Rebels (John Bates) (8 page)

The next morning
, I get up even before Nurse Garrison can come for me and when she finally comes, it is no surprise she has a shot in her hand.

“How do you feel?” she asks.

“I feel fine,” I answer, thinking nothing of this question.

“Let me see your arm,” she says, hands outstretched with the needle grasped in her left hand. I assume it is another vitamin shot, but the moment the yellow fluid enters my arm the room starts to move. I try to stand, only to lose my balance and fall to the floor as rough arms grab me. I can no longer keep my eyes open.

When I awake, I am strapped to an operation table, a bright light overhead is all I can see. I hear Dr. Pruitt’s voice call out to me.

“Count backward from one hundred, John.”

I don’t want to, but what choice do I have? I want to shout at Dr. Pruitt and tell him about the thing nurse Garrison had done, but it is too late.

“100, 99, 98, 97...” and I know no more. I don’t know what I thought would happen, whether I would dream or something, but there is nothing, only darkness.

When I awake, the bright, blinding lights of my hospital room greets me. As my eyes focus, I can see Dr. Pruitt standing over me. He looks tired, there are dark circles under his eyes and his hair looks grayer than it had before. My heart feels terrible. My lungs feel squished, and it is hard to breathe with such a heavy heart. It has to be five times the weight it was before.

“The surgery was an immense success. Your body is taking to the new heart very well.” He smiles and I can suddenly see every wrinkle in his face.

“Can I go home now?” I ask, trying to sit up. The doctor places his hands on me, stopping my painful movements.

“No, John, you can’t go home. You have to rehabilitate your body so it can get used to your new heart.”

My chest hurts. My heart feels like a hundred pounds. The pain is so intense, it feels like my lungs have no space to breathe. “The pressure, it hurts, it hurts so much.” I wrench the words out. Speaking only makes the pain worse.

“The pain tells you that your heart is growing into your new body. It is a good sign,” he says with a sad, faraway smile.

I thrash back and forth, kicking my legs. I want to rip this new heart right out of my chest and throw it away. I know my behavior is atrocious, but I don’t care. The pain is too much.

“Nurse Garrison,” Dr. Pruitt calls, pushing the little red button beside my bed.

“Yes,” the voice of Satan answers.

“Bring John a sedative and the painkiller.”

“Yes, Doctor,” the voice says, and Dr. Pruitt lets go of the button.

“You’ll be all right, John. Just give your heart a chance to take root.”

Nurse Garrison comes in with a vial full of something.

“What are you giving me?” I ask. She does not answer me, she just empties the vial into my IV bag, which injects the fluid into my body. I can no longer stay awake.

When I regain consciousness, I decide to no longer complain about the weight of my heart. It is as if my heart is twice the size it had been and  is made of bricks instead of tissue. The very act of breathing is painful, as the heart seems to be taking up the space the lungs once possessed. I lay there concentrating on the meditation exercises my father taught me. It helps the pain. I breathe as deeply as I possibly can, stretching, growing my lungs and heart with each breath. And with each breath, I pray and praise God.

Inhale. “Thank you, Lord.” Exhale. “For delivering me.” Inhale. “Out of the hands.” Exhale. “Of death and sin. For Lord, you are a powerful deliverer with the power to deliver me from any situation.” I continue to breathe and pray to God. “You are my light and even in this dark place, I can see because of thee. God, you are my strength and my peace and I thank thee and praise thy name, oh, Lord.”

The discomfort actually starts to go away, surprisingly, but I assume it is the medication they have administered to me. Within a few hours, I’m able to rise from my bed, and I realize I am in a different room than the one I had first been assigned. This one is pretty much the same, with green instead of blue and a sofa pushed up against the wall. I think momentarily about calling the nurse and asking for my IV to be removed, but I’m afraid I’ll get Nurse Garrison. So I slowly, carefully remove the IV myself. I wrap the cord of the IV up around itself and dispose of the needle in the red container that hangs on the wall. The space where the needle was in my arm starts to bleed, so I search through the various drawers in my hospital room to find bandages. I use the bathroom and carefully remove my shirt and unwrap my bloodstained bandages and stare down at my chest; it is red and raw with black angry looking stitches sticking out. I can no longer stand to look at myself, and the wounds are beginning to bleed. So with clean gauze and bandages, I wrap my chest, making it as tight as I can stand it.

