Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

Then, as he watched, the nose and mouth lengthened into a fearsome snout, the lips drawn back to reveal long razor teeth with traces of the bloody flesh of the beast’s last kill packed against the gums. The face was covered in fur, and yet it was familiar.

It was the eyes, the eyes he knew! The creature had cold, glacial-blue eyes.

Beneath those eyes, beneath the gory mouth, caked in the creature’s fur, were more of the bloody remains of its last kill. They ran down the neck to the body, which was furred with the silver-tipped brown hair of the great grizzly and appeared to grow before him until it loomed over him at a height of perhaps ten feet.

As he strained to identify the face, a great paw lashed out, its three-inch claws ripping his face. The other paw swiped and embedded in his back, holding him fast. And the head came down, the head that now had human eyes and a bear snout. Its enormous mouth was open, its teeth bared. He could not avoid the fangs, and they sank into the tender place where his neck joined his shoulder. Severed arteries hosed his blood over the bear’s head and onto its shimmering fur. He was dragged upward, into the chest of the beast, and crushed by its enormous arms. He could hear the snap of his ribs, feel the breath squeezed from his lungs, see his own body collapsing as the great man-bear killed him. And then came another scream… so much like the agonized howl he’d heard moments earlier.

Only this time the dying animal was Steven Pace.

The first sensation of anything real was the pain of each breath.

Steve Pace was coming from someplace very dark to someplace bathed in light, vaguely aware that each step forward carried him farther and farther from the comfort of the dark, the comfort of oblivion. He could not stop his progress. He was driven to move up, toward the light, toward the pain, no matter how much he wished it otherwise. And he did wish it otherwise. Every breath was agony. His head ached frightfully. The pain in his back was sickening. Each step of the journey brought his suffering into sharper focus.

And then he was back.

He was all the way back.

And he dared not move.

He squeezed his eyes to resist the reflexive act of opening them. He didn’t want to see where he was so much as he wanted first to feel it.

He was on his back, and he was warm. That was good. His arms were extended down the sides of his body, his palms resting next to the roughness of institutional sheets. There was something in his nose. He could feel it feeding cool, dry air to his lungs, and he could feel the rawness the dry air created in his nasal passages and his throat. He could feel the plastic tube running from his nose, over his cheek, and on to wherever plastic tubes go. There was tightness accompanying the pain on the left side of his face, and a dull ache over the right side of his jaw.

Tentatively, he tried to move, and his left shoulder screamed a plea to stop.

He opened his eyes.

He had no trouble recognizing his location as a hospital room and no problem recalling what had put him there. But he had no sensation of time, no idea how long he’d been unconscious, no recollection how he’d made the trip from the cold, dirty floor of his basement garage.

He was alone. Gingerly, he turned his head to see if a nursing call button was hanging where he could reach it to summon someone who could tell him how badly he was hurt. He found it at the same moment the door to his room swung open under the hand of a middle-aged doctor who walked with the confidence of a man who knew exactly what he was about. When the doctor saw that his patient was conscious, he grinned from his wide, friendly mouth to his warm brown eyes and fairly bounced across the twelve feet from the door to the bed.

“Hey there, guy, how yew all are?” he asked jovially in an accent Pace couldn’t quite place. “Nice-a yew to drop by dis party. Ah am Kevin Christian Boudreaux—Casey to mah frens. Ahm a Loo-zee-anna Cajun an’ mo’ proud-a it than I cud told yew. Imma ver’ good doctor, all-so, and I gonna be yo’ tour guide for dis cruise. We hope yo’ ’commodations is o-kay anna food pal-a-ta-ble enuf it don’ make you gettin’ sick all on the clean sheets. Lifeboat drill’s at three a.m. in de mornin’, jes when youze sleepin’ bes’, and if yew miss ’nother one, we gonna re-voke your bathin’-room priv-leges. Now, yew got some queshuns?”

Pace laughed softly and then grimaced as the response tugged at stitches and shook up places strained and bruised.

“Does every room come with a floor show?” he asked, surprised that he could barely get his voice above a hoarse whisper.

Casey Boudreaux was shining a penlight in Pace’s eyes, testing pupil reflex. “Only the private rooms,” he said, his accent miraculously gone. “We figure we need to give you something extra to justify the cost.” He pulled back and looked at the patient, apparently satisfied with what he was seeing. “How do you feel?”

“Never better,” Pace replied.

It was Boudreaux’s turn to laugh. “Aren’t you going to ask me where you are and what happened?”

“I know what happened, and I’d be very surprised if I’m not in a hospital.”

“Doggone it, all the fun’s gone out of being a doctor,” Boudreaux lamented, falling into a bedside chair. “Nobody ever asks the good old questions anymore.”

“Would you settle for ‘what happened to your accent?’”

Boudreaux shrugged. “Mah axcen? Dat ol’ ting? It’s jes somethin’ I trew on. Sholy yew got a better queshun dan dat.”

“Well, let’s try ‘How bad am I hurt?’ Will that do?”

Boudreaux shrugged again. “I guess, if it’s the best you’ve got. For starters, I’d say you’re in some considerable pain.”

“No wonder you’re a doctor,” Pace said.

“If you want the gory details, let’s start from the head and work our way down. You’ve got a cut over your left cheek that took eleven stitches to close. It will heal with a slight scar a plastic surgeon could fix, although your girlfriend, or your wife, or both might think you look sexier with it. Underneath the stitches, your cheekbone is broken, although the break is reasonably minor and should heal without any assistance from me, more’s the pity. I’ve got two kids in college and could use the surgical fee. You’ve got a knot on your right jawbone a sailor would be proud of, and it’s a wonder your jaw isn’t broken. Your left trapezius muscle—the one that keeps your head from flying off your shoulder—is slightly torn, as is the muscle layer over your abdomen. The oxygen is to make breathing easier. You have unbelievable-looking bruises over each kidney, and those organs have been battered to the point that you’ll curse the person who did this to you every time you piss for the next week or so. There might be a little blood in the urine, and if there is, we’ll have to keep a close eye on you. Eventually you’ll be good as new, and I think it’s safe to say you will play the accordion again.”

“I never played it before.”

“I told you, I’m a great doctor.”

Boudreaux did his best imitation of a rim shot.

“Now,” the doctor continued, “it’s time you saw to your guests. They’ve been waiting hours to pay their respects.”

“Who?” Pace asked. “How long have I been here?”

“Oh, good,” said Boudreaux. “That’s close to the good old question, ‘How long have I been out, Doc?’ I appreciate your indulgence. To answer, it’s Monday night, about 11:20 or so. You’ve been here close to twelve hours, but you’ve been lousy company.”

“Where’s here?”