Let him be. Give him a cigarette if he comes to. So he’s dying of lung-cancer, so what? It’s a terminal case. Dose him with morphine whenever he asks for it, whether for analgesic or recreational satisfaction. I know, I know: “We’re gonna do something, something serious and huge, we’re gonna fix stuff.” No yer not. You’re just gonna talk about stuff on the Information-overloaded Dirt Road of Surveillance and Road Pizza.
Plantman left The City to tend the Tree of Life out in The Nation and witness the appearance of The Missing Girl.
Blood stabilized. Still damn low; but high enough for me to escape the disinfected halls of Dr. Creed.
The Bakery Girl and BEING cabbed me home. BEING’s Big Media gig ended. He got a job at “Video, Video” movie rentals, working Four PM-Midnight. Apartment days, we watched TV, snacked creme-filled cakes till BEING had to slog off to “Video, Video.” Work.
The Solution Is Not Working
Personal visit after breakfast by The Man himself. Dr. Creed, eyebrows a-flutter, glum.
“When can I get out of here?” I asked.
“When your blood-count stabilizes, you’ll be able to go home and rest.”
“When can I lose this albatross,” I pointed to the machine, my ball-and-chain.
“Give it a couple of days.”
“You asked me about transfusions. Are you going to give me a transfusion?”
Eye brows in overdrive, he paused, sighed.
“The Solution is not working. I’m sorry.”
“What? Then what?”
Curtains parted (dearly departed). Had expected The Nurse. Demand she explain about the Night Visitors, launch a “formal patient’s complaint.”
Saw Mother instead. Smoking the same cigarette. Her mortal last? Can take ‘it’ with you? Whatever ‘it’ is you love?
“Look at you, poor baby. You’re a mess.”
“The Condition,” I said.
Awake night suddenly not night four AM. Three figures bedside: Short Man; Tall Surly Man, aka “Mr. Personality;” Thin Woman. Long white lab coats aqua scrubs. Young.
“This is him. Here’s his chart,” Mr. Personality.
“Amazing,” Short Man.
“Freak me out,” Thin Woman.
“I’ve never heard of anyone born with The Condition. I thought it just happens. Toxic exposure or something like that. They see it in kids on the Enemy side,” Mr. Personality.
“Which Enemy? I forgot which Enemy of the Nation we’re out to get this week,” Short Man.
Two doctors, a woman and boyish intern, came to sample my bone marrow.
Worst pain experienced, this body, to date. Flat-belly to cold metal, sanitary paper in between.
Intern, under doctor’s direction, numbed my lower-back and pelvis. Three incredibly sharp syringes of novocaine felt cold steel then stone. Hard lump of lumbar, barely sentient Next harpooned me with a thicker — orders of magnitude thicker — cork-screw type instrument, extracted a sample.
Chips of bone, chunks of marrow.
Sequence: pain, numbness, pain again.
Early nurse’s aide collected blood. The patient to the right of me moaned all night begged mercy. Still dark. The usually pleasant semi-noise of pre-dawn amplified to unpleasant by the wheeling of stretchers and machines; insistent patients buzzing the nurses’ station. I was not clear enough to know exactly where I was in terms of life’s journey as I waited for the sun, but it sure as hell wasn’t Egypt.
Triage nurse asked I’d been drinking.
“Tremendously. A great deal,” The Bakery Girl said.
“What’s your name?” The Nurse asked me.
“Ra.”
“Okay, Ray. Let’s check your vitals,” said The Nurse.
Plantman in Egypt to save Pharaoh’s ailing Date Palm. Papyrus. Literature is only corrupt as its paper. Important plant priest, celebrated immortal. Statue myths. Royal garden. Scissors bucket. Ancient days, too distant to count. Moses in baby booties.
“His temperature is one hundred and six,” said The Nurse.
“Holy shit,” said The Bakery Girl.
