Where Do I Start?

by Chase Taylor Hackett

  Mother:

  Like a bucket of ice water.

  In all the craziness—finding Roger waiting for me, an insane cat, my throbbing hand—the other events of the day had sort of faded. But there was the reminder on this stupid form.

  Mother:

  My poor Ma. She was so beautiful. I suppose every kid thinks his mother’s beautiful, but mine really was. Soft blond curls, like an angel. And bright blue eyes. And so messed up.

  I’d gone into foster care a couple times, but she’d always come back and gotten me. Until she didn’t. You’re a kid, so you keep thinking. Two years later, four years later, still a kid, you’re still thinking. I left the whole foster-care system somewhat prematurely, and after that—well—let’s just say after that I wasn’t a kid anymore.

  I looked down at the form.

  Mother:

  I suppose, later on, I could have gone looking for her when I was living out on the streets—but I didn’t. I don’t know. She hadn’t come looking for me, so…

  Mother:

  Thanks to Jeff and his private dick, I could answer that one. How did anyone as sweet and wonderful as Roger ever get tied up with such a royal asshat as Jeff Bornic?

  I was still grumbling about that as I filled out the rest of the form. Finally I got parked in an examining thing—a table for the patient and a tall chair on casters—separated from the rest of the large ward by curtains. I sat on the exam table like I was told, and worked my way out of my windbreaker—which was a lot harder than it sounds.

  Obviously, just separated by curtains, you could hear everything going on everywhere, and a woman down at the far end was having a much worse day than mine, judging from the noises coming out of her.

  A granite-faced nurse came in and unwrapped the towel from my hand. If she was the least bit impressed by the carnage, she didn’t let on. She held my left hand—or what was left of it—over an aluminum bowl and picked up a plastic bottle with a long nozzle from the counter.

  “Is this going to hurt?” I asked. I’m not a baby, but if that was alcohol Nurse Torquemada was about to pour over my hand, I’d just as soon get a little heads-up.

  “It’s just water, tough guy,” she said. “Cowboy up.”

  Sweet bedside manner.

  “I bet you say that to all the fellahs.”

  She ignored me.

  I looked down at the wound. Yipes. With one bite, the dog had really done a job on my hand. Props, Haggis. And to think, I used to sleep in the same bed with that dog sometimes. Naked.

  She squirted some water around the wound, and then cleaned the blood from the flap of hand-meat with a piece of gauze. Ow. Ow, ow, ow. Ow. She laid another piece of gauze over it. Then she wet a piece of cotton with something from a different bottle—I could smell the alcohol from four feet away, and I instinctively pulled my hand back as she came toward me.

  “Hang on, Rambo,” she said, taking my right arm. “I’ve got to disinfect this.” She indicated the ten-inch-long scratch down my forearm that was still oozing a little blood. Then she added in the same emotionless tone, “And this, by the way, is going to hurt like a screaming bitch.”

  I gave her my steeliest James Bond smile until she was done, had put the alcohol away, and was gone. And then? Holy guaca-fucking-moly did that ever hurt! I sucked in some air between my gritted teeth. Even the throbbing in my left hand was momentarily eclipsed. I wanted to pinch my arm to hold off the pain, but of course, my left hand was frigging useless.

  I contemplated the drop-ceiling tiles until it subsided, which it did in a couple minutes. There was a drunk on the other side of the curtain that cops had picked up off the sidewalk where she had passed out. A doctor was trying to talk to her, but he wasn’t getting very far.

  Made me think about my ma again.

  After a while, a doctor came in.

  On another day, in another life…even—what?—six weeks ago I’d have been seriously glad to see him. He was really young for a doctor, under thirty, tall, gym-rat body, short dark hair, huge brown eyes, thick lashes, really good-looking, and oh-man he hadn’t shaved in a couple days. Completely my type.

  “Hello,” he said. “I’m Dr. Stone.”

  And you know what else? As soon as he opened his mouth, I could tell—I was his type, too.

