hour, hooked him up to an EKG monitor, gathered her things and hurried off to check on another patient.

  A young male resident named Bennington came in a few minutes later and told Kei what he already knew, that they were going to admit him and start him on antibiotics. They would monitor his blood work for a couple of days, and then maybe discharge him with a special IV line so he could continue therapy at home.

  “After you’re discharged, a nurse will stop by your house and administer the medication once a day,” Dr. Bennington said.

  “Would it be possible for me to have a private room while I’m here?”

  “Actually, that’s all we have at this facility. One patient to a room, even on the regular floors.”

  “Good.”

  Kei didn’t bother telling anyone that he’d once been an emergency room physician himself. He didn’t want any special treatment, and he didn’t feel like going into the story behind why he wasn’t a doctor anymore.

  It was after midnight by the time they wheeled him into his room on the fourth floor. He climbed into bed and switched on the television, kept the volume low and tried Anna on his cell.

  No answer.

  It had been four days since their date, and she hadn’t responded to any of his calls or texts or emails. Which seemed absurd, based on the great time they had and the last words she’d said to him after he kissed her goodnight.

  “Talk to you soon,” she’d said.

  Kei wondered if her definition of soon was different than his. He’d wanted to talk to her five seconds after he drove away from her house.

  A man wearing white scrubs and a long white lab coat walked into Kei’s room pushing a medication cart, one of the newer ones with a computer monitor mounted on top.

  “My name is Brent,” he said. “I’m your nurse tonight.”

  “Hello, Brent.”

  “How are you doing?”

  “I could use something for pain.”

  “I’m still waiting for your admission orders to come through. How would you describe your pain on a scale of zero to ten, zero being no pain at all and—”

  “About an eight right now,” Kei said.

  “Okay. I’m sure the doctor will order something, and I’ll get it to you as soon as it’s available. In the meantime, I’d like to do a quick physical assessment and go over some questions with you.”

  “Sure.”

  Brent grabbed a pair of gloves from the dispenser on the wall, pulled his stethoscope out of his lab coat pocket and listened to Kei’s chest and belly. He performed a basic neurological exam, and then he took a long look at the infected finger.

  “How did you cut yourself?” he said.

  “On an envelope. It was nothing, just a paper cut, but then it kept getting a little worse every day. Now it feels like someone sliced into it with a hacksaw.”

  “Don’t worry,” Brent said. “We’ll get you fixed up.”

  “I hope so.”

  Brent pulled his rolling computer closer to the bed and started going through the questions on the admission database. By the time he finished, it was on record that Kei Thrasher was a forty-four-year-old Caucasian male with brown hair and blue eyes. He was six feet tall, one hundred and eighty-five pounds. No history of diabetes or cancer or heart disease. No drugs, no tobacco, one or two beers a day, maybe three or four on special occasions. He listed his occupation as bartender, although he was actually a promotion away from holding that title at the restaurant where he worked. No history of mental illness—at least none that Kei felt was relevant enough to share at the moment—and no physical complaints other than the finger.

  “Who would you like for us to contact in case of emergency?” Brent said.

  Kei thought about that for a few seconds. He didn’t have any family that he kept in touch with on a regular basis, and most of his friends had abandoned him when he lost his license to practice medicine.

  Anna was the only person who came to mind.

  “My girlfriend,” he said.

  He gave Brent the name and number, knowing that she wasn’t really his girlfriend yet, unsure as to whether she even wanted to see him again.

  “I think that’s all I need for now,” Brent said. “I’ll go check on your pain medicine.”

  “Thanks.”

  Kei clicked through the cable television channels, stopped on an old black-and-white monster movie. Brent came back about thirty minutes later, piggybacked Kei’s first dose of antibiotics into the saline drip the ER nurse had started earlier.

  “And I have your pain medicine right here,” he said, reaching into his lab coat pocket and pulling out a capped syringe.

  “What is it?”

  “Morphine.”

  “Okay.”

  Brent clamped off the drip for a few seconds while he injected the contents of the syringe into the IV port closest to Kei’s arm.

  Immediate relief.

  “I’ll be back to check on you in a little while,” Brent said. “Don’t hesitate to call if you need anything.”

  “Thank you. I think I’m good for the night.”

  Brent switched off the overhead fluorescent on his way out, left the door cracked about six inches.

