CHARLIE HEART

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: I'M NOT HER

I’M NOT HER

         When I wake up I am covered in sweat. cold sweat and everything is blurry. I reach my hand over my chest and rub my heart. I feel weird after that one.
         I realize I’m in a hospital bed, everything is white, sterile and boring. I don’t like being in hospitals, if it’s me that needs the help, and this is the second time this week.
         Where is Bruce, Tommy? Where is... is Sheila alright?
         A sharp pain starts to throb from my shoulder, just above my heart. I tear open my hospital gown to see a white gauze patch taped up on me. My first thought is, where’s my heart? But I still feel it pumping so it’s okay. I find another bandage on the back of my head. When I touch it, it makes me wince.
         “Good morning.”
         I look to my right, there she sat, curled up in a shaded corner of the room on the ground. Her knees up in her chest and her green eyes poking through, just like the first time we met. But this time she isn’t crying, this time I am closer to crying.
         Seeing her makes me want to jump out of this cardboard bed, tear out the needles and scream at her. Either that or go running as fast as I can down the halls to get away from her, I find myself having some what mixed emotions here. But I hold it together, I mean look at her, she’s just a little girl.
         “Hi,” I say in my low sick like voice. I stare up at the ceiling, those rectangle gray squares.
         She says “How are you?”
         “Great, great,” I say. “Alive.”
         She doesn’t respond. The awkwardness fill the room like poison gas.
         “So, you’ve been reading my book, huh?”
         She wants to talk about her book? How did she even know about that. Did someone tell her they found it in the wreckage? I am seconds away from running over and strangling her up against the wall paper and she wants to get a book review?
         “Only the first couple paragraphs,” I say calmly. Charlie Heart never looses his cool.
         She stands up now and slowly walks over to me. I make a mental note of all the nearby sharp objects. she touches my arm and glides her fingertips across my skin like she did on my rooftop.
         “I’m glad you are okay,” she says quietly.
         I expected her to say just about anything else in the english language except for that. I can’t help it anymore. I absolutely loose it.
         I sit up swing my arm around her and pull her onto the bed then wrapping one of my legs around her, I pin her down and tighten all my muscles. She was trying to scream but my hand pressed against her face was stoping it.
         “Look, I’m sorry,” I say. “I am so sorry. If it’s money you want I’ll give it to you, all of it.”
         She makes muffled sounds that might be words. I let up to hear her.
         “No, no, no, no, Charlie, It’s not what you thin...”
         I slam my hand across her mouth again as a nurse walks by the open door way. Then I lift off again.
         “It’s not what you think, Charlie.”
         “What do you mean, it’s not what I think?”
         “I’m not her, I’m not her!”
         “What?”
         “Please, I’ll explain, just get off of me.”
         My first thought was, ‘no way’ then realizing how bad this looks and getting desperate enough to trust her, I comply. I pick her up and she wobbles to her feet. I’ve got a fist full of her shirt in my hand, she hits it away and stands there looking like she’s about to cry. I do a quick check on all the sharp things in the room, yep, everything is still there.
         We look into each other’s faces, eyes scanning all around the details of our skin, the smell of her makeup itching my nose, her recently plucked eyebrows quivering. That big bottom lip being bitten on by her perfect white crushers. She takes a breathe and looks down.
         She wasn’t talking so I started. “I know you are trying to kill me, Ginger.” She looks back up at me. She doesn’t look surprised, but she tries to act like it.
         “No.”
         I say, “No?” Now I’m getting a little impatient. Look, Ginger. I know what I did. I remember now, And to be honest, I think I deserve it. You are the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me and I scre...”
         She covers my mouth.
         “My name isn’t Ginger, it’s Sara.”
         My eyebrow raises.
         “What? Whatever. Look, Sara, Ginger, whoever I...”
         She slams her palm against my mouth again and tells me to shush.
         “Don’t, she might hear you.”
         Now, I am a little freaked out. What was going on here. She hands me a piece of paper and looks around then over my shoulder. I sling my face around to see who she was looking at but no one is there.
         “Who?”
         She shakes her head and puts her hands on my chest.
         “Ging..Sara, What is going on?”
         “She wants you to love her, Charlie. You can’t do that.” She lowers her voice. “Please, she wants your love, so she can break you. Don’t fall for...”
         She starts twitching.
         “Are you okay,” I say.
         “I need to go now,” she says.
         “No, you aren’t going anywhere!”
         I grab her wrist as she starts to walk away. She twists it away and I go to get a hold of her shoulders when she spins around and pushes me up against the wall. I hit my head and my vision slights.
         Stars, little flashing light bulbs.
         I hear the words, ‘I’m sorry, Charlie.’Then she takes the fire extinguisher off the rack and swings it through my forehead. I’ve been knocked out before, but this one tops the rest.
         This time I don’t dream, I just lay there unconscious. I’m too angry to dream.
         When I wake, I am more confused than ever. When I wake, Bruce and Tommy are sitting next to my hospital bed. They are in their street close and looking down on my like I am their sixth grade science project, ready to dissect.
