Stuck In The Middle (2005; 2904 words)
“It’s my big toe,” said Kevin. The petite female admitting nurse stood with a clipboard beside his examining table set up in the emergency room hallway. Ten feet away, a just-vacated gurney sported disheveled sheets and a Rorschach-looking pattern of new blood. “At least that wasn’t me,” said Kevin.
“How did it happen?” asked the nurse.
“I stepped off the bus and dropped my cell phone in the gutter.”
Another, older woman in scrubs walked over, tapped the admitting nurse on the shoulder and began to whisper. Kevin looked straight ahead and kept talking.
“I yelled at the bus driver and said, ‘OH MY GOD IT’S MY CELL PHONE STOP STOP!’”
Because of the agitated, high pitch of his voice, the second woman eyed him warily, her professional judgment in play. He gave his dramatic re-enactment of the devastating scene at the bus stop on Sixteenth Street, two blocks from the one-bedroom condo that had been home since the accident, when he went on disability. Now forty-two, he was established in his community as walking local color, a harmless eccentric with a slight limp, annoying speech and a quirky memory: he might remember the losing squad of the 1969 Super Bowl, but for him the topic of the last paragraph spoken in conversation was subject to evaporation. Sitting there in the hospital, his focus was keen for the moment.
“My mother left me a trust fund. I have a trust fund, so I can afford a cell phone, even if I am on disability. I wasn’t always on disability.”
These eight years after the accident that changed him, he relished tiny moments of drama that put him at the center of things. For the old Kevin, luxuries of intentional humor and spontaneous kindness were always available. He had been dating Lou Anne at work, and they were planning to marry. “You look great in that uniform,” she would say when he came in to nod at her before being dispatched in his Orkin “bug-murder-mobile,” as he called it. Lou Anne laughed easily, warmly at his boyish methods of courting her, a tip of his hat and a wink. On dates, when they stopped at Wendy’s before going to the multiplex cinema, they kidded about being Jack Sprat and his wife. But Lou Anne had begun to lose weight and didn’t sweat so much while she sat still at her desk anymore, even though she would never lose that blush when Kevin winked or teased. “I like big butts and I cannot lie,” he would deadpan. “That’s my favorite rap song.” Lou Anne would get red in the cheeks and say, “You’re my only rapper, honey.” He saw her beauty through the extra size, beyond the obvious body surplus that others assumed to be her most telling feature.
Being on the examining table now made him think of her again. “She really did not like rap, you know,” he said and looked around to see that both nurses were gone and then watched as an oversized orderly with a shaved head and a gold chain around his neck pulled off that bloody laundry from the neighboring gurney. “I’m not upset, you know,” said Kevin as he tried to get a look at the tattoo crawling up the back of the orderly’s neck. All he could discern was a reptilian tail. “Lizard or snake?” Kevin asked. No answer, so he kept talking.
“Hospitals and chaos in the emergency room don’t bother me anymore,” he continued, as though someone were listening. “I am, however, upset about my phone. I’ll never get anything out of the bus company now. I couldn’t even call them to report what happened to my big toe because I didn’t have a phone. I shouldn’t say that. I should say that I didn’t have a working cell phone. I have the debris in my backpack if you’d like to see it. Where’s my backpack, I wonder? I had a Snickers in there. Do you have any chocolate, or maybe some M&Ms that melt in your mouth? Do you think they’ll give me another one? The bus or the phone company? Another phone?”
Still no answer, and the recently bloodied gurney next to Kevin’s table was now made up. The orderly turned on him.
“Do you always talk this much? Are you on meds?” The big man stood before Kevin, hands on hips with the soiled, rolled-up sheets stuck in the crook of one elbow. He was breathing deep and rapidly as he began to remove his rubber gloves. “Because I’ve only been standing here listening to you for two minutes and I’m ready to punch your lights out.”
