In this chapter, Law has to contend with the medical profession, something he doesn't enjoy. We also get to learn more about David whom Law seems preoccupied with. I wonder what we'll find out.
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NOTE: Check out my other stories in the Sci-fi / Fantasy Section Crown Vic to a Parallel World From Whence I Came Stolen Love
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Wasted Life a Law Edwards Mystery by Sam Stefanik
12 Grim Shadows of Fond Memories
I woke flat on my back. I was looking up at round light fixtures that were hung from a white ceiling with crazed cracks in the paint. The lights were moving very quickly in and out of my vision. I'd never seen ceiling lights move like that. It took a second for me to realize that I was moving and not the lights. It took a further second for me to realize that I was strapped to a gurney and being wheeled into a hospital. I fought the straps and shouted. "NO! NO! NEVER AGAIN! LET ME UP! LET ME OUT!"
No one acknowledged my objections. They shoved me along too many hallways to a crowded and windowless ward and parked me. The shovers started to leave. With them would leave any chance I had at getting information about the scene I'd involuntarily abandoned. I worried for Bea and her dead brother. I shouted to one of the men who appeared to be from an ambulance crew. "Did you see a girl? Did you? She was a tall blonde."
"Don't worry." The man said. "She's fine. I saw her talking to the cops when we got there."
I was glad that Bea was alright, but that was small consolation when stacked against my present circumstances. I hated hospitals. I hated doctors. I hated anyone in a white coat. They never did anything that helped. They just made everything worse. I'd learned that at the end of my time in the army during The Great War.
I fought with everyone that came, told them to let me out. All they did was tighten the straps that held me down. White-coated doctors came and went. They checked my vitals, bandaged and rebandaged my head where it had struck the edge of the bureau as I fell. They took the bandages off and x-rayed my skull. They put them back on and checked my vitals again. After the x-ray, they wheeled me to a private room.
The paint scheme of the private room, mint green walls, white ceilings gone yellow, and wide, maroon-painted doors, told me I was at Methodist Episcopal Hospital at South Broad and West Ritner. I'd been there once, many years before. Back then, I'd decided that the color scheme was designed to keep sick people sick, so they'd stay longer.
A doctor came, checked my vitals and bandages, and offered me a morphine shot. I declined. He said if I took it, he'd unstrap me. I wanted to be unstrapped more than I didn't want the shot. I agreed.
He gave it to me, took the straps off, and left as the wave of numbing heat spread across my body from the hole he'd poked in my arm. I always found morphine to be an interesting drug, a consuming drug. It took pain, higher thought, and time with equal ravenous appetite. I glanced at the bedside table and the empty visitor's chair as the fog settled in.
I closed my eyes, opened them, and saw that the chair was no longer empty. "Hello David." I slurred at the hallucination. "I remember visiting you in this same hospital. Maybe even in this room. They all look the same."
My perspective shifted as the hallucination deepened. My insides lurched as the room spun. The spinning stopped just as I was getting ready to heave. When I swallowed my stomach back to where it belonged, I found that I was in the visitor's chair instead of David. David was in the bed where I had been.
I wrung my hands and worried over David's inert form. He was unconscious and brutally hurt. His face was a pulpy mess of bloody bandages and purple bruises. His left eye was swollen. His whole beautiful body was battered and bruised.
On the far side of the bed, on a light-green-painted hat-rack, a filthy pair of black slacks hung by a set of scuffed leather suspenders. I vowed that whoever harmed David would pay dearly. They would pay extra for the suspenders. The story of both played in my doped mind as half memory and half dream.
For an entire week, I spent every moment that I wasn't at work in the Kingdom of Keystone. I practically lived there so I could bask in the glow of David's enchanting presence. Twice more he and I repeated the precedent of the first night and talked until dawn. When I left Mitch's Kingdom the following Friday morning, after one of those extra-long sessions, I felt incredible. I felt like the sun shone just for me and the sun's name was David.
