Resurrection Express

by Stephen Romano

  Follow me.

  Toni winks her glittering green eye in the dark and says it’s all gonna be okay.

  Somehow, I believe her.

  Follow me, she says. If you can’t follow Ringo . . . follow me.

  • • •

  Sure enough, the accounts rep is a hard old lady and she’s right in my face with questions about how I’m gonna pay for my visit to Hermann Hospital. They haven’t even assigned me a social worker. I give her the same dog and pony show I gave the doc. He never comes in to talk to me again.

  The rep leaves in a huff. She can tell I’m lying about not knowing who I am. It’s going to be a problem.

  I add it to the list.

  • • •

  I watch the door, all night.

  No drug drip anymore. I pulled it again and the pain is dull—not bad, but it doesn’t tickle, either. Have to stay alert. Someone will come through that door sooner or later. I have to get out of here.

  I go under for just a few minutes and Toni is there again.

  There’s not much time, baby. The wolves are closing in.

  Follow me.

  I almost hear the rest, almost bring it back to waking world . . . but it escapes me again.

  • • •

  A peppy young guy in hospital blues comes into my room at seven in the morning and says his name is Richard and he’ll be caring for me. He has dark eyes and brown hair. Well built and beefy in the face. Says he’s a fourth-year medical student but not to worry, I’m in good hands. He tells me about how I’ve been pissing for the last couple of weeks, as if I hadn’t noticed. There’s a tube hooked up to my bladder—direct plumbing, he calls it, then he apologizes for his bad joke. I reach down and feel my upper legs, inspect the tube snaking out of my lower regions, attached by an IV needle and taped there, running to a plastic bag, half full of dark yellow liquid, polluted and milky, all full of dope. You could sell my piss on the street and it would fetch top dollar.

  He changes out the bag, talking about how lucky I am.

  All of this happens in a sort of waking dream.

  I can’t tell if it’s the morphine or not.

  Have to get my head clear.

  Richard pulls back the sheet and gently grabs hold of my legs, bends them slightly at the knee for me. I don’t trust his hands when he does that. I notice that his hospital blues match my thin smock and drawstring pants, and for some reason that makes me feel vulnerable. He calls me “buddy” a lot.

  Just like David Hartman used to.

  He looks at my arm and asks why I pulled my dope drip out. He can tell just by glancing. I say I was delirious, I’m not sure what I was thinking. He looks at me right in my eyes and says nothing.

  Right in my eyes.

  I don’t like that.

  He tells me he can get me on a remote-controlled delivery system for the drip if I want it, one of those hand triggers that administers a dosage from a pump that sits alongside you in the room. I don’t want it. He says it might be just as well. Those things can be dangerous. I tell him I just don’t want to be on dope.

  He says good for you, buddy.

  He puts back the sheet, makes some more happy noise at me. Points at a wheelchair near my bed, says I’ll be doing back flips on it in no time. Leaves me some food on a rollaway table which arcs over my bed on a long arm. I watch him very carefully as he leaves.

  Then I look at the wheelchair.

  Very carefully.

  • • •

  That night, I use the stainless-steel bars on either side of my bed to lever myself up, squeezing hard and steady with just my upper-arm strength. Without the morphine drip, it’s agonizing, and I can feel the strain tearing against the wound in my side. I try again and again, getting just a little farther each time. I’m careful not to push it too far. I’m testing my body, seeing what my limits are. Nothing gives anywhere inside me.

  The last time I was shot it was much worse. I couldn’t move for a week. They gave me a morphine trigger that time and I used it a lot. Plenty of synthetic heroin. Tried to escape the hospital as soon as I could. That was when I figured out how to remove a heparin lock without tearing open my vein—the older the lock, the easier it is. They had me handcuffed to the bed back then, but the cuffs were no problem. It was the law that did me in. They didn’t have any guards on the door, but I got nailed coming out of the service entrance into the parking lot. Two plainclothes, drawing down and telling me to freeze, like all cops do.

