Raphael stood on his crutches, looking at the X ray. “All right. I can live with that if I have to.”
“You still want to try to get off the dope?”
“Yes.” Raphael was still looking at the X ray, a horrible suspicion growing as he looked at the savagely disrupted remains of his pelvis that the shadowy picture revealed. “I think it’s time I got my head back together again.”
ix
“There really wasn’t any alternative, Raphael,” the doctor told him. “The damage was so extensive that there just wasn’t anything left to salvage. We were lucky to be able to restore normal urinary function.”
“That’s the reason I’ve got this tube?” Raphael asked.
“The catheter? Yes. That’s to allow the bladder time to heal. We should be able to remove it soon. There’ll be some discomfort at first, but that’ll pass and the function will be normal.”
“Then there was no damage to the-uh-”
“Some, but we were able to repair that-to a degree. That’s a pretty tricky area to work with. My guess is that even if we’d been able to save the scrotal area and one or both testes, normal sexual function probably couldn’t have been restored.”
“Then I’m a eunuch.”
“That’s a very old-fashioned term, Raphael,” the doctor said disapprovingly.
Raphael laughed bitterly. “It’s an old-fashioned kind of condition. Will my voice change-all that kind of thing?”
“That’s mythology. That kind of thing only happens if the removal takes place before puberty. Your voice won’t change, and your beard won’t fall out. You can check with an endocrinologist periodically if you like, but it won’t really be necessary.”
“All right,” Raphael said, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. He’d begun to sweat again, and there was an unpleasant little twitching in his left hip.
“Are you all right?” the doctor asked, looking at him with concern.
“I can live with it.” Raphael’s left foot felt terribly cold.
“Why don’t I have them increase your medication for a few days?” the doctor suggested.
“No,” Raphael said sharply. He lifted himself up and got his crutches squared away.
“In time it’ll begin to be less important, Raphael,” the doctor said sympathetically.
“Sure. Thanks for your time. I know you’re busy.”
“Can you make it back to your room okay?”
“I can manage it.” Raphael turned and left the doctor’s office.
Without the drugs he found that he slept very little. After nine, when the visitors left, the hospital became quiet, but never wholly silent. When he found his hand twitching, reaching almost of its own volition for the bell that would summon the nurse with the needle, he would get out of bed, take his crutches, and wander around in the halls. The effort and the concentration it required to walk helped to keep his mind off his body and its craving.
His arms and shoulders were stronger now, and Quillian had given him his permanent crutches. They were called Canadian crutches, a term that seemed very funny to Raphael for some reason. They had leather cuffs that fit over his forearms, and they angled slightly at the handgrips. Using them was much less awkward, and he began to develop the smooth, almost stately pace of the one-legged man.
He haunted the halls of the hospital during the long hours of the night, listening to the murmurs and the pain-filled moans of the sick and the dying. Although he realized that it might have been merely coincidence, a series of random occurrences of an event that could happen at any time, Raphael became persuaded that most people die at night. Usually they died quietly, but not always. Sometimes, in the exhaustion with which he sandbagged his craving body to sleep toward the morning of each interminable night, he wondered if it might not somehow be him. It seemed almost as if his ghosting passage down the dim halls, like the turbulence in the wake of a passing ship, reached in through the doors and walls to draw out those teetering souls. Sometimes in those last moments before sleep he almost saw himself as the Angel of Death.
Once, during his restless midnight wandering, he heard a man screaming in agony. He angrily crutched his way to the nurses’ station. “Why don’t you give him a shot?” he demanded.
“It wouldn’t do any good,” the starched young nurse replied sadly. “He’s an alcoholic. His liver’s failed. Nothing works with that. He’s dying, and there’s nothing we can give him to relieve the pain.”
“You didn’t give him enough,” Raphael told her, his voice very quiet, even deadly.
“We’ve given him the maximum dosage. Any more would kill him.
“So?”
She was still quite young, so her ideals had not yet been eroded away. She stared at Raphael, her face deathly white. And then the tears began to run slowly down her cheeks.
Shimpsie noted from Raphael’s-chart that he had been refusing the painkilling medication, and she disapproved. “You must take your medication, Raphael,” she chided.
“Why?”
“Because the doctors know what’s best for you.”
He made an indelicate sound. “I’ve got the free run of the hospital, Shimpsie,” he told her. “I’ve been in the doctors’ lounge, and I’ve heard them talking. Don’t bullshit me about how much doctors know. They’re plumbers and pill pushers. I haven’t heard an original thought from one of them since I’ve been here.”
“Why do you go out of your way to be so difficult?”
“It’s an attention-getting device, Shimpsie.” He smiled at her sweetly. “I want you all to remember me. I quit taking the goddamn dope because I don’t want to get hooked. I’ve got enough problems already.”
“There are programs to help you break that habit,” she assured him. Her voice was actually earnest.
“You’ve got a program for. everything, haven’t you, Shimpsie? You send a couple of orderlies to my room about nine times a week to drag me to meetings-meetings of the lame, the halt, and the blind-where we all sit around spilling our guts for you. If you want to fondle guts, go fondle somebody else’s. Mine are just fine the way they are.”
“Why can’t I get through to you? I’m only trying to help.”
“I don’t need help, Shimpsie. Not yours, anyway.”
“You want to do it `your way’? Every client starts out singing `My Way.’ You’ll come around eventually.”
“Don’t make any bets. As I recall, I warned you that you weren’t going to enjoy this. You’d save yourself a lot of grief if you just gave up on me.”
“Oh no, Taylor. I never give up. You’ll come around-because if you don’t, you’ll stay here until you rot. We’ll grow old together, Taylor, because you won’t get out of here until I sign you off. Think about it.” She turned to leave.
He couldn’t let her get in the last word like that. He absolutely couldn’t. “Oh, Shimpsie?” he said mildly.
“Yes?”
“You really shouldn’t get so close to my bed, you know. I haven’t gotten laid for a long time. Besides, you’ve got a nice big can, and I’m a compulsive fanny-patter.”
She fled.
Finally, when the craving for the drugs had almost gone and the last dressings had been removed to reveal the puckered, angry red new scars on his hip and groin, when the Christmas season was upon them, Flood finally came to visit.
Their meeting was awkward, since there was very little they could really talk about. Raphael could sense in Flood that stifling unease all hospital visitors have. They talked desultorily of school, which was out for the Christmas holiday; of the weather, which was foul; and of nearly anything else except those uncomfortable subjects that by unspoken mutual consent they avoided.
“I brought your luggage and books and your other stuff,” Flood said. “I decided to get an apartment off campus next semester, and I was pretty sure you wouldn’t want the college to store your things. They tend to be a little careless.”
“Thanks, Damon.”
“Are you going to be coming back to school when you get out of here?” Flood asked, a curiously intent look in his dark eyes.
“I haven’t decided yet. I think I’ll wait a semester or so-get things together first.”
“Probably not a bad idea. Tackle one thing at a time.” Flood walked to the window and stood looking out at the rain.
“How’s ‘Bel?” Raphael asked, crossing that unspoken boundary.
“Fine-as far as I know, anyway. I haven’t been going down there much. ‘Bel gets a little tiresome after a while, and I’ve been studying pretty hard.”
“You?” Raphael laughed. “I didn’t think you knew how.”
Flood turned back from the window, grinning. “I’m not much of a scholar,” he admitted, “but I didn’t think it’d look good to flunk out altogether. Old J.D.’d like nothing better than to find an excuse to cut off my allowance.”
“Look,” Raphael said uncomfortably, “I really ran my mouth that night at ‘Bet’s place. If you happen to see her, tell her I apologize, okay?”