Souvenir (23 page)

They moved him. They prodded him, stuck him, pressing cold metal against his white, paper-thin skin. Someone moved his feet and asked him questions he couldn’t understand. Then they stuck pins in his feet and asked him more questions. It didn’t hurt much, and when he made a face at them they stopped. A woman in pink scrubs held up her finger, asking him to follow it as she moved it left and right. She told him he did fine and then wrote on her clipboard. It took a long time, longer than it should’ve taken to say he did fine. He could feel them removing his pants, underwear and socks. For a few seconds he was back with the medic, snipping and cutting away at his clothes. He worried about his wallet, then he worried about the .45 automatic he’d brought in. They were sure to steal it. Or maybe court-martial him for having an officer’s sidearm. No weapons allowed, the nurse had told him. Everything gets stored away. Good policy, he told her, I should know. But please, take this .45, hide it, I have to have it back, I have to—it belonged to—he couldn’t explain it, and finally begged, please, don’t let an officer take it or an orderly steal it, it’s a souvenir, a real important souvenir. She took it, hiding it under her coat, winking at him as she hurried away, one hand steadying the helmet on her head, the other tucked into her coat, his souvenir held against her breast.

He was being carried along on a conveyor belt, exposed more and more each step of the way, made less a man than a diagnosis, something to be processed until they ran out of tests. Then they covered him with a washed-out snippet of cloth, leaving him alone, his flaccid ass hanging out the open back.

He ended up being hoisted onto another bed. No, these weren’t beds, there’d be no sleeping here, and moved into a small room with a large glass window. Cold vinyl and thin foam pressed against his back, head and heels. He was on a narrow gurney, and Miss Sunshine was suddenly there, holding his hand. Where did she come from?

She turned to him, lowering her face so she could speak directly to him, letting him see her lips move, helping him to focus on what she was saying. “It wouldn’t be much longer. Just a few more tests.” She smiled and patted his hand.

“Ad….” The sound popped out of his mouth, surprising both of them. He tried again, but could only grunt “ah….ah”

“That’s okay, Mr. Brock, don’t try too hard. Let it happen by itself.” She gripped his hand, and he felt the strength in her soft, warm hand.

She let go and stuck her head out the door, speaking to someone on the other side of the large window. It was then he realized he wasn’t tied down anymore. He had managed half a word, and they’d untied him. Best news since when? Since what? He still couldn’t remember much about the car. Wait. Addy. Addy.

A wave of sadness crashed over him. He could feel it on his body, in it, like at the beach, standing in three feet of water and letting a big rolling wave smack you dead on. It knocked you hard, pulled your feet out from under you, and you felt it. Addy. Her stroke. He hadn’t remembered her stroke at all, hadn’t remembered she was dead.

Now the realization rushed back, and the memory of her smiling face was gone, an illusion crushed by death. She wouldn’t rush to his side. She wouldn’t even drag one leg behind her, then pull it along behind her, half a smile bright enough to light his day. It was as if it had all just happened, this realization, this memory, this central truth of his life, her illness, her death. He felt the agony she must have felt every day, every morning as she moved painfully, alone, to prepare herself, until that last morning.

He felt guilty again, as if he had been dreaming about another woman, Addy whole again, Addy alive. He grabbed the edge of the gurney and tried to push himself up. He swung one leg off, then pushed again.

He stood for a second, amazed that he was upright. Both hands were on the gurney, steadying himself. The room began to rock, and it seemed like the wall in front of him tilted up to the left. He gripped the gurney tighter but it didn’t help. He started falling, but everything was going in the wrong direction and he couldn’t tell where the floor was.

“Mr. Brock!” He felt hands under his armpits, pulling him up. He tried to steady his feet, keep them flat on the floor and balanced. Another larger and stronger set of hands joined Miss Sunshine’s and they got him back up, seated on the gurney, his skinny legs bare and dangling over the edge.

“Addy.” he managed. “She’s gone.”

Miss Sunshine nodded.

