Excerpt: Hopeful Romantic

This was the perfect opportunity to satisfy that gnawing curiosity…

He stepped over the threshold and moved to the right instead of the left. He didn’t have to pull back the curtain; he only had to raise his eyes to finally see who it was that was lying in bed 2208.

--

When his eyes finally saw the form lying limp with arms slung about like a rag doll’s in that bed, his stomach clenched. He felt the breath leave his lungs as if pulled out of them by a vacuum and then he felt an unexpected anger welling up in him, no idea if it was justified or from where it had come.

All this time, he’d thought…

…but how could that be?

After hearing Mabel declare that it was ‘only a matter of time’ for the person in the bed on her side of the curtain, Ben wondered how this could be true when the man- the boy, really, laying there was so very young?

He looked pale and he was thin- but he didn’t look truly ill, not in the same sense as the people that Ben had seen being wheeled in chairs from the cancer wing of the hospital around the place just to break up what must be the endless monotony of their existence here.

No, this kid- and he did seem so much younger than Ben felt, even if the difference was really only likely about five years or so- was very much still there, Ben could tell just by looking at him.

Even though he lay as still and lifeless as Annabeth currently did, and though it was obviously worse because he was on a ventilator and Annabeth was not, there had to be some spark of life left in him if he was still hanging on, so how could Mabel have said there was no hope.

What on Earth had put him here? Accident? Injury?

Suddenly, Ben focused in on something he hadn’t noticed before.

The young man had thick, ropy scars running up and down the length of his arm.

Both arms.

They were apparently old, as they bore no stitches or visible redness. Still, Ben knew instantly just what they really were.

Battle scars.

And if he’d had to make a guess, Ben would have sadly placed his money on the likelihood that the last round of that battle had been fought with different weapons; ones that had put him into that bed and had him living on that ventilator.

He heard a sigh behind him, and only afterward did he realize that there had been footsteps approaching before it.

“I told you not to look.” Vicky said sadly.

“He…” Ben tried to form a sentence, but could not.

”He’s attempted many times.” Vicky whispered into his ear, leaning so close that Ben could make out the faint smell of her flowery perfume. It reminded him of one that his grandmother used to wear. “Different methods. This time he damn near did it.”

“Is he going to be all right?” Ben finally could hold back his questions no longer. “Is Mabel his mother? She said there was no hope over here, I thought,”

”That the patient was terminal? He probably is, Benjamin. Mabel isn’t his mother, she’s his nanny. Well, she’s his guardian. When he was younger, she was his nanny. The thing is that his parents have really pretty much washed their hands of him. He’s either in a hospital or in Mabel’s care. I don’t think his parents are even in the country. They’re very…well off.”

Now Ben knew that the anger he’d felt was justified. Apparently there were two things that this kid’s parents hadn’t been able to purchase for themselves with their wealth; feeling hearts, and working consciences.

“But is he going to be all right?”

“All signs indicate he’ll probably wake up at some point. But the question is…” Her beeper sounded, and she looked down at it. “I have to go. Don’t let this get to you, though.” She touched his arm and looked at him with motherly sternness. “You’ve got enough on your plate right now, you don’t need to add anyone else’s worries.”

Ben nodded, and he looked up at the dry-erase board on the wall. He read the name on it, and before he would leave there was something that he had to say.

He approached the bed slowly, and tried his best to smile.

“Hello…” he glanced to the board again, where it said the name of the patient and who their nurse on duty was for this shift. “…Dru. My name is Benjamin, and I’m a friend of your next door neighbor here.”

He waited a moment, out of politeness, even though he knew that the man could not possibly respond if he wanted to with the ventilator in place. He just had to assume that there was every chance that somehow, his voice was getting through.. “I hope I don’t bother you too much with all the rambling on I do over there. It’s just…” he shrugged now. “You have to do something to fill the silence.” He backed up and headed for the door. “I hope that I’ll get to properly say hello again one day. One day soon, when you wake up.”

The only response to Ben’s words was the steady, unchanging beep of Dru’s heart monitor as he lay there lost in a world far beyond that which was accepted by Benjamin as the real one.

--

The noise startled Ben from sleep.

He had heard this sound before several times by this point, but never with such gut-wrenching insistence.

