Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
The problem with an eternity of restful sleep is that without health insurance, it only lasts about three minutes. Headaches brought on by blunt force trauma to the skull however, aren't nearly as picky about things like "lack of coverage" and promise to keep you company the entire bus ride home.
Which only adds insult to injury.
Literally. I noted dryly, wincing slightly as the sparsely populated bus rolled over a pothole large enough to serve as a tourist attraction. Every lump and bump in the road vibrated throughout my body like a plucked guitar string. Another sharp bounce of the bus forced me to bow my head as the world began to shake and spin with the agony that each rough jolt brought.
Taking a deep steadying breath, I closed my eyes and mentally braced myself as I waited for the merciless throbbing inside my skull to fade. Not that I'm some Zen Master or John Wayne type badass who can heroically shrug off gunshots like mosquito bites while saving the girl.
Not in the least.
I actually consider myself to be kind of a wuss, having long discovered that pain in any form universally sucks and should actively be avoided. I just didn't have much of a choice at the moment. So, between sucking it up and coping with the discomfort or writhing around on the floor picking up hair and dirt and god knows what else like a carelessly dropped human lollipop, I went with the less sticky of the two evils.
After the hospital confirmed the non-existence of my health insurance, all promises of "extensive testing" and "deep medical investigation" dissolved into a couple of over-priced aspirin that did absolutely nothing to help disband the hippy drum circle that I had gathering in my head.
Patients with no identification or proof of income are often seen as high risk for things like "paying bills" and if they are in stable enough condition, they're quickly released from the hospital before they can manage to rack up any real debt. Doctor Six-pack evidently threw me into this category the second that he left the room, because a few minutes later one of his hired goons burst through the door like the Kool-Aid man and all but throttled me awake.
The discharge nurse was a heavyset older woman with angry eyes and arms that spoke of years of manual labor as either a rhino wrangler or professional truck thrower. As she sumo-wrestled me into consciousness and pointed towards a white mesh sack that contained my clothing, she informed me that the good Doctor had had a change of heart in regards to my condition. I was now considered well enough to continue the observation of my head wound in the warm comfort of my own "anywhere but here".
Groggily, I began to protest as I fumbled with the bag’s ropey draw string, but the sudden mental image of the stern faced nurse ripping a phonebook in half made my words trail off into an unintelligible mumble of common sense.
This wasn't the nurse who gently sponged your feverous forehead, or brought you an extra pudding cup with your poorly prepared hospital dinner; no, this was the nurse that strapped you onto the table and held you down so that you didn't thrash around too violently during your medically prescribed electroshock therapy.
And I could tell that she really liked her job.
Crossing her arms across her beefy chest, she watched in stony silence as I hopped on one leg and struggled with the task of trying to put on my pants while keeping some semblance of dignity, which is no small feat while wearing a drafty hospital gown. Nurse Warm-And-Fuzzy's watchful gaze never wavered from me for a second. Despite the constant strobe of pain inside my aching skull, I found myself pausing in amusement of her menacing glower.
"So, did you have to audition for the role of “angry scary nurse” or did the casting director already have you on file?" I mused to myself, the bit of unspoken snark directed towards my bad tempered supervisor cheering me slightly.
The nurse set her jaw firmly in response and pursed her lips as she straightened her back and slowly cracked her neck to one side, then the other. A roll of her broad shoulders and a further narrowing of her already angry eyes alerted me to the fact that she may have heard my silent muses because I had actually said them out loud.
Apparently whatever they had given me for my pain before realizing that I had no health insurance was having an effect on my inner monologue, which meant that it was the good stuff. Luckily for me, this also meant that I probably wouldn't feel it when she snapped my spine like a Slim Jim.
