Undermind: Nine Stories (24 page)

He felt like a five hundred pound slab of
something old and tired, washed up on a dark beach on a hot night.
At the outer limits of his perception he sensed dull pain and
feared that this pain would sharpen once he fully woke up. He
mentally turned away from the physical world and the sensations
that awaited him there and returned to the darkness and comfort of
oblivion.

The next time he approached consciousness it
wasn’t subtle or accompanied by an option to refuse. His left leg
was screaming with pain and there were voices and bright light. He
was catapulted from sleep into a place that he didn’t know and in
which he didn’t want to be. He wanted to go back to the nothingness
where the pain couldn’t follow. Someone was touching his leg and
making the pain worse.

“Please, stop!” he shouted as he opened his
eyes.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Beaumont, I’m almost finished.
Doctor will be here in just a moment and can increase your pain
medication if you like.”

Lance couldn’t see what she was doing to his leg
and he lacked the strength to sit up and get a better view. He
looked around the room and determined that he was in a hospital,
but he didn’t know why and couldn’t recall where he had been last
or what he’d been doing.

“What happened to me?” he croaked. Fear of the
unknown constricted his throat and his mouth was very dry. He
looked at the bedside table and saw a green pitcher and a clear
empty cup.  He tried to reach toward the table with his right
hand but couldn’t, and the effort caused him more pain.

“Let me get that for you. You must be thirsty,”
the nurse said and covered his legs with his blanket, then stepped
over to the table and poured water into the cup. She unwrapped a
flex straw, bent the tip at a 45 degree angle and placed it in the
cup. She brought it to Lance’s lips and as he sipped through the
straw, the door to the room opened and a man wearing a white
doctor’s coat and a tie walked in.

The nurse said, “Doctor is here now. He can
answer your questions.”

Lance was irritated at the common nurse speech
which omitted the word “the” or the doctor’s last name when
referring to the doctor. But at least she hadn’t asked him how “we”
were doing.

“Good morning, Mr. Beaumont. I’m Doctor
Crandall.”

Lance didn’t feel as though it were a good
morning at all. As far as mornings went, he thought this one was a
contender for Shittiest Morning Ever.

“What happened to me?” he asked for the second
time. The nurse set the cup down on the table and quietly left the
room after looking at the doctor and receiving a nod.

“You’ve been in an accident.”

“Do you mean someone spilled a glass of milk on
me, or do you mean I was in a car wreck?” Lance asked. He was not
at all in the mood for vagueness or euphemisms. In his mind, an
accident was something you did unintentionally, like knocking over
a vase or bumping into someone.

The doctor smiled briefly. “You were in a
collision with another vehicle and you’ve been hurt pretty
bad.”

Despite the fuzziness of his mind, Lance was
still fixated on nuances of proper speech and thought to himself,
“I’ve been hurt pretty
 
badly
.”
He wondered how good this doctor could be at saving lives if he had
trouble with basic English. He stared at the doctor and waited for
him to continue.

“Another vehicle hit yours at a high rate of
speed, causing you multiple injuries - the worst of which was from
a shard of one of your ribs entering your heart. You nearly died.
Well, technically, you did die, briefly. Your heart stopped for a
short time. But we were able to bring you back, and repair the
damage. That’s the good news. You’re going to live.”

Lance’s drugged mind conjured up an image of
someone blowing a party horn and confetti falling down onto a group
of silent, morose looking people. This image almost made him
remember something that actually pertained to him but he couldn’t
quite reach it, like trying to think of a word or name that just
won’t come to mind, but you know that you know it.  “And the
bad news?” he asked, still wondering what people at a party might
have to do with him.

“In addition to damaging your heart, you’ve
injured your neck, broken your left arm in multiple places,
fractured your left arm, and your left leg was basically crushed.
After you’ve had a chance to begin recovering we can discuss
options regarding your leg. Right now though, I think it would be
best for you to rest as much as you can and let your body work on
healing. We don’t have to make a decision just yet.”

