Dark Passage

by Griffin Hayes

  The next part of the test required him to speak to her and wait for a response.

  “Brenda,” he said. “This is Dr. Hunter, can you hear me?”

  Almost a full minute passed without a reply.

  “Brenda?”

  Blip blip blip

  He was looking at her bookcase as he waited, marveling at how neatly it was stacked and organized. Spines out, large to small from left to right. One of them caught his attention.

  Curious George Goes to the Hospital.

  A swell of nostalgia brushed over him and he approached the bookcase with all the wonder of a child. He scanned through the titles.

  Cat in the Hat… Are You My Mother?… The Very Hungry Caterpillar…

  She must have over a hundred books here and all of them for children. Hunter plucked Curious George from the stack and held it with reverence. The cardboard edges were frayed and several of the pages bent or scribbled on, which only seemed to strengthen the warm feeling he got from holding it. He flipped through crisp pages, smiling and giggling whenever he came to a picture or part he particularly cherished. When he arrived at the bit where George gets his X-ray, he noticed the slanted, open looped handwriting in the margin. Hunter began to read.

  The human body is a cesspool of germs and bacteria. Slithering eating shitting fucking all over your skin and in your mouth and in your guts. I was a nurse for fifteen years I know I know I know I know. I’ve seen it. The miracle of life. Bullshit. The real miracle is that it manages to go on in spite of the filth and the contamination. No one is immune. No matter how careful. Drop your guard for a moment and you’re a goner. One slip. One teensy-weensy slip. That’s all it…

  The noise behind him clamored for his attention. Brenda’s heart monitor was pinging like mad.

  BLIP BLIP BLIP

  He hurried to her side. Her heart rate was doing 190 bpm and Hunter could see the line zigzagging across the screen. He was still looking at the machine when he heard the other noise just below the racket of the chirping machines. A voice. One he didn’t recognize. Not at first. A woman’s voice.

  “Die…son.”

  It sounded raspy and slurred like someone stirring from a long sleep. Or was it the hoarse, ragged voice of someone trying to talk with a tube crammed down their throat?

  “Die…son.”

  Hunter’s heart was slamming wildly inside his chest. He looked down at Brenda’s face and saw her lips. They were chapped and raw and they were moving.

  When she spoke again he realized it was a question she was asking.

  “Die son?”

  “Dr. Hunter!”

  Hunter swung around so fast that Curious George fell from his hands and made a slapping sound as it smacked against the linoleum floor.

  Bowes scanned the book at his feet. “I didn’t leave you here to peruse Mrs. Barrett’s library.”

  Hunter looked at Brenda’s limp body, tubes running in and out. Her heart rate steady now. His hand went up, he was pointing at her, almost in accusation.

  “She said something.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She spoke.”

  Dr. Bowes nudged Hunter aside, lifted one of Brenda’s eyelids and flashed a light in her face. “Dr. Hunter, this better not be some kind of joke.”

  “I’m telling you!”

  “Her pupils are dilated and unresponsive.” Bowes removed a safety pin from the pocket of his lab coat, opened it and slid the tip of it underneath the nail on Brenda’s right index finger.

  “Don’t!” Hunter shouted.

  Bowes inserted the pin and a thin trickle of blood spilled out. But Brenda didn’t move.

  “I’m not a big fan of pranks, Dr. Hunter. I should tell you that right now so we don’t have anymore misunderstandings. Jokes and goofing off have their place, I won’t deny that. I assure you I’m as good a sport as any. But I just had to sew a man’s tongue back on that he tried to bite off for the third time this year. I hope you understand.”

  Hunter reached down and scooped up Curious George. His eyes never left Brenda. “Perfectly,” he said and he replaced the book on the shelf where he’d found it. Maybe Brenda’s deep coma and steady vitals meant she wasn’t even capable of the most primitive grunts and groans. But imagined or not, Hunter knew for sure he had distinctly heard her say two words: die and son.

  Hunter spun around. “I’m curious about something, Dr. Bowes, if you’ll indulge a newbie. Why was Brenda admitted to Sunnybrook?”