This would have been an unusual exchange, perhaps, for any other man with a smashed big toe looking for help in the hospital, but Kevin was used to being called down––or called out. Since the accident, he had added many new words to his vocabulary, thanks to playing Scrabble by himself and working crossword puzzles three at a time, lined up on the dining room table. So, he now knew that he had been castigated for his volubility, his loquaciousness, his formidable verbosity and inability to respond accurately to surrounding conversational cues. He asked probing questions of the bus driver or the Starbuck’s barista, he offered his rudimentary Spanish to the maid who vacuumed the halls of his building. He asked questions, but didn’t wait for answers, didn’t want answers, and talked right over the gentle responses of persons whom he had interrogatively accosted in public places. Though he always said please and thank you, his were “the worst manners I have ever seen!” as his one friend had told him. His only real friend was Joseph, his barber, who allowed Kevin to sit and “visit” with customers for an hour a day. “I don’t let you do this because they like it,” said the barber. “I let you do this because you need to talk and I feel sorry for you.” “But sometimes I should just shut the fuck up?” Kevin responded. “You fuckin’ A, right!” said Joseph. “Fuckin’ A, man,” said Kevin.
The guy with the sheets in his elbow and tattoos on his neck was still waiting for an answer about punching out people’s lights. Kevin squelched the urge to tell why he turned out this way, why he couldn’t abide interactive conversation anymore. He stopped himself from starting the story because he knew he would forget the middle part. He always forgot that, except in the dead of night. So he forced himself to answer the question proffered by the orderly.
“Yes I am on meds and yes I should sometimes shut the fuck up.”
“Okay, then,” said the man. “Cool jacket,” he added, touching Kevin’s lapel before turning to walk away. “Have a nice day.”
In a whisper Kevin said to his back, “It’s my big toe.”
Now the hall was vacant, and distant sound was muffled to his ears since he was separated from the larger receiving area by drawn curtains. He lay down on his examining table and pulled up his right foot to rest on his knee. “They still haven’t even taken off my shoe,” he said to the empty hall. He pushed down the heel of his loafer and lifted it gingerly over his toes. His thick, winter wool L.L. Bean sock had but a quarter-sized blood spot where the big toenail would be.
“That’s not so bad,” he said and began to peel off the sock. Just before his foot was fully exposed, a stab of sick ache, a sharp hurt, radiated through his ankle, up his leg and into his brain.
“Owww!” Sock fuzz hung onto the dark, but still fluid, toenail blood. “My toe is flat,” he said, and laughed out loud, then stretched out and closed his eyes. Within seconds he was snoring. He woke himself up with the noise but turned onto his side and went hard to sleep.
~
He dreams her there, at her desk with an everything double cheeseburger––extra mayo––plus Frosty and a Biggie fry.
“Two words,” says Kevin, twirling the Orkin cap on his right index finger.
“Big butt?” says Lou Anne.
“Mel Gibson!”
“Movies, movies, movies. I love them, love them, love them,” she says. “Will you be my knight tonight?”
He walks behind her swivel office chair and puts his arms around her neck. “And I promise not to kill you tonight, but I didn’t really say that.” And they hold hands walking to the employee parking lot. Kevin opens the passenger door of Lou Anne’s Corolla, holding both her hands so that she can pull against his weight and gently slide the entirety of her red-haired, rosy-cheeked self into the car.
“Oh, my long-suffering bucket seat,” she says, laughing at herself.
“We’ll take surface streets. No interstate tonight,” he says, turning the stereo loud. Reaching the mall in a dream’s instant, he circles the multiplex again and again, while Lou Anne sings “I’m Back in Baby’s Arms” and giggles.
“I’m getting dizzy,” she says.
A loud buzz above them turns into a roar and shakes the car. Kevin strains to look out the front window and sees the belly of a jumbo jet.
“Oh, my God,” he whispers. “Not a plane crash! What’s next?” And the jet raises its wheels but scrapes the top of the car, signaling the end––again.
“Oh, well,” says Lou Anne. “Nice try. Save me tomorrow night?” The roar stops suddenly. “Sweet dreams, Sir Kevin.”
~
“Sir?” said a soft female voice above Kevin’s ear. “Sir, you say it’s your big toe?”
He opened his eyes to see a stethoscope dangling near his mouth. “What? Oh yeah,” he said and tried to push himself up on the table. “Owww!”
“Lie back, sir. I’m Dr. Martin and I’m going to get you taken care of here, okay? First I’ll dress this wound, then we’ll get an X-ray and figure out if we have a break.”
