In past hospital experiences, the doctors usually discharged him very quickly once they identified him. But the doctor who’d scribbled the man’s name on his chart might have been in too big a rush to figure it out, or maybe too new to his job to notice the signs.
The way the hospital staff looked at him – and others like him – was always with a touch of faint disgust, but mostly indifference. Once they realized he was one of them, they’d ask two security guards to walk him down the hall, the automatic doors would slide open, and they’d stand there silent, waiting for him to leave. Just staring. Afraid to touch him. Pushing him out into the cold with their eyes, their fear. Sands in their minds shifting already to cover the experience. They would gradually forget they’d even met him. The memory erased entirely.
He did not know why this happened, but it had always been so, for as long as he could remember.
The nurse patted his hand again, released it, smiled once more, and walked out the door.
The woman beside him looked away, focused on the mounted TV across the room, high up on the wall.
The man tried to move his injured leg but, as with his arm, no dice. Actually, both arms. He must’ve caught a few more bullets before he went down. His chest felt tight, too, so probably one or two more in there. He’d have to wait another hour, maybe two, before he could walk with any degree of comfort again.
He gingerly touched the bandage on his face where the first bullet had grazed his cheekbone. He knew by now it would be nearly healed. By the time the program currently on TV had ended, the wound in his shoulder would be closed up, scar tissue already evident. Then, another hour or so after that, his knee would operate as it always had – smoothly, and without a hint of pain.
Exhaustion overtook him, then, and he slept.
When he woke again nearly two hours later, the nurse – her name finally came to him: Faye – stood over him and was looking down. She held his hand.
“How you feeling now, Henry?”
“About how I probably look.”
“Oh, OK, so you do feel like shit.”
The man laughed a little. Faye glanced over at the woman in the next bed. She was scowling, probably at the language.
“It’s OK,” Faye said. “We know each other. We’re friends.”
The woman just huffed and looked away.
“Friends? Is that all?” the man said. Not only had her name come back to him, but his relationship to her had returned, as well.
“Well, you know. Maybe a little more,” Faye said, teasing. “Look, I gotta go. I can’t walk you out, but call me later, OK? Let me know you got home safe.”
* * *
When he was finally discharged from the hospital an hour later – amidst the requisite complement of security guards, and exactly the amount of indifference he had anticipated from the attending doctor – Henry walked straight home to his one-bedroom apartment, where the phone was ringing.
“Hello?”
“Henry. Milo.”
Henry’s friend Milo figured that, despite his best efforts, the flesh beneath his skin was now only about ninety-percent lead, give or take.
“Caught another few slugs tonight, brother,” Milo said. “What about you? Examined yourself yet?”
“Not yet, just got home.”
“How long’s it been?”
“Since I examined myself?” Henry said. “Couple of weeks.”
“What’s the matter – afraid to check?”
Fucking Milo. Always on Henry’s ass about the same goddamn thing.
“Listen, why don’t you lay off me for a while, alright, Milo? Don’t you have anything better to do? Christ.”
“You know I don’t. Neither do you.”
Henry sighed, looked out his living room window. Snow was falling – big fat flakes that stuck to the window, melted, vanished. No lights on in his apartment yet, so the lone gas lamp outside his building shone in, illuminating his sparse furnishings with a sickly yellow glow.
As if somehow sensing Henry’s thoughts, Milo said, “You know what you need? You need a woman’s touch over there, my friend. Someone to bring some fucking life to that shitty little hole you call home.”
“I’m hanging up now, Milo.”
“Alright, alright, but check yourself out, chickenshit!” Milo blurted. “And let me know how things’re going with Faye. You really do need–”
Henry hung up.
He crossed his living room, touched the base of a lamp. Slightly less sickly yellow light suffused the room. Henry touched the lamp’s base twice more, until the light was closer to white than yellow.
More than just sparse: stark. Empty. Hollow. Gutted. A home to match his personality. But that was Milo talking. Henry knew better. Tried to convince himself of better, anyway.
Shower. Maybe some TV, then bed. Fuck the examination. It could wait.
Henry hung his leather on the coat rack near the front door, made his way to the bathroom. Past piles of mystery novels stacked halfway to the ceiling; past a computer that he never used on a desk at which he never sat; past pizza boxes empty but for the crusts of each slice, turned rock-hard, forgotten.