Steven Womack: Dead Folks' blues

Whoever it was got away. At that moment, I realized two important things: first, I was in a helluva mess; second, my head hurt so bad I almost forgot my ankle.

After a few seconds, it occurred to me that if I didn’t start moving, I was going to roll right off Fletcher. I couldn’t feel him moving-or breathing. I knew I had to do something, so I argued with my extremities until I felt something respond to a twitch command. I slid off him and stood up, unsteady, shaky, frightened, hoping there wasn’t a second person hanging around with a slapjack. I fought off vertigo in the blackness of the room, then turned and limped toward the faint crack of light emanating beneath the door.

The hallway was empty again, and even the dimmed night-shift lights were blazingly painful. My eyes scrunched to slits. I put my left hand out to steady myself against the wall and brought my right hand up behind my shoulder to probe for the knot I knew would be there.

Bad idea. It was like getting slapped on the back of the head by Edward Scissorhands. I yelped an obscenity, then followed it with a few appropriate self-criticisms.

I brought my right hand up in front of my face. The hand was slick, wet with the coppery freshness of new blood. Great. I’d never been hit like that before. The movies could use a dose of reality. Only who’d pay to see Mel Gibson get clobbered and go silly for a few hours?

I still wasn’t thinking clearly; not yet, anyway. So when the door opened a few rooms up and to the left, my first thought was that whoever popped me was coming back to finish the job. I started to turn away and slipped, falling against the cold shiny wallpaper. My footing gave way and I slid down until I was planted firmly on my butt. The young blond nurse with the clipboard and sphyg looked at me, her eyes wide as jar tops. I closed my eyes for a bit, then felt her next to me. If she was going to finish me off, there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it.

“Are you all right?” A soft hand with a firm grip settled on my shoulder. Felt good; first time in a while.

I opened my eyes. Her chest was in my face now as she stretched over me, examining the back of my head. It was a nice chest, but I was too goofy to enjoy the moment.

“What’d you do?” she asked, her voice sweet, soothing. “Trip and fall?”

I raised my head. Her fingers were still touching my scalp six inches or so above my collar. She had a gentle touch. I looked into her eyes; in my fog I tried to determine what color they were. Hazel, probably. Then it came back to me.

“Dr. Fletcher’s in that room down there,” I said, my right hand flopping around in some vaguely accurate direction. “I think he’s dead.”

A crack of a gasp came out of her, then a second set of white-panted legs appeared next to us. I looked up. An older woman, starched white cap on her head, glared down at us.

“What happ-” she said.

“Get security,” the nurse beside me interrupted. She stood, her torso rising smoothly, silently.

“And watch him,” she ordered, pointing down at me.

I heard the soft padding of her nurse sneakers as she moved away. I settled back against the hard wall, glad to have somebody else in charge.

Damn if I didn’t get to make a second trip to the emergency room. This time, though, I didn’t have to wait out front with the peasants. I was taken directly downstairs to a cubicle and plopped on an examining table, with a blue-uniformed hospital security cop standing wordlessly at attention beside me.

I was beginning to get my wits back, those that weren’t beyond recovery. I knew the cops would arrive soon, and that I would have to figure out what to tell them. The problem was that I wasn’t exactly a veteran at this detective stuff. Maybe it would have helped if I’d had some training first. But how was I to know my first case was going to be a front-page felony?

High-powered surgeon/compulsive gambler murdered in hospital room! Private detective hired by wife to shadow husband discovers body! I visualized my parents seeing their son’s picture in a tabloid every time they went through the express lane.

The same young doctor who torqued my ankle came in to work on my head.

“Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” he asked. After a moment, I realized he was serious. I pulled up my pant leg, showing off the elastic bandage.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “You’re the …”

“Friend of Fletcher’s?”

“Hey, is it true? Fletcher really dead?” The resident’s face brightened at the prospect.

“News travels fast,” I commented.

“It would probably be better if you gentlemen didn’t discuss that,” the uniform said. I looked over at him. OFFICER REED, his nameplate read. “The Metro police will want to question you first.”

The doctor’s eyes darkened. My experience is that doctors-even beginners-don’t appreciate civilians telling them what to do.

“You can step outside,” he said to the officer.

“No can do, Doc. My orders are to stick with this guy.”

“I can’t really talk now,” I said, hoping to bring peace to the world. “Don’t worry, though, Doctor. All your wishes will come true.”

The doctor stood on tiptoe and pulled my head around to examine it. “Any dizziness?” he asked.

“A touch at first. But it went away.”

“Nausea? Shakiness?”

“Only at first. Better now.”

I grimaced as he pried apart the edges of the cut.

“You’ve got quite a knot here,” he observed.

“For this, you went to medical school?”

He pulled out a penlight, then shone it in my eyes one at a time. I blinked. I couldn’t help it; it hurt like the devil.

“Pupils are responding,” he said. “That’s good. Everything looks okay. If you’ve got a concussion, it’s a mild one. I’ll sign you in for twenty-four hours’ observation, if you want. But I think you’ll be okay.”

The only thing I wanted to do was escape from that place. “I’ll pass. Thankfully, I’ve got a thick skull.”

“I’ll have a nurse dress the wound,” he recited as he scribbled notes on a pad. “We’ll give you a skin local, probably have to shave off about a quarter’s worth of hair. No stitches, but a couple of butterflies. Go home, get some rest. Keep Neosporin on it. You’ll be solid in a day or two.”

“Great.”

“You start getting dizzy, seeing spots before your eyes, any similar reaction, then see your own doctor or get back in here. Okay?”

“Yeah, I got you.”

“You can go as soon as the nurse finishes with you.”

I looked over at the campus cop. We made eye contact; I knew I wasn’t going anywhere.

By then, it was sometime after midnight. I was fried and getting more fried by the minute. My ankle ached, and the spray-on yellow goop they promised would numb my head while the nurse worked on it failed miserably. This middle-aged angel of mercy clipped my hair back away from the cut. Then she pressed the edges of the cut together with a pair of vise grips and taped it shut with duct tape-or so I imagined. I’ll probably get an aneurysm when I pull it off.

Then came the inevitable waiting. The campus cop pulled up a chair. I lay on the examining table, found that putting my head back even on a pillow was like slamming into a brick wall, then rolled onto my side. About an hour later, I was drifting off when I began to hear voices that didn’t sound like medical people. The curtain to the cubicle slid back. A hefty, middle-aged man in a brown suit, carrying a loose-leaf notebook, stepped in. He motioned to the campus cop, and the guy disappeared in about half a second.

Cop body language, I guess.

I sat up on the edge of the table, the dry white paper cover crinkling beneath me. My sense of smell was coming back; I realized I was ravenous. Somebody outside was drinking coffee; it smelled marvelous.