Clouded Rainbow (6 page)

What the hell happened?

With his mind’s little voice asking that simple question, he immediately felt throbbing pain overwhelm his head. Roger touched the thick gauze tightly wrapping his forehead. He let out a bellow. His attention shifted to his ear, filled with the rapid sound of an electronic heartbeat,
his
heartbeat. Roger found himself in the worst place he could possibly awaken. He had never actually stayed in a hospital overnight except for one time as a seven-year-old child after undergoing a frightening tonsillectomy. However, his mother fought the staff and stayed by his side throughout his stay, calming him. That could be why he had felt such animosity toward doctors and hospitals, but whatever the reason, he wanted to get as far away from his location as possible. He wished he had awoken in his cushy bed, or in a hotel room on a business trip, or even at his office, as sometimes he took a ten minute catnap during his lunch hour. Unfortunately, he wasn’t in any of these locations. His mahogany desk and beta fish in clear water were actually a metallic bed with bars and a catheter filled with yellow urine. In addition, the man normally dressed in a costly Hugo Boss suit with a tailored shirt was now covered in a two-dollar blue gown resistant to vomit and other bodily fluids.

As Roger scanned the room trying to make sense of his dilemma, he suddenly felt abandoned. He wondered how he had ended up inside this prison cell. Most importantly, where was the love of his life? One thing was perfectly clear to him; he had to remove himself from his surroundings. Roger knew his mind would not be free until he returned to a familiar environment, where he could try to lift the low hanging cloud obscuring his mind.

Roger looked for any sign of life. The only communication he found within immediate reach was a phone on the end table. Roger picked it up, balancing IV lines with phone cords, and began dialing home.

“Four…Five…No, no, Two…” Roger mouthed as he pressed each digit.

The businessman realized his phone number was lost from his mind, corrupted like a computer’s hard drive after a deadening shock.

“Hello? Hello? Who’s there?” a baritone voice expelled through the phone as Roger’s mind screamed.

Roger tried to hang up the phone, but it fell, smashing on the ground. He mouthed the word “Lois,” as his whisper seemed to travel beyond the thick walls. He hoped it would reach the woman he had so desperately craved. As the seconds passed, he realized the stark truth that the biggest bout of forgetfulness of his entire life faced him. His only crutch was years of higher education to aid his reasoning. The first step in tackling any colossal problem, he concluded, was to deal with the immediate situation at hand.

The heartbeat monitor focused his attention, which led to the realization that a plethora of electronic sensors had been artificially attached to his body. Without thought, he pulled the various wires from his wrist and hand. He could feel the narrow tube of the intravenous slide out from the engorged vein in his hand, which made him wince. Through the sting, he grabbed the many sensors taped to his chest and abdomen and ripped them from his body, taking some hair with them. The heart monitor changed to a flat, stabbing beep that filled the room, and his head, with the sound of death. Quickly, he swung his feet around and dangled them off the bed, but something felt odd. He had a feeling in his groin that he had never felt before. It was as if something was unnaturally poking deep within his abdomen and, with each movement on the bed, it dug farther into him. Roger flipped up the blue gown and saw a long tube coiling around his leg. He followed it up, and what he saw shocked him; the tube did not end on the outside of his body, it traveled into the urethra of his penis. Roger squeezed the tube and pulled slightly, and with each movement, he could feel it poking deep within his body. His breathing escalated and sweat drenched his face. The image of the catheter burned into his mind, and he was beginning to hyperventilate. Roger knew he had to pull it out quickly, or he would fall back into the unknown void.

Just like a bandage
, he thought.

Roger turned his head and reached down to his groin; he firmly gripped the tube and yanked. He felt the hose pull out from his body followed by a burst of fluid. Roger was terrified to look down, afraid to see gushing red blood spewing from his delicate penis. He barely mustered the strength and saw the yellow color of urine dribble from the uncorked apparatus.

Roger took a moment and focused on the closed door in front of him. He looked at the light from the hallway casting through the door’s window and tried to forget the unsettling images of his catheter removal. He hoped these pictures would be purged from his mind’s database and never retrieved again.

Roger planted his feet on the cold, hard tile, which made his mind refocus on the nerves on his soles, temporarily taking the pain away from his upper body. He stood up and shuffled to the door like a toddler taking his first steps. Roger finally stopped to glance through the window of his cell into the brightly lit hallway. Roger opened the door and glanced left, and then right. He saw medical equipment lining the hallway with banks of identical doorways. The thought of Lois suddenly entered his mind. He pondered her existence sleeping in one of the adjacent hospital rooms. Roger used his strength to move toward the next room. Inside was an obese creature Roger assumed was male; however, he couldn’t be sure as thick gauze wrapped the person’s entire body, including the head. Roger lurched toward another door. He peered inside, as a wrinkly male patient lunged at him from the shadows. Roger wobbled on his feet from the surprise, and then toppled over to the unyielding floor; his head bashed the wall sending a flood of pain to his skull. The elderly man slammed the door and retreated inside his room, bringing the hallway back to silence. Roger’s bizarre environment made him crave his home even more. He rubbed his head, and then picked himself up, but pain shot down his right leg.

The lost businessman tottered down the hallway. His gown had a slit open in the back as cool air grazed his backside. Suddenly, Roger heard two approaching voices—one voice was deep and resolute, and the other was somewhat higher, but still masculine.

