In that wonderful place, it was quite alright with everyone that she accompany me down to surgery. “You’ll have to leave before they begin the procedure,” one of the nurses told her.
Off we went and the attendant sang as we rolled along and told me that I was going to be fine. Then deep in the hospital, far into the night, we were in the surgical anteroom. One of the young doctors who had operated on Jamine was part of the team.
He and the others seemed like college students as they joked with Antonia and me while we awaited the surgeon who was late. Then she was there in her red jacket and dress and greeted us all.
I thanked Antonia for being with me as they hooked me up. I held onto the image of her, as everyone smiled at me and I was gone while wondering if I was ever coming back.
12.
When I awoke a young man with a shaved head said, “Good morning, Richard, you’re in surgical recovery. My name is Scott Horton and I’m a nurse. How do you feel?”
“Like I’ve just been hit by a truck but haven’t felt the pain yet,” I said and he grinned, nodded with approval, pleased I was coherent enough to attempt a joke.
Just before I had awakened, in the moment between darkness and light, I had been in the vast space with only the light of the hospital patients’ computer screens revolving around me like suns in galaxies.
In the way it happens in dreams, I knew these were all the unconscious patients in all the hospitals in the world. Together we formed an anima, an intelligence. Most of us were part of this for a few hours, for a day sometimes. For a few it was for months and even years.
The policeman looked up from the computer with his white crewcut, his battered nose, his cigarette.
“Someone told me your name is McGittrick,” I said.
“If that name pleases you…” he shrugged.
“In other words I’m making you up as I go along.”
“Somewhere inside you knew someone oversaw the intersection of one world and the next. First you put a face on that one. Now you’ve found a name for me. Mostly I don’t deal personally with people in your situation. I don’t have to because they aren’t aware of me.
“We could keep you in a coma for as long as you live. Instead we are sending you back a changed man,” he told me. “You’ll never be able to forget what you’ve seen and you’ll never again accept the waking world as the real one.”
I had been going to ask him what he wanted. Instead, I had awakened to find Nurse Horton.
In the bright early morning in the hospital, he showed me a new button on my IV stand. “You press that when you feel any discomfort and the painkiller is injected directly into your bloodstream,” he told me. You can do that at five-minute intervals whenever you feel you need to. I’ll be back to see you very shortly.”
I held his arm and said, “Please don’t go away. I saw this guy just before I came to. The nurse upstairs called him McGittrick. He said they were using my mind while I was unconscious, that he could keep me in a coma for as long as I lived.”
He smiled. “Well you tell McGittrick to back off. You’re my patient. We have you now and we’re not letting go. We’re going to get you cleaned up and I’d like you to walk a little some time today.”
An orderly came in and took my temperature. One of the young doctors who had assisted in the surgery came by. “Things went very well. We’re confident we removed the obstruction. We opened you up along the old cancer surgery scar. We didn’t find any cancer this time.”
Another orderly took blood. Scott returned and the two of them helped me sit up and put my feet over the edge of the bed. “You’re doing great,” he said and the orderly agreed. I slid off the bed and my feet found the floor.
The orderly pushed the IV stand. Scott held me. I walked around the room. The sun was shining outside.
“I think I can do this by myself,” I said. They made me take hold of the handle bar. I pushed it out the door and into the hallway and back again.
“Very good,” they told me, and I lay down on the bed. I was sitting propped up when my sister and brother- in-law came in. My surgeon dropped by in her red suit and talked with us. Everyone seemed very pleased.
When I was alone, Scott brought me some paper and a pen that I asked for. He sat with me for a little while, told me that he was thirty-three years old, that he came from a town outside Boston and lived now in Chelsea within walking distance of the hospital. I wondered who he lived with but didn’t ask.
I wrote Scott a rambling thank you note/love letter and added at the end of it, “People who have hallucinations after operations sometimes don’t seem to come all the way back. Part of them gets lost. The hallucination can be at least as good, as powerful and compelling and meaningful, as real life. Especially since real life is as a patient, the victim of a disease. The hallucination is so engrossing that they don’t want to leave it behind. I’m afraid that will happen with me.”
Scott had gone off duty by the time I finished writing. I spent a very bad night in the recovery ward. People were waxing the floor, cleaning the walls. The nurses were slow to respond. Being awake was a nightmare.
Then McGittrick was with me. “You’re not supposed to talk about what I’ve told you, asshole,” he said. “That other time, you wrote that book about the world where people dying of cancer could become gods. But you made it science fiction and anyway nobody read it so that was okay.
“That young nurse who thinks he’s so tough? ‘We have you now and we’re not letting go,’ he says. When his time comes he will be ours and he won’t even know it’s happened.”
“What’s the point of all this?” I asked.
“You know how people when dying feel themselves drawn toward some kind of glowing light? They find it comforting. Well those globes floating in the flickering brain, the warm light of death and the promise of peace is you and all the other assholes hooked up to machines, each contributing his or her little bit. Last night you were part of the light dying souls were drawn toward. That’s one of the things we do.”
“Why an old cop, why not an angel with a fiery sword?”
“You don’t believe in angels. You have a thing for the law. Your kind usually shows that by being bad and getting caught. The cuffs go on and you swoon. You were too bright to get a criminal record. Our reports say you have promise.”
“Before the operation you were threatening me with mutilation. Now…”
“I’m going to offer you my job.”
“Right,” I said. “But you don’t exist. You told me so.”
He seemed a bit amused. “That’s not as big a deal as you make it seem.”
“And the phony charges?”
“Could also not be a big deal. That depends on you.”
13.
Then he was gone and it was morning. The door of my room was open, the cleaning crew had departed, and the hospital was waking up. Pain had begun to gnaw at my guts. I hit the button, waited a few minutes, and then hit it again.
Scott walked by and I called him. He had just come on duty. He had other patients but he stopped for me. “How are you?”
“Bad night.” I wanted to tell him about the men endlessly cleaning the floor and the smell of ammonia but I didn’t.
“Did McGittrick talk to you again?”
“Sorry I bothered you about that. I feel stupid.” What I was sorry about was having brought him to McGittrick’s attention.
