Northern Lights

by Raymond Strom

  “Your nerves think the fingers are still there,” she told me as the coolness expanded to the tips of my remaining fingers and the screams in my mind quieted. “They keep sending messages and then activate your pain receptors when they don’t receive a response.”

  She stood for a moment to be sure I went numb, then I settled back into my bed. The pain didn’t return but neither did sleep and, though I hit the yellow button a couple of times, I sat there awake, shifting back and forth, unable to get comfortable. I was unsure what day it was, how long I had been asleep, and there was no way to find out. I heard a steady ticking that I knew was a clock, but I couldn’t find it no matter where I looked. Maybe my morphine drip was on a timer—that would explain why the button was no longer working. Restless, I tossed my blanket to the floor and saw that my restraints were mere buckles on leather straps so I went at them with my good hand until I was free. I swung my legs out onto the floor, my bare feet on the cold tile, and my fluid cart followed me on wheels as I made my way into the hallway.

  Outside the door of the room across the hall, a security guard sat slumped in a plastic chair, arms crossed, snoring. Svenson lay on the bed inside, a thick white tube jammed down his throat, his head shaved, and a long zigzag of stitches across the top of his skull. I wheeled my cart past the guard and leaned in close to find that the youth had fled from his face, his cheeks loose and jowly like an old man’s.

  “Sven?” I said, expecting no response, but his eyes bolted open and I jumped backward, my cart jangling in the shuffle. I gave him a wide berth but when I saw he wasn’t moving I leaned in close again to see that his eyes were unfocused, sightless. I picked up one of his arms by the wrist and watched it drop, dead weight. He wouldn’t have struggled had I held a pillow over his face, but I was no killer and he was no longer a threat, so I wheeled my cart back to my bed and lay down.

  * * *

  At sunrise, a woman in blue scrubs sat me down at the table by the window and pulled the remaining fingers on my left hand back one at a time, middle, index, thumb, working to maintain elasticity. She had set up two mirrors so I could see my hand from other angles—an old trick to get the brain and the nerves to realize that an amputated part of the body is really gone.

  “You’ll get on without those you are missing,” she said. “It’ll be painful but you’ll get over it.”

  Outside the window an old oak tree had dropped a long, leafless branch onto the gentle grassy slope that led down to Fern Street. A black squirrel lived in the oak and that first morning I watched him tap at this twisted stick with his paw while we stretched my fingers. The angle of the slope and the corkscrew shape of the branch made it roll back down the hill every time the squirrel pushed it up, and each time it came rolling the squirrel jumped a foot, flipping backwards and sideways into the air to dodge the stick and hide for a time in plain sight before returning for another push. One strong push sent the stick rolling a little farther, and when the squirrel landed on top of it, the pair rolled down the slope like lovers. At the bottom, the squirrel wiggled out from under the stick and gave it another go but this time, stuck in a groove on flatter land, the squirrel’s partner was unresponsive. The squirrel tapped a few more times but without the same response he turned his head and went on his way, though he did return a few minutes later to try it once more.

  I longed for Russell in those first few days in the hospital, but he never came. The hours passed as I lay in bed, listening to the odd ticking mark rhythm against the melodies of the machines keeping Svenson alive and reliving the moments that led the two of us to the hospital. The mystery that remained was whether or not Russell had set me up like Svenson claimed. Svenson would have loved to shoot me in the head and throw me into that truck with Jenny, I had no issue with that, but remembering the blaring horn that afternoon, our signal, I had to believe Russell had done what he could for me—at the very worst he’d been playing both sides—running off alone only when everything fell apart. I couldn’t blame him for not making his way back to check on me. No one had been counting on Chelsea’s rage and the cast-iron pan.

  When the stretching was through, the therapist did nerve tests with safety pins, dragging the point along my wound. She explained the surgical procedure: the operating doctor had taken the skin from my discarded ring finger, sliced it lengthwise and peeled it away, then used it for a patch to cover the gap made by the amputation—my skin had set, so now we were waiting for the nerves to begin working.