  Bowes stopped thumbing the push button on his pen. “The patients housed on the eighth floor have a rather disturbing past, Dr. Hunter. That should come as no surprise to you.”

  “Was she an abuser?”

  “She had a son, but let’s just say she wasn’t up for the mother of the year award. Can we leave it at that?”

  “She murdered him?” Hunter’s guessing game was starting to annoy Bowes even more.

  “The woman’s in a coma, I don’t see how any of this is relevant.”

  Hunter nodded. His line of questioning was making Bowes uncomfortable. The old man might not have come right out and said it, but the way his jaw muscles had tensed was all Tyson needed.

  And it was then that it hit him.

  DIE SON.

  But the tone of her garbled voice when she had said it made him all the more certain she was asking a question.

  DIE SON?

  Was it her dead son she was asking for? The rational part of his mind cried out in protest. No, no, no. Of course it wasn’t. He had found Curious George and there scribbled in the margin were the disjointed thoughts of an insane woman. His mind had fabricated the rest. You were freaked out, Hunter, admit it. They got you. Dr. Bowes, Cindi. They got you all wound up and then let you go spinning in circles.

  Or maybe he was projecting. He had done an entire project on it for a psych elective he had taken in college. Hunter scanned her bookcase for a second time, filled with children’s books, wondering how many others might contain cryptic passages. The woman’s entire psychological profile might be laid out before him. These books could be the very window into dementia he had been waiting for. A portal through which he could observe and record the strange and curious shapes he found lurking in those dark places no one wanted to look. Dr. Bowes mustn’t know about this. Hunter was sure a lazy bastard like Bowes would love nothing more than to steal his hard work and take all the glory for himself.

  Yes, he thought, turning the idea over in his mind now without finding a single crack. The prospect of working here at Sunnybrook might not be so bad after all. In fact, he felt like he may enjoy it a great deal.

  Chapter 6

  He wasn’t sure exactly why he still wore his wedding ring. God knows Tyson had passed up more than half a dozen opportunities to hock the thing. The band itself was fairly simple, nothing flashy or pretentious. Probably not worth a whole hell of a lot either. Three hundred tops. Nowhere near the million they had just lost after Castleman got cold feet. No, the ring meant nothing to him which was maybe why he was so surprised at how upset he became when he thought he had lost it. He had placed the ring by the kitchen sink so he could wash his hands after pan frying a piece of Chilean Sea Bass. Grasping for a paper towel he had sent the ring tumbling into the sink and dangerously close to the garbage disposal. With lightning speed he had snatched it up, but not before cursing himself for his stupidity. He’d held the ring for a long time after that, thinking about his son Kavi. Thinking about Ruma.

  But she wasn’t his anymore, was she? Lately he had been quick to remind himself of this new reality, but this time, the sting was particularly harsh.

  During the darkest times, when his life had started spinning completely out of control, there was no doubt that his family had been the first casualty. That old saying was playing loudly in his head: You hurt the ones you love the most. It certainly wasn’t an active transgression he was guilty of.

  Of course, he had been cross and short tempered with both of
them from time to time, maybe a touch more, but it wasn’t exactly him that was doing it. It was the Tyson that hadn’t had a proper night’s sleep in six months. Surely they knew that. In a strange sort of way, sitting here at Skip’s cottage in the middle of nowhere, sleeping again for the first time, his life was taking on a new clarity.

  Tyson fished his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed.

  The phone kept ringing. “Come on, Ruma, pick up.”

  The line clicked and a woman’s voice answered. “Hello?”

  For a moment Tyson wasn’t sure if he had done the wrong thing by calling.

  “Tyson, is that you?” The voice sounded annoyed.

  “Hi, Honey.”

  “Please don’t call me that.” A tinge of her Bengali accent was starting to come through as it always did when she was pissed off at him.

  “Technically we’re still married,” Tyson said.

  “I’m assuming you called to talk to Kavi? He’s been asking about you again.”

