Terminally Ill

by Melissa Yi

“When?”

  “At the Old Port, I was standing there when he and Archer drove in the truck.”

  “Not during the show. Did you rehearse with him in the morning?”

  She adjusted her shiny pink purse on her shoulder and took a hard left at the nursing station, toward the elevator. “We did not rehearse together. He was running and practicing on his own.”

  Archer grinned. “He’s always like that. He doesn’t like to say it’s nerves, but he kind of disappears into himself on the day of.”

  “You spent the night before at their hotel with them, though?” I said, wanting to make it clear that I already knew about her and Archer and she didn’t have to hide it.

  Lucia punched the down elevator button, but she stopped and turned wide eyes on me. “No, I was working.”

  “She works Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights,” said Archer.

  “What kind of work do you do?” I asked.

  She flipped her hair and straightened up to her full height, which was probably about 5’9” even without the heels. “I am a dancer.”

  “An exotic dancer?” I asked.

  “Yes, exactly. I am not a stripper,” she said, holding her index finger in my face. I felt like batting her finger away, but the elevator door pinged open and a couple of old people stared at the Barbie girl, so she dropped her arm and let them file out of the elevator, although she didn’t bother stepping aside for them. She glided into the elevator like it was a carriage she’d called. Archer gestured for me to go ahead of him, so I did.

  The doors shut on us. The elevator started to rise instead of descending, and Lucia sighed in exasperation, but I silently blessed the inefficiency of Montreal elevators, prolonging our interview time, and asked, “So when did you end up meeting with Archer and Elvis on Hallowe’en?”

  “Archer called me at 8 a.m.” She sighed and shook out her hair. I admired the way it swished. My hair is heavier, so it tends to hang instead of ripple.

  Archer laughed. “Sorry, babe. I let you sleep as late as I could.”

  “He wanted to practice. So, we came over at nine.”

  “Nine-thirty, but it’s cool,” said Archer, kissing her neck. The elevator doors opened again, and a pregnant woman stepped in while firmly clutching the hands of two little boys. The boys watched Archer, wide-eyed, until Lucia nudged his side. He raised his head from her neck, but he kept his body next to hers as the elevator began its slow descent down the floors.

  Lucia smoothed a wrinkle out of her top. “But Elvis is running, and then he wants to rehearse on his own. So Archer and Hugo talk about how to move the equipment and so on.”

  I shuffled to the side to let in a man being pushed in a wheelchair. “What did you do while they were talking?”

  She shrugged and adjusted her purse strap. “I waited for them to tell me what to do. That is my job.”

  “Did you see the coffin and the chains?”

  She nodded. “We practice on Archer. He put on music. We put the chains on him. He get in and out of coffin.”

  Was Archer Elvis’s understudy? I raised my eyebrows. Archer just laughed and slid his hand low on Lucia’s back, just riding above her ass, while two respiratory therapists filed onto the elevator. “I wanted them to practice chaining, but Elvis was still doing his thing, so I got them to practice on me. I’m no escape artist, but I can tell them how to loop it, make sure they stand to one side and not block the view. That sort of thing. Then we had to get down to the Old Port. Well, me and Hugo and Lucia, anyway. Elvis wanted to practice with the coffin and chains by himself a few more times, but we packed up and left.”

  “What time did you get to the Old Port?”

  “The three of us got there around 10:45. I’d been there on and off for a few hours before that. I already had the admission and T-shirt guys set up, but there’s always last-minute problems I got to straighten out, and some of the fans were lining up at daybreak.”

  I didn’t mention that one of those fans was Tucker. The elevator pinged and let off a bunch of people at the next floor. “How did Elvis get down to the Old Port?”

  “One of the guys drove him down to a holding area, and then I picked him up just before the show.”

  “Where did you put the coffin and chains?”

  “Hugo and I hooked the coffin up out of sight as soon as we got there, so it would be ready to go. We kept the chains in the car. We’ve got a backup set of chains too, just in case.”

  Hmm. It sounded like there had been lots of opportunities for someone to sabotage Elvis’s equipment. Lucia and Hugo and Archer had all practiced with it on the day of, and that didn’t count “the guys” who’d helped out. “Did you lock the truck and the cab at the Old Port?”

