Authors: Steve Alten
Sharkman
Sharkman
Steve Alten
TAYLOR TRADE PUBLISHING
Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
For Mom
Published by Taylor Trade Publishing
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
16 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BT, United Kingdom
Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK
Copyright © 2014 by Alten Entertainment of Boca Raton, Inc.
“L.A. WOMAN,” words and music by THE DOORS © 1971 (Renewed) DOORS MUSIC CO. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Alten, Steve.
Sharkman / Steve Alten.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-63076-019-9 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-63076-020-5 (electronic)
[1. Paralysis—Fiction. 2. Genetic engineering—Fiction. 3. Sharks—Fiction. 4. Grandmothers—Fiction. 5. Korean Americans—Fiction. 6. Florida—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.A46343Sh 2014
[Fic]—dc23
2014008955
™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgments
I
t is with great pride and appreciation that I acknowledge those who contributed to the completion of
Sharkman
.
First and foremost, many thanks to Rick Rinehart; his assistant, Karie Simpson; assistant managing editor Janice Braunstein; and the great staff at Rowman & Littlefield. My heartfelt appreciation to my agent, Melissa McComas, CEO at Tsunami Worldwide Media. My gratitude to Rachel Eckstrom for her terrific story edits.
Special thanks to Batya Solomon and her son, Mordechai, along with Vikki Slaght and her students at Black River Falls High School and the Jackson County Public Library in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, for their input. Thanks as always to the tireless Barbara Becker for her work with the Adopt-An-Author program and to my webmaster, Doug McEntyre, at Millennium Technology Resources.
Last, to my wife, Kim, for all her support. And to my readers: thank you for your correspondence and contributions. Your comments are always a welcome treat, your input means so much, and you remain this author’s greatest asset.
To personally contact the author or learn more about his novels, go to
www.SteveAlten.com
.
Sharkman
is part of Adopt-An-Author, a free nationwide program for secondary school students and teachers. For more information, go to on
www.AdoptAnAuthor.com
.
Other novels by Steve Alten:
MEG: Origins
(e-book only)
MEG: A Novel of Deep Terror
The Trench
MEG: Primal Waters
MEG: Hell’s Aquarium
MEG: Night Stalkers
(forthcoming)
Domain
Resurrection
Phobos: Mayan Fear
Goliath
The Loch
The Shell Game
Grim Reaper: End of Days
The Omega Project
Dog Training the American Male
(written under the pen name L.A. KNIGHT)
1
Well, I took little downer ’bout an hour ago . . .
Took a look around, see which way the wind blow.
Where the little girls in their Hollywood bungalows.
Are you a lucky little lady in the City of Light—or just another lost angel . . .
City of Night, city of night, city of night, city of night.
—The Doors, “L.A. Woman”
T
he heavy staccato bass line of the Doors’ “L.A. Woman”
pulled me out of a wonderful dream.
In the dream I was playing basketball—a Korean version of Jeremy Lin. In the dream I was cat-quick, my quadriceps thickly coiled muscles that propelled me past defenders and above the rim for effortless two-handed reverse jams.
In the dream I was whole again.
Yearning to slip back into the dream, I leaned over to my right, slid my hand between the guardrails of my bed, and switched off the alarm clock’s built-in CD player. With my favorite song silenced, I could hear my grandmother cooking breakfast in the next room. I knew she’d be in soon to check on my progress, tut-tutting my idleness in her broken English.
“Stop wallowing in the past, Kwan. Set your mind to moving forward. Always move forward. You must be like the shark. The shark must swim from the moment of its birth or it will drown.”
Kwan Wilson . . . Sharkman.
This is the story of how I came to be.
Mornings are always toughest for me. An unwanted reality. Bare feet that form alien lumps beneath my sheet. Legs that have become flesh-wrapped anchors. An unseen butt forever prone to bed sores. A penis whose pleasures I will never fully know.
Paralysis is a life sentence I awaken to every day.
Just do, don’t think . . .
Reaching to the crossbar above my bed, I gripped one of the metal handles, pulling myself into an upright position. My catheter is filled with urine, but thankfully there is no blood. My first month in the hospital there was blood. There was also pain and depression and tears. There were tubes running in my arms and one really annoying one in my left nostril that ran down the back of my throat into my stomach. Broken bones and I couldn’t eat—but there were also visits from the queen.
The queen was a clear elixir they shot into my IV every four hours. Queen Dilaudid. Stronger than heroin, faster than a flowing vein, able to thwart pain in a single bound. Dilaudid is as smooth as butter and her sleep is seductive.
