Читать книгу The French Quarter - Ken J.D. Mask - Страница 8

Upon waking, I immediately thought I had died and gone to Purgatory. A beep-buzz, beep-buzz ... beep-buzz, beep-buzz sound resonated, echoing around a large bright-white room. A flashing red light from a big awkward-looking machine next to me accompanied the sounds. This was not a jazz riff.

My gaze dropped down to the tubing attached to my arm, tubing attached to my neck, laying over my chest, wires and devices all over the room seeming to flow in and out of my body.

A penlight shone in my left eye with a sweeping motion, pendulum-like, reminding me of a curtain drawn in the early morning and quickly closed, opened and closed, opened and closed. I was conscious but I couldn’t speak at the moment. I didn’t immediately recognize my surroundings or the individual on the other side of the sharp light. I thought I was in some sort of medical setting, but I really couldn’t see much past the light.

‘…so I’m in a hospital.’ Right away, I thought, ‘Lord, thank you for giving me another chance.’ I prayed silently, “Oh, Lord, thank you for this opportunity to live. What in the world has happened to me?” I attempted to swallow, but realizing there was a tube in my mouth, I took a deep breath, and then blew it out slowly. I scanned around the room, searching for anybody, anything and saw the back of what appeared to be a man dressed in plain clothes, but I noticed a holster at his side.

“Doesn’t look like a doctor, doesn’t look like a nurse, and doesn’t look like a hospital worker. Who is he?” Thoughts spun around in my head like a kaleidoscope. This time it was the face of another, not a medical professional: a white male, built solid as a soldier.

There were law enforcement officers and sheriff officers standing guard at the foot of my bed! “What have I got myself into? What has happened?”

Out of nowhere, a warm face emerged from between the two large silhouetted figures. A twentyish white female, long dark hair which flowed over a crisp white nursing uniform approached my bedside. Her blue eyes, incongruous in a Hispanic face, twinkled as she flashed a deep bright smile.

“How you doin’, hon? Good to see you came to.” She put her right hand on mine where some IV tubing was, not to adjust the tubing but just to squeeze reassuringly. The squeeze felt good.

The two large men stepped away, providing the nurse with just enough room to examine me.

“Are you ready to get that tube out of your mouth?”

I responded with a nod.

“You’re going to be okay.” She turned, writing on a clipboard, moved some tubing, picked up the phone, saying something, medical lingo I didn’t understand.

“Yes, he’s ready to be extubated.” She spun around on her heels, and marched away. I studied her from the corner of my eyes. What brand of perfume was she wearing? I could smell it as her stockings swished against her uniform, and her rubber shoes squeaked on the floor.

I saw her saunter over to the police officers.

“Can you guys just give us some room for a moment? He’s not going anywhere. Look at him.” The nurse raised her chin in my direction.

“You just do your job; we’re going to do ours.”

“I’ve been doing mine. You guys have been in my way all night. Give us a break.”

“A break! This motherfucker ….

“Listen, be cool, man.” The officer with the deeper voice touched the shorter officer’s shoulder.

“Gentleman, could you please step out into the hallway for a moment while we take this tube out of his mouth and then you can talk to him all you want.”

“Fine with me.” The taller officer nodded his head as if to say, “Go ahead.”

“Do your job,” said the other one.

I saw the heart monitors, the tubing, the life support systems beeping, blinking. The antiseptic smell of the hospital seemed, at the moment, refreshing, but I was scared. I didn’t know what was going on.

A few minutes later, four other women were milling around my bed, looking at the clipboard, then the machines. They seemed to be nursing students, crisp clean white uniforms, nervous-like, taking notes, eyes widened with curiosity.

A mid-40s white guy wearing surgical scrubs came to the head of my bed. He looked in-different, almost as if we were bothering him. He said to the dark-haired nurse, “Give me a 12-gauge syringe. I’m going to extubate him.”

“Do you want me to call for help?”

