The Fault In Reality

Chapter Twenty-Nine

For the second time today I find myself in the hospital. Same colorless corridors, same would-be cheerful nurses... except this time it's Chase in the hospital bed. He and his mother now bear a striking resemblance with their entourage of wires and machines, pale skin tone, and expressions of identical protest.

Pat is down the hall, arguing her visitation rights. A poor woman, her nurse and unwilling debate partner, is looking flustered and red in the face.

"Mrs, you're on strict bed rest. And it's too busy in there for us to wheel your bed in - you'll just have to wait," she's saying, or trying to. Most of her words are smothered by Pat's angry ones.

Chase's objections, meanwhile, seem to derive from some distorted sense of health. I skirt the threshold of the emergency room, trying to be invisible as possible so the nurses won't ask me to leave. There's about three of them, all trying valiantly to sedate Chase. But every time one of them comes near Chase's arm comes out and the syringe goes flying.

"I'm fine," he more or less wails, "let me go!"

A doctor in a white coat and glinting spectacles is frowning over the edge of a clipboard, glasses perched crookedly on the peak of his nose.

"Steady on, lad, you've lost a lot of blood to be getting up. Just lie down for a jiffy - "

"No!" moans Chase, "I know how it goes. The minute I let you you'll knock me out for another couple of hours!"

The doctor throws a helpless look at one of the nurses. I watch their faces twist to reflect the other's feelings of exasperation. Then the doctor gives the barest jerk of a nod. I follow their eyes to the shadow of a fourth nurse, crouched behind a cot with a needle in hand. In a flash he springs forwards, lithely slipping the syringe into Chase's arm.

I watch sadly as Chase's muscles relax and his body deflates. After only a minute he slumps over, eyes closed to the world. I suppose someone must have done the same to Pat, because the shouting from down the hall suddenly stops.

As it turns out, I suppose wrong. Pat is wide eyed and awake when I peek into her room. It's my father, not a drug, that's calmed her. My father is twisted to kneel at the floor by her bed. His long legs are folded down among the wires, and his hand is wrapped tightly around hers. The bespectacled doctor is standing a few paces off, at the head of the room. He's saying something, and his big mustache quivers in time with his lips, but my position at the door (and therefore next to the beeping hear monitor) prevents me from catching the form of his words.

All I know is that Pat's face settles into a relieved expression, one that pulls up her cheeks in that special smile mother's reserve for their children. Then my father relaxes visibly beside her, and I know that the news must be good.

I duck out of the room and find myself in the empty white hall. A pale, abstract linoleum squeaks under my shoes. Framed certificates litter the wall, their pattern broken every now and then with the stray sanitation reminder or "Senior Rowing Club" advertisement. The entire place reeks of boredom. There's an itch in my blood, a kind of thirst. My legs ache from sitting, standing, waiting.

I begin to pace, not because I particularly feel the need to, but because it seems like the kind of thing a more normal person would do. However I'm apparently not very good at the whole "back and forth" part of it, as I end up turning down a corridor and emptying out into some kind of lounge.

The walls boast a truly impressive shade of beige, the chairs a vibrant red in contrast. I take a quick attendance of the latter's occupants and decide it's not a lounge at all, but rather a waiting room. A silvery wilting old man is coughing next to a stack of magazines. A woman beside him presses an icepack to her jaw, under which a purple bruise has begun to form.