“It hurts.”
“I know,” said the doctor.
Kevin was foggily awake now, vivid images of his dream lingering. “It wasn’t a plane that got her. It was a telephone pole.”
“What’s that?”
“I lost my fiancée to a telephone pole, not a plane crash.”
“I’m so sorry. No one told me there was a fatality.”
“No, no. That was eight years ago. Eight years ago I lost her in her car. I mean, I was driving and I lost her.” He wasn’t crying; he never cried when he told this to people. In fact he had lost his ability to cry. “I’ve lost my ability to cry about it.”
“What happened?”
He raised himself on his elbows. “We were going to the movies and we had a wreck and I was drinking. I mean I was drinking, then we had a wreck.”
“I mean today,” said the doctor, now swabbing the swollen place. “How did this happen?”
“I dropped my cell phone in the gutter and the bus ran over my toe. Just a little.”
“We’ll get you something for pain in addition to the antibiotic for infection. You’re not on any medication, are you?”
“GOD!” he howled. “Hah! That’s rich. Yes, Dr. Martin, you could say I am.” He was at ease with this person, unlike with the big orderly, so his accustomed, unguarded voice returned momentarily. She ignored the nearly rude volume of his response.
“We’ll get all that in a minute. We’ll work something out.”
She was speaking to him as if he were just a guy, a poor decent guy who got hurt in an ordinary accident, not like a foolish former drunk with bad manners and a near drug dependency. Not like the man who couldn’t listen. Kevin looked at her soft, clear, light brown face, at her gentle eyes and sweetened his reedy voice.
“Are you an angel? From Jamaica?” The doctor laughed and let her smile linger while she continued her examination. She asked him to list his medications as she wrote them down. The big orderly appeared, pushed the gurney next to his place and wordlessly helped Kevin slide over to be wheeled down the hall and into position for the X-ray.
“Here’s some local pain relief for your injury,” said Dr. Martin. “With all that you’re taking, I really can’t give you any pain pills. You’ll feel a little prick in your toe.”
“That’s okay. One of my meds is supposed to keep me from worrying. I just won’t worry about pain. Ow,” he said, but this exclamation was quiet. The doctor wrapped a bandage around the toe.
“You’ll be in a room until I release you. I’m going to keep you here overnight.”
“Because why?” asked Kevin, anticipating––but not worrying about––a new health crisis.
“Because I can, and I think you’ll rest better if you have a little help nearby.”
“Thank you, doctor. Thank you so much.” Kevin would normally have insisted that he be let go as soon as someone could put him into a cab. His other hospital visits, every single one, had included hours of inattention from the staff, one brief appearance by a frowning, overextended physician and mounds of the wrong food for his disturbed constitution. But this time, following the dressing of his mashed, but not broken toe, following the X-ray, Kevin allowed the burly man with the necklace to wheel him into a room with two empty beds, choosing the one with the window over the patient’s left shoulder.
“Here’s the remote,” said the orderly, turning on the TV and walking out.
Kevin heard the doctor in the hall. “He doesn’t have anyone to come and get him, apparently, and he is taking so much medication. At least he says he is. I think it’s wise to keep him here.” Even from the hallway, Dr. Martin’s soft, alto sound worked like the tranquilizer she was afraid to prescribe, a sleeping pill for Kevin. Lying still on the bed, foot raised onto a pillow, he clicked “mute” on the TV remote and closed his eyes.
~
Kevin dreams the six o’clock news while Lou Anne is making dinner.
“That smells lovely,” says Kevin in his silky baritone voice. “What are we having?”
“Fried catfish a la Lou Anne with hushpuppies.” The news quits and the stereo takes over with Patsy Cline haunting the room. “And a glass of fine French wine.”
“After dinner, how about we take another try for that John Travolta movie,” says Kevin. “Raisinets and all.”
“Sure,” says Lou Anne. “Just watch out for jets and telephone poles.”
“I promise.”
~
Kevin awoke, looked around the hospital room and recognized a new voice in the hall.