  This place will have its own police division—guys with badges and revolvers. No detectives, just standard flatfoots. My edge is that they have no idea who I am, that I am not under arrest for anything. And cops in medical centers like this one are always busy on the cancer floor, separating families who are fighting over the off switch on life-support systems. They don’t have time for nobodies like me. Not yet anyway. But I have to assume the worst.

  I have to assume they’ve zeroed me.

  I start to panic, then I get a grip. I keep my fear handy, but I’m in control. Nobody’s come for me yet—nobody that I know about.

  But I have to assume the worst, at all times.

  I manage to haul my entire body a few feet above my bed, isolating my upper arm muscles to do the job, not using my abs at all. I practice the exercise for two hours.

  The wheelchair is just five feet away.

  Soon.

  • • •

  The dream is more vivid now, not surreal. I sit with Toni in an open forest glade, at a picnic table, surrounded by children, by family. This is the life my father never gave me. She smiles and her voice is clear.

  Baby, I told you the secret. Right in the beginning.

  I knew you would look into the face of God.

  And I told you not to.

  That’s not what you said.

  That’s what the Sarge said.

  Before he tried to kill me.

  I ask her what’s really going on—I ask her about the end of the world.

  Toni smiles at me and tells me there’s nothing we can do. Something about the dominoes already falling. Her voice fades away to nothing as the dream ends.

  Fades away to nothing.

  • • •

  The next morning, Richard comes in again, all full of pep.

  He hasn’t been in since yesterday.

  “Hey, buddy,” he says.

  It still sounds wrong, even though my head is much clearer.

  He changes my bladder bag again, asks me how I’m feeling again, flexes my legs again. Looks at the morphine tube, not hooked up.

  “You still doing okay without the drip?”

  “It’s better than lung cancer. Can I try the wheelchair today?”

  “Not yet. Maybe tomorrow, buddy. Can I get anything else for you?”

  “Yeah. Could you tell me what your last name is?”

  “Sergio.”

  “You’re Italian?”

  “Half.”

  “Do you see a lot of patients like me?”

  “More than you can imagine, buddy. But you’re one of the lucky ones. I once saw a guy shot in his spine—he already had one leg missing. An old hippie guy, a drug dealer who got shot during a buy in a parking lot. He had diabetes and a prosthetic leg. He lost the other one during his recovery, developed permanent brain damage. Spent his last three years as a vegetable.”

  “Bad news.”

  “They’ll start you on physical therapy in two more days.”

  “I’d like to try the wheelchair now.”

  He laughs. “You in a hurry to get somewhere?”

  “I’d just like to try it.”

  “We’ll see. Maybe in the morning.”

  He walks out of the room after fiddling with my IV machines. Gives me a smile that chills my blood.

  • • •

  I try to will myself to sleep again.

  So I can hear Toni’s voice.

  So I can figure this whole thing out.

  It doesn’t work.
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  • • •

  Later that day, a nurse comes in to see me. She’s young and happy, always smiling. Says her name is Shelly, and she’ll be taking care of me during my physical therapy. I ask her what happened to Richard.

  She makes a strange face when I say that.

  Doesn’t answer me.

  “A man has been here twice in the last two days,” I say to her very carefully, evenly, sober as hell. “He says his name is Richard Sergio. Says he’s a fourth-year medical student.”

  “I think you must’ve been dreaming, honey. There’s no Richard Sergio on this ward, but there has been some staff floating for the last week.”

  “What’s that mean? Floating?”

  She sighs. “It’s a dirty little secret in the medical world. I guess I’m not supposed to tell you, but that’s how it works in big places like this. We get overloaded and the beds get full, so they have to pull staff and interns off other wards, people who aren’t trained properly. They come in to fill the gaps.”

  “They don’t know how to treat trauma patients?”