I decided to finish dressing in both mental and physical silence as not to further enrage the pro wrestler in the nurse's outfit and risk becoming a repeat customer to this fine establishment. I let the hospital gown fall away as I shrugged on my faded blue Superman t-shirt and reached for the gray hoodie that I had been wearing when I was attacked. Sitting just long enough to tug at the laces of my black high top sneakers, I watched the nurse through top of my eyes as she moved towards the doorway and out of my room. Her absence was brief as she reappeared a moment later with an old, clunky looking hospital issued wheelchair that had probably seen its better days somewhere around the Truman administration.
"I can walk." I stated with a quick, dismissive wave of my hand before going back to the task of unknotting my shoelace.
The nurse actually smiled.
"Sweetheart," she started in a voice that meant she was substituting the word of affection for one that she really wanted to use. "One way or another, you're going in this chair." She finished, a sharp gleam in her eye informing me that she was praying I'd chose "another".
I did not. Like I said, I'm kind of a wuss.
The hospital hallways blurred by at NASCAR speeds as the discharge nurse put all of her considerable size and strength into assisting me with my exit. Clipping a couple of gurneys, a supply cart and one slow moving elderly woman who never really had a chance, we arrived at the reception desk in what I assumed to be, from the burning tire tracks on the linoleum floor, first place.
The startled processing clerk looked baffled by my sudden return from 1955 without the help of a DeLorean and blinked up at the discharge nurse in confusion. The larger woman gave an uncaring shrug and tossed an official looking folder onto the already cluttered desk with a flick of her meaty wrist.
"He's your problem now." She stated flatly before turning and walking away without so much as a farewell glance in my direction.
The clerk and I watched the stocky woman disappear back into the cold hallway that lead to the interior hospital in equal silence before slowly turning towards each other in awkward acknowledgement.
"Wow. Who did you piss off?" The new woman asked me with a bewildered half smirk and I instantly liked her. She was cute, in her early twenties, and judging from the brief exchange between Nurse Bigfoot and herself, I was guessing at the bottom of the hospital totem pole.
"She might seem gruff, but she has the softest hands." I said in mock dreaminess, my voice wistful and breathy. The clerk laughed quietly, but her smile held an honest mirth that reached her eyes, which only further endeared her to me. Grabbing my paperwork from the top of the stack in which it had been tossed, she flipped it open. I watched as her eyes flittered across the first page, widening slightly after only a few seconds.
"Oh, it's you!" She exclaimed, her voice tinted with excitement as she looked up at me. "I think they're still here! Don't go anywhere, okay? I'll be right back!" She instructed. Standing swiftly she darted out of the small processing area before I could respond.
My brain barely had enough time to come up with a half dozen or so paranoid conclusions about who or what "they" could be when true to her word, the woman quickly returned with a police officer in tow.
My heart fluttered in my chest like a guilty bird.
Now, let me state for the record that I have never, ever done anything truly illegal in my life, so I have no real reason to fear the police. I knew logically that unless they had issued warrants for jay walking, pirated music, or smoking a bit of pot in my 20's (which I always suspected at the time, but that was usually just the pot talking), that I could not possibly be in trouble. I had done nothing wrong and in the eyes of the world, I was the innocent victim. I knew this to be absolutely true, as any rational, upstanding citizen would.
But my body still tensed and despite the efforts of the residual buzz from the amazing hospital pharmaceuticals coursing through my veins, I felt nervous and uncomfortable.
As the man in the badge drew closer, I began to mentally prepare for the horrors of prison life that were undoubtedly about to be thrust upon me for reasons I couldn't rationalize, but probably deserved.
What can I say? Cops just make me nervous. I have no idea as of why, but I’ve always silently resented the fact that they scare me more than make me feel safe.
"You the guy they found in the alley?" The police officer asked in a firm, official tone as he produced a small pad of paper and pencil from one of the many pockets that covered the front of his blue-black uniform.
He was an older man, probably in his late forties judging from his almost completely gray hair, styled in what only can be described as the standard "cop haircut". His eyes were shrewd and hard and they narrowed as his sharp gaze fell upon me, giving the impression that he was waiting for me to lie.
