by Paul Cave
Unable to find a call button, Joseph reached out, intent on pulling the curtain further back. He managed to grab a handful of material, which felt cold and slimy under his touch, like that of a mouldy shower curtain, and tugged.
Nothing as hideous as a man-fish lay dying in the other bed, just an old guy with a crown of tufted white hair. An oxygen mask was fitted tightly around his face. An IV bottle hung from a stand; clear liquid dripped silently from it, into a long tube, which entered the man’s brachial vein via a steel needle. The slight hiss of released oxygen could be heard over the man’s laboured breath. His narrow chest heaved with the effort of liquid-filled lungs. Pneumonia gripped him in a parasitic embrace. A couple of twisted wires ran from under the old man’s blanket to disappear somewhere inside the wall, reappearing at a nursing station, where the beat of his heart ran in green lines across a monitor screen.
“Hey,” Joseph whispered, trying to get the old man’s attention. The noise that left his lips could quite easily have come from a leaky oxygen tank. Still, Joseph called over again, not wanting his roommate to be found by a relative, or worse, a young nurse, in his present condition.
“Hey, old man.”
The tuft of white hair shifted slightly, and the old man’s grey-yellow eyes opened and then fixed themselves to Joseph’s. The eyes appeared fearful before turning away.
“Light…” he wheezed from behind the mask.
“Huh,” asked Joseph; this noise actually forming as it should.
“The light…” the man said again.
It was then when it became apparent that the room’s light source came from directly above and behind Joseph. He forced his head back and caught the full glare of the lamp above. Bright spots burst across his eyes. He squeezed them shut and watched as phantom colours washed across the insides of his lids. Blindly, he reached up, fumbled around for a moment, and then found the light switch. The light clicked off and darkness filled the room in a heartbeat. Words from years long past flashed through Joseph’s mind.
Muhammad Ali had once said: 'I’m so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room was dark.'
Joseph chuckled quietly; once he’d believed he was capable of similar feats. Not now. Seemed like both Joseph and Ali had fallen victim to fate and illness, and would now have only memories and past triumphs to boast about.
He lay in darkness for a while, the old guy at his side unwilling or unable to speak. Eventually the silence was broken with a wheeze of breath, and then the man began to talk.
“They’ll never find what they’re looking for…” he rasped from behind the mask.
Joseph turned towards the darkness. Now, the old man’s form was little more than an outline, barely darker than the gloom that surrounded it.
“Huh?” Joseph asked.
“My secret. My insurance,” the man said with a hint of both slyness and contempt.
For a second Joseph thought the guy was boasting about himself. About some astronomically sized savings account or life insurance policy. But then the guy chuckled slightly and said, “They wouldn’t dare touch me now. Not with what I know.”
Had Joseph’s brow been capable of expression, he’d have offered the guy a frown. “Insurance?”
The guy paused. He took a few agonisingly liquid-filled breaths before speaking. “Who are you, some sort of foreigner?”
“Huh..?”
“Never mind,” he said, dismissing Joseph’s inability to communicate clearly as either ignorance or misapprehension. “Let me tell you, they think they run the whole show. But not now. Hah! I’ll have the last laugh – now that I’ve secured my insurance.”
What the hell was this guy talking about? A parasitic family member ready to claim the guy’s inheritance? Or some sort of bloodsucking financial body waiting in the wings to recoup monies owed to them?
The old man rambled on for a while, muttering incoherently, Joseph catching just a few words at best. He kicked out with his stick-thin legs, hooking the hem of the fallen sheet with one calloused foot, and then succeeded in drawing the blanket over himself.
The room fell silent, and Joseph drifted into a fitful sleep.
***
A deep, gnawing chill woke Joseph some time later. Frost had covered the window with a white crystallised layer, which had formed the outlines of macabre faces into it. Joseph pulled the single sheet tightly around him, and again felt an abrupt gutful of anger towards the absent hospital staff. This time, though, an ample serving of self-pity was mixed into it.
Where the hell were the nurses? Why would they just leave them to freeze like this? He looked over at his roommate and found the old man shivering uncontrollably. A cold sweat broke out across Joseph’s body. His teeth started to chatter.
To hell with this!
He reached up, intent on hitting the light switch, ready to find assistance, even if it meant lying here bellowing or gibbering or slapping the side of his bed until he got somebody’s attention. However, before he connected with the switch, a sudden burst of pain ripped through his skull. God… no. Not again. The shadows engulfed him and, before he knew it, the fragile ship that was his consciousness became swamped with darkness, and then quickly sank towards oblivion.
***
Not long after the door opened. Light flooded into the room, a burst of false dawn. The thin membranes that were the old man’s eyelids scrunched tightly, hypersensitive to brightness. Someone entered, dressed in starched hospital whites. The figure moved over to the old man’s side, ignoring Joseph completely – for now. A hand clad in latex reached out and the hiss of oxygen died slowly as the flow to the patient’s mask dropped.
The old man’s eyes shot open and filled with terror.
