Trust

He was confused.  For some reason, there were people everywhere in his hospital room.  What happened to Covid protocols.  Why couldn’t he have visitors, if they were grouping patients together?  Last he remembered, he had been in the ICU.  Now, there were blinding lights, a TV blaring, and people all around, including kids.  The room was large and extended to the outside.  It reminded him of being at a camp.  The nurse gathered everyone to the outside area – a patio.  There were rows of people kneeling in a circle.  The children in the inner circle and adults around them.  He was still in his hospital gown and chilly from the cold evening air.  He asked the nurse if she could get him something for his throat, which felt scratchy.

The group of people in a circle were about to play some sort of game.  The nurse instructed everyone about how the game was played.  He didn’t pay any attention, as he sort of half-knelt on the outside of the circle.  He didn’t like games, or children.  Even as a child, he didn’t really like children.  He had several friends, but he mostly kept to himself.  He especially hated kids in movies and TV shows.  He always felt there was something suspicious and creepy about them.  He felt that the kids were always somehow generic depictions of kids as adults often perceive them: totally unrealistic and annoying.  The boys were always wat too sensitive and stupid, or bullies.  The girls were very saccharine sweet and gentle, or conniving and evil.  No nuance.  Nothing in-between.  You could only get intelligent characters with real feelings in the Peanuts cartoons.

He was staring at the TV, when the nurse returned with what looked like a spray bottle of Chloraseptic from the 70s for his throat.  He thought to himself that it may have been that long since he had used it.  He was super excited about it!  She sprayed a shot onto his tongue, which had been damaged during his surgery and was so swollen that he had a difficult time rolling it out of his mouth.  The sticky red substance burned his tongue at first, but the gooey juice hit his throat and he grinned at the distant memories it elicited.  He and the nurse discussed memories of the numbing candy that is the Chloraseptic.  He asked her, over the laughing and clapping of the crowd of people, if she could change the channel on the TV to some new show that was supposed to be about a guy on kidney dialysis.  He was curious, because he had been on dialysis.  She did, but it was already in progress.  He became immediately distracted and bored.  The outdoor area slowly emptied out and he sat on the edge of his hospital bed and stared at the Chloraseptic bottle, grabbed it, sprayed it into his mouth, or tried to, missed and instead sprayed it around his mouth.  He glanced around for a wash cloth, gave up, and simply wiped around his mouth with his hand.  He eventually laid back into his bed and wiped his sticky hand on the sheets.

A cool blast of air hit his naked back.  He wrapped his arms tightly around his torso.  He looked down and realized that he was naked, except for some tubes coming out of his body.  Gone was his flimsy hospital gown.  He called for the nurse after a few minutes of shivering.  He realized that he was in the back of something akin to mining cars on a rail.  His was about five empty cars back from the front.  The cars curled to the right and back inside the hospital.  Meanwhile, he was outside on the covered patio.  He told the nurse he was cold, the nurse said she’d be right back.  He examined his predicament.  How did he get here?  The patio was decorated with Halloween decorations.  Jack o’ Lanterns were placed around, black construction paper bat cutouts were everywhere,  and there was a string of orange lights along the patio ceiling.  He wasn’t sure if it was the Halloween vibes, or simply his dislike of that particular holiday that was giving him an itchy feeling of dread.  He tried to look around behind him, but he could not turn his head more than an inch or two, and he had already lost his peripheral vision prior to his brain surgery.  Then he heard something behind him.  That’s when he realized there was someone back there.

 

The nurse returned.  That’s when he noticed she wasn’t wearing scrubs, but instead wearing an old school nurse outfit with the weird hair hat thing folded into her hair.  He hadn’t seen a nurse dressed like that since his first hospital stay in the mid-eighties, and even then, most didn’t.  It must be Halloween.  He was still cold, but instead asked her if someone was behind him.  She looked right where he suspected this figure stood and hesitated and had recognition in her eyes.  He heard the sound of a gun clicking into firing mode. 

“No, there’s no one else here.”

He did not believe her.  She could no longer be trusted.  Here he was, naked, cold, outdoors, and about to be shot in the back.  He could not climb out of the railcar, nor turn his head, because of the surgery. 

“I know there is someone there.  I can feel them.”

“No, I swear to you, it’s just you and I, Alexander.”

She turned and left, and circled back indoors.

There was movement, he noticed, reflecting off a dark window to his right, but still in front of him.  He could hear someone let out some air and then take a quick breath in.  It seemed like it was from directly behind him.  He imagined someone with a pistol pointed down directly at the back of his head.  He started to say something, but instead decided he was okay with this.  He didn’t understand why this would happen.  The hospital is supposed to be a safe place, but he decided he was ready to give up fighting.  He was ready for this all to be over.  He put his head forward and put his arms out to show his surrender, yet nothing happened. 

