Jodi Compton - Sympathy Between Humans

The cleaning wasn’t painful, but I flinched at the wet pressure in an unaccustomed place. To distract me, Cicero made one-sided conversation, the way doctors do.

“You’re lucky, in a way,” he said. “Ten years ago, only an otolaryngologist would know how to do this. They started teaching it again when viruses and bacteria became so antibiotic-resistant, in the nineties. We started seeing more and more kids with infections that wouldn’t respond to antimicrobial treatment.”

There was something in his voice that I hadn’t heard in a while, a quiet deliberateness that reminded me of the grandparents of the Indian kids I’d known in New Mexico.

He withdrew. My ear felt damp and cool.

“Go ahead and lie down,” he instructed. I did, exposing the left ear to him.

“Close your eyes. I’m going to turn on another light.” He pulled the angled neck of a lamp down close to my head. It must have had a high-wattage bulb, maybe halogen, because I could feel the heat on the side of my cheek and neck. He took my face in his long fingers.

“Lift your head up,” Cicero told me. I obeyed, and he spread the towel underneath my head. I lay back down. In the corner of my eye I saw him pick something up. A needle. It seemed quite long, sinister in the lamplight.

“Two things,” Cicero said. “I don’t have an aspirator, so after I do this, turn your head to the side so it can drain onto the towel. Second: this is going to hurt.”

“You said that already,” I said, sounding drunk to myself at last. “You don’t have to dwell on it.”

“But I need you to keep quiet when I do this,” he explained. “I don’t want any cops coming here.”

Too late, I thought, and the laughter I tried to suppress made a high, giddy sound. Cicero looked at me quizzically, and I tried to get myself under control and failed. “No,” I said, still laughing. “I don’t think I can promise that at all. ”

“If you’re having second thoughts, we can still get you to an ER.”

My laughter dried up at the prospect.

“All right, then,” Cicero said. “Turn your head a little.”

I did what he said, closed my eyes.

He laid his free hand over my mouth. “Be very still,” he said.

When the needle struck I was glad I hadn’t promised not to scream. The pain sliced right through the alcohol haze. I felt Cicero ’s hands turning my head, because I’d forgotten his instructions to do so, and then hot liquid splashed down my ear, onto the towel.

“Oh, God,” I whispered. My eyes were still closed. “Oh, God. ” Now that I was on my side, my knees were trying to inch toward my chest, toward the fetal position.

“Keep your head down, that’s it.” Cicero whispered encouragement to me, taking my hand.

“I’m going to be sick,” I told him.

“Breathe,” he instructed.

I tried to obey. One deep breath, and then another. “I want to sit up,” I said, thinking it would alleviate the nausea.

He let me, and as soon as I was upright, the nausea did begin to subside. A few more deep breaths dispelled it to the point that I knew I could keep it under control.

“Better?” Cicero asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“You want the bathroom?”

I was expecting a small, closetlike space, and so was surprised by the dimensions of the bathroom. Of course: it had to accommodate Cicero ’s wheelchair. There was a tubular railing along the wall and inside the shower, where a benchlike seat extended out from the tiled wall. I didn’t turn on the bathroom light, imagining it would seem blinding. Instead I washed up by the minimal light that came in from the hallway.

A single towel hung by the sink, no washcloth. I opened the tap and ran a thin stream of water into the basin. I dampened the side of my face with water from my fingers, rubbed them against the bar of soap and then against my neck, raising a thin foam on the wet skin. I put my fingers under the stream of water again and rinsed as well as I could, but couldn’t keep a trickle of water from escaping down the neckline of my sweater. I pressed the thick material of my shirt against my skin, blotting away the water.

When I came out, Cicero was cleaning up his exam table. I watched him, not sure what to say.

“I feel pretty good,” I lied.

But he was looking at me speculatively, in a way that sharpened my attention.

“What?” I said.

“You’re in no shape to be driving anywhere,” he said.

“I know,” I said quickly. The pain had felt sobering, but that was a misperception; I was drunk.

“You need to sleep awhile,” Cicero said.

“What, on your exam table?” I said.

Cicero sighed, reaching up to pull off the bandanna and release the little ponytail. “No,” he said slowly.

“What, then?”

“Look,” he said, “this is not an offer I’d usually make, but I think I’m going to have you sleep in my bedroom.”

“Really?” I sensed he wasn’t terribly comfortable with the idea; I wasn’t, either. But I knew he was right. I couldn’t drive until I’d fully sobered.

He was already rolling toward the bedroom, and I turned to follow. He opened the bedroom door and flicked on the light.

A narrow single bed was covered with a cinnamon-brown counterpane, a black-and-white Ansel Adams print of Yosemite on the wall. A set of hand weights, probably twenty pounds each, were half hidden under the bed. Along the wall ran a low and narrow table, almost a shelf, covered with family photos. Some of the pictures were quite old, in black-and-white.

“This is nice,” I said.

“Out there is my office,” Cicero said. “In here is my home.”

I walked in behind him. To our immediate right was a sliding closet door. It was mirrored, showing us the reflections of a drunk, lost cop and an altruistic criminal. Quickly I looked away.

“Why don’t you turn on the desk lamp,” Cicero suggested. “It doesn’t throw a lot of light, so you can sleep with it on if you like. And if you want to shut it off later, you can reach it from the bed, unlike the wall switch.”

I walked over to the desk and did as he’d recommended. Cicero turned off the brighter overhead fixture, and we were immersed in a low, golden light.

“You can close the blinds on the window, too, if you like. But we’re twenty-six stories up. No one’s going to peek in. I sleep with them open,” he said.

When he began to back out of the room, I turned and said, “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You’re not going to try to sleep on the exam table, are you?”

Cicero laughed. “No, don’t worry,” he said. “I keep late hours.”

“But-”

“If it gets that late, and I need to go to bed, I’ll wake you and kick you out. I’m not Mother Teresa.”

When he was gone, I stripped down to the sweater and my underwear and wondered: Was it right to get in the bed? That seemed so personal, but I didn’t want to wake up in an hour, on top of the covers, because I was cold.

I slipped experimentally between the comforter and the blanket, a compromise that made sense to my alcohol-and-exhaustion-clouded mind, and turned off the lamp.

An indeterminate time later I awoke in darkness. Where the hell was I? I heard masculine, adult voices from behind a door and the sound filled me with a dread I didn’t understand. My heart jumped up from its slow sleeping rhythm.

Then two words became distinguishable: pecho and fiebre. I recognized the voice of Cicero Ruiz, and heard a baby’s hoarse cough. I closed my eyes and slept again.

When I raisedmy head again from sleep, I sensed that hours had passed. Something had wakened me, though, and I looked around and saw the low form of Cicero in very dim, flickering light. He was placing a lighted candle on the table of family photos; there was another candle already on the table, flame still and steady.