“Can’t breathe…” he wheezed. Underneath the mask his nostrils flared and then clamped tightly shut as he desperately tried to draw breath.
The face above him smiled. The valve on the oxygen tank stopped turning, now fully closed. The visitor’s hand moved away from the tank and gently traced the line of morphine, which ran from an intravenous drip to the old man’s arm. A button was pressed: once, twice, three times, increasing the flow of morphine to the patient’s brachial vein. Instantly, his pupils dilated, and his initial panic seemed to flow away, diluted by the increase in opiates.
The old man felt himself drifting on a calm sea, as if the water from his lungs had flooded out from his every pore. He managed to stay afloat for a short while, but then his frail body lost its buoyancy and, quickly, he began to sink. Skeletal hands shot from under the blanket, gripping tightly onto the rails of his bed, desperately trying to keep him afloat. However, his ragged and weakened body was unable to resist, and soon he felt the current pull him under. In one final attempt at survival, his brain released a burst of adrenaline. His head cleared and a flow of energy flooded his veins. He kicked hard, using both feet to propel him towards the dark surface above. He reached out, ready to punch his way through the surface. His hand hit something solid. The water above had iced over. Winter had somehow found its way inside this room, trapping all inside in its icy embrace. The old man kicked again and his hands slapped feebly against the ice. The air in his lungs turned suddenly caustic. He opened his mouth to inhale and filled his lungs with ice-cold water.
The latex glove stayed clamped over the old man’s mouth for a little while longer, thumb and forefinger pinching both nostrils closed. Eventually, the pale feet stopped kicking. The blanket had gathered around two bony kneecaps to reveal stick-thin legs and skin like parchment.
The room fell quiet.
The visitor lingered at the bedside, head bowed and shoulders hunched. Then the gloved hand traced out the sign of the cross, from head to navel, from shoulder to shoulder. Finally, two fingertips drew the old man’s eyelids down. Something metallic glinted. A few minutes passed as the visitor worked on the patient. Next, the morphine drip was returned to its correct setting and the oxygen valve reopened
. A faint hiss of compressed air filled the room.
The figure walked to the other hospital bed. In contrast to the feeble, ancient in the first, this bed was filled from top to bottom and from side to side with a giant of a man. His dark ebony skin glistened slightly, a fine film of sweat catching the meager light available like moonlight on a pond. This patient’s chest rose and fell steadily, rhythmically, and with strength.
The visitor smiled underneath a surgical mask. “Don’t worry, you’ll soon be joining him…” the voice said, devoid of any compassion or warmth. Eyes filled with cold contempt traced over the second patient’s face, mapping every curve, feature and characteristic to mind, with the same attention to detail as would an expert cartographer. Then, silently, the visitor disappeared back through the doorway, leaving the old man and this silent witness alone.
Chapter Six
What sounded like the roar of a mating walrus drew their attention. Even the penguins surrounding Presley’s feet flinched at the sound. The jarring bark came again, only this time it took on a human quality.
“What the hell’s going on here?” a voice demanded.
Carter dropped the gun to his side.
“The park’s closed, you shouldn’t be in here,” the security guard said, stepping out of the shadows.
A heap of blubber stepped out of the darkness, wrapped in a dark blue uniform with ‘Bronx Zoo Security Enforcement Officer’ stitched across its chest pocket. The man’s undersized shirt covered swollen breasts that any teenage girl would have died for. A large, bushy moustache wandered across the lower half of the ruddy face at an odd angle; he barked again, his voice breaking with a bronchial dry rasp.
“What the hell are you doing here?” the guard asked.
What seemed like a hundred different questions and answers raced through Carter’s head, all within a second. Was he prepared to shoot Perkins in front of a witness, possibly endangering an innocent bystander? Would he be able to convince the security guard that he was indeed a cop, tracking down a cop-killer? Possibly. But the guard would probably want in on the action, offering to assist – no doubt. No, Carter thought, he couldn’t allow someone else to intervene. Perkins was not, under any circumstances, heading towards a prison cell this night – or any other night.
None of these things mattered in the end, because it was something else entirely that stopped Carter from blowing away the figure before him.
Hate.
Surprisingly, this hate was to be Presley’s saviour – for now.
Was Carter ready, willing, able to relinquish this hate? Hate: an emotion that had driven him like an obsessive and tormented drug addict for the last three months. If he did, what would be left? Grief?
Grief was too potent an emotion for Carter to handle. The detective knew now, unquestionably, that if he was to kill Perkins then all that would be left for him to do was grieve. And he also knew that that would tear him apart, piece-by-piece. What he needed was a reason for being. Only Perkins offered that now, and incredibly, only if he continued to live.
His mind reached this conclusion before the guard had a chance to either draw his weapon or activate his flashlight. And, before his identity had been compromised, Carter turned his back on them both.
In a show of bravado, the guard took a few faltering steps, demanding for Carter to freeze. But Carter was back through the torn tent flap, returning the way he’d come, before being forced to explain or identify himself.