Yet, I couldn't bring myself to be offended by his cold demeanor or scrutinizing look.
I know that cops are lied to a thousand times a day and I'm sure that after a while, it's safer to just assume that everything that you're going to hear is false. I wasn't the bad guy in all of this, but neither was he; he was just doing his job. With that realization the sheet of paranoia that I had irrationally covered myself with slipped away as I met his eyes with an honest smile.
"No sir, I'm just here for the expired pudding and sponge baths." I grinned with a flirtatious wink towards the cute clerk, eliciting no small amount of blushing amusement from her.
The police officer however, didn't smile. He didn't blink. He just stood there, pen in hand...
…staring at me.
I felt that hastily discarded sheet of panic begin to bunch up around my feet as my smile faded and the back of my neck began to prickle in discomfort. I swallowed hard and cleared my throat, this time taking on a more serious and professional manner.
"I mean, yes Officer. I think so. They told me that I was mugged, so that’s probably me." I stammered, trying to mimic the official cadence that his voice had contained and failing miserably.
He scrutinized me for a moment before nodding as he jotted something down on his pad and I let out a small sigh of relief as he finally began to move.
"And what were you doing in that neighborhood?" The officer asked, looking up from his pad through the tops of his eyes.
"Wait...where did you guys find me?" I countered with a question of my own, my head swimming with the sudden honest-to-God realization that I really had been beaten and robbed.
The enormity behind it hit me like a freight train. I had been mugged. Not pick pocketed by some anonymous thief or shaken down for a few dollars by an aggressive panhandler, but actually mugged. Someone had attacked me, knocked me on the head, rifled through my unconscious form and now it was all gone. My identification, my bank cards, even the old faded family photo that I had of my parents that I folded myself out of because I was sporting the mother of all mullets, gone.
Stubbornly, I patted the front of my jeans and ran my hands through the loose pockets of my hoodie but as I suspected, I came up with absolutely nothing.
Son of a bitch.
Any residual fear was burned away by a flash of anger and indignant rage. Now my eyes were the ones narrowing in scrutiny as I waited for the police officer to reply. Either unaware or unimpressed by my sudden epiphany and situational enlightenment, he casually turned a few pages and searched his tiny notebook.
"An anonymous caller reported an unconscious man in an alley connecting State Street and Grove." He stated in what almost sounded like boredom as he flipped another page. "Paramedics arrived, found the victim unresponsive with no identification and took him to the hospital for further evaluation." He finished, snapping the booklet closed and returning it back to his uniform pocket.
"That's only like two blocks from my apartment." I realized with a sense of shock. Because it was so close to home, the violation somehow felt even more invasive and personal; like I had been betrayed by a family member or friend.
"So you live in that neighborhood?" The police officer asked skeptically, his hand still hovering over the pocket that contained his notepad. His tone spoke volumes for his feelings on where I lived and I could see that he was battling with the urge to add something else to his notes.
"Yeah. Did you guys find my wallet?"
The cop's face twitched in surprise and he looked at me like I was suffering from a head wound and had been given a high dosage of really good drugs. Turning towards the processing clerk, his eyes searched her face in hopes of finding his own incredulous expression mirrored in hers. Instead he found only a look of concern staring back with an honest and innocent curiosity.
Shaking his head in disbelief and muttering to himself under his breath, the police officer snapped open a pocket at his side and fished around inside it. Producing a business card from the depths of his uniform, he offered it to me clenched between two outstretched fingers. I took it politely, noting the police department logo stamped on it in official blue ink and flipped it over a few times without actually reading it.
"If you remember anything about your attack please call us, or stop by the station when you're feeling more up to it." He instructed, still shaking his head with the amazement that my question had generated.
With a courteous nod extended towards both of us, he excused himself and spun on his heel, leaving me with nothing more than the certainty that my stupid question would be the topic of his next break room donut frenzy. Moving back to her chair, the processing clerk returned to her seat with a gentle smile and offered me a small shrug.
