A Storied Man

Bernie is a poverty-stricken woman whose life takes an unexpected turn when an old friend returns to town. This is Part Eleven.

Parts: 1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|…

Related reading: Talk With a Killer, Wall

Part Eleven

Bernie felt she was being carried, cradled like a baby. Warm air hit her face in short, rhythmic bursts — is that someone breathing? — but she couldn’t open her eyes. Cold and pain wracked her body, and then all feeling disappeared.

——-

Now she was lying on her back, dull pain in her chest and an unfamiliar fullness in her mouth and throat. She felt like she was suffocating.

Her arms felt like lead, and she realized when she tried to lift them that her wrists were restrained. Unable to draw her own breath, she broke out in sweat and her heart raced. She arched her back and then felt restraints on her ankles, too.

She tried to shout, “Help!” but got nothing, not even a hoarse yell. Her hearing aids were not in.

A nurse rushed over with a syringe and injected it into a tube leading into an IV. Bernie’s vision faded and everything went dark.

——-

A dull ache came from the base of her throat. Tiled drop ceiling loomed overhead. The unnatural smell of hospital washed over her, but when she tried to hold her breath, somehow she was still breathing.

Where am I? What’s going on?

She tried to speak, but nothing came out, not even her own voice vibrating inside her head. Her breathing was fast and she had no control over it. She just wanted to breathe. She reached up and grabbed the tube that seemed to be coming out of her throat, and yanked it hard.

Her lungs stopped filling without her consent, but something wasn’t right. She couldn’t get a full breath. A light flashed in her peripheral vision.

She sobbed and felt her heart pounding. Her mind raced with questions. Why did Jeff attack me? Is Glenda dead? Where is Shonda?

Suddenly three nurses surrounded her, two holding down Bernie’s arms. On all their faces she saw surprise, delight, concern, and determination. They were working quickly, apparently toward a common goal. One, who said more than the others and seemed to be in charge, re-attached the tube Bernie had pulled. The only thing Bernie could read from her lips was, “bee pee.”

The leader’s hand shot out and held open each of Bernie’s eyes in rapid succession, pausing only to flood each with blinding white light. She nodded to one of her colleagues and said something Bernie could not hear.

A nurse held up a syringe, pushed the air bubbles out, and turned her back to Bernie. No, not again. Her eyes fluttered closed.

——-

Bernie woke up uncomfortable and confused. She didn’t know if she had been dreaming. Did Jeff stab me? With a hazy memory from an earlier episode, she fought the urge to panic.

She couldn’t remember the medical term, but she knew there was a breathing tube inserted directly into her neck. Her mind pulled up George Clooney on “ER” blowing into the end of a Bic pen he had inserted into a boy’s neck.

She licked her lips. It had never felt so good.

Where is everybody? She tried to say, “Hello,” but nothing came out.

Her pulse quickened, but still she managed to keep herself from panicking.

In rushed a young woman, maybe 30 years old, with dirty blonde hair cropped level with her jawline. She wore dark green scrubs and white SAS shoes. A stethoscope draped over her neck.

She flashed Bernie a wide, welcoming smile. Clumps of mascara clung to her eyelashes and her rouge verged on clown makeup. Bernie read “Ms. Maven,” from her lips, but the rest was gibberish, so she just stared at her and tried to pick out her words.

The nurse grabbed her hand and started patting it. “Ms. Maven,” and then more words Bernie could not decipher. She put her hand under Bernie’s and pooched her lips out for what must have been a meaningful word, but looked silly in silence. Bernie just stared as the woman’s smile faded.

The nurse pulled out a stubby penlight from her scrubs chest pocket and punched a button on the end. She took aim, point blank, at Bernie’s eye and temporarily blinded her with white light. Then she did the other eye.

Again the woman moved her mouth as if speaking, and still Bernie had no idea what to do or say in response. Frustrated and aware that her caregiver was concerned, she lifted her arm and pointed to her own ear.

Relief swept over the nurse’s face. She walked over to a drawer and pulled out a zippered plastic bag that held Bernie’s hearing aids. She flipped the tiny switch on each and carefully inserted them into Bernie’s ears, then backed up so Bernie could see her face.

It was faint, but Bernie heard the ventilator as it inhaled.

“I forgot about those. Can you hear me?” she said.

Bernie nodded slightly, but this time resisted the urge to speak.

“Good. Now, don’t try to talk too much yet. We’ll see about unhooking the vent from that tracheostomy and getting you some water. That should help. Then, we’ll work on talking. Now, can you squeeze my hand?”

Bernie did.

“Good. What is one plus one?”

Bernie folded down all but two fingers on her right hand.

“Very good. You can hear me and you seem to understand me. I’m sure you have a million questions right now, but I can only tell you what I know about you medically. Do you want to hear it now?”

Bernie nodded.

“You were stabbed, and the knife hit a lung and an artery. You lost a lot of blood, but the surgeons were able to help. You’ve been out for about a month, and it’s good to finally see your eyes.”

The young woman bustled about checking monitors and charts. Despite all the technology in the room, she gently turned Bernie’s arm palm-up and laid two fingers on her wrist to check her pulse. She pulled a blood pressure cuff from a drawer and strapped it around her upper arm, then rapidly squeezed the black bulb. The cuff tightened.

Bernie’s memory flashed back to Jeff’s strong grip on her arm as she cocked it to throw a bottle at Glenda. He had been firm, but not malicious. Later, in her shack, although he had meant to kill her, he had not seemed angry. Instead, he was frighteningly calm as he worked to — what had he said? To add her soul to his collection?

“Oh, you have goosebumps. Are you cold?” the nurse said.

Bernie slowly shook her head. Recalling anything right now was like looking through thick fog. She heard the rip of Velcro as the nurse released the blood pressure cuff.

She thought she could move enough to write. She made a pinch gesture and mimed handwriting motion. The nurse stepped back over to the drawers.

Carefully, Bernie turned her head to the left. A door stood between two windows, drapes wide open to reveal a white hallway. To the right, painted white drywall stared back. In front of her was the same, except for a sign and a painting of a flowery field.

The flowers were yellow and orange and comprised the bottom half of the painting. Across the middle was a line of trees of varying heights, a white farmhouse among them. In the distance stood a mountain range of rolling hills. Above it all was a blue sky with soft white clouds.

The sign below it read, “In case of emergency, press red call button.”

She lay there thinking that she should have pushed a big red button a long time ago. Scared that nobody would answer, instead she had languished in her grief and lingered in a damaging environment. Leaving behind all that she had known, the good and the bad, had never seemed possible.

Then came Shonda. Where is she?

“Here’s that pen and paper. That’s what you wanted, right?”

Bernie nodded and opened her fingers to accept the pen. The nurse gently placed it in her hand and set down a pad of paper bearing the name University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 11:14 pm and is filed under Drama. You may follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, and/or leave a comment below.