After what seemed like hours.  He decided to try to escape.  Somehow, after several minutes, he willed himself out of the rail car, which felt like a prison.  He hurt his ribs, and scraped his knees while sliding out and hit the pavement of the patio indelicately.  He found his gown, which he had been sitting on.  He did his best to put it on and even tried to tie it on at the back of his neck, so it wouldn’t constantly fall off his shoulders and down his arms.  He did not see anyone around and the way back into the hospital was closed off, so he crawled/half walked his way off the patio onto some damp grass that wrapped around the hospital building and its surrounding bushes. 

It was very dark, but there were a lot of streetlamps illuminating the greenery giving the shrubbery long shadows – making them look much larger than they were.  He scuttled around the building in a shuffle.  He couldn’t quite walk, but this wasn’t exactly crawling either.  The uneven ground made him stumble and fall a lot.  There were windows every twenty feet or so, which looked like black squares.  The bushes would break and he could approach each window.  After checking several windows, he approached one and thought he saw movement inside.  He hunched down and felt that sinking feeling that there was a presence behind him again.  He envisioned the figure with the gun trained on him from directly behind.  He could hear the crunch of rubber soled sneakers squeak on the damp grass quietly behind him.  This time though, he sensed another figure to his left.  He couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t sense any danger.  He quickly jerked his head to the left, as far as it would go, and a striking flash of pain shot down his spine – the pain dropped him to his knees.  He couldn’t be sure, but he surmised that the second presence had a motion picture camera trained on him.  He knocked on the window and began to shiver. 

His nurse opened the window from inside. 

“Shhhhh” she hissed.  “You’re going to ruin everything!”

“Can I get back to bed?  I’m exhausted and cold” he pleaded, before adding, “What’s going on?”

“There’s nothing going on, please trust me.  Would I do anything to hurt you?”

He hesitated.  He was confused by all of this activity.  He’d been in hospitals several times, yet this time, he wasn’t sure where he was or why he had been left alone outside.

“I – I don’t think so.  Can you help me?”

“Cut!”  He heard from behind.  He clumsily shifted from his knees to sit on his backside, so he could see out away from the window.  The damp grass made his exposed butt itch like crazy.  There was more than a figure or two behind him.  There were a bunch of people.  He didn’t see anyone with a gun, but instead what seemed to be an entire film crew!   There were a couple of cameras, someone with a long microphone, and likely a gaffer, and some grips.  He could see his nurse, now outside, and it looked like she was arguing with another woman.  This other woman seemed to be in charge – the director perhaps?

“He’s no good!  This isn’t working!  He’s not right for this!” the director shouted, while gesturing towards him. 

“I thought that there was no script!  I thought the whole plan was to see what happens!” his nurse seemed agitated.

“Let’s break it down,” the director shouted, and immediately, the crew, who had been so quiet, were now a flurry of activity.  What seemed like maybe thirty people were moving all around him, putting devices into cases, wrapping cords into loops, stuffing their faces with pastries, and carrying goods to a van far off in the parking lot.  

After an eternity of bewilderment, he looked at his nurse, who was now standing next to him. 

“Let’s get you into a wheelchair,” then she shouted out to some young guy to bring a chair.  The director walked over to him and the nurse, who stood with her arms crossed, her left foot placed in front of her, and an irritated look on her face.

“I’m sorry,” Alexander mumbled, looking up at the director.

“Oh Jesus!!” she gasped and stormed off toward the van.

The young guy eventually showed up with a wheelchair and he and the nurse helped Alexander transfer into the chair.  Immediately, his tense back relaxed and he started deep breathing.  Though still chilly, he felt a lot better, but instead of wheeling him back inside the hospital, they both walked off.  Most of the crew had disappeared and the van was gone.  He was alone. 

He turned his chair toward the window he was in front of and saw his nurse and the director in a conversation.  It looked like an argument.  Eventually, the nurse left the room and he sat in the wheelchair and watched the director stand in front of a whiteboard, crossing notes off the board and writing new ones over it. 

He sat there, for what seemed like an hour, shivering.  He shouted out for help, but no one came.

Daylight filled the room.  He tried to open his eyes and see where he was.  He was laying down back in his hospital bed.  He could tell that he had fresh and clean bedsheets.  He was still cold.  He pulled the comforter up over his shoulders.  He looked around the room through the blur.  It was like he had Vaseline in his eyes.  He struggled to focus and saw a blurry bottle of Chloraseptic sitting on the bedside table.  He dropped his head back onto the pillow, closed his eyes, and let his breath go until there was nothing left in his lungs.e dropped his head baxck He dropped He