  “I did.” Archer frowned. “I don’t know if Hugo did.”

  Right. So their security wasn’t the best, even before the stunt. I assumed no one would sabotage the coffin while it was dangling off a crane, but the chains might have been accessible, and the coffin could have been manipulated beforehand.

  The elevator stopped at the fourth floor where the parking tunnel hooks on to the hospital, and Lucia sauntered out on her stilettos, not waiting for either of us. I caught up to her easily and said, “We should talk to Hugo.”

  Her head jerked toward me. “He is not here.”

  “I know that, but Archer said you were bringing him.”

  She shrugged. “I have not seen him for a few days. He is not answering his phone.”

  I paused in the middle of the foyer, in front of a giant marble statue. “Isn’t that a little odd? Archer hasn’t heard from him either, even though he owes him money.”

  Lucia tossed her hair like she was imitating a shampoo commercial again. “That is funny.” Her eyes strayed toward Archer, who stood behind her and placed both hands on her hips.

  “Do you want to see if he’s all right? Maybe stop by his apartment?” I asked.

  Archer smiled. “Hugo’s a big boy. I’m sure he’ll find us.” His head dipped toward Lucia’s neck. He parted her hair so he could press a kiss on the back of her neck.

  She shivered.

  Archer ripped his eyes away from her long enough to say, “Thanks for your help, Dr. Sze. We really appreciate it.” Then he backed her against the granite wall, beside the statue.

  “You’re welcome,” I said, feeling about as useful as a lobotomized eunuch. I turned down the hall, toward the exit doors, mentally girding myself to bike uphill to my apartment. When I glanced back at them, they were still kissing, now with one of his legs pressed between hers.

  Chapter 14

  By the time I got home, out of breath and legs aching, Elvis had already posted a teaser on his blog.

  And the cat came back the very next day

  You can’t keep a good escape artist down.

  That’s why I’m going to do Houdini proud one last time before I leave Montreal.

  I’m not going to release all the deets yet, but keep your eyes on this space.

  There were already 111 comments (no joke), most of them saying stuff like “All right, man!” and “Can’t wait!” with a few “Are you okay?”’s sprinkled in.

  Not one “Are you out of your fucking mind? Oh, wait. You already damaged it with your last stunt.”

  I called Tucker. “Did you see Elvis’s blog?”

  He laughed. “Yeah, I helped him write it. Pretty good, huh?”

  “Pretty good?” I couldn’t speak for a few seconds. “He’s going to fry his neurons.”

  “His doctors won’t let him do it until it’s safe.”

  “Even if it’s a fundraiser for them? It’s a conflict of interest, Tucker.”

  “You worry too much, Hope.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I was starting to think that the three of them combined didn’t have enough brain cells to save the leftovers from their lunch, let alone preserve a man’s brain function for the rest of his life. “Well, when you were busy blogging, did you have a chance to research hypoxic-ano
xic encephalopathy?”

  He paused. “My phone’s almost dead. I’ll do it when I get home.”

  “Right. God forbid you actually look after him as a patient instead of shoving him in a coffin.” I cleared my throat. “Okay, that was below the belt. But listen, Tucker. I haven’t had time to do a thorough review, but I couldn’t find any research about reintroducing a patient to a circumstance to help with amnesia. It’s like I said. If you’ve injured your brain, you can do occupational therapy, you can set your phone to remind yourself of things on your to-do list, you can put out pictures of your friends to remind yourself to meet them, but you don’t stick yourself back in a coffin. Really, I think Hollywood just made that up.”

  After a slightly long pause, he said, “Okay, I hear you. Let me tell him.” He didn’t bother muffling the receiver. “Hey, Elvis, it’s Hope. She said there’s no research about sticking yourself back in the coffin to help your memory. That’s just Hollywood”

  Elvis said something I couldn’t hear.

  Tucker came back on. “He says he likes Hollywood.”