Then I walk slowly, carefully, out of the hospital room. My legs don’t seem to want to obey me. I call upon God and continue to breathe as deeply as I possibly can, as I make each painful stride forward. I begin to walk down the hall; a nurse who isn’t Nurse Garrison stops me.

“Good, I see you’re up and about, but you’re not supposed to be walking here. We have a track for rehabilitation. Stay right there, and I will get you a wheelchair and then I’ll take you there,” she says with a perky smile. Whether I want to stay right here is really not an option as I move more slowly than a snail. I place my hands against the wall to steady myself while I wait for her. She may have been gone only for a few moments, but those moments seem to last and last as I stand here, arms outstretched with the wall supporting me.

She returns, placing the wheelchair behind me. I sit down, breathing in and out, grateful to now be sitting when I had been so anxious to be up and moving. She wheels me down the hall and into an elevator, out of the elevator and down another hall to a door leading out to a track. The track is suspended over an indoor pool. It is very warm inside the room. The nurse puts the brakes on the wheelchair and waits for me to stand. It is even harder to stand now after sitting in the chair, but I do it. The nurse smiles at me and tells me she will be back in a little while. I shuffle to the inner lane, grabbing hold of the railing and hold onto it as I make my way very slowly around the track.

I notice other young men dressed in the same white hospital jumpsuits moving at various speeds around the track with little or no greetings to each other than “Hey.”

I wonder again, do we all have new hearts? Why do so many need a new heart at the same time? My father had always told me if something doesn’t make logical sense then most likely there is something else at play. I keep thinking
why us
? What purpose does this surgery truly serve? While I slowly walk on the track, this helps to keep my mind off the pain. At this point, I know that I do not have all the pieces to this mysterious puzzle, but I was trained by my father that in time and with patience, the true nature of why I had this surgery will come to surface. The question is: When do I find out what the State really wants from me? And when I do, what then?

After once around the track, I just stand there, holding on to the railing, wondering when and if the nurse is ever coming back. My legs feel like lead weights, and I hope someone comes soon or I may just have to collapse to the track and lay there until help arrives. Eventually, a male attendant opens the door with a wheelchair in hand. I don’t ask if it is for me, I just assume and sit down gratefully. He takes me back to my room where he helps me out of my wheelchair into bed where I fall into an exhausted sleep.

I continue to receive
“vitamin” shots. My heart and my chest are healing very quickly, almost miraculously, with the black stitches dissolving and my skin returning to its original color. Though I do not have a mirror, it is almost like the actual incisions are disappearing. But I figure it’s simply due to the fact that I am unable to take a really good look and that whatever those vitamins I am taking are doing more than what has been explained. Rigorous activity starts the moment I can stand the pain in my chest. It’s like they can’t wait to try out their new toy. My favorite nurse is always waking me up at the break of dawn to let me know it is my time for therapy, but what they have us do is far from therapy. For anyone to have just gone through major surgery would make it unlikely to expect them to go through such tests unless the doctors are looking for something.

I run on treadmills, which at first are at moderate speeds but soon increases. How fast, I cannot tell since all readings are kept out of sight. At points, they even raise the treadmill at an angle to make it feel like I am walking up a steep hill. Of course, the staff explains this is simply to see how the heart will react to different situations to ensure it is functioning properly. At one point, I am able to keep a pace without showing any true exhaustion, which makes no sense to me.