  But—it wasn’t six weeks ago, and I had zero interest in a hot young doctor or anyone for that matter, except for guess who. Not to mention my throbbing left hand, which wasn’t exactly putting me in the mood, if you know what I mean. Poor Dr. Scruff was going to have to learn to live with disappointment. I would need to fix this.

  “You hurt your hand, Mr. Andrews?” he said, glancing at the clipboard.

  “Oh-yeah. And call me Fletch—please.” I was sitting on the examining table.

  “Okay, Fletch. Let’s see what we have.” He pulled on a pair of latex gloves and stood really close, much closer than he needed, so that his thigh was against my knee. He took my hand and removed the gauze.

  “Ah. Excellent.”

  “Thank you. Glad you like it.”

  “Sorry. It’s just something I say. I learned it in med school because you don’t want to look at a patient and say, ‘Oh, fuck.’”

  “And I guess my hand is pretty much oh-fuck-worthy.”

  “Most definitely oh-fuck-worthy.” With a little clamp thing, he lifted up the flap of flesh. You can imagine how nice that felt. “‘Oops’ is the one you really want to avoid.” He poked around a little further. “Your chart says dog bite. Is that correct?”

  “Yep,” I got out between clenched teeth.

  “What dog—Cujo?” He dropped the clamp in a metal bowl with a clang. “Okay. There’s no bone damage, but we’re going to need to clean that, reconnect some tissues, and close it all up.” He pulled off his latex gloves. “First things first. Dog bite. Do you know the dog that bit you?”

  “Yes.”

  “The issue here is rabies. Is there any chance that the dog is sick?”

  “No, I’m sure he’s completely healthy and up-to-date with his shots or whatever—the owner is quite fastidious.”

  “You’re absolutely sure. People still die from rabies, and from what I’ve read, it’s a really nasty way to go.”

  “Absolutely sure,” I said. And then I thought—now’s as good a time as ever. “It’s my boyfriend’s dog.” Not entirely true. Okay, not remotely true, just wishful thinking, but it would accomplish what I needed to accomplish without hurting anybody’s feelings.

  “Ah,” he said.

  “Ah,” I said, agreeing.

  Message sent. Message received. Lieutenant Uhura couldn’t have done it better. His leg was no longer pressed against mine. Good. The last thing I needed was to have Dr. Sexy-Eyes here passing me his phone number just as Roger showed up to take me home.

  “Okay.” He started scribbling on the chart on the clipboard. “So. Let’s do something about the pain.”

  “I hope you got something stronger than Tylenol.”

  “On a scale of one to ten, how bad would you say the pain is?”

  “Twelve and a half.”

  “Okay. I think we can do a little better than Tylenol. The nurse will get you started, and I’ll be back in a bit.”

  Nurse Beeyotch came in, as promised. I sat up straight to show her what a manly little fellow I could be. She didn’t seem to notice.

  She gave me a couple really gigantic pills with water.

  “You doing anything later?” I asked between pills. Not the tiniest reaction. “Have you ever thought about roller derby?” was my next attempt. “Because I think we’d make a damn fine team.”

  And she went out through the curtain without a word. In the end, she wasn’t really a talker, my nurse. I guess she’d given me all the chitchat she had.

  After a while, I noticed something a
little odd. The dimensions of the little curtain-cubicle thing seemed to change, depending on how you looked at them. And none of it was really square. All the angles were kind of wonky. I closed my eyes and shook my head, hoping things would stand still again.

  I was still trying to focus on the ceiling tiles, one eye at a time, when Dr. Scruff came back.

  “The pills may make you a little woozy,” he said.

  That explained a lot.

  “Woozy?” I said. “Is that what you call it?” It had been a kinda freaky twenty minutes. Or an hour. Or whatever.

  “Well, hopefully it doesn’t hurt quite so badly now. How do you feel?”

  “Like Salvador Dali.”

  “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “Two. Maybe three.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Is that like ‘oops’? Or was that an ‘oh fuck’?”