“Yes. He’s my husband and we were in an accident eight years ago. But I wasn’t hurt. He always says that he ‘lost me,’ but he doesn’t mean I’m dead. He means my life is filled with only taking care of him. Kevin is the one who was hurt, but he thinks it’s ruined my life to be stuck with him. Guilty, I guess.”
A tall, slender, fair-skinned redhead followed the doctor into the room.
“Lou Anne. You found me. I didn’t want to scare you and they broke my phone. I forgot to tell them to call you. I forgot.”
“It’s getting to where I call the hospitals first.” She leaned over his bed and kissed his forehead. Her face was placid, as Kevin had learned to expect, even though a couple of sniffles made it clear that she had been worried and crying.
He locked eyes with her. “I can never get used to how small you are. But you are just as pretty.”
His wife seemed to savor the charming way he saw beauty in the other Lou Anne. The old Lou Anne. That big girl so changed by the consuming effort of keeping her husband alive that useless flesh had melted from her frame, exposing an empirically beautiful woman.
The doctor was caught in their private moment. “I don’t know why I assumed there was no one for him to call,” said the doctor. “I should have asked more direct questions.”
“It doesn’t surprise me. He’s a convincing talker.” Lou Anne took his hand and he gave her a wan smile. “You can’t lose me, honey. And I can’t lose you.”
“Should he be out by himself?” asked the doctor.
Kevin stiffened his body and raised his head. “I have to be out. I’m not a house pet.”
“He always says that. He’s pretty good at knowing his limits, but this is frightening. I’ll take a couple days off and we’ll think about what may have changed.”
Kevin spoke. “This physician is one of those angels––like the one who pulled you from the wreck. She’s the kind who helps me remember the middle part. I was almost to the middle part right before you got here.”
“That’s the part of his dream where I don’t die,” said Lou Anne. “He remembers I won’t leave the man who showed myself to me, even if part––or all––of him is missing at any given moment.”
Kevin’s eyelids were drooping now. He didn’t acknowledge Dr. Martin as she excused herself and left the room. He grunted, stuck out his lower lip ingenuously, and raised himself up to speak to his wife.
“Honey, have you got any Milk Duds?”
“It’s my big toe,” said Kevin. The petite female admitting nurse stood with a clipboard beside his examining table set up in the emergency room hallway. Ten feet away, a just-vacated gurney sported disheveled sheets and a Rorschach-looking pattern of new blood. “At least that wasn’t me,” said Kevin.
“How did it happen?” asked the nurse.
“I stepped off the bus and dropped my cell phone in the gutter.”
Another, older woman in scrubs walked over, tapped the admitting nurse on the shoulder and began to whisper. Kevin looked straight ahead and kept talking.
“I yelled at the bus driver and said, ‘OH MY GOD IT’S MY CELL PHONE STOP STOP!’”
Because of the agitated, high pitch of his voice, the second woman eyed him warily, her professional judgment in play. He gave his dramatic re-enactment of the devastating scene at the bus stop on Sixteenth Street, two blocks from the one-bedroom condo that had been home since the accident, when he went on disability. Now forty-two, he was established in his community as walking local color, a harmless eccentric with a slight limp, annoying speech and a quirky memory: he might remember the losing squad of the 1969 Super Bowl, but for him the topic of the last paragraph spoken in conversation was subject to evaporation. Sitting there in the hospital, his focus was keen for the moment.
“My mother left me a trust fund. I have a trust fund, so I can afford a cell phone, even if I am on disability. I wasn’t always on disability.”
These eight years after the accident that changed him, he relished tiny moments of drama that put him at the center of things. For the old Kevin, luxuries of intentional humor and spontaneous kindness were always available. He had been dating Lou Anne at work, and they were planning to marry. “You look great in that uniform,” she would say when he came in to nod at her before being dispatched in his Orkin “bug-murder-mobile,” as he called it. Lou Anne laughed easily, warmly at his boyish methods of courting her, a tip of his hat and a wink. On dates, when they stopped at Wendy’s before going to the multiplex cinema, they kidded about being Jack Sprat and his wife. But Lou Anne had begun to lose weight and didn’t sweat so much while she sat still at her desk anymore, even though she would never lose that blush when Kevin winked or teased. “I like big butts and I cannot lie,” he would deadpan. “That’s my favorite rap song.” Lou Anne would get red in the cheeks and say, “You’re my only rapper, honey.” He saw her beauty through the extra size, beyond the obvious body surplus that others assumed to be her most telling feature.