“Adelaide, is that your wife? Addy, you call her?” She watched his eyes very carefully as she asked him questions. Clay nodded as he looked at her. She had dark hair and very blue eyes that he hadn’t noticed before. He felt an odd change ripple through his body, as if a veil of thin gauze had been drawn away, and suddenly he could see and understand things more clearly.

“Yes. Addy.”

“Your voice is coming back.”

“I tried—”

“Shhh,” she said, “don’t try too much. It’ll come back naturally. I could tell you were trying hard to speak before.”

Clay noticed she was holding his hand, cupping it in both of hers. It felt nice.

“I forgot she was gone. Dead. Then it came back.”

“I’m so sorry, but it’s not unusual.” She let go of Clay’s hand and gathered up the sheet that had fallen to the floor. She arranged it around Clay’s gown, covering his legs and the rest of the skin bared by the flimsy gown.

“It’s a little chilly in here,” she said, by way of explanation. Clay liked how she covered for his embarrassment, or lack of it, actually.

“Do you remember what happened to you?”

Clay ignored her question, shook his head. How could he explain it?

“I remembered Addy, but I forgot her stroke, and thought she was still alive. It came back to me. It had gone right out of my mind.”

“Oh, dear,” she said, patting his hand.

“You said Adelaide. Did you know her?” Clay asked, tears creeping out onto his cheeks.

“Yes, I did. She was my patient.”

Curiosity crept into his mind, replacing some of the sadness, as he wondered who this young woman was. Did he know her?

“Wait,” Clay said. “If you knew Addy, why did you ask me if she was my wife? You knew that already.”

“Ah, yes, Mr. Brock,” she said. “I did know that. The trick was, did you?” She said it with a satisfied smile, patting his hand again, and Clay knew he had passed some sort of test, passed through something he couldn’t yet understand.

“I was pretty confused for a while,” Clay said. “Am I going to be okay?” The words echoed in his head, and he felt the great distance from the last time he had asked, am I gonna make it? The answer wasn’t quite as important this time as it had been the last. She picked up a chart and read through it, making a quick note, and putting it down before answering him.

“Yes, for now, you are. You’ve had a transient ischemic attack. Do you know what that is?”

“No idea. You’re not a nurse, are you?”

“No. Would you rather have a male doctor, Mr. Brock?”

“No, no. Don’t get the wrong idea. It’s just that I was thinking, or dreaming, about a nurse from a long time ago. Then I woke up, and there you were. I just assumed—”

“How long ago?”

“Another century,” Clay said, his hand moving to his wound without even thinking about it. He rubbed the scar tissue near his neck, then dropped his hand, embarrassed.

“May I?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but held down the sheet and lifted his gown to look at the scar on his right side. She moved her fingers along it, pressing it, moving out from it along his ribs. She lowered the gown.

“Not a bad job, but obviously rushed. They dealt with the essentials, but dispensed with the finishing touches. It must have been done under terrible conditions.”

“There was a long line behind me, I know that much.”

“Korea, or World War Two?”

“1945. Germany, or damn close to it. Who are you, anyway?”

“Emily Krause. I’m Addy’s geriatrician. I saw your name when you were brought in. Glad to meet you, Mr. Brock.” She stuck out her hand and Clay shook it.

Well I’ll be damned. Miss Sunshine sure did have a way about her.

“She never mentioned you.”

“I’m new on staff, they brought me a few months ago to consult with Addy’s physical therapist. I was so sorry to hear about her. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a different doctor?”

“No, you’ll do. I like a young person who knows those wars even happened.”

“It wasn’t hard in my family. My grandfather never came home from the war. He went down with a sub in the Pacific. Grandma still has his picture on the mantle, in his dress blues. I dust it off for her every time I visit.”

