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Dr. Lyon checked Huit’s pulse with a stethoscope and a digital timer, and she recorded his heart rate on the sheet. Then she performed the standard blood pressure reading before unstrapping the cuff from his arm. She opened up the large folder of records that went along with his visit, and she leaned in close to his ear to whisper.
“I know your secret,” she hinted with a smile, and then she leaned back in her chair to see his reaction. After an eight second pause, Huit managed to return the grin, and Dr. Lyon confirmed the previous physician’s observations. “Your heart rate should be seventy-two beats per minute, but its consistently nine beats per minute. With that slow of a pace, your blood pressure should be lower, yet it matches a healthy person’s. You,” she pointed at him with emphasis, “live on a much slower pace than the rest of us. But you’re as healthy as any athlete that I’ve ever examined. And what’s more amazing is your age, Huit. One hundred twenty years by our records and by your own admission. Heck, these scanned documents from the military are dated ‘1917’, and yet you look no older than a teenager. You have a slowed metabolism that holds your body young, but you must have grown into a young man by the time you were drafted,” she marveled as she threw her hands into the air. “You’re a mystery, but . . .” she declared with one finger in pointed to the ceiling, “I believe that you live at 1/8th the pace of the rest of the world, and therefore your heart rate is 1/8th of a normal person’s, and you will live 8 times longer than the average person.” When she finished her dissertation, she laid her hands on her lap and waited for his reply. Over the next few minutes, Huit made a request from Dr. Lyon for a pen and paper, and he spent another ten minutes scribing out his reply. Dr. Lyon could not wait for him to hold up the answer, and when he had finished writing, she stood from her chair and looked down at the note.
“Exactly, my dear,” the note read, and she nodded her approval.
“Now, perhaps, we can get somewhere,” she added and went back to her seat. “Tell me about yourself, how you came to be in your condition? How you ended up in a nursing facility?” Huit began to write, but the process of scribing was so slow that Dr. Lyon realized that she would have to let him complete the answers to the questions on his own time. She raised her wrist and looked at her watch, and Huit instantly knew where this conversation was heading.
“Huit, our visit is nearing an end today,” the doctor explained with a smile. “Can you please bring the notes back with you on the next visit, because I am very curious to hear your story?”
“Sure,” he thought to himself, and he stopped writing a few seconds afterwards. Dr. Lyons called Urina into the room, and the nursing assistant helped him get back into the wheelchair.
“Urina, it’s chilly outside. Where are Huit’s shoes?” the doctor inquired, and Urina shrugged her shoulders to indicate that she had no idea where the man’s shoes were. “He had some the last time he was here because our office provided them for him.” Urina never voiced an opinion one way or the other to the doctor’s questions. She simply wheeled him out of the examination room and signed the forms at the front desk before leaving. Urina really did not know where Huit’s shoes were, but she also did not seem to care. To her, Huit was just another name on the schedule. His life was his own, and she thought very little of his existence when she finished work every day. Actually, she thought very little of his needs while at work. After all, he could not express his thoughts, dreams, or desires to her in a way that she could understand, so she saw him as just another “chore” in the day.
The automatic doors of the doctor’s office opened to let them through the exit, and Urina pushed Huit’s wheelchair into the diagonal lines of the parking space access. She placed both of her hands on her hips with a sigh, and she shook her head.
“I wish Doug was here,” she said aloud, and then she left Huit alone while she started the van. She had forgotten to engage the wheel brake on Huit’s chair, and the wheelchair rolled backwards into the next empty spot and kept moving downhill toward the edge of the sloped parking lot. Butterflies churned in Huit’s stomach as he watched the van move further and further away until the wheels struck the curb at the bottom of the parking lot and stopped. Huit’s body had gone rigid with the excitement, and he bounced out of the seat and onto the grass.
“Man, that’s going to leave a mark,” he moaned to himself as he looked up at the van. Urina now stood beside the van, looking puzzled about where he could possibly have gone in his wheelchair. She had missed the whole event and was standing with her hands on her hips as she finally noticed Huit laying in the grass at the bottom of the hill. “Oh, how I wish Doug was here,” he thought as she stormed down the hill and looked around to see if anyone else had noticed her mistake. There was no one else around the empty cars when she reached him, and she quickly grabbed hold of his hands to drag him face first onto the seat of the wheelchair. The stench from the filthy seat wafted into Huit’s nostrils, and he gagged with the smell.
“That’s what you get, Huit, for trying to run away,” she said as she shook her head and caught her breath from lifting him. “Serves you right,” Urina scolded him, and she yanked on his pants to help lift him up further into the chair with no success. The wheels moved again, and she ran over her own foot with the effort, bringing about a few well-placed words that will not be captured in this writing. “You’ve done it now. I’m going to have to go get help,” she said as she hobbled up the hill. At the door to the office, she turned around and yelled out to him, “Don’t go anywhere!!”
“Yeah,” Huit thought, “I’ll keep that in mind,” he reflected with his face smashed against the filthy seat. A few minutes later, he had his head raised and was making a strong effort to get himself situated into the seat of the wheelchair when Dr. Lyons came running out to help.
“Urina!! What have you done?!!” she exclaimed as she backed the wheelchair down from the curb and started pushing him up the hill to the van. “There is a brake built into the wheelchair for a reason,” she snapped. Urina followed behind with her head bowed, not saying anything and letting the doctor do the work. Dr. Lyons leaned over and whispered into Huit’s ear.
“I’m going to get you out of that facility before you get hurt,” she promised and wiped the loose grass clippings from his stained pants. With a stern eye and a pointed finger, the doctor lit into Urina again. “Use the brake!! That’s what it’s there for!” she snapped and headed back through the door of her office. Urina kept quiet and nodded as she watched the doctor disappear. Then she lowered the lift, rolled Huit onto it, and raised him into the van. She slammed the side door and ran around the van to get in the driver’s seat.
“You’re too much trouble, Wheaty. Too much trouble,” Urina grumbled as she sped off into traffic.
Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound Annual 3 Page 2