I took some extra pleasure in David's increasing participation in the theatrical mythology of Madam Mitchell's Kingdom of Keystone. At some point he had discovered my assigned title and started to call me The Hero of Law and Order. The title made me feel silly, but the fact that David used it made me feel special.
As I headed for home to clean up and change before work, I noticed I wasn't even very tired. I'd been up all night with David, and the experience seemed to add to my energy, rather than take away from it. I went into my room and hurried through my normal morning routine to get ready for work.
While my reflection was helping me fasten my suspenders, I thought of David's silly plaid pair and decided something needed to be done. I decided that beautiful packages should be secured with fine material. Just like a Christmas present shouldn't be tied with twine, David needed something much nicer to thread over his broad shoulders.
I went to work, spent as little time as I could with the feds, and ducked out in the early afternoon. The Broad Street trolley took me to the east side of Market Street, the home of all the city's grand department stores. I wandered through each of them, Wannamaker's, Lit Brothers, Strawbridge and Clothier, and on and on. I searched each store for something perfect for David, but nothing was quite right.
Jammed between the big, grand stores, were tiny specialty shops. When I didn't find what I wanted in the department stores, I tried the small ones. I hit the jackpot in J. M. Chalmers Fine Leathers and Accessories. I was waited on by a short, thick-set Pole or maybe Romanian. He had a strong eastern-European accent and talked around the stem of a cold pipe. He looked fifty, but those guys look fifty from the end of their twenties until they die.
I explained my problem and did my best to describe David. The man nodded sagely and crossed the store to get behind a different set of counters. He reached into a case and drew out a long, narrow, plain white box. He set the box on the counter and opened it reverently. Inside, wrapped in emerald-green tissue paper, was a pair of black leather suspenders with gold adjustment slides.
The man held them up to let the light glint on the gold and glow on the muted shine of the leather. "Your friend," he said in practiced but coarse and uneven English, "blond...uhh...like the...like the arc light, tan...like...like cigar Indian, yes?"
"Yes," I agreed, "with hazel eyes."
The man shrugged a deep, European shrug. "Can't help eyes, but these braces for him."
I put my faith in the man's expertise. "I'll take them."
"You got cash?" The man asked. He put a hard, suspicious eye on my rumpled detective's suit. "Fine things cost. The leather, English, the buckles, eighteen-carat. The best."
"I got cash." I said and reached into the inside pocket of my jacket for my wallet. "How much?"
"For you?" He said with his hard eye on my wallet. "I make them sixteen-eighty-five."
I handed over twenty dollars, a month's worth of room rent, and told him to keep the change. "Please," I asked and unintentionally adopted the man's halting cadence, "a neat package. Please."
The man ducked his head a fraction of an inch in acknowledgement. The suspenders were gently nested back in the green tissue, the white box carefully closed, and a very neat package made. He wrapped the box in white paper that was watermarked with the store's monogram. He tied it with narrow red ribbon with a big, looping knot in the center. I inspected the cleanliness of my hands before I accepted the box. The man nodded again and retired behind the counter.
I left the shop and hurried toward the trolley stop. I boiled with excitement. I couldn't wait to see David. I couldn't wait to give him the gift. I couldn't wait to see him try them on.
On the trolley toward home, I started to think too much. Questions tormented my mind. `What will David say? Will he accept this from me? Will he reject the gift? Will he think I'm strange? What if he already thinks I'm strange? I've been watching him for a week. He probably thinks I'm a pervert.'
My mind reeled out of control, and I started to sweat. I remembered the package gripped in my right hand. I checked on it and panicked at what I saw. My sweaty hands had darkened the watermarked paper.
I tried to dry it with my handkerchief, but that only smeared the moisture. I tried to let the box air dry by resting it on my lap. That was no good because the sway of the trolley threatened to upset the package onto the filthy floor of the car. I tried to put the box in my pocket, but it didn't fit well, and I worried it would crush. I tried to wrap my handkerchief around it for protection, but that threatened to damage the bow.