  “Depends. Everyone has to come from nursing school to get a license, you know, but you specialize depending on where you get hired.”

  “So this Richard guy, he could be from another ward?”

  “I think you just need to rest.”

  Her voice cuts me hard, her all-purpose smile dismissing the whole thing. I shut up and don’t say anything else. I have to try for the wheelchair tonight.

  They’ve zeroed me.

  • • •

  Run like hell, baby.

  You have no legs but you can still run.

  Get the hell out of that place.

  • • •

  The nurse comes back an hour later, at three thirty. I hear her in the hall with some other men while I’m doing my exercises, and I lower myself back into the bed just as she enters the room, still smiling. She notices the redness in my face. The pain I’m hiding.

  “Hello. How are you feeling?”

  “Fine.”

  “You have some color, that’s good. Do you think you can handle a visitor or two this afternoon?”

  “Who are they?”

  “The police. They want to interview you, just for a few minutes.”

  “I don’t know . . . I . . .”

  “I can tell them to come back later.”

  “No. It’s okay.”

  I need to look these men in their eyes.

  Have to see who I’m dealing with.

  Baby, be careful. Really damn careful about this.

  The nurse nods to me and goes back out into the hall. I hear hard shoes strike the floor as the two guys come into my room. Both plainclothes guys. Detectives. One of them is wearing a black bomber jacket over a flannel shirt and has dark skin. The other one has a suit on, looks real young, pale. Maybe a rookie, maybe not. Never can tell about these guys. They both wear their badges on plastic laminates around their necks.

  “Hello,” the dark one says. “My name is Roger Morales, this is my partner, Jeff Ferrier. We’re both with Houston PD. Hear you’ve had some problems.”

  Careful.

  “I don’t remember anything.”

  “That’s what they told us. We’re just following up on a lead. Need to ask you a few questions, see if it jogs anything. You up for it?”

  “Don’t see why not. But . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  They know something.

  “I mean . . . I don’t know what help I can be. I don’t even know what happened to me.”

  “Maybe you can remember a face.”

  He holds up a photograph.

  It’s a Polaroid of a girl with black hair and wild eyes.

  A very familiar girl.

  I almost say something on instinct, but I hear Toni’s voice again and find myself sticking to the lie.

  “I . . . I’ve never seen her.”

  “Her name is Heather Stone. She was reported missing six months ago, and we picked her up during the aftermath of something that went down last week.”

  “What kind of something?”

  “A shootout in a strip bar. She’d been shot in the arm, but she was okay to talk to us. She had a real crazy story to tell.”

  Yeah.

  I bet she did.

  As I look at the photo, I realize it’s definitely her. She looks a lot like my wife, black hair and green eyes . . . but there are imperfections in the design. Things a smart guy could spot. Things I never could have seen a week ago, not right off. And now that my memories have come back, now that I can see Toni’s true face in the endless white of our wedding day . . . I could curse myself for ever buying it.

  It wasn’t your fault.

  Did someone make her look like you, Toni?

  Was Hartman setting me up?

  Don’t say a word, baby. They know what’s going down. They’re playing games with you.

  “The lady gave us a description of two men who were protecting her,” Morales says flatly. “I don’t know whether to believe her story. You sure you don’t remember anything?”

  He gives me a long, hard look.

  Then he does something with his eyes.

  Something that almost looks like a wink.

  What . . . ?

  He sees my face ask the question and he looks back over his shoulder, at his partner, who quietly nods. Did I just give them something?

  “The doctors won’t let us have any details about your condition,” Morales says. “You have to legally consent to release the information. But since you’re a John Doe, that also raises a lot of issues and opens some gray areas, too. Wanna tell me about it?”

  Don’t give them anything. Tell them what they already know.

  “My legs are out of commission. I was shot in the side.”

  “Will you be up to speaking with Miss Stone, maybe in the morning? It might jog something.”

  I nod slowly. Something going down here.

  He gives me the almost-wink again.