The guard’s attention returned to Perkins. “What the hell is this?” he questioned, now unbuttoning his holster. “You’d better not be some goddamn animal activist. We had us a few of those earlier. Idiots opened up a load of cages, chanting a load of crap about equal rights and love to all God’s creatures. We had to kick their butts all the way back to suburbia first thing this morning.”
Surprised to be alive, Presley uttered a nervous laugh.
“What the fuck’s so funny, wiseass?” the guard asked.
“Nothing,” Perkins replied. “Just thankful to be alive on such a wonderful night.”
“Really?”
“Yeah – really.”
The guard grunted something under his breath. This wasn’t how things should have gone. This asshole and his disappearing friend should have pleaded for forgiveness, regretful for their intrusion, and followed him heads bowed and in tow until they’d been escorted – permanently - out of the main gate.
Not knowing what else to say, the guard said, “Get the fuck out of my pool.”
Perkins dutifully obliged, leaving his captivated audience behind him. He stepped out of the shallow water, quickly forming a small pool of his own around his scuffed shoes.
“I should arrest you for trespassin’,” the guard said.
Thinking on his feet, Perkins replied, “Listen, buddy, I ain’t got anywhere to go and I was just hungry.”
“What?” his captor gawped. “Wait… You weren’t gonna eat one of… those, were you?” One fat finger pointed towards the group of assembled penguins.
Presley almost laughed at the absurdity of the remark, but then realising he was in the presence of an intellect even more inferior than his own, a rare occasion indeed, he decided to play out the situation. “I’m real hungry, haven’t eaten in weeks.”
The guard eyed him with indecision. “My Mary’s gonna kill me if she finds out, but I’ve got a few sandwiches left over in my lunch. She always packs a few too many,” he said, patting his ample gut. “Okay, I can let this minor incident go – this time. You’d best come this way,” he directed, tipping his double chin.
Presley took the lead, with the guard trailing a few paces behind.
***
As they made their way towards the security station, the guard felt his initial anxiety surprisingly lifted. Just a homeless guy in search of food was all that had transpired, nothing he couldn’t handle. In all honesty, the guard actually felt relieved at having company, no matter how unsavoury the source. All this darkness and hootin’, hollerin’ and squawkin’ had started to get the better of him. And, although the morning’s clean-up had gone well, just a few native pigs and monkeys to round up, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something far more malevolent had been released and, was out there, somewhere, licking its lips hungrily, and just waiting for a tasty bit of prey to cross its path. At least now there’d be two of them to tackle, and the guard had already decided a shot in the homeless guy’s leg would give him the advantage to get away. Afterwards, he could simply say he’d accidentally shot the tramp while trying to save him. There could even be a medal awarded if such a thing happened.
The guard followed the hobo, happily oblivious to the fact that the only thing free to kill a man tonight was walking a few feet in front of him.
Chapter Seven
Eugene Profit’s gnarled hand punched the vending machine. A female orderly passing by witnessed the confrontation; she sucked air through clamped teeth in a show of disdain, and unwittingly brought herself within striking distance of the old coach’s venom.
“They did what?” he said again, his hand banging out another hollow boom.
Marianna reached out to take the old guy’s arm. “They posted Joseph in the wrong unit. He spent the night in geriatrics, instead of intensive care.”
“Ridiculous!” Profit barked, turning his anger away from the drinks machine.
“I know,” Marianna agreed. “Anything could have happened to him.” She looked tired. Her hair was scraped into a tight ponytail, and although she only occasionally wore make-up – her skin naturally healthy and flawless – today two dark rings had fixed themselves around russet eyes. Her cheeks were drawn, making her normally radiant face look gaunt.
“How did this happen?” Profit asked.
Marianna shrugged her shoulders. “Some sort of mix-up with names… I’m not sure.”
“So where is he now?”
“Back in intensive care.”
“C’mon,” Marianna said, “Jak
e’s already with him.”
“You thought about suing this goddamn hospital?” Profit snarled.
“That can wait. Joseph’s our only concern, for now.”
They left the battered vending machine behind them and, after a short elevator ride, arrived on Joseph’s level. Marianna led them towards his room.
“Mrs. Ruebins,” a voice called.
Marianna spun on her heels to find Joseph’s doctor heading quickly towards them. She sensed Profit tense, as if he was readying himself for a much wanted – and needed – confrontation. Having already endured a torrent of apologies regarding last night’s blunder, Marianna decided that diplomacy, rather than dispute, would be more helpful towards Joseph’s immediate future.
“Doctor,” she greeted, forcing a weak smile.
The man caught up to them, his necktie askew slightly and lungs breathing heavily. Feeling he hadn’t apologised nearly enough, he began to offer another string of apologies, hands raised in submission.
Profit took an unconscious step forward, and Marianna watched as his gnarled fingers formed into tight fists.
“Eugene,” she said, bringing herself between the two men. “Why don’t you see if either Joseph or Jake needs anything? Both must be getting hungry by now.”
The doctor started to speak – something about Joseph needing to follow a restrictive diet – but, then seeing the hostility written across the old man’s features, apparently decided to let protocol slip on this one occasion.
