“Do you carry a mirror on you?”
“Not on my rounds, no. Did you sleep well?” she asked.
Arkady mentioned a tapping he had heard half the night, an irregular tap that seemed to emanate from one side of his bed and then the other. The doctor said it was in his head. He had to admit, she should know.
“I need a phone.”
“Later. With your throat I don’t want you talking overly much or turning this into an office.”
“I’d still like a mirror.”
“Tomorrow.”
“You said that yesterday.”
“Tomorrow.”
He exercised his memory by reading a page in a magazine,
Time nibbled at the afternoon. Motes rose and sank in steady circulation.
The man in the opposite bed died. His neighbor, a tracheotomy, urgently squeezed a call button. In the corner of Arkady’s eye, further down the floor, doctors made their rounds, always asking about the liver; care of the liver was paramount in the land of vodka.
He continued to wrestle with his memory. Some telephone numbers emerged whole, some in part: 33-31-33, for example, was most of a phone number or a complete combination to a safe.
Whose phone?
Whose safe?
“We checked your incision and white blood cell count and determined that you have excellent healing and no infection. You want to chance all that for a walk?”
“I need a stroll, Elena Ilyichnina. A little exercise.”
“I wouldn’t have taken you for an exercise fanatic. Let me tell you about exercise. We are concerned about your balance and, God forbid, a fall. So your first ‘stroll,’ when you are detached from your IV, will be in a wheelchair. Then a perambulation indoors with someone ready to catch you if you trip. Then short walks in your neighborhood with friends.”
“And then?”
“Stay away from the Metro, don’t drive, don’t drink, don’t swim, don’t run, don’t play football, don’t get strangled, don’t get hit on the head. Perhaps you should consider a different line of work. For someone in your condition I can hardly think of a worse one. The problem is that you don’t know who you are. You will encounter unexpected gaps and changes in different faculties. Mood swings. Changes in your sense of smell or taste. Limits in problem solving. You don’t know yet what you don’t have. The bullet sent a shock wave through the entire brain. You have to let it mend.”
“I’ll hardly use it.”
Elena Ilyichnina was not impressed.
“Did I ask about depression?”
“No. Aren’t things bad enough?”
“Is there any history of depression in the family?”
“The normal.”
“Any suicide?”
“The usual.”
“Attitude has a great deal to do with your recuperation.”
“I will recuperate if no one else shoots me.”
At night the ward slipped into a narcotic torpor. Nurses on duty rubbed their eyes and rustled through paperwork. A microwave tone announced that something was warm.
Arkady raised himself as slowly as a deep-sea diver rising to the surface of the water. The bed hardly spun at all and when the nausea was manageable he slid to a standing position on the floor, from which he laid his ring- shaped pillow on the bed and let his head become accustomed to the altitude. He pulled the IV from his arm and, except for a few drops, stemmed the blood with his thumb. For quiet he set out without slippers, although he slid his feet as much as walked. The distance to the toilet was an endless void. His legs shook. Who knew that staying upright was such a feat?
By the time he reached the toilet door the paper envelope that was his hospital gown had adhered to the sweat on his body. First he was afraid a light might come on automatically when he opened the door and then he was afraid of the pitch black when he closed the door behind him. He felt his way with both hands until he found a switch.
The room had a toilet stall, sink and mirror. He urinated and on the way out noticed a creature with a shaved scalp of blue and a violet ring around his neck. Arkady turned enough to show the tip of a black suture and the clown displayed one just the same. Together, Arkady and the clown peeled off the bandages on their foreheads to reveal an eyelash row of sutures.
Arkady staggered away from the mirror and through the door, one hand against the wall of the corridor for balance. He went some distance before he realized he had gone the wrong direction, that he wasn’t in the ward but in some totally different area of the floor. He wasn’t even clear which way he had come.
What were his choices? Left, right or stay where he was in a paper gown for the rest of the night until there was enough light to find his way back. Wouldn’t a nurse notice his empty bed before then? If this was the best his new brain could do he was badly disappointed.
He listened for the sound of an elevator; elevator bays were always lit and gave directions. Or of a floor being mopped; the cleaning person might be a kindly soul who would point the way. Instead, he heard tapping, the sound that had slipped in and out of his consciousness for the better part of a week.
Arkady followed the sound two more doors. The knob turned easily and opened to a room with an examining table, sink and charts of the human digestive system. Zhenya was on the floor in a nest of hospital blankets playing chess on a plastic computerized board by the light of a desk lamp he had carried down with him. He stared up at Arkady. Another boy might have screamed.
“Go ahead.” Arkady settled into a wheelchair. “Finish. I have to sit.”
Playing black, Zhenya was down to an endgame. White had more pieces but they were scattered, while Zhenya’s knight drove white’s king into a panic. Zhenya finished with a pinned rook, a swindled pawn, and a series of rapid checks, each move quickly accompanied by the simulated tap of a game clock,
Zhenya’s face hovered over the small pool of light cast by the lamp. His eyes were wide and lit from below. He was still in his anorak.
“What are you doing here?” Arkady asked.
“Visiting.”
“At night?”
“I’m here at the hospital, I might as well stay. It’s easy. I just go from one waiting room to another. They have Coke machines.”
That was a speech coming from Zhenya.
“Next time visit me during visiting hours, when I’m awake.”
“Are you angry?”
“Because of the…” Arkady gestured to the general mess that was his head. “Not at you.”
“I ran. My father shot you and I ran.”
“I’ve done worse.”
Arkady’s eye fell on a telephone. When he picked up the receiver he heard a dial tone.
