Shaun Jeffrey: Dead Man's Eye

“You think you know what you saw. That’s the point I’m trying to make. Just because you saw it, it doesn’t make it real.”

Joanna didn’t like Stephen’s train of thought anymore than her own as it implied that she wasn’t in control of her own mind. That there was nothing wrong with her transplant, and that she really was going mad.

She stood up and walked across the room towards the small, claustrophobia-inducing kitchen, stopping at the window to draw the curtains on the encroaching darkness.

Before she pulled the material across, she looked down at the road below. The streetlight opposite shone a dull orange, highlighting the figure leaning nonchalantly against the post; a figure she instantly recognised as Lincoln Parker. The light overhead threw shadows around his feet, but they seemed to dance as though alive.

Lincoln waved his spectral limb in her direction and Joanna screamed and backed away from the window.

“Jo, what’s the matter,” Stephen asked as he rushed to her side.

“He’s out there. The man with one arm. He’s outside.”

“That’s impossible. He lost too much blood to have been released yet.”

“Then why don’t you go tell him that.” She turned and pointed outside, only as she secretly feared, there was no one there.

“So you’re sure Lincoln Parker didn’t leave the hospital last night,” Stephen asked.“Positive. The man was on enough sedative to knock out a horse. Why, what’s the matter?”

Stephen looked at the staff nurse and shrugged. “Oh nothing really.” He stared into the room where Lincoln sat eating his breakfast, his large bulk propped up against a stack of pillows on the bed. He didn’t know what it was, but he didn’t look like the same upbeat man he had spoken to outside the lift the day before. “Is it okay if I have a word with him?”

The nurse pulled a quizzical expression. “I guess so.”

Nodding his thanks, Stephen walked into the room and stood at the foot of Lincoln’s bed. “Hey,” he said.

Lincoln looked up. Despite his missing arm, his bulk gave him a powerful demeanour. He peered at Stephen with piercing blue eyes. “You a doctor?”

“No, just a receptionist.”

“Well I would offer you a chair, but as you can see, I’ve got my hand full.” He lifted the fork to his mouth to shovel down some more of his dinner.

Stephen stared at the stump where Lincoln’s arm should be and felt a twinge of discomfort.

“So what do you want, some more details about me for your records?”

Stephen shook his head. “No, nothing like that. Do you remember yesterday, that girl you were asking me about?”

Lincoln frowned and lowered his fork. “I may have lost an arm, but I haven’t lost my marbles. I’ve never seen you before, never mind asked you about any girl. I think romance is pretty far down my agenda at the moment.”

“It was late yesterday. You were being moved back to your room. A girl came up to you. You might remember her from the train station, when, you know… She said you sat next to her on the platform.”

“Oh, her. Yeah. I saw her yesterday. Cute little thing. Black hair. Nice body. She was talking to me and then…” He stared up at the ceiling and chewed his lower lip. “Damned if I can remember really.”

“Well she ran off after talking to you.”

Lincoln shook his head. “Guess she didn’t like me that much then.” He grinned, but the expression looked pained.

“Do you know why she ran off?”

Lincoln shook his head.” Guess I’m not the hunk I thought I was. Why, what’s it matter?”

Stephen didn’t really know what to say. “Nothing really.”

“Matters enough for you to come and question me.”

“I’m worried about her, that’s all.”

“And that’s got something to do with me, because…?”

“This is going to sound really stupid, but when you had your, erm, accident, she thought she saw, I don’t know, a phantom arm where you lost yours.”

Lincoln pulled a face. “Are you taking the piss?” He jabbed the fork in the air as if emphasising the words.

“No, of course not. Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come. Forget it.”

“Too right I’m gonna forget it. Now get the fuck out of here before I call someone.”

Stephen felt himself blush. “Look, I’m really sorry.” He turned and quickly walked out of the room.

He knew it was a stupid idea to confront Lincoln. Now he wished he hadn’t done it.

Lincoln watched the receptionist leave the room and slammed his fork onto the wheeled tray set over the bed, making it rattle. With a sweep of his arm, he sent his dinner flying across the room. As if he didn’t have enough on his plate without some nut job questioning him. The freak probably didn’t even work at the hospital. Was probably a reporter after a story for the local newspaper. Bastards. The last thing he wanted was people seeing him like this, never mind being featured in the news.

He glanced at the nub of his left shoulder, clenched his teeth and then looked away. Couldn’t believe his fuckin’ arm had been chopped off. To make it worse, the orthopaedic surgeon said there was too much damage to save the limb, and that he would be fitted with a prosthetic one – a fuckin’ plastic arm like Action Man. Well fuck that.

A loud sob burst from Lincoln’s mouth and his chest heaved. He ran the back of his hand across his eyes to dispel the tears. He wasn’t going to cry; was stronger than that, despised weakness, whether physical or mental. He was going to rise above this.

But how?

He was a cripple!

The word stung him and he gritted his teeth.

A weak, ineffectual, cripple.

Lincoln had spent years in the gym, honing his body, engorging his muscles through the repetition of lifting weights. Yesterday was going to be his first bodybuilding competition. He saw it as a way out of the crummy factory where he worked. Now even the job in the goddamn factory would be better than this.

Having heard the commotion, a red-haired nurse with stocky legs walked into the room and stared at the broken dinner plate and the food splattered across the wall. She looked across at Lincoln and then tutted.

“Now then, what’s all this? I’ll not have this sort of behaviour on my ward.”

Lincoln bit his tongue. He knew it wasn’t her fault, but he felt like screaming.

“Cat got your tongue? Feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to help, young man. And throwing food around certainly isn’t. Someone will have to clean this up.”

“Then why don’t you do it.”

The nurse fixed him with a hard glare. “Due to the circumstances, I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”

Lincoln’s wound throbbed as though to remind him of his loss. “Whatever.”

He shuffled down using his right elbow to lie on the bed.

Why had that receptionist/reporter, whatever he was, insisted that they had spoken the day before?

It didn’t make sense unless he was trying to ingratiate himself in some way to get Lincoln’s story. Make him feel that they’d already spoken, as though the barrier between strangers had been broken.

Lincoln closed his eyes to embrace sleep.

Well fuck him. Fuck them all.

Stephen looked up from his desk and stared at Lincoln Parker wandering towards him across the foyer.

He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something different about the man. Although he had never seen him upright before, the man walked with the air of someone possessed of an inner strength, his back ramrod straight.

But surely the man should be resting after his traumatic experience and subsequent operation, rather than wandering the hospital. Unless…