"You never know." She said, but I did.
I've lived in New York long enough to know that once all of the good stuff had been scooped from my old leather batman wallet, everything that couldn't be used or that had no immediate value would be tossed. It was either at the bottom of some random dumpster or already taking its final voyage in the back of a city garbage truck.
Either way, I felt more than a little bit stupid for asking the question.
The rest of the paperwork process went with no excitement and no real interaction beyond a few polite smiles. The clerk verified my information several times, gave me the hospital's emergency contact number and told me to call should the symptoms of my injuries get any worse.
"Do you have anyone that you can call to pick you up?" She asked. Her eyes softened in sincere concern and she tilted her head to one side in question.
I thought about it for a moment before rolling my shoulder in a shrug. Sure, I had friends that I could bother, people that I knew that would probably come pick me up out of guilt or a sense of obligation, but I didn't want to add this to their already darkened perception of me. I'd rather walk home than have that quiet and strained car ride with some awkward half-friend.
"Newp, just me." I replied. I tried to sound nonchalant, but the fact that I had no one to pick me up from the hospital made me feel unexpectedly self-conscious in the spotlight of a pretty girl's eyes.
It's a guy thing. No matter how bad the situation gets, you never want to appear weak or helpless to a member of the opposite sex.
Especially if they’re cute.
She nodded, my response seemingly confirming her suspicions. Leaning back in her chair she slid open the desk drawer at her middle and rummaged around through a tangle of rubber bands and sticky notes until she found a small bundle of papers. Removing one from the stack, she slammed it soundly with a rubber stamp and offered it to me on top of a shiny folded pamphlet.
My pride already flat lining, I took the hospital issued bus voucher and schedule with a mumbled thanks and watched in silence as she returned to processing my paperwork.
The clerk was barely finished with the final page and still giving it a once over for errors when the same orderly whose music I had awoken to earlier in the day arrived to wheel me the final fifty feet to the hospital’s exit. Sliding the completed forms into my file, the clerk held my copies outward and followed my gaze towards the young man as he sidled up behind me and grabbed onto the handles of the war era wheelchair.
"Really?" I leaned back and asked him over my shoulder. I pointed towards the hospital entrance in hope that the incredulous tone to my voice would make the silliness of wheeling me such a short distance obvious.
"Ready!" He confirmed over the din of the heavy bass leaking from his headphones. Snatching the offered papers from the young woman's hand, he snapped forward with a sharp lurch and propelled us towards the automated glass doors at enthusiastic speeds, leaving me no time to properly flirt my goodbyes.
We hit the metal door track that separated the interior lobby from the outside world in an impressive catching of air and skidded to a stop on the sidewalk near the patient drop off circle at the front of the hospital. Tilting the chair slightly to assist with my scrambling to get the hell out of it before he did something to make an actual necessity, the orderly handed me my paperwork and nodded in time with his own personal soundtrack.
"Five minutes." He said, his voice a bit louder than it should have been as he unconsciously tried to speak over the music that only he should have been able to hear.
"What?" I asked back, raising my own voice to match his and immediately feeling foolish for doing so.
"Five. Minutes." He said again, this time tapping at the laminated bus schedule in my hand and pointing towards the end of the block. Following his outstretched finger, I spotted a corner bus stop marker poking up from the urban landscape like a battered metallic weed.
"Oh, than-" I started but the orderly was already headed back inside, his gait punctuated with barely covered dance steps as he walked away.
The bus steamrolling over yet another pothole brought the world back into rough focus as I rocked with the impact. The fog of memory cleared as the sound of my own heartbeat slowly faded from my ears, replaced by the heavy diesel groanings of the mobile porto-potty that served as my only way home.
