3 a.m. (Henry Bins 1) (21 page)

Berlin went on to tell how she and her mom
had moved around a lot. Ten different states in her short seven
years. They would stay at some hippie colony for a couple months,
then her mom would get a job as a waitress and they would live at a
motel, then they would be moving again. They never had much money,
but they always had enough. And her mom was smart, although in a
different sort of way. They always had health insurance; her mom
still made her go to the dentist once a year for her annual check
up. When they found out she had diabetes—she was four—they went to
the best doctor, and got the best medicine and the latest supplies.
Berlin ended it with, “Yeah, she was a pretty good mom I
guess.”

This hit people differently and a couple
people started crying. I didn’t.

Dr. Raleigh tried to stem the flow of tears
and said, “Why don’t you tell us how you died.”

So Berlin told us. How she’d turned seven on
September 8th, four days ago, and she’d gotten a PSP for her
birthday, and how she was up all night playing it and how she
forgot to take her insulin and she died.

Cut and dry.

There was silence. No one wanted to follow
up a seven-year-old. Like going on stage after Chris Rock.

Dr. Raleigh took a step forward and said,
“My name is Raleigh Devroe. I was born in Mississippi, moved around
a bit, then came to Denver when I was nine. I went to George
Washington High School. If any of you know Chauncey Billups from
the Denver Nuggets, he was a year below me. Man, that was something
to watch that guy play. I even got to watch him play in college. We
both went to CU, he only for a couple years. Anyhow, I graduated,
got decent enough grades, and decided to apply to a couple med
schools. I got into a couple of them, but decided to keep it local
and went to CU Medical School.”

This wasn’t an easy thing to do. CU Medical
School wasn’t the toughest school to get into, but it wasn’t
easy.

Raleigh continued, “Christmas break after my
first semester, a buddy and I were skiing Monarch pass. I’d been
skiing all my life, since I was five. There wasn’t anything I
couldn’t ski. My buddy and I were doing some backcountry stuff and
we heard this rumble and the next thing we knew, we had about a
million pounds of snow coming down at us at eighty miles an
hour.”

He paused, took a deep breath. “I can still
remember getting hit. Still remember coming to. Still remember my
friend Jeremy screaming my name. Thank God he made it out. And then
my air ran out. And I died.”

Everyone was quiet. Raleigh’s face went
somber. He was there. He was back in that avalanche, buried under
who knows how many pounds of snow. He snapped out of it and said,
“That was thirteen years ago. And I sat in the same chairs you’re
sitting in right now. I went through the same tests you went
through, answered the same questions, and I went through the same
program you will go through over the course of the next couple
months. Went back to school, became a doctor, and now I help people
with their transition to this life. I got married last summer and
we’re expecting to get our first child in January. All in all, I
have a great life.”

And everyone in those
white plastic chairs believed him. Dr. Raleigh went through exactly
what we’d been going through. And here he was years later, happy,
well adjusted. But one thing disturbed me. He didn't say,
"Expecting our first child," he said, "Expecting to
get
our first child." I
thought about asking him what he meant, but someone, one of the
women, had already begun telling her tale.

Dr. Raleigh’s story got people in the
storytelling mood and one by one people started recounting life
stories. Telling anecdotes—where they grew up, college, kids,
lovers—before finally getting to how they had ultimately perished.
It was therapeutic in a way and you could see a weight had been
lifted off people’s shoulders after they’d shared their stories. I
was no longer terrified when I would have to speak. My heart was
still racing and it felt like I’d just walked in from a torrential
downpour, but I was no longer terrified. I would no longer pick the
room with the snake.

Both the old men were long-winded, as both
had led long interesting lives. One had been career army, retiring
as a two star general. He had a purple heart from Korea and a
couple other medals from Vietnam. He went on and on and on, and
then he told us how he’d been driving home from his daughter’s
house and gotten in a car accident.

The other old man was an inventor and had a
couple patents on microwave parts that had made him a small
fortune. He spent most of his life traveling the world and to quote
him, “Romancing the ladies.” He had a house in Aspen and had been
on his way up when he’d gotten into a car accident. Same day as the
other old guy. Same time. Same road.

