Johnny’s face drained of color as he touched the fingers of his left hand to his throat. “An arm. An arm grabbed me. Strong. An arm grabbed me and there was a sharp pain in my chest.” His eyes focused on the polished black granite surface as his fingers moved down the names; past the names he knew, his friends, his enemies, past the names he didn’t remember, and the names he never knew, until at eye level his fingers stopped on the name John V Nolan.
The edges of the letters were clean and sharp. As he felt them beneath his fingertips, he thought he could read them through his fingers, through the back of his hand. Taking his hand from the wall, he turned it over and saw through his palm the tiny American flag that someone had left at the foot of the wall.
“Mark, my hand!” He faced Mark and saw that Mark’s eyes were filled with tears.
“It’s okay, man. Just let go. It’s way past time. Let go.”
The soldier was a mist, a vapor, then only a memory. A few scratches in a black granite slab.
Mark was alone. On the snow at his feet was a photograph of eleven young soldiers standing, squatting, and sitting before a burned out piece of North Vietnamese artillery. The young men were grinning and waving. The young Johnny Nolan stood in the center at the back. He had his arms over the shoulders of the two men who stood at either side. Mark picked up the photo and stuck it in the crack to the left of Johnny Nolan’s name.
Back at the bus stop, Mark climbed the stairs into the bus, took a seat, and closed his eyes. He was happy to be riding back from the wall all alone. And sad.
The Death Addict
Code blue, code blue.
Stat time. Lights flashing, crash wagon rolling, an ominous flat tone from Room 301, the ICU nurses quietly and efficiently hurrying through their well practiced routine: strip, drip, ventilation, clear the mouth of obstructions, insert the air passage, blow, pump, pump, pump, pump, blow—
“Here’s the wagon. Clear! Clear, dammit!” Panic, rather than urgency, in the doctor’s voice. New resident.
The whump of multiple volts passing through still living tissue, the muscles contracting and relaxing, lifting a frail old form from the bed.
“Still flat!”
“Clear!”
Whump.
Adrenaline.
Blow, pump, pump, pump, pump, blow.
“Clear!”
Whump.
“Still flat.”
Another jolt.
One more.
A pause. A brief moment of silence to allow acceptance to spread over the losing team. Acceptance of the mortal fact that sooner or later every doctor loses every patient.
“Okay … time.”
“Eight twenty-two.”
“Great damned way to start the shift.”
“It was righteous. We did everything we could and we did it all right. Lighten up.” Alberta hadn’t said lighten up,kid , but it had been in her voice.
“She knew she was going to die, doc,” said Nurse Ramos. “So did we. Didn’t that news make it down to the doctor’s lounge?”
“Okay. Yeah, you’re right. Get her prepped and down to the morgue. I’ll be back in a few minutes to sign the papers. Shit, I hate this part.”
The losing team captain ducked out to hit the doctor’s lounge to suck down some smoke and the first of twenty cups of coffee he’ll consume that night, risking his own heart in an attempt at lifting himself out of his feelings of personal defeat. And he was taking the death personally, Nurse Ramos decided. On his shift and everything. How inconsiderate. Should the doctor live so long, in a few years it will be easier. He’ll learn that the doctors never win. First quarter or overtime, death wins. Always. It’s the law. Erico Ramos turned back to the task of clearing out the old tenant and preparing the room for the next contestant.
The loser this time was Rachael Raddenburg, 61, mother, grandmother, owner of a doll shop employing three persons. Nurse Alberta Smallet, who had invested some minutes of her night shift hours the past three days talking with Rachael, knew that the elderly Mrs. Raddenburg would have been mortified if she could’ve seen herself at that moment. She had been very fussy about her appearance, and now, her hair askew, she lay flat on her back, eyes sunken, skin waxy yellow, naked, withered breasts, stretch marks, hardened arteries, and all. She had been so afraid of dying.
Yet Rachael’s face was now soft, relaxed, more than peaceful. It was as though she were in a state of bliss. “The things one tries to convince oneself of,” muttered Nurse Smallet. She closed off the drip, removed the IV, and tossed the old tape and clear plastic plumbing into the medical waste. No need to bandage where the IV had been pulled. For a wound to bleed a heart needs to beat.
Nurse Ramos checked to make certain the oxygen was turned off and removed that plumbing, tossing it into the medical waste, as well. Clearing and punching off the video monitor, he began removing the multiple leads, clips and automatic cuff that had passed on to the room monitor and the bank of monitors at the ICU nurse’s station the information regarding Rachael’s no longer existent heartbeat, respiration, blood oxygen absorption, and blood pressure. As he removed the self-sticking tabs to which the EKG and respiration leads had been attached, he winced at the ripping sound made by the removal of each tab. It resembled the sound of Velcro being parted.
There was no point in wincing. After all, Rachael Raddenburg was past pain. It was the sound more than the possibility of pain. It was a raucous, disrespectful, sound.
“He’s back,” muttered Nurse Smallet. She had announced it with a voice dulled with dark humor; perhaps disgust; anger.
Erico Ramos didn’t have to look up. He knew to whom his colleague was referring. Standing respectfully in the doorway, his face carrying the same tranquil expression as the corpse’s, would be Rene Boniface, the morgue orderly. Skinny, dark, spectacled, geeky son of a bitch.
“I didn’t call for you,” said Erico.
“I know. You ready for the cart?”
Ramos and Smallet exchanged glances and Erico faced the door. “On this side.”
As Rene pushed the wheeled stretcher around the end of the bed, Erico guided one end until it was parallel to the bed and up against it. He, Nurse Smallet, and the morgue orderly leaned across the stretcher, grabbed the rolled up edge of the bed sheet, and pulled the body onto the stretcher’s surface. Rachael Raddenburg was deceptively light.
As they threw the sides of the sheet over the body, Erico Ramos saw the morgue orderly squeeze Rachael Raddenburg’s hand. Afterward, the geek rolled the stiff toward the elevators and Nurse Smallet called down to housekeeping. Erico gathered the soiled laundry and stuffed it into the bag hanging from the door. He looked up just as the elevator doors closed.
At the nurse’s station Alberta shook her head and bent to the eternal paperwork. Erico sighed and looked back into the room. There were still Rachael Raddenburg’s belongings to collect.
He felt a headache coming on as he opened the small metal clothes locker. Hanging inside were a full length charcoal cloth coat and a pale blue woman’s leisure suit. The suit and coat both were torn and stained, even though they had both been cleaned. When Rachael Raddenburg had blacked out she had been in the center of a freshly asphalted piece of 37th Street. One car had bumped her as she went down. No one had stopped.
She didn’t have a suitcase. Everything went into the white plastic tote bag. No purse. Someone on 37th had paused long enough to grab her purse and her shoes. In the pocket of her coat were some tissues and a plastic daily pill counter containing another failed doctor’s impotent ammunition. In the night stand an untouched cache of hospital issue: rose plastic wash basin, barf tray, cup and pitcher, tissues, body lotion, toothbrush, toothpaste, and mouthwash. Towel and washcloth, both clean. The laundry bag got the towel and washcloth, the rest went into the white plastic tote bag.