Lance was alarmed, and now he felt like resting
was impossible, at least mentally.
 
Options? Decision?
 
“Are you talking about amputation?” he asked
with his eyes wide open and his heart fighting against the
medication to beat rapidly.

“That is one option. But as I said, it’s not the
most important thing as of right now. The first –“

“Maybe not to you!” Lance cut him off angrily.
“It’s not
 
your
 
leg. What’s the other option?”

The doctor frowned, realizing he’d handled this
badly. He wished he hadn’t said anything yet about the leg. He was
straddling a fine line trying to keep his patient’s pain level to a
minimum without lowering his blood pressure too much.

“I know this is upsetting, but it’s very
important that you try to put this out of your mind as much as you
can for now and just focusing on resting. “

“Just give it to me straight, Doc.” Lance wanted
to say more, like that he could take it, and he wasn’t a child, but
he was suddenly exhausted and pain was making itself known in so
many places now he couldn’t even isolate the areas to form a simple
statement indicating where he hurt. He squeezed his eyes shut and
gritted his teeth as he tried to fight through the pain.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Beaumont, we’re going to – “

“Lance!”

“Excuse me?” the doctor asked.

“Call me Lance, dammit. Every time you say Mr.
Beaumont I think my dad just walked in.”

“Yes, of course, Lance. We’ll have to discuss
this later. It’s your increase in blood pressure and adrenaline
that is causing you increased pain. I need to increase your
medication, and you need to rest.
 
I mean that.
 
Nothing is more important right now than you
resting and letting your body work on healing.”

The doctor reached for the I.V. bag hanging from
a pole beside Lance’s bed and made an adjustment. Lance immediately
felt the pain subside and his muscles relaxed.

“I want you to take a deep breath.”

Lance did so and felt a slight pain in his chest
that didn’t concern him too much. He felt very tired and out of
focus. He closed his eyes. He just wanted to sleep. As he drifted
off, the image of someone blowing a paper party horn returned. He
watched in his mind as the curled end of the horn unfurled and
confetti fell down around it and he thought, “It’s my
birthday.”

***

 Lance was blissfully unconscious for a
while. As soon as his brain waves began to approach the theta
state, Devon began projecting events into Lance’s mind from the
previous evening. Lance perceived these projections as dreams. He
was at the steakhouse – the one he was heading to when the other
car crashed into him. He could see Kim and Tom sitting at a table,
talking, drinking and laughing. Lance could not sense where he was
in this dream. He was not at the table with them. The third chair
was empty. Tom and Kim were the only two sitting there.

He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it
seemed like he could hear everyone in the restaurant talking all at
once. He could hear noises from the kitchen and the hand dryer in
the bathroom. He could hear every sound in the restaurant but he
couldn’t single out just one thing and focus on it.

Kim and Tom looked like they were flirting and
having a great time. Watching them looking so happy together made
him feel kind of sick and a little sorry for himself. They were
smiling and enjoying each other’s company while he had lain mangled
inside his smashed up car, bleeding and unconscious.
 
Happy birthday to me,
 
he thought.

He looked at Tom’s hand reaching for a glass on
the table and as Tom curled his hand around the glass and began to
draw it toward him, it became a stick-shift lever that Lance was
pulling down into second gear. Kim was in the passenger seat and
had reclined it all the way back. Her shirt had ridden up a little
and her belly button was exposed. Tom shifted into third gear and
moved his hand from the gear shifter over to Kim’s stomach. He
lightly traced the back of his fingers across her tan skin.

Lance thought, “What the hell?” and became even
angrier as Tom’s hand slid up under Kim’s shirt and fondled one of
her breasts. Lance was relieved when Tom took his hand away to
shift into fourth gear, but then he put his hand right back where
it was and Lance didn’t want to be in the car with them anymore. He
watched Kim pull her shirt up over her head and toss it on the
floor beside Tom’s bed. Tom took off his own shirt and tossed it on
top of hers, then walked over to the side of the bed and dropped
down to his knees.

