“So you’re new to this room, I take it?” Gabriel asked.
“Man, you high or somethin’?” Gore scoffed. “My stuff’s been in yer damn room for two weeks. I keep tryin’ to introduce myself, but you’re always out walkin’ around or somethin’.”
Two weeks?Marvelous. “Oh, right,” Gabriel mumbled. “Of course.”
“It’s all good, roomie. If ya weren’t already havin’ bladder problems, I’d ask if ya wanna take a shot of some tequila with me. I got me a bottle hidden in the bureau there.”
Gabriel’s mouth watered. Tequila? Wow. How long had it been since he’d tasted tequila, of all things? He could drink a shot, only a…
No. Absolutely not.
“No thank you,” Gabriel muttered. Trying to block the entire exchange out of his mind, he hurriedly stumbled over to his closet, careful not to trip over his own feet. Since the stroke, he’d had enormous difficulty walking without his cane.
“Why not?”
“I can’t… drink. Not with the Seroquel I’m taking.”
“Ah, sucks. Probably a good thing, though. I’ll tell ya, liquor makes me piss my bed all the time.”
“So I’ve gathered.”
“Yep. Can’t help it. Happens in my sleep. My problem is that the only way I can piss right—while I’m awake, I mean—is that I gotta be lyin’ sideways, and then I have to piss into that plastic bottle… what’d they call it again? The urinal. Yeah, the urinal. But see, I got one other problem, too.”
Gabriel put on his glasses. Tired of parading around in a johnny gown, he carefully stepped into a pair of slacks. He pulled on and buttoned up a long-sleeve dress shirt then glanced back at the bed to make sure the bunched-up quilt was effectively hiding the wet spot. The spillage on the floor could easily be dismissed as having been caused by an overturned glass of water.
“See,” Gore continued, “when I had the surgery done to cut off this damn leg, the doctors screwed up. After the surgery, I can’t pee straight ’cause those asshole doctors fucked up my dick. Y’wanna see it?”
“Um…” No, he certainly didn’t care to see it. As if his own problems weren’t enough, being in a nuthouse like Bright New Day only amplified everything. Gabriel took his cane out of the closet and leaned on it for support, both physical and moral.
“C’mere, brother. It’s messed up, man! Look at this!” Gore tugged down the waistband of his red shorts.
Gabriel looked; he couldn’t help it. Had it really come down to this? He felt like a neutered dog. Had he really reached the point of being so utterly desexualized and dehumanized, that this kind of scene was normal? Surprisingly, Gore’s penis appeared completely normal. “Um…”
Gore glared down at his crotch. “Don’t you see it? Look, man! Those asshole doctors cut my dick off!”
“Oh.” Gabriel shook his head. He glanced at his reflection in the mirror on the wall to Gore’s left. When did his hair become so white? God, when did he get so damn old?
His self-pity was interrupted when he noticed a tiny brown slug crawling up the surface of the mirror as if it owned the place. He’d seen a lot of slugs lately. The nursing home seemed to be infested with them.
“Well… hey, Mr. Gore, I’m dying for a cigarette, so I’m going to step outside to the smoking area.” Gabriel put on his tan trench coat and fedora. He wore the same outfit every day, no matter the weather; he was always cold, anyway. Together with the cane, he felt he cut a striking figure like something out of a Bogart movie. In the last year, the nursing staff had come to refer to him as the Detective, a nickname he wasn’t quite sure how to feel about. He tightened a Windsor knot in his black tie. He stepped toward the door, ready to get the hell out of the room. “See you soon. You can—”
“Hey,” Gore said, squinting at him. “Before you go, what’s your name, buddy? I forgot to ask.”
Gabriel hesitated. He subtly positioned his body toward the doorway. He just wanted to get outside and put this morning behind him. Was that too much to ask? “Gabriel Schist,” he answered finally.
“Schist?” Gore chuckled. “Ha! Y’know, I actually just got the Schist vaccine again the other day. Y’know, that vaccine that protects ya from AIDS and stuff? That’s funny! It must be weird whenever ya get the vaccine, since ya got the same name and all. It’d be funny if the guy who made it was related to ya or somethin’.”