  I felt like stamping my foot. “Jesus, Tucker. Don’t you see that this whole thing is unscientific and could endanger his life? You’re the psych guy. You know what immersion therapy really means. If you’re afraid of heights, first you’re supposed to imagine that you’re on the second floor. Then, when that doesn’t bother you anymore, you can try walking up to the second floor in real life. Then you might be able to step on the balcony for a second. You don’t just say, ‘Oh, I’m doing immersion therapy, I’m going to bungee jump off the CN tower.”

  Tucker paused. “I hear ya.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. I guess I’ve got a conflict of interest too. But you’re right. It’s like cheering on Mohammed Ali to keep on fighting even though I know he’s going to end up with premature Parkinson’s from it.”

  My death grip on my phone released slightly. “So you’ll talk to him?”

  “Yeah, I’ll talk to him. Oh, hang on.” He covered up the receiver, muffling his and Elvis’s voices, before Elvis took the phone. “Hi, Hope. Listen, I appreciate everything you’ve done for us, but I’m going to break out of the coffin no matter what.”

  I shook my head even though he couldn’t see me. “You’ve got to get your doctors on board for this.”

  “I will. Look. I’m not going underwater. There’s plenty of oxygen in the coffin. I’m not going to bang my head against the wood or anything. And they’ll break me out at four minutes anyway, just like they would underwater, except there’ll be a million doctors and nurses there. Nothing’s gonna go wrong.”

  Talk about bullheaded. I decided to change tack, appeal to his paranoia. “But Elvis, we still haven’t figured out if anyone sabotaged you. Don’t you think it’s dangerous to climb back into a coffin right away?”

  “This time, I won’t let anyone else help me except Archer. I’d trust Archer with my life.”

  “Where is Archer?”

  “He’ll be back anytime.”

  “He’s with Lucia,” I said flatly.

  “Whatever. He won’t be with her again until Friday.”

  “Friday? You want to do this on Friday?” I felt like strangling him the way that Homer Simpson attacks his son, so that Bart’s eyes goggle and his tongue ripples through the air, except of course that really would exacerbate hypoxic-anoxic encephalopathy more than his coffin stunt.

  “Well, they’re not going to keep me at UCH forever. They were talking about transferring me to the Neuro, or back to Winnipeg for rehab. I’ve got to strike while the iron is hot. Later.” He hung up.

  Well. At least the lack of oxygen hadn’t affected his memory of clichés. I hung up too, harder than I should have.

  Maybe Tucker could talk him out of it. But like I said, Elvis seemed more stubborn than a newly branded bull.

  If Elvis convinced his doctors—or did it against medical advice—I had to be there for the coffin trick. Even if I had to beg for a few hours off. One person Tucker and I had not eliminated from suspicion was Archer himself.

  I sighed, trying to ignore the squeezing ache in my chest. I hadn’t planned to spend my birthday weekend resuscitating Elvis again.

  I marched to my desk in the living room and grabbed Henry, the wooden mannequin that was my only souvenir from a long-ago drawing class. I wanted to pose him in an angry stance, but how do you make a faceless wooden doll look furious? I forced him into a standing position with his right hand held in the air like he was, saying, Stop! Then I called Ryan.

  Ryan answered right away. “Hope.” I could tell he was smiling.

  I felt guilty burdening him with my crap, so I sprinkled some cheer in my voice. “Hey, Dude. Did your Pau Pau have her surgery?”

  “Yeah. She’s awake and asking for congee. My mom went to make it for her.” His voice sang with relief before it dimmed again. “You sound weird. What’s up?”

  There was no point in hiding it. I tried to explain the whole mess, including Elvis practically wanting to commit hari-kari, in as few words as possible.

  Ryan stayed silent for a moment. Unlike Tucker, he doesn’t try to fill every moment with sound and fireworks. “You wish you were a detective again?”

  “No—well, part of me does, obviously. I like helping people, and it sucks that I’m completely replaceable and forgettable.”

  “Never,” muttered Ryan, and I smiled for real at that one, because it’s true, even though we called it quits, we can’t leave each other alone.

  “I’d like to kick Tucker in the cojones right now. Although it was a crappy way to tell him I might move to Ottawa.”

  “How’s that going?” Ryan’s voice warmed up.