  “Depends. Look at me.” He had this little flashlight that he pointed into my eyes while he pulled my eyelids open, then he clicked off the flashlight. “That’s an ‘oops’ then. No biggie.” He put his little toy away. “You’re just going to feel a little funny for a while.”

  “You have amazing eyes,” I said when I could see again. I guess that was the feel-a-little-funny part talking. He was writing something on his clipboard.

  “Thank you,” he said without looking up.

  “Roger’s eyes are prettier.”

  “The boyfriend?” He had a tray with some syringes on it, and he started to fill one.

  “Yep.”

  “Is he here with you?”

  “Coming to pick me up.”

  “Good.” He carefully wiped around the back of my hand with wet cotton.

  “Is this where you tell me I’m going to feel a small prick?”

  He shook his head, smiling.

  “I think we’ve both heard that joke before, Fletch. You will feel the needle but only for a second or two at the most.” And he made three injections around the wound. “I’ll leave word at the desk about Roger. It’s good there’s someone to look after you,” he said, snapping the last syringe into the hazmat thing.

  “He’s very good at looking after.”

  “Fastidious.”

  “Fastidious.”

  “You should probably lie back.”

  “Good idea.” I started to lie down.

  “This way,” he said, “with your feet at that end so I can get to your hand. I’ll be back in a bit when the shots have taken hold.”

  I think I nodded off somewhere along here.

  Chapter 33

  Under the Influence

  Roger

  There’s another reason I don’t like the outer boroughs. They’re so frigging far away. I know Brooklyn’s just across the river, but it always seems to take forever to get anywhere.

  I got home, smeared some antibiotic stuff on Haggis’s ear, gave him a piece of freeze-dried cow lung, and got back in the waiting car. I was off to the unknown regions of Wyckoff Heights. After a small eternity, I was finally able to thank my driver profusely with an absurd tip—he liked dogs, after all—and I ran in through the emergency entrance.

  I thought for sure I’d get a hassle trying to see a patient who was no relation, but they just pointed me in the right direction.

  All the doctors looked like they were in their twenties. It was like going to the frigging Apple Store. Seemed to me a little adult supervision wouldn’t hurt.

  I heard moans and grunts coming from different curtained-off cubicles, and I walked past a snoring woman on a gurney, until I finally heard Fletch’s voice coming from behind a screen.

  “He has the most beautiful hands you’ve ever seen. Long and thin, and so pale, they look like porcelain, except for these funky callouses from the violin—”

  I stuck my head around the curtain. What the hell was Fletch going on about?

  “Dweeb!” He was sitting on a table, and he was thrilled to see me for some reason. In his exuberance, he had yanked his left hand away from the doctor, who was in the middle of doing something with it.

  “Hey!” the doctor said. “You have to hold still.” He caught the hand in the air—with the needle and thread still swinging from it. Oh-jeez. I had to close my eyes. “You must be the boyfriend.”

  My eyes popped open. Was he talking to me?

  “Y-yeah.” That explained how I got in here so easily. Clever Fletch. And maybe a sympathetic doctor. I wasn’t totally certain, but after just a glance I guessed he batted on our side.

  “Dweeb, meet Dr. Scruff.” Fletch was being awfully boisterous.

  The doctor turned around to me briefly and nodded, smiling.

  “Roger Prescott.” I nodded back. Wow, leave it to Fletch to get the hot doctor. Wait a minute. Dr. Scruff couldn’t be his real name, could it?

  “Dr. Stone,” Dr. Scruff said, anticipating my confusion. “Joel.” Jeez, he was like my age.

  “Fletch doesn’t seem quite…”

  “Yeah. He’s not quite. He’s having a bit of a reaction to the pain meds. Unusual, but not unheard of. You’ve seen that YouTube video of the kid coming home from the dentist? This is that. He’ll be fine with a little sleep.”

  “Okay.” I was trying not to watch as the guy used these like pliers things to push the needle through the skin, and then he tied it off and snipped the threads. And then he prepped another stitch.