  “One more thing,” he says. “She gave us a name. Elroy Coffin. Ring any bells?”

  “No.”

  He knows you’re lying, baby. He’s checked you out. Knows you’re supposed to be dead. Knows something.

  But he doesn’t say anything.

  Turns and leaves me there, surrounded by the fear of the doomed.

  • • •

  The nurse checks on me every hour after that, says I’m doing great, asks me if I still insist on no pain meds. I tell her it’s fine. A food service guy in a pale gray uniform brings me food and I eat it. Goes down easy, but tastes like shit. Dry meat and canned veggies. I’ve watched the nurse when she works the levers that control the bars on either side of my bed, and figured out how to lower them and use the rollaway table as a method to lever myself off, so I can inch my way over to the wheelchair. It’s my only way out, and I have to do it now, tonight. While the ward is almost empty, during the morning hours.

  • • •

  The plot is simple.

  I’ll get out of here through the back entrance and steal a car in the visitors lot. It’ll be harder with no legs, but I’ll have wheels to get there. It’ll be cold, wearing nothing but a smock and thin blue pants, but I’ll have to tough it out. It’ll take me at least twenty minutes to get in the chair. Gotta do it careful, so that I don’t come unplugged from my life blipper. Once I disconnect, I have to move quick. They won’t stop me, because they can’t stop me, not legally. Unless the cops who questioned me have people in the building now, unless I’m actually under suspicion for something. I have to take that chance. The noose is closing. I can feel it all around me.

  I can hear Toni telling me to calm down, telling me not to panic.

  I watch the clock on the wall and wait for one in the morning. They never check on me between one and five.

  That’s my window. I count the minutes.

  I leave my food on the rollaway table and tell the nurse to keep it there when she comes
in for her last visit. She goes along nicely. Leaves my door open.

  The lights go dark in the hall, and I reach down and work the lever on the bar to my right. The bar goes down with a dull metal thump. Now, the rollaway. I set the dinner dishes on the bed next to me and pull myself across the table, using only my arms. A sharp pain stitches my side, but I can’t think about that now. Gotta use the bar on my right to push myself off the bed, roll myself over to the chair. It’s just five feet away. I push hard and it works. I roll away. Something snaps in the table. I feel the wheels give, and my center of gravity goes all whacked. The floor comes up hard as I crash there. I go down on my back, not feeling the impact.

  Goddammit.

  Stupid.

  The pain stitches me again. I look down to see if there’s any new blood oozing through the bandages and there’s nothing. Doesn’t feel like I reopened the wound. The fall might not have cost me anything . . . but I can feel the deadweight of my legs for the first time and it’s terrifying. Have to move fast. The chair is three feet away from me, waiting to get me out of here. I get over on my arms and elbows, start pulling my way forward. And that’s right when the voice comes.

  “Hey, buddy.”

  I look up to see him, standing there in the open doorway.

  Richard, the happy intern—or whatever his name really is.

  “Getting ready to go somewhere?”

  I don’t answer him. I freeze there on the floor.

  I see that he has some sort of bag with him. He smiles, closing the door, crouching low, looking right in my eyes.

  Pulls a gun from the bag and aims it at my head.

  “You know, I was really hoping it would come to this, buddy.”

  “They sent you to kill me.”

  He laughs, still using his phony bedside manner. “You’re very perceptive. And clever, too. For a while, we thought you really did have amnesia. But your charts tell a different story. And you gave yourself away today, asking about the wheelchair.”

  You gave yourself away, too, asshole. Your fake smile. Going through the motions. The stories about the other patients you’d seen in here, those were nice touches—but I still had you pegged.

  I just glare at him.

  “Someone wants to say hello,” he says.

  He goes into the bag over his shoulder and pulls out an iPad. Sets it up on the floor, clicking the screen on. A face I wasn’t expecting suddenly stares right into me. Or maybe I was expecting it.