am probably in shock. Maybe I have a concussion. I look dead. Hell, for all I know I am dead. That would answer a lot of questions—if I were lost in purgatory like some doomed character in a bad horror movie.
The door to the exam room opens and a young doctor breezes in. Thirty at most, with thick, jet-black hair and the brusque manner of every ER physician except George Clooney.
“Hello,” he says, without looking up from the information I filled out for the registry nurse.
“Hello,” I say. He kicks his rolling metal stool over between his legs and sits squarely in front of me and looks at my brow.
“Let’s have a look.” He snaps on a pair of latex gloves and swabs something across my Band-Aids and peels them off.
“Nasty cut,” he says, and looks closer. “Got some infection. How’d you get this?”
Oh, I was just nosing around a murder victim’s shallow grave at two a.m. and this blinding light struck me down like Saul on the road to Damascus and next thing I knew I was buried alive. At least I think I’m alive…you might want to check my vitals just to make sure, Doc…
Doc.
Killer liked to call people that. And in the dream…what was that the guy had said…? “I’ve got a story for you, Doc.”
I have had dreams about Killer before—obscure, haunting dreams—but this dream was different. I actually believed this was really happening…it had the feel of something that really happened…
The doctor presses a wad of gauze against my eyes and I can feel him squirt Betadine over the wound. It stings like hell. He sops up the drips of Betadine then pulls the gauze away and I see the needle.
“Little stick now,” he says, as he raises a syringe toward my face, its long needle moving up to my eye and over it, to my brow, and my shoulders tense as he sticks the needle right into the wound. I grit my teeth as the needle penetrates.
I’ll give you a ‘little stick,’ you little prick. Why don’t you just tell the truth? “I’m gonna stick a needle right into your deep, bleeding wound and it’s gonna hurt like a motherfucker.”
I can see his gloved hand pushing the plunger down slowly, filling my wound with lidocaine, and I wait for the numbness and it comes and I realize how much it had been hurting me and now I feel warm fuzzy feelings for my friend the doctor whom I now like ever so much.
“I walked into a door,” I answer his question belatedly.
I feel him look at me as he cleans the wound deeper. He doesn’t say anything, just proceeds to treat me.
I flash on a long-buried memory of being treated in an ER while I was drinking. I had found myself in a downtown L.A. emergency room in the middle of the night, coming off a howling bender with a bad cut on the back of my head. I had no idea how or where I got the injury but I told the doctor I fell, and the doctor’s silence was the same silence I feel now from the doctor who is quickly applying a series of butterfly bandages to my brow. I know I present like a drunk or an addict—having fallen down and hurt myself, looking like I slept in an alley. Or in a grave…
“Okay,” he says, finishing already. “Here,” he hands me a few aluminum sample packets of Polysporin and then snaps his gloves off. “Put some of this on there tonight and every day until you run out and if you see any redness or swelling you need to get it taken care of. The bandages will come off on their own in about a week,” he says this slowly and clearly, as though he were talking to a five year-old. To him I am a stumbling drunk, or some kind of problematic person that he doesn’t want coming back here.
“Thanks,” I say, and get off the table as he writes something on my chart.
“Take care,” he says, without looking at me, and then walks out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I steer my truck homeward, running my mind over everything. I am confused and in trouble but somehow I feel okay. Maybe it’s the lidocaine, but I feel calmer as I near my
The door to the exam room opens and a young doctor breezes in. Thirty at most, with thick, jet-black hair and the brusque manner of every ER physician except George Clooney.
“Hello,” he says, without looking up from the information I filled out for the registry nurse.
“Hello,” I say. He kicks his rolling metal stool over between his legs and sits squarely in front of me and looks at my brow.
“Let’s have a look.” He snaps on a pair of latex gloves and swabs something across my Band-Aids and peels them off.
“Nasty cut,” he says, and looks closer. “Got some infection. How’d you get this?”
Oh, I was just nosing around a murder victim’s shallow grave at two a.m. and this blinding light struck me down like Saul on the road to Damascus and next thing I knew I was buried alive. At least I think I’m alive…you might want to check my vitals just to make sure, Doc…
Doc.
Killer liked to call people that. And in the dream…what was that the guy had said…? “I’ve got a story for you, Doc.”
I have had dreams about Killer before—obscure, haunting dreams—but this dream was different. I actually believed this was really happening…it had the feel of something that really happened…
The doctor presses a wad of gauze against my eyes and I can feel him squirt Betadine over the wound. It stings like hell. He sops up the drips of Betadine then pulls the gauze away and I see the needle.
“Little stick now,” he says, as he raises a syringe toward my face, its long needle moving up to my eye and over it, to my brow, and my shoulders tense as he sticks the needle right into the wound. I grit my teeth as the needle penetrates.
I’ll give you a ‘little stick,’ you little prick. Why don’t you just tell the truth? “I’m gonna stick a needle right into your deep, bleeding wound and it’s gonna hurt like a motherfucker.”
I can see his gloved hand pushing the plunger down slowly, filling my wound with lidocaine, and I wait for the numbness and it comes and I realize how much it had been hurting me and now I feel warm fuzzy feelings for my friend the doctor whom I now like ever so much.
“I walked into a door,” I answer his question belatedly.
I feel him look at me as he cleans the wound deeper. He doesn’t say anything, just proceeds to treat me.
I flash on a long-buried memory of being treated in an ER while I was drinking. I had found myself in a downtown L.A. emergency room in the middle of the night, coming off a howling bender with a bad cut on the back of my head. I had no idea how or where I got the injury but I told the doctor I fell, and the doctor’s silence was the same silence I feel now from the doctor who is quickly applying a series of butterfly bandages to my brow. I know I present like a drunk or an addict—having fallen down and hurt myself, looking like I slept in an alley. Or in a grave…
“Okay,” he says, finishing already. “Here,” he hands me a few aluminum sample packets of Polysporin and then snaps his gloves off. “Put some of this on there tonight and every day until you run out and if you see any redness or swelling you need to get it taken care of. The bandages will come off on their own in about a week,” he says this slowly and clearly, as though he were talking to a five year-old. To him I am a stumbling drunk, or some kind of problematic person that he doesn’t want coming back here.
“Thanks,” I say, and get off the table as he writes something on my chart.
“Take care,” he says, without looking at me, and then walks out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I steer my truck homeward, running my mind over everything. I am confused and in trouble but somehow I feel okay. Maybe it’s the lidocaine, but I feel calmer as I near my
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