"What the hell is going on?" Vicky hollered, as she came rushing to the bedside of the pale boy on the opposite side of the curtain from Annabeth's.

"He's awake and he's trying to pull out the vent." The nurse's aid stammered.

"How the hell did he get out of those restraints?” Vicky demanded to know. The aid’s eyes glistened with tears.

“He has bruises from them. I was just taking his vitals, and he seemed so still, I thought maybe-“

“Well that was your first mistake. You thought.” Vicky snapped.

“Andru, don't, honey, you're going to really hurt yourself if you..." the aid pleaded, but the sound of the continuing struggle told Ben that the boy called Andru had hardly given up his fight.

He thought about rushing over to ask if he could help, but he knew from talking to the staff that only they were allowed to touch the patients. If a person touched someone who was not a family member, the hospital would be liable if there was an injury- and so would the ‘good Samaritan’.

Still, he rose from his seat and rushed beyond the curtain anyway.

“Anything I can do?”

“No. Go.” Vicky shouted back to him, not having time for anything more. "DRU!" Vicky hollered at her patient with the authority you'd expect of a war weary military commander. "Stop pulling. We'll get it out. Just stop!"

The sound of the frenetic beeping of his heart monitor began to slow, and Ben could also hear the sound of machinery switching off.

"Okay,” Vicky announced. ”We're going to extubate..."

Ben left as he was told to do. Standing just outside the door now he turned away, his stomach lurching slightly as he heard only the continued beeping, and then the sound of the young man coughing.

Gagging.

Then Dru was gasping for air, and after hearing that, Ben finally felt as if he could breathe again as well.

--

The beat of the music was driving; clear evidence of a drum machine kicked in overdrive and threatening to careen out of control.

The guitars ringing, almost like bells. The driving bass, The gritty, moody vocals.

Hey, I know this song.

She thought it quite unusual that for once, there was actually a song she liked playing on the clock radio when the alarm switched on.

Usually, it was a commercial for the local ‘medical spa’ and told you that if you dialed now, you could get a half off discount on your breast ‘augmentation’ procedure, or special financing on liposuction every other Thursday if you hurried to call IMMEDIATELY!

Part of her was always tempted to pick up the phone, just for the hell of it, and call them in the same tone and at the same volume as their assaulting, and insulting, radio commercials. She pictured it so clearly.

“HELLO! I WOULD LIKE THE DISCOUNT ON THE 40 EEE BREAST IMPLANTS AND I’D LIKE THOSE PUPPIES INSTALLED AND READY TO SHOW OFF BY THE WEEKEND!”

She just could never quite bring herself to do it to the poor receptionist destined to answer the call.

She found it odd that she could hear the radio on the bedside table so clearly, given that she was certain she’d fallen asleep in the living room. She rose, and stretched. She stumbled forward, imagining she was headed in the direction of the bathroom for her morning shower.

She hummed, then sang along with a few of the words to the song

“You got a piece of me, and honestly
My life would suck without you…”

She laughed, thinking how when she’d sent Benjamin the file of this song saying that she knew it wasn’t the most delicately sentimental song in the world, he had responded by saying that it ‘wasn’t without a certain romance…’

She realized that she’d been walking far longer than she should’ve had to go to get to her bathroom.

Why was it always so dark in this room? She usually got hit in the eye first thing in the morning with the sun’s first searing rays of light through a hole in the window shade she kept forgetting to replace.

The song on the radio changed mid-chorus, and she frowned.

“Hey, what happened? I was enjoying that.” She murmured.

There was a scream.

A shrill, earsplitting, heart-stopping sort of shriek; from a voice that sounded as if it should belong to a small girl and yet seemed to be emanating from the gaping mouth of a very angry young man.

Annabeth also screamed.

“What? Shit!” He exclaimed more than asked the moment the screaming had stopped. He scrambled out of bed, then realizing he was only wearing his boxer shorts and very large earrings. The kind of grossly oversized earrings that stretched out the wearer’s earlobe to the point of obscenity and made Annabeth’s eyes water to look at just imagining how bad the piercings must’ve hurt.

“What. Who. How?”

“What?” She jumped back several paces. “I don’t know how I- where the hell am I?”