The doctor, whose badge identified him as Dr. Leighton, just looked her way and shook his head. “No. I’ve done this.”

“I’m going to get this tube out of your throat and then you’re going to have to talk.”

“What does he mean by that?”

A few seconds later, feeling that hard plastic tube scraping my throat, my tongue and tasting bloody, musty spit, I was coughing. To make things worse, he was sticking some other hard, smaller tube down my throat, a suction device, a hand-held vacuum cleaner, sucking all around my nose and my mouth.

For the next three-four minutes I just coughed. Hacking, and spitting, I sat up in the bed and wiped my mouth with the sheet.

The first nurse, the lady with the effervescent smile, dark hair and blue eyes, approached my bedside. “Oh, that should be better now. Isn’t it?”

I nodded my head, yes. A drop of spittle ran down my face, and the nurse wiped it. Embarrassed, I had never felt so vulnerable and helpless.

The doctor just walked out of the room with the tube in his hands and he dropped it on the table just beyond the door to my room.

The police officers came in. The taller one said to the nurse, “Can I talk to him now?”

“… Listen, just give us a moment please, and just give us a moment.”

I took a deep breath again and inhaled the antiseptic smell of the hospital. I caught a whiff of my morning breath, and was thinking, “I hope I’m not breathing too hard on this lady, she’s pretty. Don’t blow any bad, stinking breath on her.” Then I thought to myself, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute, your troubles are a lot deeper than worrying about throwing some stinking’ breath on someone.”

I looked down and saw bandages all over my stomach. I thought back, “Hell, I’ve been shot and I’m in police custody.”

“Phewwww, if I could just get to Job.”

“Excuse me?” she said.

“My family.”

“Do they know you’re here?”

“Where?”

The two police officers came over to me and one of them said to the other, “Listen, let’s not ask him anything right now. We’ve got to wait for the Assistant D.A. to come. We’ve got to get this guy back over to the holding.”

“Man, are you serious? Look at him. He can’t go anywhere. He’s not going anywhere. The D.A. can process him down here.”

All of a sudden I heard a familiar man’s voice. “Jake, Jake. How ya doing back there? Sweet

Jesus, thank you.”

It was my brother Job and his wife Rose. Job was my law partner in our firm, which we had opened a few years ago, after I passed the Louisiana bar. Out of nowhere, Rose, his wife of five years, appeared at my bedside.

One of the police officers turned to him and said, “No visitors right now.”

“I’m a family member.”

“Me too.”

The nurse said, “He can see some family members. He’s seen you guys enough.”

Job approached my bedside. I felt like this was a direct gift from God, hearing a familiar voice, even though Job and I hadn’t gotten along too famously over the past couple of months. Given the tension in our law practice, I was surprised to feel so much relief just hearing his voice. His wife handed me a rose, something she always did, “I like to give a rose for obvious reasons.” I had heard that many times before. I always thought that it was corny.

She placed it by the bedside, realizing I couldn’t grab it.

Job was 6’2”, chunky, thick, dark brown skin with dark balding fine hair. He was two shades darker than me, but we had the same head, people used to say. I had been in better shape than him for most of our lives. He had just made 43 and I was 11 years younger. His mid-section reflected his 5 years of marriage, and my thin, cut frame reflected my bachelor years. Standing side-by-side, you could tell that I had him by 2 inches. I used to kid him about shedding some stomach for some of my height.

“Man, what’s happening here?” Job glared at the police officers as if to say, “Can you guys leave us alone for a minute?”

The officers didn’t budge.

“Listen, dear, we can figure this stuff out later. Let’s just see how he’s doing. What’s the nurse saying? Can we get a doctor in here?” Rose turned.

The nurse was still in the room and said, “Yes, I’ll get his surgeon in just a moment.”

“How you feeling, buddy? I haven’t told anyone yet about what’s going on with you. You know how mom and dad are.”

“I told them,” Rose said calmly.

He looked up at her in an angry, ‘courtroom-type’ way and said, “Lord, Jesus.”