He traced the back of his fingers across Kim’s
stomach again. One way, then the other, then he slowly drew lazy
circles upwards toward the bottom of her breasts. His fingers
gently grazed the soft flesh and then trailed away again. Then he
started kissing her stomach and ribs, slowly and softly. Lance
watched, fuming. His best friend and his fiancé.  He couldn’t
believe this was happening. Not again. Dead embers of a nearly
forgotten fire surged back to life.

When Tom went from kissing to licking, Lance had
seen more than enough of but couldn’t stop watching and he couldn’t
say anything because he wasn’t there - even though he was. Tom
licked Kim’s tanned skin from her belly button up to the bottom of
her left breast and then he started sucking. When he finally pulled
away, he looked at what he had done and smiled. He had left a
hickey about the size of a quarter. He started to lower his head
again, this time going for Kim’s nipple and Lance slammed some kind
of door in his mind and opened his eyes and saw his nurse looking
down at him.

“Oh! I’m sorry. I was just going to check your
pulse. Did I wake you?”

“No!”

Lance was breathing hard and feeling every bit
of the shock, anger and outrage that he felt in that terrible dream
even though he was awake now. He thought it was ridiculous for him
to be feeling an emotion over something that had only occurred in a
dream. But it didn’t
 
feel
 
like a
dream.

The nurse let go of his wrist and wrote
something on a chart. “Doctor still wants you to rest, but he did
say it’s okay if your visitors sit with you for just a minute. I’m
sorry it can’t be longer, but you really, really need to rest and
sleep if you can. Okay, Sweetie?”

Lance nodded. The nurse walked out. Several
seconds later the door to his room opened and this time Tom and Kim
came through. “Oh my God, Lance! Are you okay? What happened to
you?” Kim rushed to his side, looking him up and down and
grimacing. “Oh, baby! What happened?”

Kim was wearing the same clothing he had dreamed
she was wearing. Lance felt like this partially confirmed to him
that what he had seen was more than just a dream, even though he
still thought it was illogical. He knew what clothes Kim wore and
he knew that his sub-conscious could have easily created a dream in
which she would wear the clothes he liked to see her in most. It
proved nothing. But he was holding back explosive anger. He smiled
at her and said, “I’m pretty messed up. Come here.”

She came closer and Lance put his hand on her
stomach and quickly slid his hand upward, lifting her shirt as he
did so. As he exposed her breasts, she shrieked and pulled herself
backwards away from him while pulling her top back down. She was
only exposed for a second, but that was long enough for Lance to
see the hickey. He already knew how it got there.

He looked at Tom who tried to hold his gaze but
found that he couldn’t and so he looked at the water pitcher beside
Lance’s bed. “I forgave you once, you son-of-a-bitch, but never
again. Get out of here and out of my life! I HATE YOU!!” Tom
immediately turned and headed out of the room. Kim was backing away
from the bed in fear. She stopped when she bumped into the wall
behind her.

“Lance. What are you talking about? What’s the
matter, baby?”

“Shut up. Just shut up! You have the nerve to
lie to me when I’m lying on what could’ve been my deathbed? I loved
you more than anything and that just proves what an IDIOT I’ve
been! Just get the hell out of here. I never want to see you
again!”

“Lance, I… I…”

“GO!” he screamed as loud as he could. Kim stood
frozen with her hand covering her mouth and tears running down her
face. She couldn’t move. The door opened and the nurse rushed
in.

“I’m sorry, but I need you to leave. We thought
seeing friends would help him, but this…. I need you to leave
now.”

Kim broke the spell that had her momentarily
paralyzed and started to walk toward the door. When she reached the
door, she turned back to Lance and said, “I’m sorry, Lance. I’m so,
so sorry.” The nurse put her hand on Kim’s back and gently nudged
her through the doorway and shut the door as soon as she
could.  She quickly made her way to the equipment that was
emitting a rapid series of beeps.

“Mr. Beaumont?”

Lance had his arm across his eyes and was crying
hard, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

“Mr. Beaumont, honey? I need you to take a deep
breath for me.”