  I smiled, even though my stomach twisted a little. “The secretary said I could make an appointment with the dean next week, but I can’t get time off from work, so I’ll either have to get them to Skype or we’ll figure something else out. Anyway, I’m bummed because if Elvis pulls his stunt on Friday, I think I should be there. But I’m still coming to see you this weekend. Wouldn’t miss it.”

  I could hear his smile through the phone. “You better make it. It’s not every day a girl turns 27.”

  “Good thing, too.” I know it’s not super old, but once you hit north of 25 and start running into your married-with-children friends on Facebook, you know that the clock is ticking.

  “I’ll make it worth your while,” said Ryan. His voice lowered. I remembered our many days and nights between the sheets, before we’d broken up and before he’d decided to go all abstinent on me. I tried to figure out a polite way to ask if a birthday was a good enough reason to break his vow of chastity.

  All I could think of was, “Really worth my while?”

  “Absolutely. Listen, Hope, my grandmother’s good right now. So I’m coming to see you.”

  I caught my breath. “You mean you’d come to Elvis’s stunt? And then we’d drive back to Ottawa together?” Not fuel efficient, for sure, but so much fun. It wouldn’t hurt so much to be a bystander if Ryan cheered along with me.

  “No. Well, maybe. But I mean, I’ll drive up as soon as I can. It’s too late tonight.”

  Laughter burbled in my throat. It’s a four hour round trip from Ottawa to Montreal and back. Even if Ryan started driving this second and spent zero time at my apartment, he still wouldn’t get back home until after midnight. “Yeah. I’m about to crash.”

  “But tomorrow, you’re not on call, right?”

  “Right. I’m on call on Wednesday. So—”

  “Tuesday it is. I’ll see you in about 24 hours. When do you finish?”

  “I’ve got my clinic in the morning and palliative care in the afternoon. Um, maybe five-ish.”

  “I’ll leave around five. I should be there around seven. Depends on traffic. Okay?”

  “Yes. Oh, my God, yes.” Wrong thing to say to an über-Christian. “I mean, gosh. I mean, OMG. I mean—”

  “I love you, too. Se
e you soon, Hope.” He hung up before I had time to respond, but my mouth automatically opened to shape the words back.

  Chapter 15

  The next morning, I had to suffer through my family medicine clinic with Dr. Callendar, also known as FMC with Dr. C. I arrived only two minutes late, which meant that I beat Omar, but Dr. Callendar sighed and ostentatiously tapped his watch at both of us. “Dr. Yamamoto would like to give her presentation on hypertension in the elderly, if the rest of you would deign to listen to it.”

  Tori pressed her lips together slightly, but said nothing. I was just getting to know her well enough to figure out her signs of stress.

  Stan Biedelman called, from across the table, “I, for one, am on the edge of my seat, waiting for Dr. Yamamoto to bestow her pearls of wisdom upon me!”

  “As you should be,” said Dr. Callendar, smiling at Tori.

  She ignored both of them and began outlining how up to twenty percent of the population in general has high blood pressure, but it affects a much higher percentage of the elderly, up to 60 or 80 percent. We already knew the association between hypertension and heart attacks and stroke, so she described instead how to tailor drugs for the elderly, especially Chlorthiazide, ACE inhibitors, and calcium channel blockers. I have to admit, my approach to hypertension in my family medicine clinics up until then, had been “if their numbers are okay, keep them on whatever they’re on. If it’s not working, switch to whatever the team leader says is better.” Fortunately, the gist of Tori’s presentation was that, no matter how much the drug companies would like to swing you over to their team, the most important thing is to lower the patient’s blood pressure, not which brand-name drug you use. So I did learn from her presentation, but the way Dr. Callendar heaped praise upon her, you’d think she’d won the Nobel Prize.

  Stan put his hand in the air. “Isn’t there a problem with the frail elderly, that lowering their blood pressure doesn’t decrease their mortality and might actually put them at greater risk, since 20 percent of the elderly in general will have the side effect of orthostatic hypotension?”

  Stan is a second-year resident, only a year ahead of me and Tori, but I swear that he sometimes seems a light year ahead of me.