“I’m looking for Lois Belkin. Where is she?” Roger asked the two approaching male nurses.

Both men neared the lost patient with wide eyes and wide grasps.

“You have to go back to your room,” the taller nurse said.

“Where is Lois?” Roger continued.

“There is no Lois here. Let’s get you back to your room,” the shorter one said as he gripped Roger’s arm.

“Hey! Let me go,” Roger snapped.

“We’re just trying to help. Your head is not right. You need to rest,” the taller nurse insisted.

Roger panicked from the grip of the four claws. He gave in.

“Now, where is your room?” the taller nurse asked.

Roger nodded down the hall behind him. The three of them moved toward the wrong direction. Roger felt scared, alone, lost. He had to escape.

A crowd of visitors swarmed them. Roger saw an opening. He used all of his energy to break free. Roger ducked between two women, and then fled down the hallway.

“Hey! Stop! Get back here!” the taller nurse yelled.

Roger was free. He ran through the pain, turned down a hallway, and then hid inside a room. He wanted nothing more than to go home, to go to a safe place to solve the questions that hung over him. But Roger realized that just like his phone number, the phone number to safety, he didn’t even remember his address.

Roger watched from inside the room as the men passed. The threat was averted. As he turned to exit the room, a strange man startled him. Roger recognized that the man resembled himself, but he had cuts and bruises on his grubby face and wore a tight bandage around his head. Then, Roger realized the man was actually reflecting back from a mirror; he was seeing the image of himself.

“What happened to you?” he asked the stranger staring at him.

Roger looked deep into the man’s hazel eyes. He longed to find the lost memory that held his home address. His mind throbbed with pain, but Roger kept trying, kept focusing. And then like a ray of light penetrating a black cloud, Roger blinked.

“Dietrich Road,” he whispered.

Roger grabbed a pen from a table nearby and scribbled the two words on his wrist. He tried to remember the street number, but numbers appeared to be the most damaged in his mind.

With an ounce of hope, Roger looked around the dark room and noticed a figure lying in the bed. He sneaked around the curtain and saw an elderly man asleep and unaware of the intrusion. Roger looked down at the blue gown covering his aching body, and then shifted his eyes to a pile of perfectly folded clothes on a chair nearby. The simple sight made him suddenly strive for Lois. She sometimes laid out an outfit for him in the morning on a chair if he was running late and in the shower. He wished it were one of those mornings.

Roger began to disrobe the blue gown and felt the cool air against his naked body. It felt purifying and tickled his sensitive skin. He took a second to glance down at his exposed penis, which was his cue to dress rapidly. Roger grabbed the dark-colored pants and slid them on his legs through the pain. He noticed his right leg involuntarily twitched as he raised it, and concluded it must have been a result of his affliction. He grabbed the light-colored dress shirt and began to button it up, as he did every morning before work. Roger finished and instinctively tucked the shirt into the pants, giving a sense of neatness to the outfit. He slid into a pair of loafers that were under the chair. Luckily, the shoes were a perfect fit. Roger took a step into the brighter light cast from the hallway, and then stopped cold. His attention focused on the pants, which were riding up several inches to his ankles. Roger peered at the man lying horizontally in the bed and tried to assess his height. Even though Roger was a few inches taller than average, those inches rested in his torso. He noticed a photograph propped on the bedside table. It showed the elderly man wearing a vivacious smile as he gripped a similarly aged woman close to his side. The couple looked happy and peaceful, enjoying a moment together that would forever be captured in the snapshot. Roger looked at the man’s now bewildered face, which was pale and unresponsive.

What happened?
Roger thought. He realized his intention in looking at the photograph was to find out the man’s height. He noticed the man was comically shorter than the woman; he reasoned that either she was unnaturally tall or he was unusually short. Roger looked down at the high-water pants and knew the latter was the hand to bet.

The stranger in the mirror stopped Roger again, as he took a moment to fix his shirt. Roger performed an unconscious polish to his collar whenever he saw a mirror, an instinct ingrained in him from years in the business world. Roger studied his weary face as he grabbed the head bandage and threw it aside. He knew it had to go, as it was a sure sign of his jailbreak. With the problem of appearance mostly solved, Roger was ready to embark on the next stage of his journey.

7

Roger stepped into the lit hallway of Saint Peters North Hospital. The pain in his right leg intensified as he tried to walk it off. Roger hoped his new attire would be enough to convince any potential barricades, particularly a hospital staff member. Up ahead, a bank of closed elevators lined the hallway as Roger took a moment to check the area. He knew this would be the ideal place for parked individuals and the prime opportunity for small talk, his current worst enemy. Fortunately, he saw nothing and no one, just up and down arrows offering a choice to the elevator’s future patrons. Roger pressed the down arrow and waited. He wished they had made another button, one that would provide a private elevator for those individuals not interested in chatting with a random stranger.

Why do people always have to talk? Why can’t they just stand in silence?
he mused. Roger realized this was just the way humans reacted, craving some meaningless prattle to pass the typical thirty-seconds of silence.

What was a person’s fear?
he pondered. He reasoned people feared offending others by remaining silent. Roger was hoping that no one would be on the elevator, as he had no brainpower to think of a clever excuse for his visit to this floor.