Chuck Logan - Absolute Zero

Her house. Stay with that.

She went in, brushed her teeth, swished with Scope. In the middle of this task she realized she really was alone in the house. No music in the basement. No Earl.

Now, with things getting tricky, she suddenly missed him.

No, she missed his function in her life.

But Jolene’s whole idea was not to depend on men anymore. Right?

So, you’re going to figure this out on your own.

Your house.

Your money.

Your life.

No men allowed.

All you have to do is hang on through the weekend. Milt will come to the rescue. This time next week you’ll be visiting Hank in a safe, secure nursing home.

It’s going to be all right.

He had receded far into himself and his vision turned black at the edges, tunneled, like looking the wrong way through two telescopes. The enthusiasms of simply tapping the TV controls on and off a few times had left him mentally drained, and now his fingers were like cold batteries, dead. It was a revelation. He’d had nothing to use to measure his strength before. Now he realized how little energy he had left.

And he saw it as a finite amount, nonrenewable.

And he saw something else. Something approaching with a calm, unhurried tread. A blur of color flickering into the edge of his vision. His heart and lungs were strong but his brain was flaming out.

Dying.

Everything he did from now on had to count.

Jolene steeled herself and entered Hank’s room, determined to be businesslike. Just do the work. She believed in holding up her end of the deal. The deal had been for better or for worse. She could handle two more days of worse.

First she cleaned excess saliva from his mouth with the suction wand. Then she changed his wet diaper. As she fed him through his tube and added water to the IV drip, she watched him carefully for signals. He seemed almost asleep, eyes barely open. Lazy, dreamy, tired.

Dutifully, she stripped off his gown, brought in a dishpan of hot water, and gave him a sponge bath. She checked the incision where his gastrostomy inserted for leakage or infection. Then she rubbed his wasting body down with baby oil, shaved him, and trimmed his hair. She clipped his fingernails and toenails, and swabbed his gums and teeth with a sponge dipped in mouthwash.

She talked to him as she put his diaper and clean gown back on, as she struggled turning him, to put on clean sheets half a bed at a time. Just practical little asides. “Now I’m going to roll you over. Now I’m pulling on your gown.”

Then she swept around the bed, taking great care to get all the hair and clippings. When she was finished, she removed all the cleaning materials. She took the old sheets and clothes downstairs to the laundry room and put them in the washer. She armored herself with reassuring smells of hot water, Spic ’n’ Span, and Tide.

Feeling stronger, she returned to the kitchen, poured another cup of coffee, and stood, studying the restaurant-style stove. It was a regular flame thrower-must have cost eight grand, but Hank had insisted on getting it. He’d spent another hundred grand remodeling this house. He’d bought the new Ford for himself and the Honda for her.

And didn’t renew his fucking health insurance.

That’s a drunk for you.

Jolene looked around at the new granite counters, the tile floor, the new cabinets, the river scene out the windows.

Hers someday. Hell, it was hers now. She shook her head. Nothing lasts, Hank used to say. But they’d barely had even the first part of nothing.

She put on her coat and took her coffee out on the deck and lit another cigarette and pictured a happy mob of nicotine assassins stabbing the air sacs in her lungs.

She inhaled, exhaled. Dropped her head on her chest.

She’d have to sign over a deed on the house to Milt, as security, until they got through probate court. She could live with that.

Then the wind came up so frigid it must have blown in from North Dakota. Jolene hugged herself and her heart quaked in her chest like a dry leaf. She snubbed out her cigarette and hurried through the patio door into Hank’s room to get warm. She sat on the edge of his bed.

“I never lied to you, Hank. I told you I’d make you happy for a while, which, you’ll recall, I did. I also told you I’d probably take you for every cent you had.”

Jolene held Hank’s wooden right hand in both of hers and said, “You laughed at me when I said that. But you know what, honey? I guess that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

He knew he should hoard his reserves of strength; the effort to move his finger was like shoveling steel. Fire discipline, he told himself, reaching back to his most primitive survival instincts .

But she was right there, her warm flesh on his, and he could smell her lily body wash and he couldn’t resist.

So he tickled her damp palm with the tip of his right index finger. A sly, unmistakable wiggle .

Electrocuted, Jolene did not actually scream this time; it was more like a long gasp as she jumped off the bed, ran from the studio, through her bedroom, and up the stairs into the kitchen. She leaned with both hands braced on the counter until she caught her breath. She stared at the phone. Allen? No, she’d called him before and Hank had stopped his tricks.

That meant something, maybe.

Besides, Allen was an overeducated nice guy and right now she needed a little more red meat.

She snatched a card down from the bulletin board-the one Phil Broker had given her-and reached for the phone.

Amy answered the phone next to the couch, thinking it might be the sheriff’s department again. She thrust the receiver at Broker. “For you, and she’s shook up.” Too ladylike to smirk, Amy curled her lip slightly.

Broker took the phone. “Hello?”

“Broker, something really weird is going on,” Jolene blurted.

“Calm down.”

“It’s Hank. He’s. . doing things.”

“Hank’s doing things ?” Broker repeated and Amy caught his goose bumps.

“What things?” Amy asked, huddled at his shoulder, head-to-head, with her ear against the receiver.

Jolene said, “The night before last, Earl left the TV clicker in his hand, like a joke. And I heard the TV come on and I went in there and he turned it off and on twice.”

“Jesus,” Broker and Amy read off the same page, eyes locked.

“. . the thing is, I called Allen and he came over and I remembered the cat had been on Hank’s lap, and Allen thought it was the cat, you know. Except it wasn’t the damn cat because about three minutes ago I was holding his hand and he very deliberately tickled my palm.”

“Tickled?” Broker wondered.

“Goddammit, tickled . The way guys do. You know? Wanna fuck, like that? Tickled!”

“Let’s get over there fast,” Amy said, her face absolutely electric.

“You sure?” Broker said.

“What’s going on?” Jolene yelled.

“Hold tight, we’re on the way,” Broker said.

Broker was speeding down the back roads again. “Remember, Allen Falken has a way of showing up over there,” he said. “I’m thinking about the lawsuit? If he sees you around Hank, you could lose your license.”

Amy brushed aside his concern. Her eyes focused straight ahead into a vortex of streaming leaves. “What if he’s coming out of a coma?” she wondered.

“Can that happen?”

“ Anything can happen.” She threw up her arms; pumped, she bounced on the seat. “When you’re dealing with the human brain we’re like cavemen hanging our toes over the edge of deep space. Nobody really knows,” her voice raced. “The proofs the neurologists use to diagnose persistent vegetative states are medieval. Visual pursuit? Whether the eyes focus on and follow an object? C’mon. There’s a case history of patients who have been misdiagnosed, who are locked in.”