The Keep (23 page)

When the doctor leaves I ask, You gonna fire him, Hannah?

Depends if he can learn to do his job better than he’s doing it now, she says. I believe in giving folks a chance to turn themselves around.

Right about there, she starts to fade. This happens a lot: a gray almost mist comes in and then I feel my eyes start to roll back. I’m thinking, a Christmas tree means Tom-Tom really wanted to kill me. And I never saw it.

I keep writing stuff down, but there’s no way I’ll be back in time to finish out the class. It’s a habit by now, I guess. One minute I don’t know what the fuck’s going on, and the next minute I start noticing things, collecting them in my head like a list. And I feel what Hannah must feel, watching that doctor: organized. Back in control.

No Hannah for three days, and I’m losing my mind. The nurse I’ve got instead is called Angela, but she’s no angel. She hates convicts, you can tell, she’s just doing it for the hazard pay. Those nurses are usually scared or mad or both. This one’s just mad.

Where’s Hannah? I ask on day three. Not that I didn’t also ask on days one and two.

She’s off.

Why so many days in a row?

That’s not my concern.

Meaning you don’t care or you don’t know?

She doesn’t answer.

Is she sick? Is something wrong? Did she go on vacation?

I can pass along your questions to the supervisor.

Right as she says that, I look at my gut and I get a shock: the tube is gone.

Where’s the tube? I ask.

Dr. Arthur removed it this morning while you were sleeping.

Does that mean it’s getting better?

It means you’re going back into surgery.

When?

Today sometime.

Is there any chance Hannah will be back today? It’s crazy, but even though I know Hannah is just an ordinary nurse with no power, and the rest of it is pure fantasy, I don’t want to go into surgery without her. There’s no telling what could go wrong.

I’ll tell the doctor you’d like to speak to him when he has time.

Great, I say. Maybe the president will show up, too. Can’t you just give me the lowdown? Does the fact that they’re operating mean things are better or worse? Is it a reward or a punishment is what I’m saying.

She turns to me, and I swear to God her eyes are bugging half out of her head. Are you aware, she says, that every question you ask is costing the taxpayer money? Those two guards outside the door, how much you think they’re getting paid? We’re turning people away downstairs because they don’t have insurance, and you robbers and rapists and murderers are lying around here being treated like kings. I don’t get it.

I try again. But the operation—

They should have a meter running right next to your bed, she says. Just so you can see the burden you are. Then maybe you’d give me a peaceful minute to do my work.

Is it the same as the last oper—

That’s fifteen dollars.

Or is it something—

Another fifteen. You’re up to thirty.

I stare at her. My head is starting to fog up. I say, Are you seriously asking me for money?

Angela looks behind her, realizing all of a sudden that this doesn’t look too good. I don’t hear you, she says, and starts to hum. She hums and hums. I try to talk, but all she does is hum.

The gray’s coming on, a nice morphine gray. I welcome it.

Don’t ever leave me again, I tell Hannah when she finally comes back.

I’m sorry, LB. I had some personal business. Now they went and gave you another operation behind my back.

How does it look? I ask her.

She lifts back the covers and glances at my gut. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it.

Not bad, she says. No muss, no fuss.

No tube.

Exactly my point, LB. That tube was a sign of trouble, I can tell you that, now it’s safely out. People downstairs do their jobs right, you shouldn’t need a tube.

My head is thick. More drugs. Why? I wonder. Not that I’m complaining.

How long have I been in here, Hannah? Total.

She picks up my chart. Twenty-three days.

So the class is almost over. There were only four more left when I got cut.

Any chance I’ll be out next week?

No chance, LB.

So that’s it. No more Holly. But I keep on writing anyhow.

Hey, Hannah, I say. How come you’re so nice to criminals?

That’s got nothing to do with me, LB, she says. That’s between you and God.

I have dreams, oh shit. Drug dreams, those ones where the past slops all over the place like a backed-up line. Sometimes I’m at school. The other boys would steal your food if you didn’t steal theirs first. Howie couldn’t do it. When he first came in he says, I don’t want their food. I can’t eat that much. I just want my own food. And I tell him, Take it, man, or they’ll take yours and then you’ll starve. I’ve seen it happen. They bring in fat kids like you and the next thing you know they’re skeletons. They take ’em out in coffins and bury them in unmarked graves. And then I start to laugh. He’s so new, that sweet scared face. Everyone’s like that at first. But you stay in here long enough, you can laugh about anything.

There’s a blank where my mother should be, a hole like when you cut someone out of a picture. My dad I remember, not really his face but his legs. He was tall. Strong calves and thighs with delicate knees, like a horse. How I had to jump to try and reach his hand. And then my own hands on the TV screen when he’s watching. I must be really small, standing there with my hands on the screen to balance me. And all of a sudden I notice them there, surrounded by light: two hands. Fat baby hands. And that’s me.

I open my eyes and Holly’s next to my bed. Or more like: a person is sitting there in a yellow paper outfit and mask like they all wear around me now, and her face is Holly’s face. The drugs, it’s got to be. I shut my eyes and try again.

Hi there, she says.

That can’t be you.

Then I’m in trouble, Holly says.

I would laugh, except you need muscles to laugh that I think I lost in one of those surgeries. How did you get in here?

I have my ways. She’s smiling, I can tell from her eyes, even though the mask covers up her mouth. And under that smile she’s scared to death.

Hannah must’ve let her in. But Hannah hasn’t been my nurse since they moved me down to the ICU. And anyway, how could she get Holly past the guards? Then I think: Hannah could do it. Hannah can do anything.

I’m glad, I say. I’m glad you came.