Clay looked at this young woman. She wasn’t quite as young as he first thought. There were a few lines around the eyes, the softness and smoothness of her twenties behind her. There was a lot he had missed, but he wasn’t thinking straight, he knew that much. He felt a sudden admiration for her, her steadfastness with her grandmother and the remembrance of her grandfather. Not the least that she voluntarily tended to the ancient and elderly.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said, slipping for a moment from her professional posture, her eyes drifting as if her thoughts were somewhere else. “Your son is waiting for you, in my office.”

“Can I go now? Perhaps you could explain this attack thing to both of us.”

“Yes, certainly.” The efficient doctor returning, checking his pulse, heart rate, blood pressure, vision, and balance. She gave up looking for something wrong with him, and called an orderly to help Clay get dressed. The orderly wheeled him to her office, knocked on her door, and within a second Chris opened it.

“Dad!” Chris pulled him in the room, and awkwardly hugged him, leaning down over the wheelchair. Clay patted his son on the back, not certain how to respond to the display of emotion. “I’m glad you’re okay, you had me worried.”

“Here I am,” said Clay, at a loss for words but feeling that said everything. Here I am. They can’t kill me.

“Chris, please sit,” Dr. Krause said. She pulled a chair in front of Clay and Chris so she could face both of them directly.

“Mr. Brock, as I said, you’ve had a transient ischemic attack. It’s called a TIA, or a mini-stroke.”

“Is it what like my mother had?” Chris asked, looking at Clay. He thought he could see the fear of the disability flit across his son’s face, the terror of the closeness that might require.

“No,” Dr. Krause said. “It’s nothing like a stroke. It’s a temporary blockage of a blood vessel in the brain. It brings on sudden symptoms, like those your father experienced. Vision problems, dizziness, loss of consciousness, temporary amnesia.”

“Is he going to be all right?” Chris asked.

“He is all right,” Dr. Krause said. “We’ve done a full set of tests, except for an MRI. I was about to order one when your father came out of it. The symptoms can last as little as ten minutes or as much as 24 hours. None of the other tests showed anything, and he quickly became very lucid. Quite lucid, actually.” She smiled at Clay.

“So he can go home?”

“Absolutely,” Dr. Krause said. “I’m going to prescribe a blood-thinning medication, to see if we can avoid another one of these events. I’ll want to see you in a week, Mr. Brock—”

“Call me Clay, why don’t you? Mr. Brock makes me feel old.” They laughed at his joke, and Clay felt like he’d won the lottery. He’d thought he was dying, losing everything, and now he was going home in time for dinner. As he watched Dr. Krause smile, he remembered the struggle with his silence, how then he’d wanted nothing more than to tell the world everything. Now he was sitting here, cracking wise, and all those words were safely tucked back in place. For how long?

“All right, Clay, and you can call me Emily.”

“Oh no,” Clay said. “I call a doctor Doc, no two ways about that.”

“So nothing special to look out for tonight?” Chris asked her.

“Your father may be a little tired, that’s all,” she said as she opened the door. “Will you or someone stay with him?”

“I will,” Chris said. To Clay, it sounded like someone volunteering to take point on a patrol, knowing there was no other choice.

Chris pushed the wheelchair in silence, down the corridor to the main lobby. Clay could see the sky out the tall windows, thick white clouds drifting across a blue sky above wet pavement. It had stopped raining.

There had been blue skies before, leaving that other hospital, the first blue skies in days, maybe weeks. No clouds, but white contrails as bombers, fighters and cargo planes dropping supplies streamed overhead. On the stretcher, he had looked up and seen the big four-engine bombers, high in the sky, and trembled with awe and anger. Where were you guys anyway? The nurse walked up to his stretcher, as he was about to be loaded into the ambulance for transport to a General Hospital.

“Take it easy, soldier, you’re going to be okay,” she said as she re-arranged his blanket. She slipped a medical pouch under his blanket and tucked it in. He felt the hard metal of the .45 wrapped inside.

“It’s unloaded,” she whispered. “Don’t tell who…”

“Don’t worry,” he said, reaching with his good arm and squeezing her hand. “I know how to keep a secret.”