Oedipussy (12 page)

Out of the darkness.

I opened my eyes.

Everything seemed clear.

White.

Verywhite.

Bright verywhite.

Pockmarked ceiling tiles.

Here are ceiling tiles.

I can count twenty four ceiling tiles.

Swirling around the ceiling tiles were metal tracks.

My mouth was full. My mouth was so very full.

Psst, a machine whispered next to me. The machine had a bag, regulating fluid.

The line trailed down, clear and magnified fluid, around the bedframe, down into my arm.

I used my arm to pull what was in my mouth out. I removed a long, plastic corrugated tube that I felt moving straight down to the center of my chest. I yanked it free followed with a drizzle of drool, and heavy warm air filled my lungs like sacks of rice.

On my arm, there wasn't a needle missing. There was a needle there. There was a needle attached to the bag.

I looked down my arm and I saw the needle, and beyond it I saw my hand. I lifted my arm a little, moving my fingers, and-

beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep

-an alarm went off and there was something wrong with the arm I was looking at. It was disproportionate and strange.

"I swear, Keefe," a large black woman in tye dye scrubs entered in the middle of focusing on putting on her rubber gloves, "if you've pulled that butterfly catheter out one more time, I am gonna duct-tape that got-da-" She paused, mid-stride, staring at me. My hand was still in the air.

"Hello," I whispered. It hurt.

"Hello," she said. Her eyes grew wide. Her finger touched a blue button and the alarm stopped. She walked directly over to me and started to take my blood pressure. There was a little cart she brought over with a box on it - some kind of huge thermometer with disposable tips and curly telephone wires everywhere.

Some hospital.

She looked at her watch, and intently tapped a clipboard on the thermometer cart like she was rudely waiting for me to finish my temperature.

Was it rude? She looked like she was concentrating on the tapping.

"Okay, honey, everything looks good, but I am going to ask you to not move. I need to call the doctor. I'll be back in a minute, and then we can talk."

She left the room, and the machine next to me gave a 'psst,' and then a 'rowr' of a motor. I heard another 'psst' to my left. I turned my head, and there was a man sleeping very still with the same setup. Straight across from me, another three beds on the opposite side of the room. All sleeping patients. On my right, another bed with a woman.

The rest of the room was sparse. Behind each bed there were wall hookups and a little canister thing with tubing - maybe a vacuum. In one corner of the room near the door was a counter with a sink, a sharps container, and some medical supplies. On the other end of the big room, there was a big metal cabinet.

Where was the bathroom?

I laid my head back down. I traced my eyes across the ceiling, imagining little trains running along the interconnected tracks swirling about. There were connections. Everyone was busy. The Orient Express wound through a wintry mountain range with cups of tea barely moving in the dining car.

The woman walked back in. She pulled a wheely stool next to my bed.

"Okay, so I'm here to talk. The doctor can tell you more when he arrives. Do you want to talk with me, or wait?"

"No... I sort of know why I'm here." She pulled the cart with the thermometer and the clipboard. She started touching it, again.

"What do you remember?"

"Listen, I don't have a drug problem. I've never done them, but somehow with the show... It doesn't make sense. Worst I've ever done was sip some of my dad's beer on a football night or something."

My voice sounded like shit. It was raspy and deathly from the bottom of a crypt. I really must have been screaming, or hungover. Does heroin make you hung over?

"What do you remember happening?"

"I was on stage. We were playing and I had a needle in my arm. That is all I remember. I did some drugs. I fell off the stage..." My eyes searched my sheets in front of me, looking for the answer.

"Oh. So there were drugs involved?"

"I guess. I don't know where they came from, so if that is the next question -"

"No, it isn't honey." She looked at the clipboard in front of her and ran her hand across it intently. It seemed to glow? "Do you remember a van ride?"

"I'm in a band."

"John Xiong was driving a van?” She was reading off the clipboard. “You were riding in back?"

"Yeah. Van was wrecked, John quit. We moved on."

A man walked in with determination.

"Hello, Todd, I am Doctor Krishnamurthy. I am a doctor on duty here at Saint Lucius Hospital. I hear you're awake and doing well."

He produced a flashlight and checked my pupils.

"Yes, I feel good. Rested."

"Excellent. Can you tell me why you're here?"

"Drugs...and I fell off a stage."

He took the flashlight down and looked me in the eyes, and then at the nurse.

"That's what he told me," she said.

"Do you mind?" He motioned to the stool and the woman stood. Dr. Krishnamurthy sat beside the bed. "Do you do drugs, Mr. Keefe?"

"Never before then."

"What kind of drugs were they, Mr. Keefe?"

"Heroin?"

"I see." He took out a gadget, attached a black cap to it and began looking in my nose and ears. "Mr. Keefe, there are no traces of drugs in your system. I guarantee it."

"That's a relief."

"Yes, as a matter of fact, aside from a few minor indicators, you are in very good health and you are incredibly lucky."

"Oh yeah?"