We missed you in class.

Come on.

Really. It felt…small.

Yeah. I guess Tom-Tom’s gone too.

I heard they moved him to the supermax.

There’s some kind of distress, or despair, something, pushing out from her face. Even with just her eyes to go on, I see it.
Anguish.
It’s not a word I use, but that’s it.

Ray, I feel sick, she says. About what happened to you.

Relax, it goes on all the time. You’ll get used to it.

Bullshit.

She’s looking at me, not my face but the rest of me. The tube is back in, which is why they moved me down here. Does it hurt? she says.

It must, or I wouldn’t be this high.

The room seems quieter than usual. Even the buzzers have piped down. I’m thinking, Am I making this up? It’s like that day in Holly’s class when I was alone with her on the break and no one came in for so long. Like God had decided.

I look at Holly. In this strange place, in our weird costumes, all the stuff that’s in between us disappears. Holly T. Farrell, I say, who are you?

I’m no one special, she says, and I can see she believes it.

Was I right? Three kids?

Just two.

Who left, him or you?

There’s a pause that tells me whatever she says next probably won’t be true.

I left.

Good girl.

She’s wearing what she wears for her other job. Something with a pattern, I see it above the yellow paper collar. A little chain around her neck. I can’t see her hair inside the cap.

You look nice, I say.

That’s my job, she says, and then she laughs. Not really. I work at the college, in admissions. They let me get my BA and now I’m doing a master’s in writing. Slowly.

The kids?

Two girls. Ten and thirteen.

Each fact is like a sweet nugget landing near my heart. I don’t even mind how hot I am. I’ve got a fever they can’t get rid of.

Ray, she says, and leans closer to me. I—I keep wondering about what happened.

You mean with Tom-Tom?

No. Before. Why you went to prison.

Oh. That.

I want to understand it.

I
don’t understand it.

Then the facts, if you can talk about it. It—it would help me, I think.

I wait awhile before I answer. Finally I say: The facts are, I shot a guy through the head.

She swallows. Did you know him?

We were friends.

She looks down at her hands. I keep my eyes on her, not because I want to see her reaction, I don’t want that, but even more I don’t want to miss a second of her time in here next to me. I want to memorize it.

I’m assuming you had a reason, she says.

I had plenty of reasons. Too many reasons. I could make up a lot of shit so it would sound better, but I’m too sick. It’s just something I did.

Holly chews that over for quite a while. Finally she says, I don’t like thinking things can happen that way. It makes the world seem too dangerous.

Love those kids, I tell her.

She looks up. I’ve caught her by surprise. Her face opens up and all of a sudden it’s like that paper mask is transparent. I’m looking right through it, and I get a flash of some kind of life we could’ve had—barbecues, dogs, kids flopping over us in bed—it rolls through me fast but strong and clear, like one of those cooking smells that blows in the window so sharp you can pick out the ingredients. And then it’s gone. It’s gone, and Holly’s holding my hand. Finally, after that long long wait, her hand is back on mine. Dry cool fingers, slim. The rings loose. I close my eyes. My hand is so hot, I feel my pulse in every finger. I’m afraid she’ll let go but she doesn’t let go. She keeps her hand around mine and it’s like she’s holding all of me in her cool sweetness, calming my fever back down.

When I open up my eyes, Holly’s crying. The paper mask is all wet. Something bad happened to you, I say. Didn’t it?

She nods. The tears keep coming.

It takes me about as much energy to lift up my head as it took Davis to do his seven hundred push-ups, but I force myself. I want to see our hands. And there they are, intertwined on my chest like two people lying down. Beyond them is the tube: brown plastic. My neck is shaking.

I let my head fall back. The gray is coming on—all that head lifting has close to knocked me out. I hear Holly sob, and I hold her hand tighter, afraid she’ll move it away. But she uses the other hand to wipe her face. And I know why they let her in here.

Howard: I give up, Danny. What’s your secret?

Danny: Secret? The knife was still in his jacket pocket. He forced himself not to touch it. What are you talking about?

Howard was hunched at the long table in the great hall, using the light from a candelabra to study the framed map Danny had bought in town. They’d just finished dinner, Danny’s first meal in twenty-four hours: chicken stew with olives and silver leaves, cooked by Howard. Danny was pretty sure it was the tastiest chicken stew he’d had in his life.

Howard: You kind of…don’t take this the wrong way, but you kind of bumble around, and you seem like you’re just barely hanging on, much less getting anything done, and then you turn up something like this.

Danny: You like it.

Howard looked up.
Like
isn’t really the word. It’s unbelievable, Danny. It’s—it’s the thing we’ve been looking for every one of the how many days have we been here?

Forty. Mick’s voice. The only light in the room came from the candles on the table, so Danny couldn’t see him.

Howard: It’s huge, Danny—it’s
it.
The missing piece. And you stumbled on this with your head in a sling, for fuck’s sake!

Danny smiled as naturally as he could, which was not all that naturally. Howard was freaking him out. Danny was almost sure his cousin was mocking him, laying it on extra-thick to make Danny squirm. Or it could be the worm, eating its way deeper into Danny. But Howard
was
the worm. He was going in circles. It all came down to whether Howard knew about the knife. If he did, Danny’s advantage was gone and this was open war. And even though Danny kept telling himself there was no way Howard could know, and there was no exact
reason
to think he knew, Danny had the feeling he did.

Howard: Have you looked at this map, Danny?

Not for too long.

Howard: So what made you buy it?

I’m not sure.

Danny felt the weight of the knife in his pocket, and suddenly the pressure of being watched by Howard was almost physical. Danny couldn’t meet his cousin’s eyes.