I’m not sure if anyone else was drawing on
this coincidence, but I was pretty sure these two old farts had
killed each other.

One woman had a rare disease that killed
her. The doctors on Two had given her a new medicine and she was
responding well to it. Another woman had epilepsy. She died while
having a seizure. Or she assumes that’s how she died. One of the
guys had a bad sinus infection and he mixed a bunch of medicines,
as well as pot and booze, and his heart stopped. His sinus
infection was gone. Another guy was eating at Elways, a steakhouse
in Denver, and he’d been choking and excused himself to go to the
bathroom.

I’d once read an article
in
Maxim
that
five hundred men died each year from choking and only one woman.
That’s because women would freak out and someone would give them
the Heimlich, whereas guys would try to play it off and go the
bathroom, and as in Floyd’s case, not be able to expunge the large
piece of prime rib from their airway. Another guy, the black guy,
drowned in a pool.

A couple more car crashes, a couple diseases
I’d never heard of, and suddenly the only people not to have
recounted their deathly tale were myself and the sullen teenager. I
could feel all the eyes in the room floating between both the
emo-kid and myself. Watching us like a tennis match to see who
would raise their hand.

My heart raced and my mouth turned into the
Sahara. I raised my hand. All the eyes found their way to me. I
said, “My name is Maddy Young.”

I took a deep breath and said, “I’m a law
student at the University of Denver.” I laughed. “I mean, I was a
law student. I graduated in December and took the bar in
March.”

“
I heard that shit is hard
as hell,” said the black guy who couldn’t swim.

I nodded. “Yeah, it’s a bitch. I got a
100.”

“
You lie.” He looked
impressed all the same. I saw a couple eyebrows rise around the
room. These people thought they were in the presence of
genius.

I set them straight. “I got 100 out of a
possible 400.” You had to get 176 more points than I got to
pass.

“
So you
failed.”

“
Miserably.”

I heard Dr. Raleigh give a sharp laugh in
the corner. I looked at him. He smiled and said, “Don’t worry, I
took the MCATS three times.”

I smiled at him.

“
I was scheduled to take
the Bar again next week.” I hadn’t thought of this yet and I found
it depressing. All those hours studying. All that money.  I
took a deep breath and said, “Anyhow, how I died isn’t very
interesting. I was in the shower, I was washing my hair and the
next thing I remember is falling. I woke up here with twenty
stitches in my head and a horrible headache.”

I looked at Dr. Raleigh, I wondered if he
knew I was rubbing one out when I’d slipped. If Dr. Raleigh was
aware of this, he didn’t show it. He did ask, “What about family?
You didn’t mention any family.”

“
I don’t have
any.”

And we left it at that. Twenty-six eyes
moved from me to the emo-teenager. He was staring straight down.
His face in his hands. His greasy hair hanging over his eyes. He
looked familiar, but I suppose all those emo-kids look pretty much
the same.

Dr. Raleigh looked at him and said, “You’re
up.”

The kid didn’t say anything. Didn’t even
flinch. Dr. Raleigh had seen this before. He said, “We can’t leave
this room until everyone has told their story. That’s how it
works.”

I should mention we’d been in this room for
going on six hours. We were ready to be done. Ready to return to
our little rooms, with our little bathrooms, and our little beds,
and watch some TV. The TV’s wouldn’t turn on before. I had a
feeling they would turn on tonight.

Ten minutes went by. Then twenty. The
teenager hadn’t moved. Hadn’t even blinked. I was starting to think
maybe he was dead. Again. The black guy stood up and walked over to
him. I don’t know if he whispered in his ear that he was going to
kill him if he didn’t start talking, or if it was his favorite
proverb, or a black joke, or what, but the kid snapped out of
it.

He looked up and said, “My name is Damon.
I’m fourteen. My dad started beating the shit out of me when I was
seven. Started fucking my little sister when she was eight. I
bought a gun. I shot him. Then I shot myself.”

I’d heard about this. I’d seen it on the
news. It had happened two days before I’d died. That’s why the kid
looked so familiar. I’d seen his picture on the television.

Damon looked around, then said, “And if that
motherfucker is here. I’m going to find him and I’m going to cut
him into a million pieces.”

