Colin Harrison - Afterburn

… Halfway across he saw a van turning onto First, going too fast, and he was unsure whether to run or stay, and instead he pulled harder to make sure the ice chest was out of the path of the van, but the effort did not produce commensurate progress and the van honked in irritation, not slowing exactly but cutting its wheels sharply, not to avoid Rick but rather an old man ten steps behind him on First Avenue-the van had a choice of hitting the old man or Rick's ice chest, and so it hit the chest, the corner of the bumper catching the back of the box and spinning it out of Rick's hands. He jumped back, foot on fire with pain.

The van stopped. "Yo," said the driver, jumping out, a man in his twenties, head a bullet. "What the fuck you doing, you goddamn-" He saw the blood on Rick's T-shirt, stopped, and jumped back into the van.

Rick reached the cooler, which was dented but undamaged, and dragged it over to the curb. He noticed the cooler's drainage plug and pulled it. Water gushed out. Was there a bit of color in the water? He could do it, he was almost there.

He dragged the trunk through the emergency ward's electronic doors, right past the guard up to the nurses' desk.

"I got my arm cut off," he croaked.

"What?" asked the nurse.

He shrugged his big coat to the floor. His shirt was a bloody mess.

"Lie down!" she commanded. "Clyde, I have a priority! Call Dr. Kulik." She turned back to Rick. "Sir, lie down! You need-"

"It's in here," he said, pounding the cooler. "Get someone down here who can put it back on!"

"What? The arm?"

"Yes," he said, suddenly dizzy.

She picked up a phone. "I need a gurney and saline and a quick blood match."

"The cooler…" Rick muttered.

"Clyde," ordered the nurse, "cut open that cooler. But don't touch anything. Sir, lie down! We're getting a gurney in here, sir."

The guard stepped over to the cooler and produced a pen knife. He slit the tape with four hard strokes and lifted the top. Then he looked back at Rick.

"Get it out! " Rick called.

The guard took his flashlight and stirred around the ice. He struck something and bent closer.

"Don't contaminate any body parts," called the nurse.

"You can contaminate my body parts," muttered the guard, digging in the ice. "This is fucked up."

An orderly pushed in the gurney. "Sir?"

"What-wait," pleaded Rick. "I have to see my arm."

The guard reached in, spilling ice. "I got it, I got it."

"Let me see!"

The guard shook his head in disgust. "This ain't no arm."

"What?" cried Rick. "Look!"

"No, you look, my man." The guard tugged upward, using his weight, this time spilling most of the ice, and pulled out the frozen head and neck of a huge turkey, its pale plucked body following, maybe thirty pounds in all, something asymmetrical about it, frozen black feet sticking out awkwardly. The guard examined the turkey, then pointed. "They took off one wing, right here." He dropped the carcass back into the cooler, looked at Rick. "That's it, my man."

He pushed away the gurney and sank down on one knee, then two, thinking he might vomit, but he did not, although a sickening shiver went through him, a cold shot of pain and grief that ended in stillness. The dog, eating. He put his remaining hand against the tile floor, supporting himself, then fell forward as they gathered around. His head rested against the floor. That was it. You can't give frozen turkey to a dog.

Sir, they said, we're going to start an IV. He was somebody else now, forever. He collapsed onto his right side, lifting his legs to his chest like a child curling beneath a blanket. Yes, now he was released. He'd waited years and years and finally it had happened. He had received his punishment.

His taxi raced recklessly from the airport over an elevated highway that snaked past hundreds of enormous construction sites extending every direction into the haze. This Shanghai, new yet already retro-futuristic, forced itself brutally upward through the accumulated crust, erasing the narrow lanes of crumbling brick and pagoda roofs, penetrating the massive and ill-kept English mansions-surviving relics of Europe's short-lived triumphalism-and toppling, perhaps especially, the dreary ten-story apartment blocks erected by Mao's bureaucrats. Knocked down, bulldozed aside, trucked away. All gone-forever or soon. Finished, the fifty-story projects stood like rigid mechanical fingers, exoskeletally articulated with glass and stainless steel, aloof in their inhuman size, while the unfinished structures-great concrete bones veiled with bamboo scaffolding-entombed the foul air of the very sky itself, their shadowy honeycombed interiors flickering and flaring with welding torches as cranes lifted tilting loads, or caged construction elevators plummeted along zippered seams, while gray ant-men in yellow hard hats moved along the huge edges of man-made stone with dull vigor.

But the sight of the city did not relieve him of his misery; the sleepless flight to Hong Kong had rewired his back for constant pain, down low where all the surgery had been, and the bad air already made his chest ache. His suit lay wrinkled and damp from the heat, his mouth tasted sour, his eyes burned. The knockout pills hadn't worked-he'd been too upset about Marvin Noff's prediction of Teknetrix's demise. And he was worried about Melissa Williams, that Ellie would find out, worried by what the evening with Melissa meant, how he should think about it. Flopping around on a hotel bed with some overly attentive woman half his age was not in the plan. Not if he knew himself. But he'd given in to her so easily. Why? Was it just that he was lonely? He liked her, dammit. Was this so bad? She'd made him feel younger, if only for ten minutes. Not just younger, but alive, able to create and destroy. Maybe it was the sex that had hurt his back so much. Probably. Definitely. But it had been worth it. He wondered if she'd enjoyed it. Emotionally, he would guess. Maybe she'd had an orgasm at the end, he couldn't tell. He was no match for a man twenty or thirty years younger. But that was understood; no one needed to dwell on that. She'd said not to worry about the birth control-probably on the Pill like most of them. He doubted very much she might have AIDS. All the demographics were wrong. College-educated white woman. And he wasn't going to worry about the little sexual diseases, not at his age, not with all the big possibilities already waiting. What did she want with him? Did she want to be a mother? Breasts and nipples and hips and a soft belly, all waiting. Could he ask her the next time he saw her? No, not yet. You don't just spring that on a woman. But he would see her again, he knew that. Yes, Charlie, you bad boy. Maybe at the Pierre again, maybe somewhere else. He liked her appearance and intelligence. When did you start thinking more about the past than the future? He could live with Ellie another thousand years and she'd never float that question. Because the future scared her. He'd ask Towers, the bow-tied investigator, to find out more about Melissa. No harm in that, just get some basic information.

He slipped his hand around to his back and watched the buildings go by. Something had seized up along the base of his spine, where they'd fused two vertebrae, making him feel the old seams of scar tissue. Something tight or out of alignment, sandpapering the nerves. The doctors had fixed the two worst vertebrae but left a couple of others alone to grind around and disintegrate by themselves. He'd need some kind of medicine, just to walk without looking like he was a hundred years old. Back pain was tricky, part emotional even when the physical malady was obvious. Maybe the tension had contributed-the company, the baby-making business, which now he was convinced he'd been going about in the wrong way. Putting an advertisement in the paper and hiring people to help him-he was staffing an expansion, he was proceeding corporately, for God's sake. Better maybe to find someone he liked, someone young and smart and compatible, and then privately raise the question of a baby. Maybe Melissa Williams might want to have a baby. It wasn't an impossible idea. Why not? You could have an understanding. Everything written down and signed, but based on respect.