The hospital was a damn madhouse. Doctors and nurses pushed by, flying down the hallway at inhuman speeds like white-coated superheroes, shouting out complicated series of orders to one another that sounded nothing like words I’d ever heard in the English language before.
Everything in the place blinked and beeped and when the occasional alarm would sound more white coats would stampede toward the ER doors, their stethoscopes swinging from their necks like elephant trunks.
The waiting room was jam packed, every seat was taken as the nurses at the desk called out numbers like the deli counter at the grocery store. The hallways were lined with people, all in varying states of worry, who all tried to become a part of the walls to make room for the medical teams when they rolled another patient through. The smell of the place was sickening, like open sores and antiseptic. My stomach rolled.
“We need to see Samuel Clearwater, he’s back there. What room is he in? How is he doing?” King demanded. The front desk nurse, looked as if she was about to argue until she glanced up from her computer between King and Bear. She looked back down to the screen. “He doesn’t have a room yet. He’s in an evaluation curtain.”
“Where is the evaluation area?” Bear asked.
She shook her head. “Nuh, uh, you can’t go back there unless you’re immediate family.”
“We’re the closest thing to family he’s got,” Ray argued.
“Unfortunately, in this hospital that’s not close enough. I’ll send a doctor out with an update as soon as we have one. I suggest you take a seat until then. If and when he gets a room you can go back one at a time, but for now you have to wait like everyone else.”
“Fuck this,” King roared, heading toward the double doors marked DO NOT ENTER in large determined strides.
“Sir!” The nurse exclaimed throwing her tiny body in front of King before he reached his destination. She flipped her braids over her shoulders again and that’s when I got a clear view of her name tag. IVY. And Nurse Ivy apparently had a huge set of balls on her to stand up against the likes of King. “Don’t you make me call security up in here and have you thrown out. Because then you’ll have to call for an update from your jail cell instead of sitting patiently in the waiting room like I so nicely asked you to do.”
“Listen, Darlin’,” Bear said, smiling down at Ivy who looked even less impressed with his attempt at a softer approach, although the lines in her forehead did decrease just a fraction. She was a female after all and Bear’s slow southern drawl sounded like a deep purr. The kind that vibrated all the way through you to the ground. “Our friend in there. He hates hospitals more than anything. All I’m asking that you let one of us to go in there and check on him, really quick, just to make sure he’s alright, and then we’ll get out of your fucking hair.” Nurse Ivy folded her arms over her chest, her determination to keep them out unwavering.
Two uniformed guards approached King and Bear. “Ma’am, please,” Bear pled, as the guards stepped between them and Ivy. “He needs someone back there with him and he doesn’t have any immediate family here.”
“Yes, he does!” I shouted a bit too loudly. Not only did King, Bear, and Ray turn to face me, but so did the nurse, the guards, and most of the waiting room. “I can go back there with him. I’m his immediate family.”
“Sure you are, Miss,” the nurse said with a roll of her eyes. “And who exactly are you? His sister? No wait, his mama?”
I had about all I could take of the bitch. I stepped between King and Bear. “No, I’m his WIFE,” I growled.
She looked up to King and Bear. “No immediate family, huh?” she said with her lips pursed. “You unaware that your friend had a wife?” she asked skeptically.
“It’s complicated,” Ray clarified.
“Take me to my husband. Now,” I said to the nurse, pushing past the guards who stepped aside. Reluctantly, and with a lot more attitude than was necessary, Ivy shoved the paper back into my hands and pressed a button opening the double doors. The security guards stepped away.
I turned back before the doors closed again. “I’ll come out and let you know what’s going on as soon as I know something,” I said to Preppy’s friends. King shot me an appreciative nod before I followed the nurse down the wide hall on the way to find Preppy.
My husband.
****
The nurse walked me through another set of doors and pointed me toward a curtain before stalking back off toward the waiting area, grumbling to herself along the way. Cautiously, I pulled the curtain aside and my breath caught in my throat when I saw Preppy lying there on the gurney with his head tilted back and his eyes closed. He was unconscious.
A doctor wearing glasses and a long white lab coat was hovering over Preppy, a needle up to the IV in the back of Preppy’s hand. When the doctor realized I was there his eyes snapped up to mine and he pulled the needle from the IV and stood up straight, adjusting his coat.
“I’m his wife,” I said before he could protest my presence. “What’s going on with him?” I asked, standing by the gurney and taking Preppy’s hand in mine in a very wifely move. I scanned him over but there weren’t any obvious signs of injury. No bleeding or bruises. “What happened to him?”
The doctor tucked the full needle into the breast pocket of his shirt. “What is that?” I asked, pointing to where he’d just covered his pocket with his coat.
“Just a mild sedative,” he replied, pushing his glasses back on his nose. That’s when I noticed the cheesy smiley face tattoo on the back of his hand.
“He looks perfectly sedated to me,” I said, looking at Preppy who’s mouth was open, a deep snore rumbled from his mouth.
“That’s why I decided not to give it to him,” The doctor replied, jotting something down on his clipboard.
“Why sedate him at all? What exactly is going on here? Why is he here at all?”
“Your husband was found on the water tower about to commit suicide. It was called in by a concerned passer-by and the police called an ambulance who brought him here. Standard protocol for these types of things.”
Suicide? The water tower?
“Who was the passer-by?” I asked. “I’d like to check with them. Talk to them about what it is they saw.”
“You can’t. It was an anonymous call.” The doctor set the clipboard into a slot on the wall. “If you’ll excuse me ma’am.”
“No, I won’t excuse you. There must be some mistake. The bystander is wrong. My husband wouldn’t do that,” I argued.
I knew Preppy’s take on suicide. I knew that even in the worst of worst times he would never take his own life. I was as sure of that as I was about the earth being round and the sky being blue.
I want to be an old man with old rabbit dick dangling between my legs...