  “I’ll give you something different to take home with you,” the doctor said as he drove another needle in.

  “Thanks.” I couldn’t look, but I couldn’t really look away either.

  “Have you considered a muzzle?”

  “For—Fletch?” No, but I obviously should have. And a really short leash.

  “For the dog,” he explained.

  “Muzzle Haggis?!” said Fletch, outraged. There went the hand again.

  “If it’s one of these pit-bull things,” the doctor said, retrieving the hand and dangling thread, “you should really—”

  “No, he’s a small terrier. Scottish.”

  “He’s the best dog in the world,” said Fletch. “He called Haggis ‘Cujo,’” he whispered to me.

  “The dog didn’t go after Fletch,” I explained. “He was attacked by a cat—the dog, I mean—there was a horrible fight, and Fletch broke it up. And he got bitten doing it.”

  “I see. You didn’t tell me you were a hero, Fletch.”

  “You’d be surprised at the things he can neglect to mention,” I said.

  “Oh, Roger, really?” Fletch said, pouting. “After today?”

  “You’re right, you’re right,” I conceded. “Yes, Doctor, he was definitely a hero.”

  “You do that really well,” said Fletch, calmly observing the needle go through the living flesh of his hand. How can he watch that?

  “Thank you,” said Dr. Joel. “There.” He snipped off the thread, examined his handiwork, and snapped the latex gloves off. I stepped over to Fletch.

  “How are you doing, Fletch?”

  He looked at me with the goofiest expression.

  “I’ve missed you, Dweeb,” and he hopped off the table, arms open wide to hug me. But his legs weren’t quite steady and he grabbed onto me. As if I were strong enough to hold him up, which I wasn’t.

  “Excel”—the doctor rolled his stool under Fletch’s backside—“lent.” After waiting a second to be sure Fletch was more or less stable on the stool, he pulled a pen from his breast pocket, clicked it, and began making notes in Fletch’s chart.

  Of course Fletch was more or less stable because he was clinging to me like a drunk on a lamppost, with his head pressed sideways against my chest.

  “Missed you,” he said again, squeezed me, took a deep breath, and sighed.

  I hated that I was blushing and didn’t really k
now what to do with Fletch just there and me with my arms in the air like an idiot.

  “I brought the rabies tag with me, Doctor,” I said. I was pretty weirded out by this new, messed-up Fletch. I let my left arm fall around his shoulders—there wasn’t much else I could do with it—while I fished the metal tag from my pocket. “Here, in case you need it.”

  “Your voice is so sexy like this,” Fletch said with his ear pressed against my chest. “Say something else.”

  “Careful with your hand, Fletch,” I cautioned.

  “Rumble, rumble,” Fletch mumbled, still pressed against me. He flipped his head around to try with his other ear.

  “The nurse will come and put a bandage on that as soon as she’s free,” said the doctor.

  “She’s crazy about me,” Fletch lolled.

  “I have no idea if we need the rabies tag or not, but I’ll put the number in the chart just in case. The dog is completely healthy?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “How does your hand feel now, Fletch?” the young doctor asked.

  “It doesn’t. I can’t feel it at all.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t last. Are you guys here in Brooklyn?”

  “Chelsea,” I said. Obviously I couldn’t dump Fletch in his apartment alone like this. The doctor glanced at his watch.

  “By the time you get him back to Manhattan, the pain may have started to kick in again. Give him a pill when he needs it. I’ve given him an anti-inflammatory, which should help with the swelling. It’s already better than it was. And a tetanus shot, just in case. He’ll want to sleep—let him.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “You’ll be looking after him?”

  “Uh, yeah.” Would I? Yeah, I guess I would be.

  “He said you were fastidious.”

  “He said that?” It was dumb, but I couldn’t help thinking about that night when he first moved himself in, uninvited, and he didn’t know what fastidious meant. He had actually looked it up—and then later in bed, when we were doing—whatever—he teased me about whether this or that was particularly fastidious. I had to smile, and then I realized my left hand was stroking Fletch’s back a little.