Rob Thurman - Slashback

Junior, each word resounded darkly in my thoughts with every step, you have truly become an unbelievable pain in my neck.

Junior did work in the cafeteria, which was in the basement. He was exactly as I imagined: slow, mumbling shyly to the employees and visitors, and a hairnet far larger than what little hair he had required. After getting a glimpse of him, I moved back to a corner of the cafeteria behind a pillar out of his sight. I took the last empty table and waited for an impatient short man in scrubs to give me the look. It was a universal look for hardworking people with short lunch breaks: why are you taking up a table if you’re not eating? I waved a hand at him and started to stand up. “Oh, sorry, I’m leaving.”

He swooped in as fast as a hawk on a field mouse. I waited until he had a mouth of mashed potatoes while eyeing me suspiciously in case I tried to snatch the table back. “My dad’s upstairs,” I offered. “Getting some sort of stomach scan. I’m just waiting until it’s done.” I could’ve added that he was all I had and did this guy know where the chapel was so I could pray and maybe I should think about getting a job in case my dad couldn’t go back to work right away. It’s what Sophia would’ve said, which is why I wouldn’t. I went straight for the “get a job” lie as it tasted the least like chalk and tin in my mouth. “What are the people like who work here now? Are they nice?”

It turned out he was a cardiopulmonary surgeon and he certainly did not know the personalities and/or characteristics of the common cafeteria worker. In other words, in this hospital he was a god and the rest ants beneath his sanctified feet.

The next person was a proctologist. She had no problem talking about the cafeteria workers, their probable bowel habits considering the food they served and told me stories about the odder things she’d removed from people’s anuses including a set of Russian nesting dolls. They kept coming out and coming out and coming out. I couldn’t help but laugh while simultaneously wondering if I was going to have to give the red-faced doctor choking on her own hilarity the Heimlich maneuver and promising myself to never repeat the stories to Cal. I might leave them to him in my will, but he wouldn’t hear them while I was still alive. The moral of the story being if I decided to go into medicine and I wanted good-humored colleagues, proctology was the field to aim for. . so to speak.

As for Junior, my new friend Dr. Linda Wilner said he was a nice enough guy, gave big portions and rarely sneezed on the food, was religious as he’d seen him praying over his own lunch, and with what he ate could use some roughage to help out with regularity. I decided I likely didn’t want to be a proctologist after all.

I thanked her and was leaving the cafeteria when I saw Junior not concentrating on the stewed cabbage as I’d planned, but gone and a security guard at the entrance to the cafeteria staring at me. It was a toss-up whether Junior had spotted me and called security or the first doctor I’d talked to had. I was betting the doctor. If Junior saw me, he’d assume I was here looking for a job as I’d told him I’d planned to. The doctor-he could not like unescorted minors taking up tables that Heaven itself had set aside for him or not believed I had a parent here at all. Hospitals are great places for thieves. Everyone’s worried about their sick or dying family member, no one’s watching their purse or wallet. It was a pickpocket’s dream. Our second week in New London, Sophia had gone to Lawrence Memorial with the intention of being a one-woman crime spree. Unfortunately for her, it had already been picked clean several times over in the past months by thieves who had the same idea as Sophia. After that kind of pattern, it made sense they’d be on alert. I should’ve thought about that.

I thought about it when the security guard started walking, then running, my way. I thought about it more than once as I ran through halls, up and down stairs, went up to the roof and memorably all the way down to the morgue. In a cold metal drawer lying on my side next to a gray and blue man with a missing leg below the knee and a stench I didn’t have to be Cal to smell, I wondered irritably what made this security guard this dogged? He was in his forties. How much were they paying him to be this devoted to his job? Where did he get all that energy?

Not getting laid by his wife, Cal whispered in my mind. But at least that’ll keep him safe from the serial killer.

If he were here, that was what he’d say-how could an eleven-year-old get a foul mouth so quickly without my noticing it was on the horizon? But he and his smart mouth weren’t here. He was waiting for me outside and I was now an hour overdue. If he stayed on the bench, it would be all right. He would know better than to come to try to find me. I was the oldest. This was my job. I would get out of here and he would stay where I’d told him. He’d listen, he’d obey, he wouldn’t come in this place. I’d get out of this damn morgue and I’d see for myself. Cal knew better than to try to save me, not here.

Of course “here” was where I found him.

He’d made it as far as the automatic sliding glass doors of the ER before collapsing. I could see the people running toward him as he convulsed and vomited on the cheap tile floor. The cavalry had come to rescue me and I meant that without an ounce of sarcasm. He’d risked his life over this and he knew it. Cal, who looked all human on the outside, but we had no idea what he looked like on the inside and I couldn’t take a chance.

I’d lost the security guard, but I didn’t make any new friends when I hit a doctor with one shoulder knocking him flat, and then did the same to a nurse on the other side. Scooping Cal up, I kept running through the still open doors. It was dark outside now and none of the ER staff were the runners the security guard had been. Even carrying Cal, I lost them after several blocks of twists and turns.

I had him up with his head over my shoulder. I didn’t enjoy the warmth of his vomit spilling down my back, but that was much better than him choking on it. The convulsing turned to squirming, and then he was gasping in my ear, “Nik, get away from me. Nik, get away!” That might not have halted my running, but his fists pounding as hard as they could against my back did. I stopped in an alley between a long out-of-business store and a church and gently put him on his feet. He fell instantly, scrambling backward on all fours, horrified eyes on me.

“Cal?” Confusion and a flash of panic wrapped dual hands around my lungs and gripped tightly. I took a step toward him.

“No.” He moved farther away, then lunged to his feet and toward the nearest garbage can, digging through it until he found a can of Coke that was not quite empty. He poured what was left over his hand, then covered up his nose and mouth.

That’s when I got it. For an hour and a half I’d been in the hospital soaking up the stench of illness and dying that had had Cal on the floor flailing in his own sick. Worse, I’d been in a drawer with a corpse, who from the whiff I’d gotten, had died of gangrene. I was making Cal as sick as the hospital could. I backed away. “Tell me when I’m far enough,” I asked as if it were an ordinary question. Right now we both needed to believe things were ordinary if we had to lie to ourselves to do it.

After several more steps he nodded, still keeping his mouth and nose covered. I’d have to write a thank-you note to the Coca-Cola company, I thought with only a slight edge of relieved hysteria.

“Where’d you go?” he asked, accusing words muffled by his hand. “You said a half hour. You were gone an hour and a half. You were gone forever. I thought he got you.”