Bruce Wagner - Memorial

The nurse said Mr Levin was in hydrotherapy but Chess could “go ahead on.” The RNs liked it when friends or relatives showed interest (not the norm in cases as far gone as Maurie’s). Visitors provided distraction and eased staff burden — unless they were pushy or demanding family members who stopped by just long enough to assess that their loved (more accurately, “liked,” or unloved) ones were being treated with appalling indifference: troublemakers who never felt enough was being done. Chester clearly wasn’t that way. He was in the “How can I help?” category, and his arrival brought smiles.

He walked down the hall, past rooms of stranded patients. It was strange: while there didn’t seem to be any bonafide interaction between so-called caregivers and charges, the place was a blizzard of weirdly concentrated bustle, as if employees were preparing for a presidential visit. Chess felt as invisible as the inmates, which was actually a relief.

He found the hydrotherapy room, a large metal vat attended by a jovial fellow with pinned on his shirt.

“Hey, how ya doin?” said Servano.

Chess hovered in the doorway.

“All right.”

“You a friend of my man Maurie’s?”

“Yeah. How is he?”

“Maurie? He’s the king. Doin real good. We’re getting Maurie ready for the Olympics. Special Olympics. Ain’t that right, Maurie?”

The patient was supported by a wide canvas sling, to prevent him from going under. The water churned and Servano PT’s arms dipped beneath, working Maurie’s legs.

“See, someone so young? When they’re hit hard? My feeling is: get em in the water, ASAP. Cause he’s a young man. Some of these docs’ll tell you we can do this kind of work when they’re in bed, but there ain’t no way. I’ve seen water work miracles. Doctors want to write a lot of these patients off. Now it don’t look like the King is doin much, but this is all about retraining. Retraining muscle groups and electrostatic energy. Ever heard of chakras? What’s your name?”

“Chester — Chess.”

“Your daddy a chess player?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Well, Chester Chakra, I’m a big believer. In unlocking energies. I seen it happen too many times! And you don’t need a stem cell transplant neither. Sometimes the brain decides to throw a roadblock up and you got to lift the barrier. Happens all the time, man, and they call it a miracle, but I just call it perseverity. Without perseverity, you’re not gonna have no miracle. I seen it. Dozens of times. I seen it happen to my on tee. This was a few years ago. I went back to visit? In Alabama? She was just layin there. Man, the flies were on her and ain’t no body there to wave em off. See, cause everybody too busy. Everybody in the world too busy to do what they supposed to. What they paid to do. And I said, Man, get her in the friggin water! What’s the matter with you? You got a tub there just sittin, put the lady in. You ever heard of Lourdes, Chester? And I ain’t talking Madonna’s daughter, neither! She’s cute. I seen pictures of her. Looks just like her mama. Eyebrows all bushy. Probably gonna know how to make money like her mama too. I stayed in Alabama a month, doin it all myself. Puttin Ontee in the water. And they let me do it too, cause they knew I was trained even though I didn’t have a license. Not in Alabama, no way. The only license they care about in Alabama is a driver’s license! Caballero, you better be carrying one when they stop you or they’ll lock your brown ass in jail and throw away the key! So I worked with my ontee and I worked some other patients too — I’m an equal-opportunity healer when it comes to water — we lifted a lotta roadblocks, cleaned up muchos chakras, those folks practically gave me the key to the city when I left! I can go back and practice PT anytime. Hell, I could have myself a private practice. But I like Southern California. I was a little worried about em but the Alabamians turned out to be good people — not too many places would’ve let me do half the stuff I wound up doing. See, people are cool if you give em the chance. There’s a few bad apples but mostly the world’s full o’ good people. And my ontee is fine. Now she walks with a cane, with a hand-carved owl on top. Don’t even use a walker. And this is someone who was almost as bad off as the King here. She’s 63 years young. And she’s workin now, works out of the house, doing telephone surveys. She good at it too! A productive member of society. If you’d have seen her that 1st time? See, I used to work with a vet, in a vetirary hospital. Very fancy one. This vetirary was like the Hilton! The cat’s meow! That’s what they should have called it — cute, huh? The Cat’s Meow. I told my sister that and she laughed. She said I should try to sell that name to someone on the Internet. My sister good at the Internet, sells shit on eBay all the time. So this vetirary facility was the cat’s meow, and the dog’s bark, too! And I saw all our furry friends getting better in the tubs. Most of em didn’t like it at 1st but they chill. See, it’s all about the water — ain’t it, Maurie? Yeah, he doin fine. He doin real fine. Gonna be walkin outta here real soon, aren’t you, King?”

Suddenly, Servano PT laughed.

He switched off the churning and motioned Chess to come over. He pointed in the water — Maurie had a hard-on.

“Now that’s a good thing! See it? See how the water’ll do ya? Now that’s bad ass. That’s badass healing chakra, the roadblocks are liftin! That’s like the Red Sea parting! See? That means he’s feelin better already, that’s his way of tellin us about it! Isn’t it, King? H 2O’ll do that to ya. Get you excited about shit again. And when the body starts to feel itself come alive like that, it’s all good. That’s the lower-body chakras workin and that leads to the heart and head chakras, all that’s gonna be flowin. Sorry, Maurie! Ramona don’t have no shift today!”

He laughed and winked and flicked on the churner. The visitor leaned against the wall, his mood plummeting. After a few more minutes of bullshitting, the PT asked Chess if he was aware that Medicaid was reimbursing rapists and child molesters for their Viagra prescriptions.

Servano said he thought that was a crime.

Why is he telling me this?

“The state does all kinds of crazy shit. See, Maurie, he’s one of the lucky ones. It don’t look like it but it’s true. See, most these places are warehouses, but the doctors here are pretty good. We gotta pretty good level of care. Hell, prisoners get better treatment than civilians on the street. I mean, the jails are in bad shape, man. They got TB and syphilis and AIDS and now they got drug-resistant staph — everybody walkin around with boils on their faces filled with pus — guards too. Prisons are a natural breeding ground. Worse than kindygarden. But instead of cleaning up their act, they spend millions transporting these rapists. Know where they take em when they get sick? Beverly Hills! I am serious, Chester! They get breast implants too! I’m not shittin you, man! Hell, that nurse killer? What was his name, Speck? Speck kills 8 nurses, then goes and gets himself implants, on the taxpayer’s expense. Now ain’t that a bitch? Guess I should’ve said, Ain’t he a bitch.” He laughed at his joke. “I’m pretty sure he’s dead now. Maybe his knockers got all infected or they were too heavy and smothered him in his sleep! Triple Ds! Stupid mother fucker —the state probably would’ve paid for a breast reduction. Naw, I think somebody killed him. I remember reading that. Or whatever. That was one fucker who deserved to die. I’m sorry to use bad language, Chester, hope you’re not offended. But a man who shows no mercy should be shown no mercy. They should have thrown a nurse’s outfit over those tits and hunted him down like he did those poor young girls. Candystriped his sick ass. I’m tellin you there’s hundreds of these guys in jail, serial killers, baby rapers, cold bitches like the Green River Killer or the BTK, they’ll never know how many lives they took and you know what? They get their teeth fixed in Beverly Hills cause if they don’t, they can sue the whole system, they get their little pills for herpes and antidepressants when my sister can’t even afford the copay on Effexor. Hell, just talkin about it makes me want to go all Prozac! But the BTK? He don’t need no copay!”