Sleep is necessary to heal. Back in the hospital I could fall asleep reaching for a cup of water and wake up a century later still holding it. I took deep catnaps and dreamt weird dreams, only to wake up two minutes later lost in a time warp.
Pain wakes you like a sledgehammer. So do nurses wanting blood at three a.m. and vitals at four a.m. and IV bag changes around the clock, each set to the Monty Python “machine that goes ping.” What keeps your journey into madness locked away in the corral is pain medicine, and Dilaudid is queen.
For the first three weeks after the accident I found myself watching the clock, desperate to make it to my next syringe. Two milligrams every four hours was hitting me like a ton of bricks but deserting me forty-five minutes too soon, so my keepers and I settled into a nice three hour, one milligram groove and reality became optional again.
God, I miss the queen.
I don’t miss the hospital. For months my lungs were filled with its scent; for weeks I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink and that damn tube in my nose kept jabbing me in the throat until it became so loose I could snort it in and out. What I couldn’t do is crap into my colostomy bag—a necessary prerequisite to eating and drinking after emergency colon surgery. Turns out the car accident that severed my spinal cord between my L4 and L5 vertebrae also tore a two-centimeter hole in my colon. That doesn’t sound big, but it’s big enough to allow wastes that are supposed to exit your butt to leak into your body—which can kill you. When a CAT scan revealed the tear, an emergency surgical team cut open my belly and removed the damaged section of my colon. Then they took the end closest to my esophagus and ran it out the left side of my stomach like a pink belly button. The pink belly button is called a stoma and it functions just like a butt-hole. My waste is collected in a colostomy bag—a plastic pouch that attaches to my skin. That may sound gross (and it is) but it beats wearing a big diaper and having to have your nurse or your grandmother change you like a baby.
As disgusting as these thoughts may be, they remind me how much worse my life was back in the hospital. Every morning when I wake up I tell myself that I need to be grateful, after all, I could be a quadriplegic, or brain damaged . . . or I could be dead.
Yep, I’m a lucky guy. Best to just forget about that vial of Oxycodone you have secretly stashed in your sock drawer. Forget about offing yourself, Kwan. Today is a beautiful day.
Except today sucked. See, today was to be my first day back in high school since the accident—a day I’d been dreading. New city, new school, no friends—that’s scary enough. Now try doing it as a paraplegic.
Eight months had passed since my parents and I lived outside the naval base in San Diego where my father was stationed. Vice Admiral Douglas Wilson was forty-one when he married my mother, Mi Yung, who was only twenty. Mom raised me while Dad was at sea, which was most of the time. When he’d return home to his young bride, he’d treat her like a princess and me like one of his sailors, barking orders at me to clean my room and change my clothes, and why did I get a B in Algebra when I should have aspired to an A. In the military this is known as “dressing down” and it’s supposed to build character.
The Admiral—as I called him—had visited me twice while I was in the hospital. On his first visit he scolded me for being irresponsible, telling me that my paralysis was the Lord’s justice. On his last visit he berated me for attempting to undo the Lord’s work by trying to kill myself. And that was the last time I saw my father.
After four months in the hospital and three more months in rehab, I was sent to live with my maternal grandmother, Sun Jung. Sun Jung lives in Delray Beach—a small town located just north of Boca Raton on the southeast coast of Florida. Sun Jung moved here thirteen years ago because it’s warm all year round, which is good for her arthritis. I like Delray Beach because it’s three thousand miles away from Admiral Asshole.
Stop holding onto your anger, Kwan. It is you who are the one who is suffering. Move forward.
Sitting up in bed, I lift my T-shirt to check my colostomy bag. There’s a small half-dollar size smudge of brown inside—nothing worth cleaning. My big bowel movement of the day usually happens about twenty minutes after I eat breakfast so it’s better to wait to change the bag. Besides, it’s easier to deal with from my wheelchair.
It’s easier to do most things from my wheelchair. I’m tall and gangly—I used to
stand
six feet four inches, and I weighed a buck eighty. Half of that is now dead weight. Try dragging a hundred and eighty pounds in and out of bed or a wheelchair using only your arms. Now try doing it without snapping a bone in legs that dangle below your waist like a stranger’s extremities and you’ll understand why—
“Kwan?”