Wincing, I reluctantly opened my eyes and stared into my lap at the hands that I had unconsciously clenched into fists. I was still wearing the plastic identification bracelet that marked me as a recent guest of Elmore Community Hospital, the name "John Doe" stamped upon it in a watery gray-black ink that somehow managed to look faded and worn even though it couldn't have been more than a day old. A juvenile, sarcastic urge from the recesses of my mind vaguely noted that I should keep the wrist band as a souvenir of my stay because eventually, having the documented evidence of my anonymity would seem pretty damn cool.
Again, it's a guy thing.
The remainder of the bus ride went without too many more jostles and I was more than content to stare blankly out of the window in an unseeing trance. As tired as I was, I still took extra care in not resting my head upon the badly smudged glass. One unexpected bump could transport me back into to a world of hospital laced flashbacks and I had no desire to keep Nurse Ratched in the forefronts of my memory.
The city blurred by in a mesh of drab colored buildings and passing cars. I tried not to focus on anything in particular as I hunkered down into the depths of my hooded sweatshirt. The bus hissed loudly, pitching and rolling as it began to slow. Narrowing my eyes against the reflections of the interior glass, I looked out of the window and tried to ascertain my location.
I was close to my apartment
The buildings had grown closer together, huddled against the city and protected by a barrier of unmoving cars that replaced the normal flow of traffic. Besides the occasional corner market or small business, commercial buildings had given way to the tight cluster of residential housing.
Passing a familiar block, I reluctantly withdrew my hands from the warmth of the pocket tunnel at the front of my hoodie and reached for the dingy yellow strip that crept down the bus's interior wall. Pressing my thumb into it, I signaled for the driver to stop and the bus staggered to a lurching halt.
I started moving towards the front of the barely populated vehicle as its doors folded open with an unwilling squeal and muttered a word of thanks towards the unresponsive driver as I stepped off. The awkward height of the heavy metal steps seemed even more noticeable at my tired pace and breaking the cardinal rule of public transportation, "don't touch a goddamn thing", I grabbed onto the railing for support.
I had moved barely two feet from the stairs when I felt the doors snap behind me, closing in a protest of cracked rubber stripping and rusted metal. A puff of warm exhaust enveloped me in a biting cloud of mechanical steam as the bus squealed back to life and resumed its route, leaving me alone at my destination.
The sun had already disappeared from the city sky, hidden by the rows of apartment buildings. Even though summer still had a few days left in its reign, it was a bit windy and noticeably cooler.
"Early winter." I noted wisely with absolutely no foundation of experience to back up my observation. It just seemed like one of those sage things that you should say when squinting up at the sky with a mild concussion.
Setting my shoulders I took a deep breath and set forth to finish my journey on foot before someone noticed me standing on the street corner, talking to myself.
At least my headache was finally showing signs of passing. Oh, it was still there - a dull, ache that complained with every step, but it was a lot less intense than it had been for the better part of the day. Now more of an annoyance that chewed at the edge of my thoughts, at least it was no longer trying to actively devour them. The walk from the bus stop combined with a cool breeze tugged at the veil of grogginess that I wore and my mood lifted.
Looking up from the sidewalk, my heart began to race with anticipation as I spotted my apartment building. I picked up my pace at the prospect of finally being home and all but sprinted the last few feet towards the stone staircase that lead up into my humble abode.
It had been a long day, and I was looking forward to the eternity of sleep the hospital had promised me before kicking me out.
"You are not allowed pets." A familiar, heavily accented voice punched through what remained of the fog in my head like an air horn. Pausing mid-step, I looked further up the staircase towards the approaching source of the statement.
It was my landlord, Mr. Peitonovich
Viktor Peitonovich was a large man; not overweight, but heavy with a body no longer blessed by youth. He had hard gray eyes and wore his face in a perpetual mask of seriousness that I had never seen cracked by mirth. I wasn't exactly certain of his nationality or country of origin, but I was almost positive that they were Slavic in nature because he sounded exactly like every bad Russian mobster I had seen on television.
His accent was heavy, making his words seem slower and more drawn out, but his English was the passable functionality of an immigrant who had been in the country a good number of years.