  “When do you think that’ll happen?” I asked.

  “Maybe never,” she said. “We have a long treatment plan ahead, so get ready to be here a lot.”

  I told her then that I’d be moving to Minneapolis at the end of the month, then struggled to remember the name of the dorm that had been listed on my college papers.

  “The university hospital is the best in the state,” she said. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

  She dragged the pin across the back of my good hand for comparison and I turned back to the window, wondering how long Russell had waited out by the road. Of course we hadn’t talked about it, hadn’t made a plan beyond meeting up there—had no plan at all for if it turned out badly—so I’ll never know what he was thinking. Our inability to plan beyond the immediate had been a main feature of our time together. I knew he couldn’t help it. He and I had been raised to think that something was wrong with people like us and the less we said the better, the less of a chance anyone else might catch on. My hope was that he would be able to open up, wherever it was that he finally found himself.

  When my physical therapy ended, I wheeled my cart over to Svenson’s room, past the again sleeping guard, and watched the television that they left on to stimulate Svenson’s brain. The remote by his bed could switch the set on and off but I couldn’t change the volume, stuck on loud, or the channel, stuck on the news. The big story that week was Timothy McVeigh’s formal sentencing and his final comments before the judge handed down the order. The commentary went on and on, talking head after talking head, until they finally released his statement, a quotation attributed to Louis Brandeis. I stood and wheeled my cart as close to the television as possible to hear.

  “Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher,” read by someone else, played over a chalk sketch of him standing up in court wearing a fresh buzz cut, a cream-colored jail uniform. “For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.”

  Particularly true here, I thought, looking over at Svenson. Too bad he didn’t get to see it, but I took comfort in the idea that, soon enough, he’d get a sentencing of his own.

  * * *

  The sheriff came by with flowers and sweet treats. We nibbled cookies as he told me of Kristina’s progress, still tired all the time but sober now. She hadn’t taken the news of Jenny’s death well. The sheriff had to hold her down in her treatment center bedroom when he told her, until she cried herself to sleep, and since then she had been in a somber and silent mood. She was to be released from the treatment facility the day after I would leave the hospital.

  “You know,” he said, pointing at the cart next to me, “if you don’t want to end up where she is, you might want to take that out of your arm.”

  “It’s the only thing that can stop this phantom pain,” I said. “It’s like the air where my fingers were itches and pulsates. It was worse before, but it’s getting better.”

  “Well, I don’t like it,” he said.

  I took a shortbread and ate it in one bite, then asked the question I had been saving since he arrived.

  “Have you seen Russell around?”

  “The other phantom pain?” the sheriff teased. “We had an APB on his license plate, found his car a block away from the Amtrak station in Saint Paul with a bullet from Svenson’s rifle lodged in the back.”

  “So he got away?”

  “You could say that,” the sheriff said. “He’s running from something but he hasn’t done anything worth
my time. We wanted to talk to him at first but now I’m just glad he isn’t in here with you. Or in the morgue.”

  * * *

  Every security guard posted outside Svenson’s room was always sleeping so I was happier when anyone else was on the wing, even a nurse checking Svenson’s catheter or a janitor stopping by with the broom. Late at night when no one else was around, I worried about Svenson waking up, ripping the tubes from his face and arms, then making his way to my bed to finish the job that his sister had interrupted. My dreams took us outside the hospital, to the More-4-You parking lot, where I was happy to see that my legs had come unglued, the worst part of my recurring nightmare finally over. I could walk when I had to, and when Svenson came after me in his truck, I could run. Each of these dreams roused my fear that he would someday wake up, but I would find out that this could not happen.

  One morning, a screaming in the hallway pulled me out of sleep. “Untle Sven, Untle Sven, wake up!”

  I opened my eyes to see the little girl I had met out at Svenson’s house, Chelsea’s daughter. Wearing a bright yellow sundress, with her hair pulled back into two braids, she danced around the hallway and made her wake-up request into a song, shaking her hips from side to side and pointing at the ground with her fingers.

