The Jigsaw Man (21 page)

He j u s t glared at me with that sad look on his face

again, as if he pitied my optimism, then turned his

head the other way and refused to talk anymore. I tried

a few times, but Red Beard told me to save my breath.

"Forget it, Mike," Red said. "He can get like this

before we get hooked up. He'll be fine in a while. It's

always better once t h i n g s are underway. You'll see."

"So tell me what to expect." I asked. "What are they

gonna do to us?"

"Okay. Here's the deal. Dr. Marshall goes through a

shitload of blood around here, keeping all his experi¬

ments going. He gets some of it shipped in from a few

legal blood banks, but most of the blood comes from

right here in this room.

"Take a look around, Mike. Counting you, we have

fourteen warm bodies strapped in tight and waiting for

the nurses.
Fourteen!
That's it to fill the demand for all

Dr. Marshall's experiments. You do the math."

"You can't be serious?" I asked. "He'd have to take a

bathtub of blood out of each of us."

Lucas chose this m o m e n t to decide he was in a talk¬

ative mood again. "Exactly! They damn near drain us

dry."

Red Beard quickly added, "Well, not exactly. It j u s t

feels that way. They take way more than they should,

that's for sure. I heard one of the nurses say the average

h u m a n body contains around ten to twelve pints of

blood, depending on their weight. Something like that,

anyway. Lose half your blood and you can kiss your ass

good-bye. Trouble is, with our limbs removed, we must

have less blood than an average human, right? Say seven

or eight pints, tops. They take two and a half pints out

of each of us, sometimes a bit more."

"Leaves you completely drained of energy and feel¬

ing like a sack of shit," Lucas said. "You'll be so tired,

you'll sleep the whole day away. Then they'll let us rest

tomorrow, so we can build up a new supply for them to

do it all over again."

I remembered something from the last time I'd been

in this room. "Why were some of you hooked up dur¬

ing the night, then? I remember seeing more than one

of you with the drain needles still in your head."

"Don't remind me," Lucas said, shuddering at the

thought. "We were working
overtime.
Getting punished.

It happens every now and then. Dr. Marshall accuses us

of holding out, as if we could, and he'll put us on the

slow drip all night long. The needles hurt like hell, and

it's j u s t his way of abusing us and keeping us scared of

him."

A few minutes later, two nurses and two large, mus¬

cular orderlies stormed into the room. They were all

business and went straight to work. The nurses set the

needles, and the orderlies hooked up the auto-siphon

machines beside the bed and were also available to beat

a little cooperation into any of us that dared to scream,

cry, or turn our heads away from the needle.

N o n e of them looked into any of our eyes or said a

single word of encouragement or commiseration. You'd

think they'd have at least some pity for us, but I never

witnessed even a trace of compassion as they went about

their cold methodical business.

How can these people be so cruel?

I don't know how much Dr. Marshall was paying

them, but it must have been bundles. There's no other

way anyone would be able to stomach doing this j o b

every second day. Unless—were they j u s t as fanatical

about the doctor's work as he was? N a h , had to be the

money.

Surprisingly, the long needle inserted into a vein

r u n n i n g along the left side of my face didn't hurt as

much as Fd been expecting it to. Going in, at least. It

wasn't until the orderly turned on the siphon machine

that things started getting bad.

Really bad.

All the previous times I'd donated blood in the outside

world, I can't say I remember ever feeling the blood com¬

ing out. You j u s t lay down on a bed, or sat on a chair,

waiting for the little bag to fill so you could head for the

dessert tray to claim your snack. Sometimes it might

take half an hour to complete your donation.

That wasn't the case for us Bleeders. They turned up

the juice on the machines, actually sucking the blood

from our veins instead of waiting around for Mother

N a t u r e and gravity to do the j o b . W i t h every pull of

the machine, I felt like I was going to pass out, the

blood surging within me as it was forced out the clear

plastic tube attached to my head.

W i t h i n minutes, it started to hurt. H u r t like a bas¬

tard, in fact, the pain steadily growing with every throb

of the machine. It might have been my nerves, or my

imagination, but it felt like it was pulling blood from

me harder and harder. I had this strange thought that

the next time the machine pulled, it was going to suck

my brain right from my skull out the tube like a big

scrambled lump of pureed jelly. It didn't happen, but

man did I get a splitting headache. Just as bad as the

drug-induced pain I'd experienced after waking from

my last surgery.

Headache or not, they kept sucking my life fluid out

of m e , taking more and more until I was sure they in¬

tended to bleed me to death.

Just like Wheels. Probably how they deal with all the

troublemakers, sucking the life out of us with a big straw.

I started to become delirious, screaming for someone

to help me, to stop them killing me like this. I thrashed

around in bed, fighting against the thick straps that held

me down,panicking,coveredinsweat, and three-quarters

out of my mind from having lost so much blood.

My screams brought the orderlies r u n n i n g and one

of them mercilessly ripped the needle from my head to

end my first session as Dr. Marshall's new blood donor.

W h e n he yanked it out, the needle scratched against

my skull j u s t above my ear. That set fireworks of agony

flashing down the entire left side of my body, tiny pin¬

points of light dancing in my glassy, unfocused eyes.

A nurse stepped forward and bandaged me u p , but by

this point I was so out of it, I barely knew what was go¬

ing on. I couldn't figure out who these people were, or

why they were standing around looking at me. Before I

could attempt to ask, the lights went out again and I

was plunged into a deep, dark, semidead sleep.

