The Pain Nurse - страница 9

His roommate was a quadriplegic from a car crash. He was trussed up in a contraption of wires and tubes. Every few minutes a nurse or technician would come in with a different, invariably noisy treatment. The commotion and stench made rest impossible. Hospitals were noisy places. When the poor man was conscious, he only wanted to watch back-to-back episodes of Judge Judy, with the volume on high. The room itself offered no view. The neuro-rehab unit was located in a first-floor addition that shot off the main part of the hospital. But Will’s window looked back into the old blond-brick building, across a small stretch of hibernating grass. The heliport was located on top of the neuro-rehab wing, and late at night medevac choppers would land, causing the windows to shake as if an earthquake were happening. The night-shift nurses joked darkly with him about the likelihood that one day a helicopter would crash on them. “The first thing you’ll see is the aviation fuel running down the walls, before it ignites and we’re all toast,” one said merrily.

At least he was off the morphine. It had masked the pain but it had brought dreams. Morphine took him to an old amusement park in Newport, Kentucky, right across the river from downtown. He had no memory of such a place ever existing-but it must have, the drug told him so. It was fenced off and deserted, but Will had walked through the gate. It was twilight, the sky on the verge of rain. He was alone, surrounded by rusting kiddie rides. All around was a quadrangle of old wooden buildings, their reddish paint flaking off. He walked inside one and saw straw on the ground, as if it had once been a stable. The morphine told him that children had been killed here, many children, murdered horribly. His dreaming self fought to find a way out, a way to wake up. The souls of the innocent dead followed him until he had crashed back into his broken body, staring at the harsh light over his bed. After that, he was happier to have the pain than the morphine dreams.

As he slowly got better, Will would dress in the bed and call a nurse first thing in the morning to transfer him from the bed into a wheelchair. The wheelchair was comfortable and moved easily. It had the brand name Quickie, which seemed like a sick joke. He might never be able to have a quickie again.

He stayed out as long as they would let him. With difficulty, he began to slide himself from the bed to the wheelchair, wheelchair to toilet and back. He needed a nurse there to help, of course. His right leg seemed unable to bear any weight, although he could move it easily. Will had quickly realized that he was one of the better-off patients. When the nurses weren’t taking care of what everyone called “the quads,” they were writing endless paperwork, as bad as cops, worse even. He called the nurses less often, did things for himself.

“You look good.”

Will knew it was a lie. Mueller started to clap him on the shoulder, then seemed to think better of it. His hand hung between them awkwardly. They awkwardly shook hands. Steve Mueller was around forty, wearing chinos, tie, and wool sport coat. He had a close-cropped halo of blond hair ringing his baldness and the look of a faded high school football player. He had a bristly peach-colored mustache. Growing up on the west side, he had played football for Elder, and had never been farther than Chicago. In other words, he had the resumé of nearly everyone who rose to command in the Cincinnati Police Department. It was one more reason Will would never move ahead. He was Scots-Irish Protestant in a German Catholic town.

“Can I wheel you somewhere, so we can talk? Where’s that pretty wife of yours?”

“She’s working. I can wheel myself.” And Will could, until he started hurting too badly. “There’s a Starbucks down by the lobby.”

“How are you two doing? You and Cindy.”

“We’re okay. We’re good.”

“That’s good.” Mueller sounded skeptical. Then: “Love conquers all, huh?”

After a few minutes, they had navigated the crowded hallways, out of neuro-rehab, down the corridor behind the emergency room and into the bright, glassy expanse of the main concourse.