Nervous sweat ran from my every pore. It stung my eyes and made my shirt cling to my back. To make matters worse, my stomach twisted itself into knots from the stress. The foul taste of bile rose in my throat. Too late I had a flash of intelligence. I wrapped my hand with the handkerchief and held the package carefully between my fingers. That solved one problem, but my anxiety continued to stir my imagination and unsettle my stomach. I thought of a million possible bad outcomes of offering my modest gift to David.
I went home to try to kill time until I could go to Mitch's. When I got to my room, I downed enough gin to settle my crawling stomach and tried to take a nap. It was no good. I could barely close my eyes I was so worried. I gave up on sleep, took another cold shower, and drank some more straight gin. The cold shower washed away my nervous sweat and the warm gin partially calmed my overwrought nerves. When I couldn't bear to wait any longer, I left my rooming house and pointed my steps toward The Kingdom of Keystone.
I tried to take my time along the way, but I still arrived a full hour before the kingdom opened to customers. In a desperate attempt to kill the remaining time, I paced back and forth along the block between the salt works and Mitch's Victorian monstrosity. My mind raced like an engine with no governor. My insides lurched so hard, I had to keep my teeth clamped to keep from heaving.
Motion on the porch of Mitch's froze my rapid steps. The wide front door opened. Madam Mitchell stepped regally onto the wraparound porch and looked down along her eyes at me. "What are you doing?" She demanded in her deliberate falsetto.
I ran up the marble stairs and stammered. "I...uhm...you see...oh my God...I came to...fuck."
Mitch glared at me. "That's what people come here for. You're too early."
"WHAT?" I shouted in her face. I strangled my volume and tried to explain myself. "No, I didn't...not to fuck...I mean."
Mitch jabbed her closed Chinese fan into the center of my chest. "Stop stammering, Edwards!"
The fact that Mitch had used my name instead of calling me the Errant Hero of Law and Order jarred me. It jarred me enough that I could try to explain myself. I still couldn't coax coherent speech from my throat, so I held the box with the suspenders in it up to Mitch. She eyed the box for barely a second before her face changed to one of understanding. She poked me in the chest again. "Why didn't you say so? He's in the bar preparing for the evening. He is very much alone."
I gaped at her. "How did you...?" I managed to ask before my throat closed again.
Mitch allowed herself a barely perceptible grin. "Don't insult my intelligence. Women know these things." She stepped back and pointed the end of her fan at the front door.
I opened the door and handed Mitch across the threshold like she really was the royal figure she pretended to be. When she was safely inside the house, I kissed her diamond studded hand and sprinted toward the bar. I stopped running as soon as I laid eyes on David. He was behind the bar, diligently polishing glasses. I forced myself to take a couple deep breaths, then completed my trip to the bar with what I hoped was the pace of nonchalance. I sat near David and put the package on the bar in front of me.
David greeted me with a big grin and an enthusiastic wave. He knew what my order would be and went to get it. A few seconds later, he set a gin and tonic on the bar next to the package. For once the glass had a lemon slice floating in it, but he'd forgotten the ice. It never ceased to amaze me that David couldn't master the simple drink. It only had four ingredients, gin, tonic, ice, and a lemon slice. David never got the proportions right, and if he did, one of the ingredients was missing entirely.
"Who is the lucky guy?" He asked and tilted his head toward the package on the bar. To my shame, the fine white paper was fingerprinted and smudged despite my best efforts.
I wanted to flee, or disappear into the floor, anything to avoid having to explain the gift to David. I had a sip of my warm drink, but it didn't help. I stammered like an overzealous auctioneer. "I...uh...I got it...uhm...saw it and...shit...thought of...thought it would ...you know...look good on...it seemed...uh...oh-fuck, here." I offered the box to David's general direction and clamped my free hand over my eyes.