C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - T H R E E

I was r u n n i n g down the center of the street, rain soak¬

ing me from above, plastering my hair to my head as I

willed my legs to move faster and faster. I was dream¬

ing, of course, and fully aware of where it was my dream

legs were taking me, but I had no way of waking up or

changing my destination even if I wanted to. Finding

the dead bodies of my wife and son and the badly in¬

j u r e d body of my daughter certainly wasn't a pleasant

experience but at least I would see them again and that

counted for something.

My dream was always a bit fuzzy at the start, but

usually it started with the phone call. I was halfway

through my beer, t h i n k i n g how wonderful it was I was

ahead and sure to win the silly chug game when the

phone rang. I know now that it's for m e , but back then

it was j u s t a distraction that made me slow down enough

that my buddy beat me. We had a dollar on the line—

which seemed pretty important at the time—so I was

asking for a rematch when the bartender, Ronnie, tapped

me on the shoulder with a pallid, blank expression on

his face that made me think he'd seen a ghost.

"It's the police," Ronnie said. "Lookin' for you. You'd

better come take this."

"Hello?" I asked, reminding myself to keep my sen¬

tences short so I wouldn't slur my words.

Sometimes the dream played out in full; me swaying

on my feet as I tried to understand what the police of¬

ficer was telling me. Jackie, Arlene, and Daniel had

been in a car accident, a bad one, and things weren't

looking good. There was an ambulance on the way and

Jackie had told the cops where to find me before pass¬

ing out; the last words she'd ever say, and I wasn't there

to hear them.

Sometimes I got lucky, like tonight, and the dream

skipped ahead a few minutes to my mad dash in the

rain-drenched street toward the twisted piece of metal

and plastic that had once been our family's silver Honda

Civic. The car was upside down, the entire front end

gone, wrapped around a wooden telephone pole on the

soft shoulder of the road.

As I ran closer, I could see the windows were all

smashed out and it's right here I usually want to wake

up because I know from experience that in a few more

strides I'll be able to see Daniel's body still trapped in

the backseat, his blood-covered little arm waving in the

air for help. I'll run even harder to get to the car, but by

the time I make it there I'm always too late. Daniel is

still alive and looking at m e , but the light is fading in

his beautiful blue eyes and he dies before we can say a

word to each other. I don't even get to touch his offered

hand before he goes, and I'll hate myself forever for not

being able to run faster.

Something was screwy with tonight's dream, though,

something different, because when I ran up to the car

Daniel wasn't in the backseat. He wasn't in the car at

all, and neither was his mother, who by all rights should

be slumped over the wheel, partially impaled on the

broken steering column, as I'd actually found her. Arlene was there in the passenger seat, but she wasn't

covered in blood and screaming the way I remember.

N o , she was j u s t sitting there, quiet as a mouse, staring

at me with black empty eyes filled with hatred and ac¬

cusation.

There was a cop standing near m e , and I turned to

him and asked, "What's going on? Where's Jackie and

Daniel? They're supposed to be here, waiting for me in

the car like all the other times."

The policeman looked at me kind of funny, but

said, "The ambulance arrived about ten minutes ago.

They've taken y o u r wife and son to the closest medi¬

cal facility."

This was news to me. It certainly never happened

like that with the real accident so I wasn't sure how to

react or what to do.

"Are they dead?" I asked. Of course they were, but I

had to say something.

"No, sir. From what I understand, they're both busted

up pretty badly but the paramedic treating them said

they should make it if they get to the hospital in time."

"Which hospital?" I asked, feeling like a jackass for

getting my hopes up. I know I'm dreaming and they

both died years ago but none of that mattered right

now. If they're still alive, even j u s t in this crazy dream,

then I had a chance to see them one last time. See

them, hold them, talk to them, tell both of them how

much I loved them and how I was sorry I made Jackie

drag our family out on a stormy night like this j u s t be¬

cause I was too drunk to drive home myself. N o n e of

my words could change the past or make anything bet¬

ter, but I had to at least try.

"It's not far from here," the policeman said. "Get in

the cruiser, I'll take you there."

Arlene got out of the car and walked over toward us.

I held the police cruiser door open for her, thinking

and h o p i n g she was coming with m e , but she walked off

into the dark stormy night without another glance in

my direction.

She's walking out of my life, forever,
I thought. At least

I had that part right.

Shaking my head to clear the rain and tears from my

eyes, I j u m p e d in the cruiser and waved for the cop to

get moving. On the ride over, I was praying I wouldn't

wake up. I wouldn't even speak to the police officer, think¬

ing that any change of thought or focus and my dream

might veer off in some other unwanted direction. This

was the closest I'd come to seeing my wife and son in

nearly four years and I knew it was too good to be true.

It wouldn't last, couldn't last, but if I could j u s t stay

asleep for five more minutes, to kiss Jackie one more

time, to hold little Daniel in my arms for just one m i n

ute, that was all I wanted. Was that asking too much?

My panic alarm started to go off as we left the city

limits, the police cruiser taking a left onto a paved road

that wound its way t h r o u g h a forest of tall sturdy trees.

There wasn't a hospital outside of the city. Was there?

Why hadn't they taken Jackie and Daniel to Buffalo

General. Surely it was closer to the accident scene than

this.

"Where are we?" I asked, looking at the policeman

for the first time since getting into his cruiser.

"We're at the medical center," he said. "Don't you