  “I was kinda hoping that we could talk first.”

  She laughed and the sound felt like hot knives sliding into his flesh.

  “We haven’t had a proper conversation in almost ten years. Why start now?”

  “It’s not too late to repair this. These last few months have been a doozy, I know, but we have too much history together to throw everything away so easily. I’m at the point now where I don’t care anymore about what happened between you and your gynecologist, Dr. Peekaboo or whatever his name is. “

  “First of all, you need to get your facts straight. His name is Packer, he’s a GP, not a gynecologist and nothing happened between us. You really need to stop trying to hand the responsibility for this off on me all the time. And for your information, our problems started long before this little sleeping crisis of yours transformed you into something out of a George Romero movie.”

  Tyson drew in a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Ruma. You’re right. I was way out of line. It’s just that Skip got me in touch with this doctor who’s given me this new drug. Without a word of a lie, I haven’t slept so soundly in all my life. I’m telling you, I’ve been reborn.”

  “More drugs?”

  “No, this one’s FDA approved, well, nearly.”

  “I’m not sure I believe you anymore.”

  Tyson felt his temper rising. He was laying his nuts out on a chopping block and she was winding up for a two-handed swing. “Come on, Ruma.”

  “You’ve spent your entire life failing, so why stop now?”

  “Bullshit,” he screamed, wondering whether Kavi was sitting nearby, listening to his dad shouting. “This website Skip and I are working on, Onesizefitsall.com. It’s gonna be huge. That’s not my opinion, that’s a fact.”

  “Another pipe dream, Tyson. When are you gonna wake up and join the rest of us in the real world? For years I’ve supported you in every way I could while you ran around from one dream to another. First that pyramid scheme that nearly wiped us out. Then that rental property. Why make money busting your hump when other people can make it for you? That’s what you said. And Kavi’s medical bills. Every time you find a new disease on the Internet you whisk him off to Doctor Cohen’s office.” He could hear her accent becoming thicker. “Those visits cost money. Lots of money. Money we don’t have. You used to wake up in the middle of the night screaming and for a long time I held you and then you grew distant and abusive and I stopped holding you. You take the people you love for granted and you do that for long enough you can kill the love, I don’t care how strong the love is, you can kill it.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  She wasn’t done.

  “If I was a wiser person I’d have recognized it before, but it’s only in this last home stretch that I’ve seen the truth. In all those pipe dreams of yours, you weren’t chasing something. Something has been chasing you and you’ve been running ever since. For the life of me I don’t know what it is. God knows in all the years we’ve been together you’ve never spoken to me about your childhood and what it must have been like to grow up with foster parents. But whatever happened in your life to make you this way, it started long before you and I and that’s something you can’t outrun, Tyson, no matter how far or how fast you go. I’ll bet all those times you wake up screaming that’s exactly what you’re doing. Running.”

  “I don’t run in my dreams.” Tyson’s voice was flat.

  The suddenness of his answer stunned Ruma into silence for a moment.

  “I mean, I don’t remember much of my dreams. Only snippets. But I know I’m not running. There’s something horrible in my head. It’s trapped in there and it’s angry and it’s pounding to get out. It’s an ugly thing and it wants to destroy everything I love, including you and Kavi.”

  More silence and Tyson wondered if he was scaring her.

  “I know this is the kinda thing a guy says before he buys a meat cleaver and chops his family into tiny bits, but I’m not crazy. And I don’t have a violent bone in my body. You know that.”

  He could hear her breathing on the other end of the line—or was she crying? “So what is this drug you’re taking? Nothing illegal, I hope.”

  “No, no. There’s a trial Skip told me about in lower Manhattan. It’s run by a faggoty little man named Stevens, but it seems to be working. And that’s my point, things may finally be turning around for me.”

  “So you joined a clinical trial. Why didn’t you come to me? You don’t spend ten years in the marketing department for a major Pharma company without knowing a thing or two about drugs.”

  “I wanted to, but I wanted to show you I could do this on my own. Besides, you probably would have signed me up for electro shock therapy instead.”