Being on the examining table now made him think of her again. “She really did not like rap, you know,” he said and looked around to see that both nurses were gone and then watched as an oversized orderly with a shaved head and a gold chain around his neck pulled off that bloody laundry from the neighboring gurney. “I’m not upset, you know,” said Kevin as he tried to get a look at the tattoo crawling up the back of the orderly’s neck. All he could discern was a reptilian tail. “Lizard or snake?” Kevin asked. No answer, so he kept talking.
“Hospitals and chaos in the emergency room don’t bother me anymore,” he continued, as though someone were listening. “I am, however, upset about my phone. I’ll never get anything out of the bus company now. I couldn’t even call them to report what happened to my big toe because I didn’t have a phone. I shouldn’t say that. I should say that I didn’t have a working cell phone. I have the debris in my backpack if you’d like to see it. Where’s my backpack, I wonder? I had a Snickers in there. Do you have any chocolate, or maybe some M&Ms that melt in your mouth? Do you think they’ll give me another one? The bus or the phone company? Another phone?”
Still no answer, and the recently bloodied gurney next to Kevin’s table was now made up. The orderly turned on him.
“Do you always talk this much? Are you on meds?” The big man stood before Kevin, hands on hips with the soiled, rolled-up sheets stuck in the crook of one elbow. He was breathing deep and rapidly as he began to remove his rubber gloves. “Because I’ve only been standing here listening to you for two minutes and I’m ready to punch your lights out.”
This would have been an unusual exchange, perhaps, for any other man with a smashed big toe looking for help in the hospital, but Kevin was used to being called down––or called out. Since the accident, he had added many new words to his vocabulary, thanks to playing Scrabble by himself and working crossword puzzles three at a time, lined up on the dining room table. So, he now knew that he had been castigated for his volubility, his loquaciousness, his formidable verbosity and inability to respond accurately to surrounding conversational cues. He asked probing questions of the bus driver or the Starbuck’s barista, he offered his rudimentary Spanish to the maid who vacuumed the halls of his building. He asked questions, but didn’t wait for answers, didn’t want answers, and talked right over the gentle responses of persons whom he had interrogatively accosted in public places. Though he always said please and thank you, his were “the worst manners I have ever seen!” as his one friend had told him. His only real friend was Joseph, his barber, who allowed Kevin to sit and “visit” with customers for an hour a day. “I don’t let you do this because they like it,” said the barber. “I let you do this because you need to talk and I feel sorry for you.” “But sometimes I should just shut the fuck up?” Kevin responded. “You fuckin’ A, right!” said Joseph. “Fuckin’ A, man,” said Kevin.
The guy with the sheets in his elbow and tattoos on his neck was still waiting for an answer about punching out people’s lights. Kevin squelched the urge to tell why he turned out this way, why he couldn’t abide interactive conversation anymore. He stopped himself from starting the story because he knew he would forget the middle part. He always forgot that, except in the dead of night. So he forced himself to answer the question proffered by the orderly.
“Yes I am on meds and yes I should sometimes shut the fuck up.”
“Okay, then,” said the man. “Cool jacket,” he added, touching Kevin’s lapel before turning to walk away. “Have a nice day.”
In a whisper Kevin said to his back, “It’s my big toe.”
Now the hall was vacant, and distant sound was muffled to his ears since he was separated from the larger receiving area by drawn curtains. He lay down on his examining table and pulled up his right foot to rest on his knee. “They still haven’t even taken off my shoe,” he said to the empty hall. He pushed down the heel of his loafer and lifted it gingerly over his toes. His thick, winter wool L.L. Bean sock had but a quarter-sized blood spot where the big toenail would be.
“That’s not so bad,” he said and began to peel off the sock. Just before his foot was fully exposed, a stab of sick ache, a sharp hurt, radiated through his ankle, up his leg and into his brain.
