Michael Koryta - Last Words

A cave. That memory frightened him more than the others, even though it was among the out-of-focus set. Blackness and cold water. He’d been left there. He’d tried to find his way out of the dark.

And apparently succeeded? The hospital room told him that he had, but the foggy memories offered no confirmation, not even a hint.

He punched the call button then, and the door opened within seconds, and an overweight brunette woman with kind eyes looked at him and said, “My goodness. Let me get the doctor.”

She was gone before he could even ask for water.

The doctor was a short, slender man named Mehir Desare, and as soon as he introduced himself to Mark, he told him that he owed him some thanks.

“If all continues to go well, you’re going to get me in some medical journals. We’re not supposed to confess that we desire that sort of thing — it’s quite self-important and shameful to admit — but the truth is the truth, you know.”

Mark nodded, though he wasn’t following at all. Dr. Mehir Desare smiled at him over steepled fingers as he sat on a stool beside the bed and said, “Don’t you want to know how we did it?”

“Sure,” Mark said. His throat hurt when he spoke.

“You arrived to us with a core temperature of 24.8 Celsius — that would be, oh, 76.6 Fahrenheit, you know — quite low. Quite low. The EMTs had done a fine job with you, the very best they could, and still they had not succeeded in bringing your core temperature up any higher than that. A grim situation.”

The doctor paused as if to make certain Mark appreciated the drama.

“Grim,” Mark echoed, and Dr. Desare nodded.

“To rewarm you, we used ECMO, extracorporeal circulation. Do you know what extracorporeal circulation is, Mr. Novak?”

Mark didn’t, but he considered the adjective for a moment and then said, “Out of body. Whatever you’re talking about that kept me alive, it came from outside of the body.”

“Indeed. The technique involves oxygenating the patient’s blood outside the body via mechanical means. Where your system stops, ours begins. Consider it a pinch hitter for your circulation. Oxygen-depleted blood — or, in your case, chilled blood — is diverted from the body, rewarmed and enriched with oxygen, then pumped back in. We weaned you from extracorporeal circulation when your own system indicated that it was ready to get back into the game. But you were kept alive thanks to an out-of-body experience.”

Dr. Mehir Desare smiled at that, pleased with the little joke, but Mark was shuffling through some of those out-of-focus snapshots of memory. Shotguns. A van. Walking a plank that couldn’t have been a plank. Then—

The wall was melting.

Then he’d been alone in the dark. Or had he been alone? He felt as if someone had been with him. But the image that came to mind—

Sarah Martin was watching me. She was lit from within and she was watching

— was not one he wanted to dwell on. Or even remember.

He thought then of his mother, of her skin turning blue on the wind-whipped prairie. A spirit quest, she’d told him when she was conscious again. By that point, she was so out of her head that she’d begun to believe her own con. She thought she really was a Nez Perce. You’re fucking German, he’d told her, and when she insisted he was wrong, he’d held up his hands and said, You’re right, Mother. You’re not German. You’re a fraud, that’s all, and then the nurse had asked him to leave, and he never went back to the hospital. Last words. He had a way with them, certainly. He tried to think of the last thing he’d said before he’d ended up in the cave. If they hadn’t gotten him out in time, what would his last words have been? He couldn’t come up with anything.

“We administered some drugs to protect the brain and now you are” — Dr. Desare consulted his watch — “twenty-eight hours into your stay with us.”

More than a day.

“How long was I in the cave?” Mark said.

“You remember the cave? Excellent!” The doctor was jubilant. “Memory function of the kind you’re displaying is exciting. There was some concern about neurologic deficits. We’ll be conducting tests, but at this juncture I’m pleased with your general cognitive ability.”

“Deepest thanks,” Mark said, and the doctor laughed.

“It might not seem like the highest of compliments, but we were worried. As for how long you were in the cave, I can’t say. Are you up to seeing visitors, by the way? There’s one waiting rather impatiently. A man from Florida.”

Jeff London had arrived.

Jeff looked good, fit and rested, which came as no surprise. He worked out with religious fervor. He’d probably been doing push-ups in the waiting room. His hair was still thick but starting to go gray. His tan face was weathered. Still, he could have passed for forty without much question, and he was fifty-five.

“Rumor has it someone finally figured out how to thaw you out,” he said.

“They pumped my blood out, warmed it up, and then let me have it back. Pretty good deal, don’t you think?”

“Most people who know you wouldn’t have given your blood back once they took it, that’s for sure.”

The hospital room might have seemed the wrong venue for the exchange of wiseass barbs, but the barbs were needed. From the way Jeff let his eyes drift, though, Mark knew the good humor wouldn’t last long.

“Why in the hell did you force your way into that cave?” Jeff said. “Even in the annals of your decision-making, that one stands out as poor, which is really saying something.”

“Force my way into the cave?” Mark stared at him without comprehension. “You haven’t been told what happened?” He realized then what should have been obvious from the start — nobody had been told what happened. He’d felt it would be clear somehow. He’d been put in the cave and he’d been rescued from it, and so it seemed someone should have understood the basics. The rescue effort had been organized. He had vague flash memories of uniforms and lights and official questions. Amid all the confusion, he’d gotten some comfort in that — the police had been called, and that meant they understood what had happened. The idea that he had gone into the cave willingly was astonishing.

“I’ve been told you pried open an old gate and went wandering,” Jeff said. “I don’t believe that you chose to take your clothes off for the trip, though. It’s been a point of contention between me and your friend the sheriff. The appearance of things suggested you went into the water after something. Your clothes were folded in a tidy pile right beside some sort of underground stream, like you’d taken them off before you waded in so they wouldn’t get wet.”

“Jeff... I was abducted. Three guys with shotguns.”

“They took you to the cave?”

“Yes. Well... not directly. I mean, two of them left. I think. But I had a hood over my head, and I can’t say exactly. But there was... I was somewhere else first.”

“How’d you get into the cave?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean? Did they knock you out?”

“Yes. Well... they must have. Because I don’t remember how I got in there. There’s a gap in my memory for a stretch, so they must have. I was up on the road, I was driving, and they stopped me and put me in this van. All of them had masks. All of them had shotguns. Then they put a hood over my head so I couldn’t see anything, and we went... somewhere. There was one guy asking questions.”

“The hood was on you the whole time?”

“No. It came off, I think.”

“You think? ”