David took the package. The next sounds I heard were of large hands as they struggled to do something delicate, like unwrapping a package without tearing the paper or untying the bow. I heard a sharp intake of breath, a pause, and then an exclamation. "I love them!"
I was instantly relieved. `OH, THANK GOD!' My mind shouted. I looked up and wondered what I'd see. David was already unbuttoning his old suspenders to fasten on the new. He buttoned the leather ones to the front of his slacks then stopped because he didn't know what to do next.
He ran around the bar and stopped in front of me. "Help me with the back?" He blurted and performed a neat about-face. He handed the rear button loops of the new suspenders over his shoulders and waited. I automatically reached to help, but when my hand got near David, it shook like I was having my own private earthquake.
I held my right wrist with my left hand to steady it and was able to take the button loops from him. Fastening them, to the back waistband of his slacks, so close to...so close to his...to him...I was catatonic. Part of me wanted to touch him, to press my hands against his flesh and see if he felt like other men. Another part knew that would be like seeing the face of God.
My hands shook, my mind raced, I fought with myself. Going `over the top' in the war had been easier than this. I forced my hands to cooperate, commanded them to obey my will, and very carefully pulled the waist of David's pants back with the old suspenders. I kept it away from his skin long enough to fasten the loops of the new to the buttons on his pants.
"There." I squeaked when the last button slid home. The plaid suspenders disappeared over David's head, and he concentrated on adjusting the leather ones. I glanced in the barback mirror and saw a face that looked like mine but that was the color of an over-ripe tomato. I grabbed my drink, gulped it, and choked on the frothy warm tonic.
The choking gave me a reason to be red. I mentally thanked David for forgetting the ice. He waited silently until my breathing evened out, then he thanked me for the gift. "Thank you, Law. These are so nice. You've been so nice to me." David shifted his old suspenders to his left hand and offered his right for me to shake. "You really are a hero like the madam says."
I matched David's actions when I shifted my empty glass from my right hand to my left. I reached out with my right to shake his hand. I lost control over the appendage as it got near David. My hand tremored. I reached for it with my left hand to steady it and dropped the glass I had been holding. It rolled away, under a nearby table.
I dove away from David and chased the glass. To my relief, by the time I retrieved it, the moment was over. David's offer of physical contact had expired. He'd moved back behind the bar to fix another drink for me. I was able to return to my stool with some of my dignity intact.
When David set the fresh drink at my place, this time without the lemon slice, I looked at him and decided the man at the shop had been right. The suspenders belonged on David. The black leather exuded a muted glow like David's smooth tan skin. The gold buckles sparkled in the electric light like David's intense hazel eyes. His beauty and their beauty complimented one another perfectly.
I watched David all that night, even more closely than I had before. I loved to see him enjoy my gift. I loved when he would show his new suspenders off to the patrons and the other employees. Pride swelled in my chest as David took pleasure in his new possession. I took pleasure that something of me was now part of him. Something of the violent animal that was me, managed to adorn the perfect angel that was him.
I stayed until closing time and just a little after. Both David and I were tired. We didn't have much conversation after everyone left. He thanked me again for the suspenders. I complimented him on how he made them look. We said `goodnight' and I went home.
The next day, Saturday, I got stuck on special duty with the feds. They planned to stake out a local warehouse in the hopes they could catch and seize a shipment of liquor. All of us on the police force knew that the shipper and receiver had already been warned and the delivery time and location changed. We couldn't tell the feds that, so a dozen of us wasted our entire night waiting in the dark for something to happen that we knew would not.
I wasn't lonely that night. I kept myself company with visions of David. I saw him behind the bar, trying on the suspenders, smiling, chilling a drink in the shaker, polishing glasses, walking toward me, walking away from me, doing anything or nothing. The angel from Iowa kept me company all the long pointless night.