  Kei adjusted the bed to a comfortable position. He wanted to watch the rest of the movie, but he couldn’t keep his eyes op
en. He turned the volume all the way down, drifted off, feeling no pain, resting better than he had in days.

  And then a loud thump jarred him awake.

  The light came on, bright and harsh and unsettling, and an old man wearing a hospital gown staggered into the room and started shouting for help. Kei sat up, squinted him into focus. He was bald and barefoot and his arm was bleeding where he’d ripped out his IV.

  He was obviously confused. Kei had dealt with plenty of similar cases when he was a doctor. Kei pressed the call button, but before any of the nurses had a chance to respond, a man in a dark blue suit ran in and grabbed the old guy by the shoulders.

  “Come on,” the man in the dark blue suit said. “We need to get you back to your room.”

  But the old man didn’t want any part of it. He turned and started hitting the man in the dark blue suit with his bony fists, and then he turned back toward Kei, frantic and out of breath and pleading for help as if his life depended on it.

  “It’s me!” he shouted. “Anna! Please help me!”

  2

  The man in the dark blue suit looked over at Kei.

  Not a glance, closer to a stare.

  Maybe it was Kei’s imagination, but it seemed as if the man in the dark blue suit was very nervous about something. Or maybe Kei was misinterpreting the expression on his face. Maybe it was one of concern rather than anxiety. The old man was probably his dad. Or grandfather, maybe. The man in the dark blue suit was probably around thirty, and the old man appeared to be in his late seventies or early eighties.

  Grandfather, Kei decided.

  The old guy was still shouting, pleading for help, emphatically trying to establish his identity to someone named Anna. Or claiming that his own name was Anna. He was obviously very upset about something, and it was difficult to discern the exact message he was trying to convey, but it was clear that the name Anna played a big part in whatever was going through his mind. His room must be right next door, Kei thought. He must have overheard Kei answering questions for the admission database. That was the only time Anna had been mentioned, and it seemed like too much of a coincidence for the old man to have picked the name at random.

  Brent and two female nurses rushed in with a wheelchair and forced the old man to sit down, and then one of the women pulled out a hypodermic and injected something into his left thigh. Whatever it was, it calmed him down immediately. They wheeled him out of the room, and the man in the dark blue suit followed.

  The entire occurrence had probably lasted less than a minute, but Kei was wide awake now, and his finger was hurting again. He gave the staff some time to get the old man settled back into his own room, and then he pressed the call button and requested something for pain.

  “I’ll tell your nurse,” a female voice said over the intercom.

  Kei waited, stared at the television, wondered how the movie had ended. Probably the same as most of them, with the monster being destroyed and the villagers living happily ever after—especially the man and woman who’d managed to fall in love along the way.

  There was some kind of cop show on now. Guns and car chases and all that. Not really Kei’s thing, but he didn’t feel like going through all the channels again. He left the volume down, checked his cell phone for messages. Nothing. He tried not to worry about it too much. It was the middle of the night, after all. Maybe Anna would get back to him in the morning.

  Brent came in holding a syringe in one hand and a liter of normal saline in the other. The bag from the ER was almost empty. Brent was staying on top of it. He was a good nurse. He hung the saline on the rolling pole next to the bed, ready to be changed over before the pump started beeping. He went through the pain assessment scale again, and Kei told him it was a seven this time.

  “How’s the old man doing?” Kei said.

  “I’m really not allowed to talk about that. It’s a confidentiality issue.”

  “Is he still next door to me? Or did you move him closer to the nurses’ station where you can keep a better eye on him?”

  “He was never next door to you.”

  Brent administered the morphine. Kei experienced a wave of nausea this time, but it passed quickly. The pain in his finger clicked off like a switch.

  “He kept saying the name Anna,” Kei said. “I thought he must have overheard me when I gave you her phone number.”

  “I don’t see how he could have,” Brent said. “Anyway, it’s a common name. Maybe it was his wife’s name. Or his mother’s.”

  Kei nodded. That made sense. The poor old guy was probably thinking about someone from long ago.

  Brent spiked the new bag of saline, tossed the old one in the trashcan on his way out of the room.

  Kei fell asleep right away.

  Anna was sitting across from him at the seafood place. Table for two, view of the Gulf, guy on a stool playing an acoustic guitar next to a small dance floor in the corner.

  “What kind of name is Kei?” Anna said.