  “Hey Untle Sven, wake up. Hey Untle Sven, wake up now. Hey Untle Sven, wake up. Hey Untle Sven, wake up—YOU COW!”

  An older man scurried into view and picked the girl up, told her to be quiet. I was startled to see who it was.

  “Rick?”

  The man turned to me with the girl in his arms. He was still the same skeleton with rough leather skin pulled tight, topped with thin blond hair and a face full of pockmarks, but no hint of recognition in his eyes. My hospital gown and new haircut were the perfect disguise.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Did you say something?”

  “No, no,” I said. “I thought I recognized you.”

  “No problem.”

  Rick turned around and took the girl to Svenson’s room. I climbed out of bed to follow and lingered in the hallway. As they neared the bed Rick picked up Svenson’s hand and gave it to the girl, who held it in both of hers. Svenson’s eyes opened to slits and he turned his head toward them. Eavesdropping from my room, I had heard the doctors discussing his injuries—it was hard to tell if he knew what was going on around him, but he wasn’t dead or dying and he didn’t need the machines to keep him breathing anymore.

  “Untle SVEN!” the girl yelled. “WAKE UP! Daddy! Make Untle Sven wake UP!”

  Footsteps clicked down the hallway and when I saw Chelsea’s long red hair swing around the corner my heart sped up to a drumroll. I spread my arms wide as I walked toward her and she did the same, so that we came together in a tight hug. I didn’t know what to say, how to thank her, but she would soon let me know.

  More footsteps broke our embrace, then Leon came down the hall with a doctor and three other men in suits, chatting in whispers on their way to Svenson’s room, failing to notice me and Chelsea. I thought she would join the group but she turned back after we watched them pass.

  “This is going to be very hard on Jennifer,” she said.

  “Jennifer?”

  “My daughter. Once she understands what’s happened to her uncle, she’ll be crushed.”

  As if this was her cue, Jennifer came running into the hallway with Rick behind her but he grabbed her by the armpits and hauled her back into the room.

  “Rick’s her father?”

  She nodded and the little drama of their family came into full view. Chelsea, clueless and young and not yet aware of the family business, had taken Rick up on an offer similar to the one he had made me on the day of Svenson’s Confederate flag revival and ended up with more than she had expected: little Jennifer. Rick must have kept on his same reckless course, leading them to the laundromat on the day of my arrival to wash the scabies out of all their clothes.

  “And he’s back in your life now?” I asked.

  “Since the accident,” she said, “yes. He isn’t living with us yet but he’s her father. It doesn’t feel right to keep her away from him. Not now.”

  We stood there for a moment and Leon’s words floated down the hallway as he discussed vital signs and rehabilitation plans with the suited men and the doctor.

  “The Aurora is all we have now,” Chelsea said. “My mother and brother both gone who knows where, my father dead, and Sven now like this. I know you think he was a monster but, no matter what I’ve said before, he was our protector, he did what he had to do to keep our family together. If the Aurora gets shut down, me and little Jennifer will lose everything.”

  Her daughter ran out into the hallway again but this time Rick didn’t catch her. She came over to us and wrapped her arms around her mother’s leg.

  “I know you,” she said. “You’re good at Intenno.” Then she laughed and hid her face behind her hands, peeking through her fingers. Suddenly, I understood that the Nintendo I had played with her that night was my own, stolen by Rick and given to his daughter.

  “Hello, Jennifer,” I said.

  “Hey, Chelsea,” Leon called, sticking his head out the door, then when he saw me: “What are you doing here?”

  I held up my hand, wound toward him.

  “I tried to warn you,” Leon said, then waved Chelsea over as he turned back to the group.

  Chelsea dropped a kiss, warm and wet, on my cheek, then left to join the group in Svenson’s room. I took two steps nearer the doorway and listened as they all turned toward Sven. The doctor looked into his eyes and ears and did reflex tests before one of the suited men asked him a series of questions.

