James Sallis - Eye of the Cricket

Bailey stepped from behind the partitioning curtain. "I'm already on the unit," Bailey said. "Excuse me, Mr. Griffin."

He went across to the bed and, after listening a moment with his stethoscope, asked for something. The nurse passed him a syringe. He tapped at the man's ribs a time or two, then, holding the syringe like a dart, jabbed it into his chest.

"Pressure's going down. O2 up to 84."

A second nurse came over carrying a bundle, pushing a bedside table. She set the bundle down, tore open the tape sealing it and unfolded greenish-gray material from around a stainless steel tray, coils of rubber tubing, surgical instruments in clear sterile packages.

With one of those instruments Bailey punctured the chest again just below the syringe. With another that looked like a combination between cooking forceps and needle-nose pliers he threaded a rubber tube into the chest, stitched it in place, and attached a plastic bottle.

A chest tube, for pneumothorax. At one point before she died, Baby Girl McTell, Alouette's baby, LaVerne's daughter's baby, had five of them.

"Okay, looks good. Let's get a stat chest to confirm. Good catch, Nancy. ABG when you're ready?"

The nurse was listening to the man's chest. She glanced up and nodded, moved her stethoscope to the other side. The second nurse was tossing instruments into the tray, disposables into the trash.

Bailey came back across the floor.

I nodded towards the man on the bed between us. He hadn't taken his eyes off Bailey the whole time. Now the eyes swung to me. Still, empty, depthless. Like shallow water. His face, though deeply lined, with hard planes and full features, somehow just as emotionless, just as blank.

The word wiped came to me. Then a flurry of synonyms: erased, undone, deleted, obliterated, expunged, dissolved, consumed.

Bailey again shook his head.

"Always hard to say, especially at first, with cases like this. The trauma itself can temporarily short-circuit everyday connections. And sometimes people come up with really weird responses to emergency dings. He was beaten on the head. Almost certainly there's been some degree of anoxia. We don't even have any way of knowing what kind of shape he was in before all this."

Again he began scrubbing his hands at the sink.

"We'll watch him. I'll have neuro in for a look. Not much else I can tell you right now. Could be a whole different ball game by morning."

He'd hung his lab coat on the end of the bed. As he reached for it, the man on the bed said, "You got my book."

We both turned.

"What?" Bailey said.

"My book. You got it."

"He was carrying a book when he came in," I said. "They found it in his clothes downstairs."

"Who are you, sir? What's your name?"

"You got my book."

"We have to know who you are, sir."

"You got my book," he said. Then, politely, added, "Sir."

I got the book from the inside pocket of my coat and handed it to him. He took it: thefirst time he'd moved. He looked at the front cover, turned it over, opened it and looked inside. Then he looked at me and nodded.

"My book."

And that was it. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.

I moved out to the waiting room where, mostly alone, I passed the night watching the dreary banter of talk-show hosts and guest celebrities, a rerun of The A-Team in which the boys defended a Vietnamese giocer in East L.A. from marauding Latino gangbangers, a couple of movies whose plots, characters and climactic car chases were indistinguishable.

There might be no connection at all between David and this patient, of course. He could simply have found the book somewhere; come across it in curbside trash, a basement, some abandoned room or building.

I wasn't sure I wanted to think too closely about where or how he might have found it. For a long time now, years, when I thought of my son at all, I had assumed he was dead.

But this man might have found the book at a shelter of some kind, maybe in New York; it could have made its way there, even been left there by David himself. Or at a church, the kind in which people take refuge, the kind that hands out blankets and feeds the destitute, keeps a cache of Bibles and books and old clothes on hand for them.

Last night in ER-no, it was night before last now-Craig Parker had suggested that the patient's clothes, apparent castoffs but recently cleaned, might have come from one of the churches or missions.

Around twelve the guy polishing the floor shut off his machine, got a thermos of coffee from his cart, and started telling me about the house he and his girlfriend were buying up on Valence. Needed some work, sure, but he could do that himself, take his time and do it right, meant they were getting a real bargain. Been looking a long time. Not many bargains left anymore. He just loved those old shotguns. Only problem was it was next door to a cemetery, and he wanted to know if that would bother me. I told him I loved cemeteries.

Twenty-year-old sitcoms for an hour or so then. Fred Sanford had the big one. J. J. strutted around his family's project apartment explaining his latest scam.

Starting about two-thirty, a security guard walked by three times within the hour, finally stopping to ask could he help me and who I was with.

Not much choice after that. (1) Religious programming. (2) News repeating itself over and over like a stutter. (3) The last half of a movie from 1938. Pick one.

Around five a nurse on break sat beside me and, smoking three cigarettes in fifteen minutes, told me the story of her life. Sadly it wasn't much of a story or a life, and she knew it.

As I watched dawn take over the window, it came to me that I had utterly missed my Wednesday classes-not only missed them but not even given them a thought It was the first time in years anything like that had happened. Since I'd gone looking for Alouette.

At seven a bleary-eyed, much-bespattered Bailey got off the elevator. He came up to me and stood staring out at the light.

"Been here all night?"

"Yeah."

"Hope you got some sleep, at least."

I shook my head.

"Must be something in the air. Well, let's go see what the morning's brought, shall we?"

I followed him into the unit. Nurses were changing shift, walking from bed to bed as they gave report. The ones going off looked used up. The ones coming on didn't look a hell of a lot better. Sunlight streamed in at the windows, glared on every surface. Workers pushed carts of linens and supplies through double doors. The phone buzzed and went on buzzing.

Behind the half-curtain he sat almost upright in bed. A plastic washbasin and soap dish were on the tray table before him. He was nude. A towel covered his lap.

"Cleanliness. Next to," he said. "Any moment now. I'm marshaling strength."

His eyes went from Bailey to me and back. He smiled, and one hand lifted in a sketchy, exhausted wave.

"Good morning. Early start on the day, huh? I didn't expect you this soon."

He looked closely at Bailey.

"You wanted to know my name."

Bailey nodded.

"Lewis Griffin," he said.

He held up his ragged copy of The Old Man.

"My book. One of them, anyway."

So there I was in an old yellow T-shirt and the white boxers with hearts on them that Richard Garces gave me as a joke. Squinting out at these huddled shapes. Streetlight on the corner working for the firsttime in months.

"Norm?" Some others, too. My God, it must be serious. Raymond's forsaken his couch to come along.

"Lewis. Apologize for disturbing you this time of night Woke you up, too, from the look of it. You know Janet Prue? Lives two houses up, on my side."

I didn't, but nodded. Late sixties, early seventies. That classic tweed-and-khaki look. Silky gray hair.