But the staffer will only say, “That’s good, you can stop.” Nothing more, nothing less. I will then climb one rock wall after another. They even put me into a simulator that allows them to change atmospheric pressure and the amount of oxygen that would be in the air to test my endurance while climbing. Whatever they do appears to have had no affect on me, so I assume that they run basic tests and the harder ones will come in the future.

There is a moment where I hear one of them state, “I can’t believe he is still going! Never did we ever expect such results.” I am surprised, since I don’t feel any different in this weird contraption. I am taken aback. I didn’t think they wanted me to hear anything concerning the results. At this point, I see Dr. Pruitt signal to the other staff members to be quiet, as it is evident I am hearing some of their conversation. I guess they thought I wouldn’t be able to hear them, since I was inside an environmentally controlled box with no intercom to communicate with me.

Maybe my mind is playing tricks on me, since I have been locked up in this lab like a rat for too long. They test my strength against measurements and machines with weights that are hidden on the other side of the curtains where only the doctor knows the real limit of such excursions. At first, it feels like I could hardly move the bar but now things are so easy I feel like they aren’t testing me at all. They must be trying to trick me psychologically, making me feel better about myself. Surprisingly, Dr. Pruitt is glad when I do well and concerned when I’ve done too much and am in pain. Of all the staffers I come in contact with, Dr. Pruitt is the only one who truly cares about my well-being. This is different from other State figures who care only for themselves and what the State can give them.

When returning to my room, I notice I have been placed next to the other boys with white suits. I find it surprising how well-built they appear to be, but again I never really got a chance to see them that often. I guess I am the runt of the litter. They ask no questions, make no comments. It is as if they have not only taken out their hearts but their voices, too. I follow the example of my silent neighbors.

After several days have passed and as soon as Dr. Pruitt is satisfied with my rehabilitation, he has me join the others for exercise routines. We run in the same white suits. I am first every time. I notice at times the others straining to keep up with me. It reminds me of my old Young Army group where I was always the one everyone wanted to beat. I am actually surprised I am able to do so well, especially when these other guys are in tip-top shape. In many ways, they remind me of the Steel team, but I can’t even imagine us being at that level, especially in such a short time period. That type of conditioning would take years of discipline as well as special training. How fast I’m going, I have no idea. Only the doctor and the nurses with their stopwatches know, and they will not tell.

“How fast was I going?” one silly young man asks. It is the first time anyone has spoken and we all stare at him. The nurses only glare at him until he falls silent. No more questions are asked.

During swimming time, they line us up along the pool’s edge. We are to swim freestyle all the way to one end and back. We are all dressed in the same white swimming trunks, and everyone has the same scar on their chest. When the whistle is blown, I dive into the lukewarm water where I proceed to swim as I always have. But this time I feel like I am swimming through air. It is so effortless. Generally, when in the water, you feel like you are swimming in jell-o, but this time, I feel no resistance, no fatigue, no muscle cramping.

I am always the first in my own platoon, and now I swim as hard as I can in this pool with these new companions as my competition, pushing my heart and lungs to work together. Coming finally to the wall, I jump up and slap the edge, saying that I am finished. I look around, and I am aware that I am the only one standing, with the others coming just moments behind. I look at Dr. Pruitt and he smiles, giving me a thumbs-up. The others continue to write on their clipboards, always analyzing the results, never saying anything that either encourages or discourages our results. We push each other without a word, no greeting except an occasional smile; we are all good little soldiers.

As we show more and more progress, the State staffers decide to put something new in our rehab workouts. I can tell Dr. Pruitt is not pleased with this but as always, the State has the final word. Either you can comply or you will be replaced, something the State has no issue in doing.

We are all brought to gym and in the center stands a very large octagon that is covered by a large metal cage. I do not like what I am looking at. This could only mean one thing: physical combat, but why? A person that seems familiar comes forward, with clipboard in hand. As he approaches, I realize it is the same man that had come to my school to watch us compete against the Steel team. The man with the clipboard. He is a rugged man with a square jaw and cold looking brown eyes that showed no fear and no mercy.