William Lashner - Past Due

But only almost. Because I knew the truth of it, the truth behind everything. That our certainties are all false, our dreams are all lies, our loves will always betray us.

The living go on dying, only the dead will rise unchanged.

Maybe he was right, Cooper Prod, meditating on the sins of his past in his prison ashram. Maybe the only hope for life was death.

It was too late to visit, but I called the fourth-floor nurses’ desk anyway, just to find out how he was doing, my father, how he was doing.

Not so well.

“VICTOR?”

I looked up. Dr. Mayonnaise was in the room. Her head was tilted funny, as if once again, when she looked at me, she was seeing an art work that made no sense. This time a Magritte painting perhaps.

“Hi,” I said.

“Are you okay?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Is there anything I can get you?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“What happened to your forehead?”

“A pigeon I kicked flew up and punched me in the head.”

“While you were playing golf?”

“How did you know?”

“You want me to look at it?”

“No.”

“We’re doing everything we can.”

“I know you are.”

“It’s still too early to tell whether the Primaxin is working. Sometimes the lag between first administering the drug and seeing a definite result can be seventy-two hours.”

“Okay.”

“I know it looks bad, Victor, but in these cases it’s the best thing for him. His heart rate is down, his oxygen level up.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“Indicators are promising.”

“I can tell,” I said, as I looked over at my father.

He was out, more unconscious then asleep, which I suppose was a good thing, considering there was a blue tube snaking down his throat. The respirator bellows were drawing and blowing at a steady clip, the heart monitor was letting out a steady bleep. He was being kept alive by a machine while they waited to determine that the latest antibiotic also was having no effect on the disease that plagued him. They were stumped, the doctors, stumped by my father, which put them in the same uncertain place I had stood toward him for the entirety of my life. I wasn’t sure of the reasons for my own bewilderment, Freud would have a better theory for that than I could ever come up with, but I knew why the doctors were confused. They thought they were fighting a mere microbe, but what they were up against was far more virulent. The thing destroying my father piece by piece was his past.

“I’ll inform you if there’s any change,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“Let me get you some Kleenex.”

“I’m okay, really,”

“Your tie’s getting wet.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s indestructible.”

“Handy.”

“Can you do one thing for me, Karen?”

“What, Victor?”

“Can you save his life? Please.”

She looked stricken.

“Can you? Please? Save his life?”

“Let me get you the Kleenex,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. I felt sorry for her, just then, Dr. Mayonnaise from Ohio. It was going to be a long career, fetching Kleenex and going around saying things like Indicators are promising. I used to be jealous of doctors, the money they made, the status of their little degrees, the way everyone bowed and scraped in their presence and made it a point to use the honorific before their names, as if it were a sign of higher nobility. Excuse me, Lord Wentworth, I’ll have a table for you in a few minutes, but first I have to take care of Dr. Finster. He’s a gastroenterologist, you know. I used to be jealous of doctors, but not anymore. Dr. Mayonnaise was welcome to it, the money included. Before her time was up she’d earn it.

I sat alone in the room with just my father and my hopelessness for a long time. It was surprisingly peaceful there, with the predictable rhythm of the bellows. Resignation is a very peaceful emotion. I was through, I told myself, it was over. Joey Parma had given me a murder and now I was giving it back, along with his own. It was too hard, I didn’t have enough fight in me. The bastard behind everything had the law on his side and he had won. Maybe I’d be able to save my career, maybe my life would return to where it was before McDeiss called me to the crime scene, maybe I’d finally get my cable back. It was funny how comforting maybe had become. And as I made that decision to give up, finally, my body unclenched and I caught myself once and then twice, my chin falling, my eyes drifting shut before they snapped open in panic. And then I didn’t catch myself, I let myself slide into sleep, beside my father, with the soft rhythm of the bellows.

A nurse shook me awake.

“I’m sorry,” I said as I jerked to a stiff position. “I know I shouldn’t. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Mr. Carl. You’re allowed to sleep. That’s not why I woke you. You have a visitor.”

“I’m not a patient,” I said.

“Not yet,” she said, with a maternal smile. “But none the less, someone is here to see you. But he’s not allowed in the room.”

“Okay.”

“You’ll have to go out to see him.”

“Okay,” I said and I did. And he was waiting for me, leaning at the nurses’ desk, hat in hand, chatting away, making the cute night nurse blush.

Skink.

“I KNEW Agirl once, name of Gwendolyn,” said Skink. “Gwendolyn, not Gwen. She wasn’t one of them thin twigs everyone goes for now. Gwendolyn had breasts like great piles of pudding, they was. I used to love my pudding. Tapioca. With the whip cream. Not no more though, on account of the cholesterol. But Gwendolyn was a lovely girl, nice feet she had, and we had us a lovely time. This was when I was living in Fresno. The girls there they didn’t put on no airs. Of course what kind of airs was you going to put on in Fresno? Still. Gwendolyn.”

Skink and I were in the hospital cafeteria. I had bought a coffee, an egg salad on white, and a bag of potato chips for my dinner. I brought half the limp sandwich up to my mouth and Skink stared at it as if it were some exotic island grub I was sticking into my craw.

“What?” I said.

“Why don’t you just inject a pound of lard into your veins and get it over with?”

I took a bite of the sandwich and, with my mouth still full, I said, “Get on with it, Phil. Why are you telling me about lost loves?”

“Just shut up and listen. So one night I put on the Old Spice, grease back the hair, stuff a handkerchief in the suit pocket, and I’m ready for a night. I picks up my Gwendolyn, takes her to this frilly grease trough, what with candles and a violin. Dinner and a show and the show, it’s going to be back at her place. So I’m laying on the sweet talk, laying it on so thick my tie is curling, when she ups and says, ‘Philip, we need to talk.’ ”

“You don’t have to go any farther.” I opened up the bag of chips, offered it to Skink. “You want?”

“Don’t be daft. So that’s the last of her, I figure. She’s a good-enough sport to give me a final plow for old time’s sake, but that’s the end. No more pudding for Mr. Skink. The last I figure I’d ever see of lovely Gwendolyn. But I was wrong, wasn’t I? The next night, who’s knocking at my door?”

“Gwendolyn?”

“Just wanting to see how I was doing. I’m doing fine, I says. Good, she says. You want to catch a movie? I thought we broke up, I says. We did, she says. So what’s with the movie? I says. We can still be friends, she says. I wasn’t in it for the friendship, I says. Oh, Philip, she says. Go put on a jacket. And damn if I didn’t. You see what I’m getting at here, Victor?”