Gabriel stiffened and bit his tongue. Relax, Gabriel. Relax, relax, relax. His cane wobbled underneath him, barely holding him up. “Actually, I’ve never taken the Schist vaccine. See you later, Mr. Gore.” He left the room and entered the corridor.
South Wing was the most populated of Bright New Day’s five long-term care wings and occasionally referenced to by staff members as the blue wing. After five years, Gabriel should have grown comfortable. There were days when he felt a sense of familiarity from those indigo-floored hallways, recognizable faces, and repetitive daily routines. And some days, he even felt at home. But most days, he loathed every doorway, corridor, and scrap of blue wallpaper.
At the moment, none of that mattered. After the horrific wakeup he’d just experienced, the only thing he cared about was getting a cigarette. Until he felt smoke in his lungs, everything was an obstacle. He needed an escape—an escape from his morning, an escape from his misery, an escape from people—and possibly more than anything else, he needed to hear the ocean outside the building. He didn’t need to touch the water—he knew that they’d never permit him to actually touch the ocean again—but just hearing it would be enough.
So Gabriel bravely marched down the bleach-scented corridors of Bright New Day. He passed a long series of identical open doors leading to identical bedrooms. His home. His total institution. His prison. His cane tapped along the floor, striking out into the future and carrying his sagging body along with it. Tap. Tap. Tap.
He walked slowly. Everything was always slow for him, or maybe he was normal and the world around him was just a dizzying blur. He couldn’t tell anymore. As he walked, nurses and LNAs—licensed nursing assistants—rushed from room to room, following the ominous rings of ever-present call bells. Fellow residents laughed, screamed, and argued. The staff gossiped. Within the rooms, television sets were cranked up to maximum volume by nearly deaf residents, most of whom were watching the same old TV Land reruns that they’d been watching for the last twenty years.
As usual, the Crooner was sitting outside his room, beaming with enthusiasm. A small, silver-haired man with no teeth, the Crooner offered Gabriel an overzealous, gummy smile and a voice excruciatingly loud enough to match it. “Laaaahhh! La-la-lah! Upstairs la-la-la upstaaaaiiirs is where I must be upstaiiirzzz. Laaaa-deee-daaa-deee-daaahh! Laa! La! Laaaa! Upstairs!”
The Crooner never stopped singing, from early in the morning until well past midnight. Together, he and the call bells were like an ambitious but untalented garage band.
As the Crooner belted out his music, he continually backed his wheelchair against the wall like a battering ram. Gabriel tried not to listen, tried not to look, but the Crooner was staring right at him with big eager eyes. Rumor had it that the Crooner had once been a highly renowned history professor at Yale.
Tap. Tap. On the other end of the hallway, Gabriel approached Bob Baker, a Vietnam veteran with a mouth sharper and thinner than razor wire. He liked Bob. Bob didn’t speak much. That was nice. It was easy.
Bob spent his days sitting in the hallway and scowling at passersby. Gabriel suspected that Bob had auditory schizophrenia because of the way he’d often perk his ears up as if hearing sounds that weren’t there. Bob probably had OCD. He smoked exactly four cigarettes a day, and the only thing he ever ate was hot dogs. According to Dana Kleznowski, an LPN on North Wing and one of Gabriel’s favorite nurses, Bob demanded that the hot dogs be arranged in a special dish and cut into little pieces exactly three-quarter-inch squares.
“Hello, Mr. Baker,” Gabriel said. “Having a good day today?”
“Noooooope,” Bob growled with a voice that punctured the air like a can opener.
Tap. Tap. The door to the smoking area was still so far, far away. His heart quivered. He just wanted to get outside, have his cigarette, and be done with it. His desperation for tobacco, sunlight, and the sound of the ocean became increasingly severe. He’d already had his social fill for the day. He just wanted to—
A cold, shaky hand grabbed him.
He stared down into the grimacing face of Edna Foster. She clutched his hand with a death grip. He tried to pry himself loose, but she wouldn’t let go.
“Pleeeeeease…” she murmured pitifully.