“Owww!” Sock fuzz hung onto the dark, but still fluid, toenail blood. “My toe is flat,” he said, and laughed out loud, then stretched out and closed his eyes. Within seconds he was snoring. He woke himself up with the noise but turned onto his side and went hard to sleep.
~
He dreams her there, at her desk with an everything double cheeseburger––extra mayo––plus Frosty and a Biggie fry.
“Two words,” says Kevin, twirling the Orkin cap on his right index finger.
“Big butt?” says Lou Anne.
“Mel Gibson!”
“Movies, movies, movies. I love them, love them, love them,” she says. “Will you be my knight tonight?”
He walks behind her swivel office chair and puts his arms around her neck. “And I promise not to kill you tonight, but I didn’t really say that.” And they hold hands walking to the employee parking lot. Kevin opens the passenger door of Lou Anne’s Corolla, holding both her hands so that she can pull against his weight and gently slide the entirety of her red-haired, rosy-cheeked self into the car.
“Oh, my long-suffering bucket seat,” she says, laughing at herself.
“We’ll take surface streets. No interstate tonight,” he says, turning the stereo loud. Reaching the mall in a dream’s instant, he circles the multiplex again and again, while Lou Anne sings “I’m Back in Baby’s Arms” and giggles.
“I’m getting dizzy,” she says.
A loud buzz above them turns into a roar and shakes the car. Kevin strains to look out the front window and sees the belly of a jumbo jet.
“Oh, my God,” he whispers. “Not a plane crash! What’s next?” And the jet raises its wheels but scrapes the top of the car, signaling the end––again.
“Oh, well,” says Lou Anne. “Nice try. Save me tomorrow night?” The roar stops suddenly. “Sweet dreams, Sir Kevin.”
~
“Sir?” said a soft female voice above Kevin’s ear. “Sir, you say it’s your big toe?”
He opened his eyes to see a stethoscope dangling near his mouth. “What? Oh yeah,” he said and tried to push himself up on the table. “Owww!”
“Lie back, sir. I’m Dr. Martin and I’m going to get you taken care of here, okay? First I’ll dress this wound, then we’ll get an X-ray and figure out if we have a break.”
“It hurts.”
“I know,” said the doctor.
Kevin was foggily awake now, vivid images of his dream lingering. “It wasn’t a plane that got her. It was a telephone pole.”
“What’s that?”
“I lost my fiancée to a telephone pole, not a plane crash.”
“I’m so sorry. No one told me there was a fatality.”
“No, no. That was eight years ago. Eight years ago I lost her in her car. I mean, I was driving and I lost her.” He wasn’t crying; he never cried when he told this to people. In fact he had lost his ability to cry. “I’ve lost my ability to cry about it.”
“What happened?”
He raised himself on his elbows. “We were going to the movies and we had a wreck and I was drinking. I mean I was drinking, then we had a wreck.”
“I mean today,” said the doctor, now swabbing the swollen place. “How did this happen?”
“I dropped my cell phone in the gutter and the bus ran over my toe. Just a little.”
“We’ll get you something for pain in addition to the antibiotic for infection. You’re not on any medication, are you?”
“GOD!” he howled. “Hah! That’s rich. Yes, Dr. Martin, you could say I am.” He was at ease with this person, unlike with the big orderly, so his accustomed, unguarded voice returned momentarily. She ignored the nearly rude volume of his response.
“We’ll get all that in a minute. We’ll work something out.”
She was speaking to him as if he were just a guy, a poor decent guy who got hurt in an ordinary accident, not like a foolish former drunk with bad manners and a near drug dependency. Not like the man who couldn’t listen. Kevin looked at her soft, clear, light brown face, at her gentle eyes and sweetened his reedy voice.
“Are you an angel? From Jamaica?” The doctor laughed and let her smile linger while she continued her examination. She asked him to list his medications as she wrote them down. The big orderly appeared, pushed the gurney next to his place and wordlessly helped Kevin slide over to be wheeled down the hall and into position for the X-ray.
“Here’s some local pain relief for your injury,” said Dr. Martin. “With all that you’re taking, I really can’t give you any pain pills. You’ll feel a little prick in your toe.”