         As soon as I see them I’m yelling, Where did she go? Where did she go? as if they would have the answer.
         “Calm down man,” says Tommy. “You’re alright.”
         Bruce asks, “Who?”
         “Ginger!”
         Tommy says, “She was here?”
         “Yes, maybe, ten minutes ago.” I look at my wrist, my rolex was gone. I look at the wall clock. “Well, more like an hour...I don’t know, but we need to go now.”
         I am spinning out of the bed and onto my feet. Then a nurse comes in, escorting a very beat up but alive looking Sheila Perkins on a brand new looking walker. This makes me stop. She is smiling from ear to ear.
         “Miss Perkins,” I say. “You are okay.”
         “Well, just because I’m old doesn’t mean I’m going to die every time something blows up, Charlie.”
         I smile. Bruce and Tommy stand up.
         “Im glad,” I say.
         “Yes, I am glad you boys are well too.”
         She wobbles in a little closer and starts her next comment with one of those big proud coughs I love so much.
         “I came to tell you Charlie, that one nurse, that said she knew you, remember her?”
         I carefully nod.
         “Well she came by and gave me flowers, she is such a sweet thing. Anyways, she wanted me to give you a message.”
         We all look at her with great anticipation.
         “She said, ‘I really miss that lamp.’”
         We are still looking at her, waiting, but she doesn’t say anything. She is just smiling blankly.
         I say, “That’s it?”
         “That’s it,”she says.
         I’m thinking, go where?
         When she says, “Well, I need to be leaving, but I would love to get together with you again Charlie and finish talking about your family. You are turning out to be a very interesting person.”
         I think I liked her better when all she did was grunt.
         She coughs, then she says, “You know what is really interesting?”
         Everyone stares.
         “I had a child once. I was very young though, I couldn’t take care of it so I left it with someone that could. I named it Charlie, just like you.
         She shakes her head and looks down. No one says anything as she leaves and all I have is Bruce, Tommy, and their blank faces. I would feel better if I at least had my pants on.
         I run my memory of our conversations. Was she implying that there was a possibility that she could be my...
         I start to run after her, then the I.V. in my arm and the catheter in my ‘you know what’ lock up and slam me back down. Now that’s pain.
         Then the doctor walks in. He sees a little white piece of paper on the ground, picks it up and throws it into one of those sanitary trash cans with the bio hazard symbol of the top. The kind with the rubber slits for a hole. I suddenly remember, that was the paper that Ginger, or Sara gave me. Talk about a split change of thought here.
         I reach down and rip everything off. I leap forward to dig it out of the trash and the doctor almost looses all his paper work.
         “Whoa, what are you doing their son? I think you need to lay back down.”
         I’m not listening, I’m tossing chucks of latex gloves and used paper towels on the floor. Tommy and Bruce are still just staring blankly.
         “Excuse me Mr.,” he looks at his clipboard. “Mr. Heart, lets get you back on the bed and give you a higher dose of...”
         “FOUND IT!” I show it to him like I discovered the famous needle in the haystack, smiling like a dumb ape. Now the doctor is staring blankly. I’ve got the whole room questioning my sanity.
         “I’m sorry Doc, I can’t stay.”
         “No, I think you need to stay.”
         “No, I, I really need to get going.”I Start pushing against him and he pushes back.
         “Mr. Heart, I would strongly advise that you...”
 I brake from the room. My gown flying up in the air flashing all the people in the hallway. now I’m running, and as I’m run I open the note. I look for exit signs, this is a very big hospital, I look out the window, I’m at least twenty stories up.
         I hear someone yelling ‘Nurse, call security,’ down the hall. Tommy, Bruce and the doctor all all following me. I find the elevators and punch the down button over and over again. The doors split and I’m punching the shut button even faster.
         When ever an explosion goes off in your own home they always think you had a hand in it. Seeing this was the second explosion for me in the same week, there is no doubt it’s my doing. They aren’t chasing me because they care about my health, they want Ginger, or me, or someone behind bars. And I’m not all the way ready to give her over yet.
         This is the part of my story where everything seems to be happening too fast. But here is the truth, if you just sit and think things through, then someone else gets to decide the ending. I never was one for sitting.
         I crack open the note and look at it closely.
         It says: On the corner of Fourth street and Locket Lane. Eleven o’clock pm. tonight. Come alone and don’t get caught.
         I read it a couple times before I stick it in between the waistband of my Calvin Klein’s and my skin. Which is a good thing because when the door opens, there are two doctors and three security guards standing there. Before I know it, one of them has a needle in my neck and I’m down again. I think of those poor animals on the T.V. that get put under this way. Was this what it felt like to be a wild stallion, a great white shark, or a swamp crocodile?
         The tranquilizer actually feels really good. It makes you want to laugh, float. But you don’t because you can’t feel your muscles or your skin. All you see is shades of grey and you hear far away voices that recommend a psychiatric admissions. Then after a while you don’t hear at all. All you can think about is Gin... Sara. Then after a few more seconds, you can’t even have that.