  “It’s Japanese. Apparently my mother spent some time over there while she was pregnant with me. I have a picture somewhere of her standing in front of the Tokyo National Museum. She looks like she stuffed a watermelon under her shirt.”

  “So your parents traveled a lot?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I like long stories.”

  The waiter came with their drinks. Kei didn’t feel like sharing the details of his childhood with Anna right then. The abandonment. The foster homes. Too boring and too embarrassing for a first date. So he changed the subject.

  “There’s a concert at the amphitheater next weekend,” he said. “Want to go?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. What night is it?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Who’s playing?”

  “I don’t remember that either.”

  Anna laughed. “You’re crazy,” she said.

  Kei wanted to lean across the table and kiss her. He didn’t, of course. Not then. But he wanted to.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  He got up and walked over to the guy playing guitar in the corner, whispered a request in his ear. A few minutes later he and Anna were up on the floor, slow dancing to “A Tomorrow Like Yesterday,” the classic ballad from the fifties.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard this song before,” Anna said. “But I like it.”

  “One of my favorites,” Kei said.

  Her body felt perfect next to his, like it belonged there. When the song ended, they walked back to their table, sat down to the two steaming plates of food that had been brought while they were gone.

  “Here’s your breakfast, Mr. Thrasher.”

  Kei woke up, blinked a few times, looked around the room. It took him a few seconds to remember where he was.

  Television, IV pump, side rails.

  The hospital.

  The blinds covering the window were closed, but he could see light around the edges so he knew it was daytime.

  “Where’s Brent?” he said.

  “He went home about an hour ago. It’s a brand new shift now, and I’m going to be your nurse for the day. My name’s Ashley.”

  White scrubs, tall and slender, long blond hair tied back in a ponytail. Squeaky white nursing shoes. Some kind of perfume or scented lotion that Kei didn’t really care for. She adjusted the height on the bedside table and positioned it across the bed. There was a tray on it with a glass of orange juice and a cup of coffee and a plate covered with a blue plastic dome.

  Ashley checked the IV bag, which was still over half full.

  “When are they going to let me out of here?” Kei said.

  “You’re scheduled for a PICC later this afternoon. That’s the IV line you’ll be going home with. So you’ll be NPO after breakfast. That means—”

  “I know what it means. Nothing by mouth.”

  “Right. So eat up while you can. If all goes well, the doctor will probably discharge you tonight.”

&nbs
p; “Who’s my doctor?”

  “You were assigned to the hospitalist service. They work shifts, just like the nurses, so it changes every twelve hours. I think Dr. Garcia is on today. She should be making rounds in just a little while.”

  “Thanks.”

  “How’s the finger?”

  Kei showed it to her.

  “It’s not as red as it was,” he said. “And I think the swelling has gone down some. No pain right now.”

  “Good. I’ll be back in just a little while to check on you.”

  Ashley left the room. Kei lifted the dome from the plate and set it aside. Scrambled eggs, two strips of bacon, two slices of toasted white bread cut diagonally into triangles. Everything looked okay, not bad for hospital food, but Kei really wasn’t very hungry.

  Anna still hadn’t messaged him back. He didn’t know whether to feel sad or concerned at this point. She was probably all right. She probably just didn’t feel like talking. Maybe she was busy at work. Or maybe she just didn’t like Kei as much as he liked her. Maybe there was someone else in her life. Kei felt as though he’d known her forever, but he hadn’t. They’d only been out the one time. He drank the coffee, watched a few minutes of a morning news show on television, decided to get out of bed and take a little walk.

  He got up and put on the robe and slippers he’d packed in his gym bag, and then he unplugged the IV pump, which immediately switched over to battery power. He rolled the pole out into the hallway, looked left and right, decided to walk toward the nurses’ station. Not that he needed anything. He just thought they should know that he was out and about. He passed the room next door to his, and the next room, and the next, the first two with contact isolation signs on the doors and the third wide open with a white-haired woman sitting on the side of the bed eating breakfast.

  The fourth door down was open as well. Nobody was in the room at the moment, but the mattress had been stripped and there was a mop and bucket in the corner. The patient must have been discharged, Kei thought. The housekeeping staff members who’d had been in the process of cleaning the space must have taken a break. Or maybe they had been called elsewhere. A stat clean on another unit, maybe. It appeared as though they had left in a hurry.