“That’s okay. One of my meds is supposed to keep me from worrying. I just won’t worry about pain. Ow,” he said, but this exclamation was quiet. The doctor wrapped a bandage around the toe.
“You’ll be in a room until I release you. I’m going to keep you here overnight.”
“Because why?” asked Kevin, anticipating––but not worrying about––a new health crisis.
“Because I can, and I think you’ll rest better if you have a little help nearby.”
“Thank you, doctor. Thank you so much.” Kevin would normally have insisted that he be let go as soon as someone could put him into a cab. His other hospital visits, every single one, had included hours of inattention from the staff, one brief appearance by a frowning, overextended physician and mounds of the wrong food for his disturbed constitution. But this time, following the dressing of his mashed, but not broken toe, following the X-ray, Kevin allowed the burly man with the necklace to wheel him into a room with two empty beds, choosing the one with the window over the patient’s left shoulder.
“Here’s the remote,” said the orderly, turning on the TV and walking out.
Kevin heard the doctor in the hall. “He doesn’t have anyone to come and get him, apparently, and he is taking so much medication. At least he says he is. I think it’s wise to keep him here.” Even from the hallway, Dr. Martin’s soft, alto sound worked like the tranquilizer she was afraid to prescribe, a sleeping pill for Kevin. Lying still on the bed, foot raised onto a pillow, he clicked “mute” on the TV remote and closed his eyes.
~
Kevin dreams the six o’clock news while Lou Anne is making dinner.
“That smells lovely,” says Kevin in his silky baritone voice. “What are we having?”
“Fried catfish a la Lou Anne with hushpuppies.” The news quits and the stereo takes over with Patsy Cline haunting the room. “And a glass of fine French wine.”
“After dinner, how about we take another try for that John Travolta movie,” says Kevin. “Raisinets and all.”
“Sure,” says Lou Anne. “Just watch out for jets and telephone poles.”
“I promise.”
~
Kevin awoke, looked around the hospital room and recognized a new voice in the hall.
“Yes. He’s my husband and we were in an accident eight years ago. But I wasn’t hurt. He always says that he ‘lost me,’ but he doesn’t mean I’m dead. He means my life is filled with only taking care of him. Kevin is the one who was hurt, but he thinks it’s ruined my life to be stuck with him. Guilty, I guess.”
A tall, slender, fair-skinned redhead followed the doctor into the room.
“Lou Anne. You found me. I didn’t want to scare you and they broke my phone. I forgot to tell them to call you. I forgot.”
“It’s getting to where I call the hospitals first.” She leaned over his bed and kissed his forehead. Her face was placid, as Kevin had learned to expect, even though a couple of sniffles made it clear that she had been worried and crying.
He locked eyes with her. “I can never get used to how small you are. But you are just as pretty.”
His wife seemed to savor the charming way he saw beauty in the other Lou Anne. The old Lou Anne. That big girl so changed by the consuming effort of keeping her husband alive that useless flesh had melted from her frame, exposing an empirically beautiful woman.
The doctor was caught in their private moment. “I don’t know why I assumed there was no one for him to call,” said the doctor. “I should have asked more direct questions.”
“It doesn’t surprise me. He’s a convincing talker.” Lou Anne took his hand and he gave her a wan smile. “You can’t lose me, honey. And I can’t lose you.”
“Should he be out by himself?” asked the doctor.
Kevin stiffened his body and raised his head. “I have to be out. I’m not a house pet.”
“He always says that. He’s pretty good at knowing his limits, but this is frightening. I’ll take a couple days off and we’ll think about what may have changed.”
Kevin spoke. “This physician is one of those angels––like the one who pulled you from the wreck. She’s the kind who helps me remember the middle part. I was almost to the middle part right before you got here.”
“That’s the part of his dream where I don’t die,” said Lou Anne. “He remembers I won’t leave the man who showed myself to me, even if part––or all––of him is missing at any given moment.”
Kevin’s eyelids were drooping now. He didn’t acknowledge Dr. Martin as she excused herself and left the room. He grunted, stuck out his lower lip ingenuously, and raised himself up to speak to his wife.
“Honey, have you got any Milk Duds?”