Just a lucky Break

Cynthia looked up from her book. The man standing there wore a white hospital gown like hers. She closed the book and smiled at him. He didn’t move. She noticed his right hand was curled into a claw, like he was holding dirty socks.
         “Hello,” she said. He still didn’t move. “Who are you?”
         He was shaved, but fuzz was on his chin and head. As if his hair had melted down around his chin. His face was small: nose, mouth, and eyes. Only defined cheekbones stood out; Cynthia thought they made him look even thinner. A wrapping went around his head. To her it looked like a sweatband, but the man looked cold and afraid. His eyes, milky, never blinked.
         “Who are you?” She repeated. Like speaking to her grandchildren; sometimes the information had to be eased out.
         The man finally said a word. It escaped his mouth like it was running from a cave.
         “None.”
         “Are you a priest?” She asked. Yet he still didn't move. Only his clenched hand trembled.
         “Do you need me to call a nurse?” Cynthia asked. They would come running. She was in for a heart defect. Any change in the beeping, they told her, and you call us, because the machine might not fix everything. She reached for the call button when the man spoke.
         “I…don’t…know you.” His lips moved little, but the words were there, and strong. They were separated, each one by itself.
         “No, you don’t. Would you like to?” She asked. Perhaps she would make a friend today.
         “Only people I know…get to live.”

         “And you can eat all the ice cream you want,” the doctor told Steven.
         “As much as I want?” Steven asked. The doctor nodded.
         “You’re safe as long as nothing else goes wrong with the ol’ ticker,” the doctor said, tapping his chest. “As long as it keeps going bup-bup, you’re okay.”
         “Oh boy. Tim is going to be jealous when he hears,” Steven said, grinning.
         “Listen here sport. If you hear anything except that beeping-” The doctor listened with his ear cupped and an exaggerated expression, “-you press this button fast. Got that?”
         “Why?” Steven asked.
         “Because something might be wrong. We don’t know exactly what the ball did, so we don’t know what can happen. Promise you’ll press that button?”
         “I promise. Scout’s honor,” Steven said. He connected his pinkie and thumb and held his hand up, the scout sign.
         “Good man.” The doctor turned to mom. “Any trouble he can just call the nurses.”
         “Thank you, doctor,” mom said. “Steven, I’m going back to look after Mallory, but Dad will be here in two hours. Tell me what time that is.”
         Steven pondered the clock opposite his bed. ”Four o’clock?”
         Mom smiled. “Good job.” She straightened up. “Timothy’s mother called while you were asleep. Timothy feels sorry for what he did, and he says he‘ll make it up to you.”
         “It wasn’t his fault, it was just a lucky break for me. Those things happen when you play ball. Besides, I get to eat all the ice cream I want!”
         “Don’t eat too much. You’ll get a stomach ache,” mom said.
         “Okay, I won’t. I promise.”
         “You feel all right?”
         “Yeah, I feel fine. You can go.”

         “Hold on, let me get a pencil, just a minute. Here’s one. Not so fast, I can’t write that fast.”
         Jack scribbled. His secretary prattled in her loud, high voice, and the man winced.
         “Sarah for God’s sake, slow down. I just had a heart attack. No, it’s fine to work. Yes, I’m sure, I just can’t stress myself, which is exactly what you're doing right now. You’re right, I’m sorry. I’m just a little scattered. Tell me that last number, but slower this time. Okay, got it. Yeah, I’ll give him a call. I’ll see you soon. Maybe a week, I’m not sure, I’m not a doctor.” Jack ended the call. He had scrawled the number of a vendor on a note pad.
         A shadow covered his bed. It grew off a man in a hospital gown, silent and still, with bandages around his head. Jack suspected he was a vet. Lots of vets came back from the war banged up, but this one looked even worse. It looked like there were things going on in his head that most wouldn’t dare think.
         “Can I help you?” Jack asked the man. The man said nothing.
         “If you don’t need anything, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. I’m very busy right now.” The man didn’t move. “Look, you can’t just stand there. If you don’t move, I’m going to call a nurse, and have her get you out of here.”
         He didn’t blink. He didn’t move, not a bit. Only his right hand shook a little. To Jack it looked like he was holding a phone, the way the fingers curled.
         “Are you going to do this the hard way or the easy way? I’ll help you with the hard way.” Jack was accustomed to doing things the hard way. His secretary could tell anybody that in her awful, screechy voice.
         “I…don’t…know you.”
         “It took you all this time to figure that out? You’re probably from the psych ward and can’t even understand me. Now I have a crazy on my hands.” He reached for the nurse call button. Before he pressed it he heard the other sentence.
         “Only people I know…get to live.”