Yikes.

Dr. Raleigh said, “I think that’s enough for
today.”

Chapter 3.

Counseling

When I sat down in the chair opposite my
designated TAC, Two Adjustment Counselor, I examined every square
inch, and there were several, of Dr. JeAnn Tury.

She was big, with hairy arms, a hairy lip,
and large glasses that fed into short spiked grayish hair. She wore
a tan polo shirt. I would imagine JeAnn Tury was partial to the
women, if not for being cast aside by men for a good twenty years.
She gave a disarming smile and I instantly felt at ease.

I should mention I was
wearing a pair of jeans, a gray hooded sweatshirt, and sandals. In
addition to the contacts, when I had awoken this morning, I had
found a pile of neatly folded clothes at the foot of my bed. A
couple pairs of jeans, five or six shirts, two hoodies, some socks,
a pair of Converse, some sandals, and three pairs of boxer briefs.
Oddly enough, the clothes
they
had picked for me weren’t far-off the clothes I
would have picked for myself. There was, of course, a logical
explanation for this. During one of the intensive question and
answer sessions I had in my first three days, I’d been asked to
describe a typical outfit I might wear. It would appear someone had
been listening.

Dr. Tury introduced herself and told me to
call her JeAnn. I told her that in that case she could call me Mr.
Young, which she found humorous. After sitting her large frame
down, JeAnn said, “I hope the testing over the course of the past
couple days wasn’t too grueling.”

“
It’s still uncomfortable
to sit down, but I’ll live.”

“
That’s good to hear.” She
stifled a chuckle and said, “So, my job is to help you adjust to
your new surroundings. How are you feeling so far?”

I shrugged. “It’s a little crazy, sort of
hard to wrap your head around, but I think I’ll get there.”

“
Good, good.”

“
I thought Dr. Raleigh was
my counselor.”

“
Dr. Raleigh is the head
counselor for the entire facility. There are four other counselors,
including myself, who deal with the Arrivals on a more intimate
level. More hands on. I’ll help you acclimate to your new
environment, anything from setting up a new bank account, to
finding a place to live, to finding a job. All that
crap.”

I laughed.

She added, “But if you ever have any
questions for Dr. Raleigh his door is always open.”

“
Good to know.”

After a moment’s pause, I asked, “How long
have you been here?”

She peered up at the ceiling and exhaled.
“Gosh. . . in May it will have been twenty-seven years.”

I knew it was coming before she started. I’d
learned to recognize the look.

“
It was May 5th, 1982. I
was fifteen years old, living in Nebraska at the time. It was a
Tuesday. My school was about two miles away from our house and my
brother and I, Johnny—he was a year younger than me—would walk home
from school everyday. “

She took a deep breath.

“
You could tell a storm
was coming, but I thought we could make it back in time. The sky
turned from blue to black, then yellow. The siren went off. Johnny
and I ran, but then we couldn’t see, we were enveloped by this
swirling yellowness. And then it was like a bomb went off. The
loudest sound I’d ever heard and I grabbed Johnny and covered him,
but the tornado just ripped me off him.”

She went silent.

I could see her eyes were moist.

She said, “I’d like to think that Johnny
made it.”

“
So he didn’t come
here?”

“
No.”

But according to Dr.
Raleigh, only one out of every three people who died came to Two.
So technically, Johnny could have died and gone somewhere else. Or
Johnny could have survived. But Johnny didn’t survive. Johnny died
at the hands of the tornado, just as his big sister had died at the
hands of the tornado. And I knew this because they had documented
the tornado she was speaking of on
Storm
Stories
on the weather channel. I was a
big weather guy. For a long time, I’d wanted to be a storm chaser.
Some kids want to be in the NBA, I wanted to chase tornadoes. I
grew out of this obsession when I was about fifteen, but to this
day I DVR’d every show on the Weather Channel. Anyhow, a couple
months back they'd done an episode on the deadliest tornado to ever
make its way through Nebraska. May 5, 1982. They had interviewed
JeAnn and Johnny’s parents. Johnny hadn’t made it. I thought about
telling JeAnn about her brother. But JeAnn already knew.