“Could you stop? I need cigarettes,” I said, checking my pockets.
“Can I remind you that we have someone O.D.ing in the backseat?” Donald said.
Raymond was hunched over the wheel, looking worried, like he could use a cigarette and was seriously considering it.
I ignored Donald and said, “It’ll just take a minute.”
“No,” Raymond said, though he seemed unsure.
“He’s not O.D.ing,” I said, almost furious, thinking about an empty bar in North Camden. “He’s just a Freshman. Freshmen don’t O.D.”
“Fuck you!” Donald said. “Oh shit, he’s throwing up. He’s gonna throw up.”
We could hear the retching sounds in the darkness of the Saab and I turned around to get a better look. Harry was still coughing and looked sweaty.
“Open the window,” Raymond screamed. “Open the fucking window!”
“You two should really calm down. He’s not throwing up,” I said, pissed-off but sad.
“He’s gonna throw up. I just know it,” Donald was shouting.
“What do you call that sound?” Raymond inquired about the retching, shouting at me.
“Dry heaves?” I shouted back.
Harry started to mumble to himself, then he started to retch again.
“Oh no,” Donald said, trying to lift Harry’s head up to the window. “He’s going to throw up again!”
“Good,” Raymond shouted back. “It’s good if he throws up. Let him throw up.”
“I can’t believe you two,” I said. “Can I change this tape?”
Raymond drove up to the Emergency entrance and stopped the car with a screech. We all got out and pulled Harry from the backseat and with his feet dragging carried him to the front desk. The place was empty. Muzak was coming from invisible speakers on the ceiling. A young fat nurse looked at us and smirked, probably thinking, oh boy, another Camden College prank. “Yes?” she asked, not looking at Harry.
“This guy’s O.D.ing,” Raymond said, walking over to the desk, leaving Harry in Donald’s clutches.
“O.D.ing?” she asked, getting up.
Then the doctor on duty came out. He looked like Jack Elam, some old fat guy with thick glasses, mumbling to himself. Donald lay Harry on the floor. “Thank God,” Raymond murmured, in a way that sounded like he was relieved this whole situation was in someone else’s hands and not his. The doctor leaned over to check Harry’s vital signs. I knew the guy was a quack when he didn’t ask any of us anything. None of us said a word. It irritated me that Raymond and Donald not only made me miss this all-important meeting but also that they were wearing the same long wool jacket I was wearing. I had bought mine first at the Salvation Army store in town for thirty dollars. It was Loden wool. Then the next day the two of them ran down and bought the two remaining, probably donated by someone on the faculty who was going West, to teach in California or somwhere. The doctor grunted and raised Harry’s eyelids. Harry laughed a little, then jerked around and lay still.
“Will you get him into the Emergency room.” Raymond’s face was red. “Hurry. Isn’t there anyone else here?” He looked around, frantic in a practiced way. Like someone who’s worried, but not really, about getting into Palladium or something.
The doctor ignored him. His shock of gray-white hair was unsuccessfully greased back and stiff, and he kept grunting. He checked Harry’s pulse, found nothing, and then unbuttoned Harry’s shirt and placed the stethoscope to his tan, bony chest. We all stood there in the empty hospital. The doctor checked the pulse again and grunted. Harry was moving around a little, a drunken smile on his young Freshman face. The doctor checked for a heartbeat, for any sign. He used the stethoscope again. The doctor finally looked at the three of us and said, “I’m not getting any pulse.”
Donald threw a hand over his mouth and backed into the wall behind him.
“He’s dead?” Raymond asked, disbelieving. “Is this a joke?”
“Oh shit, I can see him moving,” I said, pointing at the rise and fall of his chest. “He’s not dead. I can see him breathing.”
“He’s dead, Paul. Shut up! I knew it. I knew it!” Donald said.
“I’m sorry about this, boys,” the doctor said, shaking his head. “How did this happen?”
“Oh God,” Donald wailed.
“Shut up before I slap you,” I told him. “Look. He’s not dead.”
“Boys, I’m not getting a heartbeat or a pulse. The pupils look dilated to me.” The doctor wheezed with the strain of getting up, and pointing at Harry, “That boy’s dead.”
None of us said anything. I looked over at Raymond, who wasn’t looking too worried anymore, and he gave me a glance that said this-quack-is-a-fucking-lunatic-let’s-get-the-hell-out-of-here. Donald was still upset, his back facing us. The nurse was looking over the desk, disinterested.
“I don’t know what to tell you boys,” the doctor said. “But your friend is dead. He’s simply not alive.”
Harry opened his eyes and asked, “I’m not dead am I?”
Donald screamed.
“Yes, you are,” Raymond said. “Shut up.”
The doctor didn’t seem too shocked by Harry’s state and grunted as he knelt down next to Harry and took his pulse again. “I’m telling you, there’s no pulse. This boy is dead.” He was saying this even thogh Harry’s eyes were open, blinking. The doctor used his stethoscope once more. “I’m not getting anything.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Uh, listen. Doctor. I think we’re going to take our friend home, okay?” I approached him cautiously. I knew we were in Hospital Hell or somewhere similar. “Is that, like, okay, with you?”
“Am I dead?” Harry asked, suddenly looking better, cracking up.
“Tell him to shut up!” Donald screamed.
“I’m pretty sure your friend is dead,” the doctor grunted, a little confused. “Maybe you want me to run some tests.”
“No!” Raymond and I said at the same time. We stood there watching the supposedly dead Freshman, Harry, laugh. We said nothing. Even though Dr. Phibes kept insisting he wanted to run some tests on “your friend’s corpse,” we finally took the Freshman home, but Donald wouldn’t sit in the backseat with him. It was almost eight-thirty by the time we got back to campus. I had blown it.
SEAN Today, I hang out, ride my motorcycle into town, walk around, buy a couple of tapes, then come back to Booth and watch Planet of the Apes on Getch’s VCR. I love the scene where an ape bullet has made Charlton Heston mute. He escapes and frantically runs around Ape City and as the net closes over his head he is raised triumphantly by The Gorillas and he finds his voice and screams, “Get your stinkin’ hands off me you damn dirty apes!” I’ve always liked that scene. It reminds me of nightmares I had in elementary school or something. Then, when I’m about to take a shower, I find the Duke of Disease (gross grad of 78 or 79) doing his friggin laundry in my bathroom. And he doesn’t even go to school here. Just visiting an old teacher. I have to run after the asshole with a can of Lysol. I get another note in my box after dinner tonight. They don’t say anything really except, like, “I love you” or “You’re Sexy,” stuff like that. I used to think they were jokes that Tony or Getch were putting in my box, but there’s been too many of them to take as a joke. Someone is seriously interested in me. My interest has definitely been aroused.
Then it’s back in Booth after dinner watching TV in Getch’s room and some tall greasy-haired hippie turned professional-college-student-type named Dan, who had been fucking Candice last term, is there talking to Tony. Anyway, it’s about eight-thirty and the room is cold and I feel feverish. Tony and this guy get into a heated argument about politics or something. It’s frightening. Tony, in a pre-drunken state, is pissed off that his point was lost, and Dan, smelling like some twenty-year-old unwashed rug, keeps referring to leftist writers and calling the N.Y.C. police force “Nazis.” I tell him that I was once beaten up by the city police. He smiles and says, “Here’s a case in point.” I was joking. I feel weird, my body aches. I watch people argue about Nazis. I enjoy it. Saturdays suck.