My grandmother knocked and let herself in. If you’re imagining an old frail Asian woman then you’d be wrong. Sun Jung was in her midfifties, but she looks ten years younger. Like my mother, she was born in South Korea—the democratic Korea, not the communist regime run by that Looney Toon Kim Jong Un. Sun Jung’s been in the States since I turned seven—I’m seventeen, by the way—and she’s become fully Americanized. Her hair is long and wavy and dyed auburn. She’s not very tall, but she’s strong and wiry from working out at the gym three times a week and her smile can light up a room. But she’s old school conservative when it comes to respect and definitely not someone you’d want to piss off. She’s a registered nurse, which is good for me, but she works twelve-hour shifts at the hospital so helping me to become an independent adult is number one on her priority list.
“Kwan, why aren’t you dressed? The van is coming to drive you in forty minutes.”
“I was just thinking about things.”
“You’re not thinking, you’re wallowing. Stop wallowing in the mud like a worm. Sharks don’t wallow, they just do. You want to be shark or worm?” Without waiting for an answer, she lowered the guardrail on the left side of my bed, pushed my wheelchair next to the bed frame, and tossed me my jeans. “I ironed your favorite shirt; it’s hanging in the laundry room. Go eat while I get ready.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Tut-tut. Big day, you need to eat.”
I waited for her to leave before I grabbed the jeans and worked each pant leg over my bare feet, careful not to catch the little toes. Once I had the pants up to my knees, I slid the catheter out of my penis. Then I reached above my head for one of the crossbeam handles and pulled myself off the bed with my right hand while my left worked the loose-fitting jeans over my thighs and buttocks. Lying back down, I buttoned up, zipped the fly, and buckled the leather belt. Then I hoisted myself off the bed again before I gently lowered my legs and butt into the wheelchair.
I have two wheelchairs, both manual. This one is the standard model I get around in; the other I use strictly in the shower. One day I’d like to have a sports chair, or better yet an electric chair, but we can’t afford it right now. My father could easily afford it, but that would circumvent God’s punishment—a direct violation of the Admiral’s code of conduct.
More about that later. Right now I need to empty my catheter bottle, eat, change my colostomy bag, brush my teeth, and finish dressing before the Medic-van arrives to take me to school.
Palm-pushing my tires forward, I guided the chair out of my bedroom and into the kitchen. My grandmother’s home is a single-story, two-bedroom, two-bathroom dwelling with a fenced-in backyard that separates us from the Tri-Rail train tracks. The one-car garage is too narrow to hold her Ford pickup, so she uses it for storage and my exercise equipment.
For breakfast, Sun Jung had gone traditional, making me
gaeran tost-u
, which is an egg sandwich with brown sugar and cabbage. I discarded the cabbage because it makes my poop stink worse than usual. I ate the sandwich and the cut-up pear slices; then I watched TV while I waited for my colostomy bag to fill with sludge.
My grandmother was dressed in her nurse’s attire by the time the first warm brown turds began twisting out of my stoma. “Kwan, I’m running late—can you manage yourself?”
“I guess so. Where’s my backpack?”
“I left it by the front door. Your lunch is inside, along with a notebook. I put your cell phone inside the front pocket and twenty dollars in your wallet.”
“What about the pepper spray?”
“No pepper spray.”
“Sun Jung—”
“Kwan, you cannot bring pepper spray to high school; they won’t allow it.”
“I’ll hide it on my chair.” I gave her the puppy dog eyes.
“No pepper spray. Do you understand my English?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Remind me later to call Dr. Chertok.”
“Who’s Dr. Chertok?”
“She’s the psychiatrist the hospital referred. She wants to see you this week.”
“Sun Jung, I don’t want to see another shrink.”
“When you tell your home nurse you are thinking about killing yourself, then legally you have to see a psychiatrist.”
“Geez. It was an idle threat . . . a joke.”
“Ha-ha, funny joke mister man. You want me to joke like this? Hey, Kwan, I hate everything today so I think I might drive off the interstate on the way home from work. Ha-ha.”
“Fine. I’ll see the shrink.”
“No joking with this lady, Kwan. If she think you going to hurt yourself then you’ll wake up in a psychiatric ward with crazy patients who eat their own boogers and talk to dead people. You understand my English?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She leaned over and patted me on the head. “I love you very much. You my favorite grandson.”
“I’m your only grandson.”
“Yes, but you still my favorite. Today begins a new journey. Make it special.”
I have no doubt my grandmother loves me, but it’s a conditional love. On the one hand, I remind her of her daughter, Mi Yung, who was the light of her life. On the other hand, I’m the reason her daughter isn’t around anymore. See, the car accident that left me paralyzed also killed my mother—and it was entirely my fault.
And now you know why I keep that vial of Oxycodone stashed in my sock drawer, and now you know why I’m so angry.
I’m angry at myself.