Steven Womack: Dead Folks' blues

“Nothing a heart transplant won’t cure.”

Walter grinned, reached out a hand to me. “Hell, boy, you can’t replace what you haven’t got.”

I let Walter pull me up until I was firmly on my rump. I could see the ankle was swollen through my jock sock. I gingerly pulled down the thick cotton.

Maybe it wasn’t too bad. A little red, swollen, but no exposed bone splinters, no streaking, not too much purple and yellow. And the pain was beginning to throb down to a gentle agony.

“Help me up, man. I need to get some ice.” I grabbed his hand, and he pulled me up on my good leg.

I threw my arm around his shoulder-guys can do that when they’re physically wounded-and let him help me into the locker room. One of the attendants got me a high-tech, chemical ice bag, and I sat on a bench, sweat still cascading off me, nursing the leg.

Walter stripped down for his shower, then wrapped a towel around his waist and sat next to me.

“That’s going to be sore tomorrow.”

“You asshole, it’s sore now. ”

“You going to be okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, moving the bag around a bit. “You know, it’s funny. I was wondering how I could approach Fletcher without his suspecting why I was really there. Now I’ve got a reason.”

Walter looked at me strangely. His expression was one I couldn’t come anywhere near reading.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Maybe you need to go have that looked at.”

By seven that evening, I knew I was going to have to have the leg X-rayed. The pain wasn’t severe, but the swelling remained, and the ankle was stiffening up. I’d broken an ankle playing soccer in high school, so I had an idea of what might be going down.

I was only kidding when I told Walter that now I had an excuse to see Fletcher. But the more I thought of it, the better the idea seemed. Besides, if I went to the emergency room at the university medical center, my insurance would cover it. If I went to the local doc-in-a-box, it came out of my own pocket.

It’s tough driving a straight shift car with a bum right leg. By now the ankle wouldn’t bend at all, so pressing the accelerator meant doing it all with hip and knee. The usual traffic out 21st Avenue didn’t help either. The university was still in session. It was a cool, clear night, and the streets were filled with freshly scrubbed little rich kids out for a stroll.

The university area was one of my favorite parts of town, though. In a city full of automobiles, with lousy mass transit and few sidewalks, it was a delight to see strollers out enjoying the weather. It had turned into a beautiful evening.

For once, my parking karma improved, and I was able to find a spot off 21st, barely a block from the emergency room. I limped up onto the walk and inched down to the huge glass doors, which slid open as I approached as if the building were hungry for another one. I checked in at the desk, described my problem, filled out paperwork for twenty minutes, then sat in a chair.

Thank God I didn’t have a sucking chest wound.

By nine o’clock, somebody deigned to see me. It was another hour before a doctor walked in and handed me the verdict. “Mr. Denton, we think you’re going to live,” he said.

Typical E.R. humor. “Your X rays are fine. Nothing broken. I think it’s a bad sprain, maybe a pulled ligament. Nothing to take you down in the lower forty and shoot you over.”

The doctor was young, fresh-faced, clean-cut, cheerful, with a white lab coat that had his name stenciled over the left pocket in green thread. He was obviously early enough in his shift that he could still put together a coherent sentence.

“That’s great,” I said. “So what do I do with it?”

“I’m going to wrap it for you,” he announced, pulling a chrome stool over to the foot of the table where I sat, bum leg dangling over the side. “Keep it elevated. Stay off it a few days. If the swelling hasn’t abated considerably in twenty-four hours, see your own doctor. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough,” I said. The doctor unwrapped a flesh-colored elastic bandage-one the insurance company would probably be billed about a hundred bucks for-and started gently wrapping the softball attached to the end of my leg.

“Say, Doc, I got a friend here in the hospital. He’s on staff and the med school faculty both. Conrad Fletcher.”

I yelped as the gentle healing hand jerked my ankle about sixty degrees to the right.

“Sorry,” the doctor said. “Hand slipped. Fletcher, you say?”

“Yeah, Dr. Conrad Fletcher.” I couldn’t fail to notice that he was winding the bandage progressively tighter.

“Yes, I know him. I did my surgical residency under him.”

“Great. You wouldn’t happen to know if he’s around the hospital tonight, would you? I’d like to say hi.”

The young doctor looked up at me, any trace of warmth gone from his face. “Check with the nurses’ station on the fourth floor. If he’s around anywhere, they’ll know.”

He pushed two silver clips onto the bandage to secure it. He stood up, handed me some papers, and then was gone. A nurse came in after him with another set of papers for my signature. Then, thank heavens, my interface with the healthcare system was over.

I asked for directions to the fourth floor nurses’ station.

“East or west?” the blond, teenage candy striper asked. Again, I tried not to drool too loudly.

“I don’t know. Whatever’s closest.”

“Follow the yellow line down that hall. It’ll go left, then down another hall to a bunch of elevators. Grab one to the fourth floor and the nurses’ station should be right there.”

“Great.” I limped away, following the yellow line down the hard linoleum as it ran parallel to, intersected with, and melded with other lines. All I needed was Toto hoofing along beside me.

Hospitals late at night are weird places. The lights seem turned down low, but they’re probably not. The air is heavier, stuffier, as if the crowds of people who parade back and forth in the halls during the day had sucked all the oxygen out. On this night the people who passed looked more drawn, more tired, than the daytime people. The place was quieter, slower, creepier.

I was the only one on the huge elevator creaking its way to the fourth floor. The doors pulled apart in front of me. Visiting hours were over, the lights were dimmer than ever. I hobbled down the hall, more from stiffness than pain. The hall dead-ended into a T I stood for a second at the intersection, my head bobbing first one way, then the outer, and did a mental coin flip.

I turned right and walked maybe ten feet. So far, I hadn’t seen anybody or anything besides a few stainless-steel carts loaded down with medical gear. The place was a freaking ghost town, and if I didn’t find Fletcher quickly, I was going home to catch my nightly rerun of Green Acres on cable. I was tired, sore, and there was a cold one in the refrigerator with my name on it.

I saw light and headed toward it. The hall intersected with another one again, and off to the left was a glass-enclosed nurses’ station. There were no nurses around, or at least nobody who resembled a nurse. But a woman with her back to me, in a well-tailored red dress, sat at a computer terminal. The phosphorescent green of the VDT bathed her dark hair in an eerie glow.

I leaned on the counter, in a break between the high glass walls of Fort Nurse. “Excuse me, miss.”

No answer. Maybe she considered the miss a pejorative. I cleared my throat, leaned in a little farther.

“Excuse me, Ms. …”

The wheels of the chair spun on the floor as she pivoted. The woman stared at me through glasses that looked stern on her. Her face was professional, just a little this side of tense, very pretty. Sharp nose, hair pulled back, with a green halo around her head: a high-tech angel with a clamped-shut sphincter.