Dead and Gone

I held up the handle, so he could see it.

And pushed the button, so I could feel it.

“What happened to me?”

“You were beat up real bad, pal,” one of the cops said to me. Baird or Wheelwright, I couldn’t remember which one he was.

“Why? Who would—?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out. You got a few broken ribs, like someone worked you over with a piece of pipe. One of the ribs went into a lung. That’s why they had to open you up.”

“The nurse said I was … shot?”

“Right in the head,” the cop said.

“Maybe that’s why he can’t—” the other cop said. I could see the one talking to me give him a hard “Shut the fuck up!” look.

“Ah, Mr. Burke, he’s got a better memory than you think, partner. The bullet took out an eye, but it missed the brain. Just ‘scored’ it, whatever the hell that means. The docs say he’ll get his memory back … just a matter of time.”

“I’m … Burke?”

One of the cops laughed. The other just watched me. I could see his outline through the blur in my eye. My one eye. I moved my hand to find the other. It was all bandages there.

Rich told me my lungs had puddled with fluid from being on my back so long. He gave me a tube with a mouthpiece and some beads at the top. I had to blow … hard … until I could rattle the beads. A dozen times. Every couple of hours, he said.

I was in a room with three other beds. Curtains around the beds. The other patients got visitors. Nobody came for me except the cops.

I heard one of the cops arguing with a nurse. They wanted me in a private room. So they could talk to me. The nurse said there was nothing she could do about that—they’d have to talk to someone in Administration.

They came and got me the next day. Just rolled me onto a gurney and wheeled me down the hall, into an elevator, through another hall, into a room. It was a private room. A dingy private room built into a corner.

I still didn’t get any visitors except the cops. But they came every day.

I knew what that meant. I worked the breathing tube until I got too exhausted to hold on to it. As soon as I got my hands to work again, I went back at it. Over and over. The pain burned my blood, it was so bad. But my lungs got emptier. I could see the results of that … all over my chest. When Rich was on duty, it got cleaned up fast. When he wasn’t, they just left me like that.

The IVs fed me. But it was hate that gave me strength.

Days passed. They finally took out the catheter. Then the needle that was taped into a vein above my collarbone. The metal stand that held the morphine pump also held some bags of clear stuff running into two different IVs, one to my elbow, the other into my wrist. When they were all done unhooking me, I was bound only to the morphine pump.

As soon as I was sure no one was around, I tried to stand up. The first few times I fell. But the morphine pump stayed attached to me. The stand was on little wheels. I waited until Rich was off-duty, made my way out of the room. It took a long time, maybe fifteen minutes, to travel the few feet.

When I got into the hall, I saw a handrail running the length of the corridor.

I tried to pull the morphine pump along with my right hand, using my left on the railing. I took one step and a wave of black washed over me. I knew I couldn’t fall. I held on. Nobody paid attention. When I felt stronger, I made my way back into the room. I sat on the bed. It took forever to get the lines adjusted. I rolled onto my back and went out.

Every day, I went a little farther down that hall.

It hurt to eat. The hospital food wasn’t as good as the stuff they served the last time I was Inside. I chewed it very slow. One mouthful, one minute. Getting it down right, so I could keep it there.

Rich brought me some cans of Ensure, and I drank them all.

They took me for CAT scans. MRIs. Echocardiograms. They looked into my eye with lights.

Every day, sometimes twice a day, they drew tubes and tubes of blood. The veins on my arms finally collapsed and turned black, like I was a used-up junkie. They switched to tiny needles, took what they wanted from the webbing between my fingers. It went very slow when they did that. Hurt more, too.

A psychiatrist came. She didn’t ask me much. Mostly tried to make me feel better about not remembering anything. She said it wasn’t unusual. Not to worry. They wouldn’t discharge me until I was all better.

A woman with a face that meanness made ugly asked me about health insurance. I told her I had a real good plan. Full coverage. From my job. I was an … I couldn’t remember, but I knew I had coverage. Her lizard lips told me the police said I was a man with a long criminal record and no known employment. I told her that was silly. She said they took my fingerprints. I told her that was silly, too. She was angry at something. Later, she brought me a bunch of papers to sign. I signed them all. With an “X,” like she said to.

It was a teaching hospital. That’s why they were always studying me, this one resident said. He was working on his skills just by talking to me, perfecting that superior-snotty-scary tone they all need to armor themselves against the world’s knowing that they don’t know much.

Early one morning, Morales showed up. I’d known him a long time. A cop. He’d never liked me, but I didn’t take it personally. Morales didn’t like anyone except his old partner MacGowan. And MacGowan was long gone—pulled the pin on himself rather than talk to IAD after Morales smoked a bad guy and then flaked him with the throwdown piece he always carried. Morales was an old-style street roller, not a trace of slickness in him. A pit bull—once he locked on, he’d die holding the bite. And if he owed you, he’d pay it off or die trying.

He owed me, heavy.

“What happened?” he asked, no preamble.

“Who’re you?”