"I'm sorry?" I blinked up at him, noting his position about halfway up the steps.
"No sorry, no pets. They are not in lease." He clarified in that strong accent, taking my words of confusion for an attempt to make amends.
Tugging at the front of a reddish brown leather jacket that was too shiny to ever be taken seriously by anyone but its wearer, Mr. Peitonovich moved down the stairs until he stood almost directly in front of me. He made noticeable effort to stop a single step above me in order to give himself a further height advantage that he could use as physical leverage during the conversation.
He really didn't need it.
I mean, the man wasn't a giant, but his six feet and a generous handful of inches had already given him the vertical advantage over my own five foot eight, 175 pound frame. Sure I had a pretty solid stocky build, but it was nothing in comparison to my Russian landlord who had arms like a man who had seen a lifetime of manual labor in a country where there those kind of jobs weren't exactly coddled.
The scent of his cheap cologne washed over me by the bucketful and I had to fight the urge to step away and give him the notion that his leverage tactics were paying off.
"I don't have any pets Mr. Peitonovich. We've gone over this." I said wearily, but without even a hint of the intimidation that he was trying to inflict on me. I locked eyes with him and met his steely gaze too tired to be cowed, which only seemed to fuel his annoyance.
"You feed cat. Up fire escape. I see this." He stated in short broken sentences, an outstretched finger bobbing in front of my nose with each word. Cold gray eyes narrowed in accusation and he inched forward slightly, daring me to deny it.
"I tell you no feed. I tell you NO pets." He continued, pausing just long enough to let his words sink past any language barrier that I might have claimed existed. "You feed anyway, so this your pet. Lease say no pet, so rent goes up. One hundred, fifty dollar." His ending ultimatum slapped away the haze of my day and replaced it with the warming sting of anger.
A hundred and fifty bucks more a month for a cat that I didn’t even own?
"Oh come on!" I protested, my very fixed income leaping to the front of my mind.
Everything in the world seemed to have a steadily increasing price tag and if I wanted to continue my lavish life of freedom from real, actual work, I had to adhere to a pretty strict budget.
Unexpected rent hikes weren't exactly a part of that.
Despite looking like an extra in a late night mobster movie, Mr. Peitonovich was a pretty decent landlord and he kept the building in good repair. The rent was reasonable, my neighbors were mostly elderly couples who kept to themselves and the neighborhood had a far rougher reputation than it actually deserved, which kept solicitors and door to door annoyances at bay. I had only lived in the apartments for a couple of years, but they had taken me forever to find and I absolutely hated the thought of moving.
"It's not even my cat! You can't just raise the rent whenever you feel like it!" I pointed out, but my words had no effect on the big man who regarded me with an uncaring and dismissive shrug.
"This is not my problem. You want cat, you pay for cat." He said simply. "You not like to follow rules?" He asked rhetorically as he pushed past me, descending the stairs in a trot. "Then maybe you find new place to live." He added with a certain finality made abruptly more so by the scary Russian accent.
Mr. Peitonovich reached the bottom of the staircase and turned sharply. Moving down the sidewalk without so much as glancing over his shoulder, he robbed me of any further argument and effectively ended our conversation. I stood there for a while and glowered after him, the back of his leather jacket occasionally glinting brownish-red in the fading daylight as he shrank in the growing distance.
What a perfect end, to a perfect day.
Beaten, robbed, and paying a hundred and fifty dollars a month more for a cat that I didn't even own, I swore under my breath and stomped up the remainder of the stairs, vowing to kick the damn thing instead of feeding it the next time that it came scratching at my window. I reached for the door to the entrance way and turned one last angry glare to the pinprick of my landlord as he sauntered down the street.
"WHERE IN THE HELL ARE YOU EVEN FROM?" I screamed after him, my eyes barely able to make out the silhouette of the man waving his hand in some unheard response as he drifted from sight.