It was getting late, and Martin had to find a florist. He laid some money on the counter and left, thinking how he and Rachel were worrying about Dylan’s reading problems. Here was a kid who was clearly disturbed, maybe psychotic. Probably had the crap beaten out of him as a kid and was now hopelessly messed up on drugs, living in a cartoon world, making love to cakes.
Jesus! Life’s hard, but it’s harder when you’re stupid … or crazy, Martin thought. Always someone worse off. And he headed for his car, which started on the second try.
3
“The good news is that you’re going to live. The bad news is that we’re going to have to shave off some of your pretty hair.”
Cindy Porter was just finishing her shift at the Essex Medical Center when Hawthorne off-duty fireman Freddie Wyman brought the kid in. The bleeding had stopped, but there were glass splinters in his scalp.
The boy’s name was Brendan LaMotte, age eighteen, from Barton. He lived alone with his grandfather. Cindy called the man to say that Brendan was being treated for a head bruise, but that it didn’t look serious and that Brendan would most likely be home in a couple of hours after they took X rays. The accompanying firefighter had said that he had lost his footing and fallen headfirst into the storm door of a diner.
“I don’t think you have a concussion, but we’re gonna send you to Radiology to make sure just how hard a head they gave you.”
She tried to get the boy to smile. But he seemed distracted, not by the bruise but being in a hospital. Because the injury was on the top of his head, they had put him on a chair in one of the ER bed bays and drawn the curtain for privacy. But something about the space bothered him. He kept inspecting the oxygen nozzles in the wall, the X-ray plug, the sink, cabinet, box of surgical gloves, cotton swabs, containers of alcohol, et cetera. And he got up and sniffed everything like a drug dog.
“But first we’re gonna clean you up, okay?” She spread the hairs above the cut with her gloved hand. The cut was not deep so he wouldn’t need stitches, but there were splinters that had to be removed. “Boy, that must have hurt.”
“Wasn’t too bad,” he mumbled.
“The bleeding stopped, and we got most of the dried blood cleaned up.”
“‘The cold in clime are cold in blood, / Their love can scarce deserve the name.’”
“What’s that?”
The kid shook his head to say it was nothing.
“Okay,” she continued. “What we’re going to do is just pick out the shrapnel, so sit tight, and I promise to do my best not to hurt. Okay?”
“H-how much hair you gonna cut off?” he asked.
“Maybe about an inch. I won’t shave on the cut itself, just around it to make sure we get it all.”
Cindy was of the school that you keep a running commentary to distract patients from unpleasant matters, especially kids. Brendan wasn’t chatty, although he muttered to himself as if having a private conversation.
She clipped the hair around the wound, which had crusted over. Unfortunately, the glass from the door was the standard fare, not the shatterproof stuff that came apart in chunks. So she had to use tweezers. All the time the kid sat perfectly still. Whatever he was muttering, she detected some kind of rhythm. “Is that some kind of rap you’re doing?”
“Uh-uh.”
“So you’re not going to tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“What you’re saying.”
“Just a p-p-poem.”
“Oh. What poem?”
“S-Shakespeare. Sonnet Twenty-nine.”
“How does it go?” When he shook his head, she nudged him. “Come on, this place could use a little poetry.”
Finally he consented. “‘When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state …’” And he recited the whole poem.
“Wow! How about that. Are you an English major?”
“No.”
“That’s right, you just turned eighteen so you’re still in high school. Wow! You must be a pretty good student.”
Brendan did not respond.
“Well, I used to like Shakespeare in school. My favorite is Romeo and Juliet.” And she recited a few lines. “‘But soft! What light through yonder window shines? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun …’”
“Breaks. ‘What light through yonder window breaks?’”
“Oops. That’s why I’m in here and not on stage,” she said. “By the way, did you get attacked by a porcupine or something?”
“What do you mean?”
She began inspecting his scalp. “You’ve got some funny little scars,” she said. She handed him a mirror. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you had some kind of hair implant.”
He stared intensely into it but said nothing.
“Whatever, we got all the glass out and cleaned you up.”
The kid continued to study his scalp in the mirror as she pulled open the curtain and announced that Radiology was ready for him.
“Sorry about the hair,” she said, walking him toward the waiting room. “But if you comb the other way nobody will notice. Wait a sec.” She went behind the reception desk and returned with a baseball cap. On the front it said ELIXIR. “Promo hats from one of the pharmaceutical vendors. We got a whole box of them.”
“Thanks,” he said, still in a funny daze. He tucked the hat in his back pocket.
She walked him down the hall to Radiology and stayed with him while the technician took several shots of his head from different angles. The kid obliged, turning this way and that when asked. When it was over Cindy led him back to his cubicle. “So, you don’t have any headaches?”
“No.”
“Dizziness, disorientation, confusion?”
“No.”
“Who’s the president of the United States?”
Brendan looked up at her to see if she was joking.
“Just checking.”
He told her.
“How about the last one?”
“George W. Bush.”
“Keep going.”
“William Jefferson Clinton.”
Then on a hunch she asked, “Do you know any more?”
For a strange moment he locked eyes with her. Then he said simply, “All of them.”
“Beg pardon?”
“George Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon …” He stopped for a moment, his eyes taking on an odd cast. “Nixon, Nixon, Nixon …”
“That’s pretty good,” Cindy said to snap him back. Then he looked at her and shook his head as if trying to dispel something. And without a moment’s hesitation he began to recite: “Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman …” And he named presidents all the way back to George Washington.
Cindy did not know all the names or proper order, but she had a strong suspicion that this wondrous teenage kid had them exactly right. “Holy cow!” she said in pure awe. “That’s amazing.” The kid’s a savant, she said to herself. She looked at the clipboard. Where it asked for occupation he had entered waiter, not student. “How come you’re not in school?”
He shrugged. “It d-d-didn’t work out.”
He looked at her with deep penetrating eyes that locked onto her own. He stared at her with such intensity that she had to look away. God, what a strange boy.
“Can I go?” he asked.
“Pretty soon. The doc has to check your films first.”
A few minutes later, the resident physician, Dr. Adrian Budd, came by to say that he had read the scan and found no signs of a concussion. When he left, Cindy handed Brendan a couple sheets on head injuries. “If there’s any sign of swelling, pain, headaches, or dizziness, you give us a call. The number’s on the top of the page.”