  “Can this individual hear?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Can this individual see?”

  “No.”

  “Is this individual fit for trial? And if so, would he be able to participate in his own defense?”

  “No. And no.”

  “The prosecution of this case is hereby suspended,” another of the suited men piped up, “however, the indictment stands and, if this individual again becomes competent to understand the charges against him, he will see his day in court.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that,” the doctor said.

  The suited men left the room and I was enraged but held my tongue as the doctor discussed with Leon and Chelsea how Svenson would be released to their care, a convalescent’s room in the farmhouse where he had grown up, free from prison. I could only hope that somewhere inside that shut-down body he was still awake and aware of what he had done, living out in complete isolation the life sentence he deserved.

  * * *

  My first night out of the hospital, I lay in the dark on Kristina’s couch, sleepless, when the sheriff came up the stairs with a plastic bag. He whispered my name.

  “I’m awake,” I said, then sat up and switched on the lamp.

  “I forgot to give you this,” he said and tossed the bag. “It’s the clothes you were wearing that day and whatever else you had when we found you. Might want to open it in the kitchen.”

  There was a lot of blood. Being the tourniquet and the bandage, my flannel shirt had soaked up most of it, but the rest of my clothes would have been ruined even if the emergency workers hadn’t cut them off me with jagged vertical slashes. The three hundred-dollar bills I had gotten from Leon were still in my pants as well as the keys to both my place and Kristina’s, and beneath all that, alone in the corner of the sack, was the glass ring. Though I did keep the keys and the money, the ring was the most important object among everything I owned. Jenny had said that if anyone could care for a glass ring it was me, so I threw my clothes in the garbage and slid Jenny’s ring on the finger nearest my injury, then made my way back to the couch in the dark and drifted away.

  We didn’t get much done that next day while we waited for Kristina’s discharge time, but we did box up Jenny’s room, as well as all the pictures of her that hung around the house, so Kristina wouldn
’t have to be reminded of her right away. The bulky safety glove that I wore slowed me down. The main protection was a curved piece of plastic that I strapped in over the missing fingers, to protect the wound from being banged or otherwise injured, but the wider, heavier hand caused it to happen more often. I was ready to quit long before the sheriff said it was time.

  I waited on the front steps for the sheriff to return with Kristina but the look she gave me when they pulled up made me wish I hadn’t. The sheriff parked the car, then walked around to open the passenger door and help Kristina out. She moved slowly, even with the sheriff’s help, and didn’t look at me again as they made their way inside so the sheriff could lay Kristina on her bed, where she would spend the rest of the evening. Late that first night she was back, in a moment that gave me flashbacks of my mother and the Fisherman, I heard Kristina and the sheriff arguing in her bedroom while I tried to sleep on the couch.

  “There wasn’t any problem until he came around,” Kristina shouted.

  “For the last time,” the sheriff yelled, “he was the one who figured it all out!”

  Kristina thought Jenny’s death was my fault and that was fine. If that gave her the strength to get through her days, then she could think that. Not that I’m blameless, of course. I could have done more to keep Jenny safe. We all could have—me, Kristina, the sheriff—but I felt that we had done right by Jenny in getting Svenson off the streets and, though I wasn’t sure that Leon’s continuing business was a good thing, Chelsea and I had at least finished what Jenny had started.

  * * *

  I couldn’t stay at Jenny’s funeral, couldn’t watch them lower her into the ground, so I left my seat next to Kristina and the sheriff and wandered off through the cemetery, back past the obelisk and the aboveground crypt and, finally, Marta Mattson, the lonely reader whose husband never returned to spend his death beside her. She stood out as a silhouette before a beautiful late-summer day—fluffy white clouds lazed about in the sky and the scent of freshly mown grass hung in the air. I stuck my hand in my pocket and came out with the key to my place at the Arlington and figured I might as well go return it.