“What did you expect me to do? They had to know.”

I turned, looking at the clock: 3:30. Didn’t know if it was in the morning or afternoon, just that it was 3:30. Then I closed my eyes.

Moments later, I was awakened by the shaking of an unfamiliar hand and a voice I’d never heard before.

“How you doing? How you doing?” I saw a 60-ish, graying plump gentleman in a long white coat opened to reveal a Kano Branon suit and l’Homme Slice tie. “How you doing, son?”

I realized he was some sort of surgeon; several students in surgical scrubs surrounded him, all leaning in towards me. He seemed oblivious to the police officer’s presence, and began to ask me a series of questions.

“Hello, Jake. Dr. Helm.” He stuck out one hairy hand, while the other one held my chart. As he studied the notes he murmured, “Hmmmmm.” He turned to one of the students. “What’s his I and Os? What’s his BUN and creatinine? Does any-body know?”

Then he turned to me and said, “You’re going to be getting outta here soon, son. Whatever happens to you after this, I’m not quite sure. It was just my job to get you fixed up. You’ve undergone a pretty extensive surgery. You’ve been in the hospital for a couple of hours, and probably aren’t quite aware of what’s happened to you. We had to take out a portion of your colon, but you’re going to be all right. You’re going to be just fine.”

He placed the clipboard at the bed’s end, and then cleared his throat. “Can you wriggle your toes for me?”

I looked down at my feet, peeking out from under the white covers. I stretched out the big toe of my left foot, reaching towards the sky, and lifted my left leg, almost involuntarily. Then I spread out the toes of my right foot. They were covered partially in a sheet, and lifted it to the sky as well.

“Very good.” Dr. Helm turned to me. “Now squeeze my hand.” He put his fingers in my right hand and I squeezed them. Then he said, “Here’s the other one.” I realized that the intravenous tubing was in my hand, but I gripped with this hand strongly as well. He said, “Ah, very good now.” Then he said, “Open your mouth and say Ahhhh.” He took a wooden object from his front coat pocket and a flashlight from his right side pocket and then shone the light in my mouth. He said to me again, “Say ahhh and stick your tongue out.” With a warm smile, he looked down into my throat.

Repeating, “You’re going to be just fine.” He patted me on my head, not like a pitiful pat nor like a dog pat, but like a fatherly pat. Then he turned to the police officers and said to them, “Can you guys give us a break? We’re trying to have rounds here.”

The police officers just stood there, looking silently at me, intermittently staring at each other.

One of the assistants entered the room again and said to him, “His laboratory data looks okay. His BUN and creatinine are within normal limits, and his Is and Os have been good for the past 24 hours.”

The surgeon turned to me again and said reassuringly, “You’re going to be just fine, buddy.” He turned smoothly, placing the clipboard chart at the end of the bed, and left the room. The rest of his team scurried behind.

Moments later, Job and Rose came back in, sighing in unison.

“Boy, you went out on us there real quick. Good thing we got a chance to talk to you first, though. How you feeling?”

I nodded my head as if to say I’m doing okay. Then I tried to sit up.

The nurse who was still in the room said, “Be still, honey. Be still. You’ve got a long way to go yet.”

Rose broke in, “It’s time for us to go to church, dear. You know we’ve got to go to church pretty soon. We’ve got to head on back to New Orleans.”

Job turned to Rose. “Listen, honey. Church can wait for a moment. It’s my brother.”

“Honey, you know we’ve got to go to church, you being a deacon and all. We’ve got an important meeting at the church tonight. We can pray and talk to him later.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Then he turned to me and said, “You know how I am, trying to be a minister in this church and practicing law. Well, I got to go, bro. I’ll talk to you later. We’ve got a lot of things to figure out. I don’t think you realize what’s going on here.”

I nodded to him and waved my hand goodbye. The nurse walked them out. I heard her mumbling something to them. She didn’t seem desperate or serious; it was something said in parting, nothing informational.

I shut my eyes.