Jack O'Connell - The Resurrectionist

Sweeney surprised himself by saying, “That’s some quality control.”

The Sheep didn’t flinch.

“Don’t need any quality control,” he said. “That’s one of the things I learned in the cave.”

He held a test tube out in the air and, without thinking, Sweeney got to his feet and took it from him. Now the Sheep was firing on all cylinders, using one hand to swirl the tap water in the beaker, another to hold a small brown envelope to his mouth that he tore open with his teeth. He spit the flap to the floor, brought the envelope to his nose, and sniffed. Then he held it out to Sweeney, who declined the scent.

“You got a steady hand?” the Sheep asked.

Sweeney took the question as rhetorical and held out the tube. The Sheep poured the crystalline contents of the envelope without spilling a grain. Then he threw the envelope to the floor and took the tube from Sweeney, who remained by his side.

“Some people,” the Sheep said, “need to go into the desert for revelation. But I can’t stand wide-open spaces. All that sky, it’s terrible.” He talked as he worked, pouring colored liquids from soup cans and beer bottles that looked as if they’d never been washed, let alone sterilized. “Maybe I’m agoraphobic. That’s the word, isn’t it? But if so, they never mentioned it. I heard paranoid and I heard delusional and a lot of other not-so-nice things. But to the best of my knowledge nobody ever said agoraphobic.”

He produced more envelopes and plastic baggies, making them appear out of seemingly nowhere. At points, he reminded Sweeney of a particularly intense teppanyaki chef that he and Kerry had liked at the Tokyo Gardens back in Cleveland.

“But my point is, for some people, they got to go out under that big sky, with no boundaries, in order to get the truth. Now I’m just the opposite. I need to go inward, you see. I need to burrow in. Caves are perfect for me. I’m like a mole, you know? The deeper and the darker, the better. If the answer’s gonna come, it’s gonna come in the caves.”

The radio played “Take These Chains.” Sweeney found himself assisting. The Sheep’s instructions were never explicit, but Sweeney had no trouble determining what he wanted.

“And I gotta say, I think that’s appropriate. Cuz I don’t know how much Buzz might’ve told you, but we’re headed inside, right? When all’s said and done, that’s where the real cosmos is, you know?”

Sweeney answered in grunts. The radio played “She’s a Winner” and “Reap What You Sow.” At some point, the Fluke came up to the loft carrying two mugs of coffee. The Sheep downed his in a single gulp. Sweeney washed out beakers, ran the centrifuge, boiled down liquids. On occasion, he caught himself identifying aromas, taking note of colors.

It was pleasant work, and the Sheep was good company. A little spacey, tripped-out for a lab rat, but warm and smart and funny. Eventually the focus of all their labor became a tin saucepan that simmered on low atop the hot plate. The Sheep stirred the contents with a wooden spoon, his face tilted down over the mouth of the pan and engulfed in its vapors. Sweeney joined him, looked down and saw a thin purple broth.

“Is it soup yet?” he asked.

“That’s funny,” the Sheep said. “That’s what Buzz calls it. But personally, I like to think of it more like chili.”

He tapped the spoon on the lip of the pan, then set it down in the dust of the worktable. “This,” he said, “is just the beans. We’re still waitin’ on the meat, you might say. The meat’s the most important part. I tried a dozen recipes, okay, and some were better’n others. But it wasn’t till this last trip to the caves that I got everything worked out just right. The soup was always too thick or too thin. Like in Goldilocks, you know? Too little meat and everything’s just pale and bland. And too much meat and you’ll put the boys in their own fuckin’ coma. That’s the thing to remember. It’s all about the meat.”

“The meat,” said Nadia, from the doorway, “has arrived.”

She was dressed in her nurse’s uniform, all cotton, white on white. Her hair was still pulled back, and Sweeney found it strange to see her Clinic persona playing here in Gehenna. She stared at the Sheep and ignored Sweeney.

Nadia reached into her pocket and withdrew a vial. It was small and plastic, capped with a green stopper and filled with a pink liquid. She handed it to the Sheep, who held it up to the light and closed one eye to look at it.

“You said it was okay if I got some blood with the fluid.”

Nadia sounded brittle, a little defensive. But Sweeney could see that the Sheep was thrilled.

“A little blood,” he said, “might be just the thing.”

He moved to the hot plate, pulled the stopper with his teeth, and poured the pink liquid into the soup. Then he grabbed the wooden spoon and began to stir. Nadia looked from the Sheep to Sweeney and said, “The kid says hello.”

Sweeney came around the tables toward her, and the Sheep, without taking his eye off the saucepan, said, “Don’t fuckin’ touch her.”

Nadia couldn’t stop the smile. She put a hand on her hip, gave an exaggerated roll of the eyes. “You chivalrous bastard,” she said but Sweeney couldn’t tell to whom she was talking.

“What was in the vial?” he said to Nadia.

“So much for the afterglow,” she said but the Sheep answered the question.

“It’s Danny’s brain fluid,” he said. “They check the pressure in his skull cavity and if they need to, they drain the fluid. You know that, Sweeney.”

Sweeney couldn’t stop staring at Nadia.

The Sheep went on.

“Don’t make a big thing out of this. Normally, they’d throw the drainage in toxic waste and it’d be burned in the morning. We’re taking something he doesn’t need, Sweeney. Something that’s poisonous to him.”

“We’re helping Danny out,” Nadia said. “And if you can control yourself, we’re going to help you out too.”

He wanted to slap her. Knock her to the ground. Break an arm or a leg. But everything they were saying was true. They did have to drain Danny’s shunt once or twice a week. They’d done it back at St. Joe’s. It relieved the pressure on the brain. A simple procedure. And the fluid was nothing but waste product. He’d watched Mrs. Heller throw a hundred vials into the toxic box. He’d never given them another thought.

He turned to the Sheep and said, “You’re going to drink this shit?”

Nadia laughed and the Sheep said, “Actually, we’re gonna take it intravenously.” He put down the wooden spoon again and turned to Nadia.

“Call the boys in,” he said. “And tell Buzz soup’s on.”

The Abominations had built a little campfire inside a massive stew kettle. They’d placed the pan on the floor in the center of the lunchroom and were sitting around it in a semicircle. Buzz was prodding the makeshift kindling with a tire iron. Opposite him, Sweeney was staring at the faces, all of them warped by shadow. The bikers looked like kids on Christmas morning, made silent by a panicky desire for a specific gift and a concurrent terror that it might not be under the tree.

The Sheep was in the middle of the semicircle, on his knees, holding a tin beer tray that held a pile of syringes. While everyone watched, he began loading the spikes with the contents of the saucepan.

Buzz put down the tire iron and said, “Looks a little thin.”

The Sheep shook his head.

“Looks,” he said, and snapped a finger against the last needle, “can be deceiving as a motherfucker.”

Buzz smiled but he let his voice go low when he said, “Careful there, Alvin.”