  “Don’t think the thought hasn’t crossed my mind.” She laughed and this time there was none of the biting edge from before. This was the Ruma he had fallen in love with. “I’m glad to hear you’re sleeping again.”

  “Maybe someday soon I’ll be sleeping next to you, instead of here at Skip’s summer house.”

  She didn’t dignify the comment with a reply and Tyson wasn’t sure whether that was a good or a bad thing.

  “Someone wants to talk to you,” she said.

  The sound of rustling, as though the phone were being dragged across the floor and then silence.

  “Hello?” Tyson said, wondering if Kavi had hung up by mistake. It wouldn’t be the first time. After all, he was only five years old.

  “Buzz, you there? Talk to Daddy for a minute.”

  Then Ruma again. “He’s been asking to call you all night and now he’s clamming up. I’m putting you on speakerphone.”

  “Kavi, your daddy loves you so much, you know that?”

  On the other end, Tyson could hear Ruma giggling. “He’s nodding. Daddy can’t see you, honey. We’re not on the computer.”

  “All right, well, give him a kiss for me.”

  “Will do.”

  The line went dead and Tyson slowly set the phone back on the cradle. He could feel his stomach grumbling so he busied himself with finishing dinner. Thirty minutes later he was seated before a thirteen-inch TV wolfing down the Sea Bass, grilled potatoes and some wild rice. He chased that down with a glass of red wine and flipped between the only three channels that weren’t completely fuzzy. One of those channels, he thanked God, was WNBC 4 from New York where he could get his Mets scores and news highlights. Maybe tomorrow he would climb up on the roof and see if he couldn’t do something about fixing that antenna.

  From where he was sitting, Tyson could see the injector sitting on the kitchen counter and beside that, the dark blue vials of Noxil. The sight of them reminded him of the journal he was supposed to be keeping. That was the agreement, right? He got to be the guinea pig and they got their diary outlining all the ghoulish side effects he experienced. He could just imagine Skip coming to close the place up in the fall, wondering why he hadn’t heard from his friend in so long. Wasn’t hard to visualize the ho
rror on Skip’s face when he found Tyson lying on the floor with the injector in his hand, dead and bloated. A diary lying next to his ghastly corpse and on its pages the unspeakable details of how a little vial of blue liquid had slowly killed him.

  He let out a dry, humorless laugh and tried to shake off the thought as one might try to shake off a cold sweat. Man dies taking experimental drug. Wouldn’t Sino-Meck just love that kind of publicity? But truth be told, he wasn’t sure yet what he should put in that diary. He’d slept for a thirty-six-hour stretch without a single nightmare and that had definitely been a good thing.

  Tyson went to the kitchen drawer and pulled it open, not completely aware that he was cringing. The Han and Chewy action figures were still there. He plucked them out of the drawer, gripping their tiny plastic bodies until he could feel the sharp edges biting into his palms. No, the pain was proof enough they were real. No doubt about that. Which was good because it meant he wasn’t going crazy. He also knew he wasn’t at home in his bed right now dreaming all of this up. So what the hell was going on?

  He decided to go over the facts one by one until he could make sense of what had happened. He arrived on the nineteenth, took a second dose and proceeded to sleep and presumably dream peacefully for thirty-six hours, give or take. One of those dreams, he remembered, had been about the very toys he was now clutching tightly in his hands.

  Upon awakening, he left briefly to do some shopping and when he returned he found those same toys in a kitchen drawer. So the question was simple: how did they get there?

  Tucked away in his storage locker in the basement of his apartment, behind an old water damaged reproduction Renoir and crammed beneath an unused Ab Roller, was a fairly nondescript little Star Wars lunch box. The metal kind kids used to go crazy over. Resting inside were the sole surviving relics from Tyson’s early childhood and it was there that he kept Han and Chewy. Granted it had been years, perhaps even decades, since he’d peeked inside the box, but nevertheless he couldn’t help but wonder: What if he were to look inside that box and find them sitting there? What would that mean?