He looked at me gravely, and we kept eye contact. He took the clipboard from the nurse.

"He seems lucid and aware of his surroundings," he said to the nurse. She tapped. "This is Betty, she is the nurse on duty for your room, but she will be bringing you to another room shortly. Tell me, what is it you last remember?"

"I was just telling Betty - taking my drugs and falling off a stage."

"That did not happen, Todd. You were in an accident, and you have been here under our care since the accident. Do you know where you are?"

"You just said -" He said we were at Saint Lucius. I was in Boston. "Saint Lucius? Twin Falls, Saint Lucius?"

"You were in an accident..." he looked at the glowing clipboard. ”April twenty-second, 1994."

"Okay. Sure. That was our first show, when that guy crashed into the van and almost killed us all."

"You remember, then?" He flipped it back to Betty, and once again she tapped her fingers on it.

"Yeah, like ages ago."

"Ages ago?"

"Well, touring for the last three weeks," my voice was horse, "although some of it makes no sense in there because we had a show in June, but then it was December already and we played with Radio Head."

"Radiohead."

"That is what I said. And we were in Boston. What, did I get air flighted here or something? Did Hirons pay for it to get me closer to my family?"

A smile edged the corner of Betty's face, the red lipstick shone in the dim light of the room.

"I'm afraid to tell you some things that may come as a shock to you. We're here for whatever support you need."

"Okay," I said slowly.

"What year is it?"

"Ninety-four."

"Mr. Keefe, the year is twenty-nineteen. It has been twenty-five years since your accident."

My mind was blank. In any other circumstance, it seems that I would be angry, or upset. I was confused, but mostly, I was just... Blank.

"You were the sole survivor of the accident. A drunk driver hit your vehicle. John Xiong was killed instantly and Steven Harvester was ejected and died later. Your van was pushed up and over the barricade over Snake River, and the van fell into the gorge. The van then took on water, with you and Kurt unconscious in the back. Kurt Lobel drowned in the van. The van sank in such a way that you were found above water on boxes in the back of the van.

"You are a very lucky man, Todd. I know that this is going to be a difficult process for you-"

"No."

"No, what?"

"No...” I was trying to be patient. “I get it."

"Okay. We are going to make sure you have a therapist and neurologist available as a part of your treatment. There is something else we need to talk about right away, however."

I sat stony and still. He took an instrument out of his lab coat along with a little rubber hammer. The instrument looked like a tiny pizza cutter with spikes instead of a blade. He held them in his hands between his knees as he addressed me.

"This is a lot of information to process, and it will take time. I'm afraid there's no better way to say this, Todd. In the accident you were gravely injured, and you have come a long way in twenty-five years. You have battled some things that I am sure you didn't even know you were battling. It says in your chart you had a near fatal bedsore that I am sure you still have scarring from... In the accident you had three broken ribs. A fracture of your right orbital bone behind your eye. A broken tibula. Four bones broken in your foot. Hemorrhaging everywhere, namely in your face. You were a mess.

"You also fractured a few other bones that were a little more important than these. Of course, all of your bones are important, but some are those we can not fix. You fractured cervical vertebrae four, five, and six. You fractured thoracic vertebrae one and two. You shattered almost all of your lumbar vertebrae.

"The medical team that assisted you did a fantastic job with you. You were brought in on a back board, and they immediately went to work stabilizing you, many surgeries to put some hardware back there to keep everything from falling apart. It was bad, but not impossible."

"So?"

"We're pretty certain of some things. Before I say anything, I would like to check if that's okay?"

He took his little hammer, and bonked by right knee. I braced for the uncomfortable shock and reaction.

It didn't come.

Nothing.

He did it two more times.

He switched to my left knee.

Three times.

Nothing.

"Betty, note reflex hammer elicits no response."

He put his hammer back in his pocket and took out the spiky pizza cutter.

"Your only job is to react as you feel this instrument. Tell me if and when you feel it, and I am going to ask that you stare at the ceiling or close your eyes as I complete this test.

I looked up at the ceiling and closed my eyes.

Twenty five years.

I've been on tour for twenty five years?

I've been away for twenty five years.

I have eaten myself and been reborn, chewing on my years. I've been a waif for twenty-five years.

Just yesterday, I was worried about what was next, and what was next, and so much potential. It seemed as though it was guaranteed to some degree, and then...

No, I have to get out of here. This is some sick -

I grabbed the bed railing, but then held my hand in front of me. The skin was distended, floppy, and pale. There were brown marks that hadn't been there. My bones showed through the grey flesh, and the muscles seemed weak. The fingernails had ridges running lengthwise that weren't so before. Grey hairs peeked from the sleeve of my blue johnnie robe like brush on the side of the highway, or the bottom of Snake River Canyon.

"Where are my friends?"

There was a pause.

"They died in the accident."

"Does my mom know I am awake? -ow!" there was a pain to the side of my right thigh near my testicles. "-the fuck?"

I looked down at the doctor, and he looked up at me from where he sat on the stool. He turned his attention to Betty.