         Steven bent the leather of his glove back and forth. It was already bent from use, but he continued. He wasn’t afraid of the hospital, even though he knew people died here. For a kid like him it was a place to watch television and eat ice cream. Every few minutes a nurse would poke her head in and check on him. He once asked if there were any other children that he could talk with, but the nurse told him no. Steven went back to bending his glove.
         It was partially the glove’s fault that he was here, it didn’t catch that ball. Tim had cracked a big hit right at Steven on the field, and the ball had smacked Steven right in the heart. He went down in a heap like a card-castle.
         Steven didn’t blame Timothy, it was an accident. Just one of those lucky breaks you hear about. A house gets broken into, or a dog gets lost. It just happened to Steven this time.
         Just one of those lucky breaks. He checked the clock. After a small moment of interpretation, he decided the clock said three.

         Her heart beat hard. It wasn’t diseased or hurt , but it was going a little crazy.
         She heard from outside her door a few words that her brain didn't like. The words were: smothered, escaped, and dangerous.
         There was another word: killed. Then the voices had moved on.
         Cassie heard the words and became frightened. She had only been in the hospital because of  diabetes trouble, and now her heart beat furiously. She didn’t know what was going on in the hospital, but she was scared and wanted her parents. She was sixteen and beginning to peel away from them, but now she wanted them back, to hold her and tell her that nobody would get her. She though about calling a nurse, but someone, some shadow, entered her room.
         She, like the two, noticed he didn’t blink. She, like the others, saw his hand and thought it was curled around a pen to take notes in school. She, like the others, only heard two sentences. Then she, like the others, heard nothing.

         Steven drummed his hands on his bed, pretending to be Ringo Starr. It was only a half hour before his father would arrive and see how he was, and Steven couldn’t wait to tell him about all the ice cream he could eat. He and his father would eat ice cream and talk about baseball and the Beatles. Steven would tell him about all the nice nurses and the smart doctors, and about how he wanted to be a doctor because of how fun it would be to save people’s lives all the time, just like Superman. He figured his dad would laugh and tell him to go for it, that he should do just that.
         Steven bent his glove again, and checked the clock. Only five minutes had passed. Surely time was not going fast enough; it had slowed down a little bit, to keep Steven in suspense.
         People were running back and forth outside his door. They all looked like they had some place to be, right now on the double. It made him think of war movies he watched. Like with John Wayne. How they would pull the triggers on their rifles or toss the grenades and the Nazis would howl and the Allies won in the end.
         The people outside looked scared, too. They kept looking over their shoulder and looking down hallways and around corners. Maybe a dog had gotten in the hospital, and they needed to find it and bring it back to the little boy and girl who had lost it and were crying because Robin (The dog’s name, Steven decided) had run away and might get hurt. But when the nurse or the doctor found Robin it would be a lucky break for the boy and girl.
         It was quiet outside his room now, and there were only fifteen minutes before his father was going to see him and they would talk about Superman and John Wayne, and maybe about getting a dog. His father would probably laugh and say something about having good enough grades and being responsible, and Steven would say yes I’ll take care of it and walk it and feed it. And I want to name it Robin, like in the Batman comics. His father will laugh and say Robin was a good name for a dog.
         The door opened. Steven looked up, expecting to see a nurse, or the doctor, or maybe his father.
         But no, it was a man in a dress, the kind that showed your bum if you turned around or bent over. The man was at the foot of Steven’s bed.
         “Who are you?” Steven asked. The man didn’t say anything. Steven saw his hand and thought it looked just like he had a grenade and was about to throw it, and he saw his unblinking eyes and thought it was like he was in the heat of Normandy, chucking that grenade too late, and it blasted too close to him and got him good, hit him in the head and that was why he had the bandage.
         “Do you have a name?” Steven asked. The man was probably just lonely. Steven smiled at him. The man said something.
         “None.”
         “You don’t have a name? That’s weird. My name’s Steven.” The man blinked, and Steven thought that maybe it was the first time he had seen the man blink but maybe he was wrong.
         “Ste…ven?” The man said, in a halting speech.
         “That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” Steven said and laughed. That was what his mom said sometimes.
         “I…know you,” The man said.
         “Yup! What’s your name?” Steven asked again.
         “I don’t think I have one,” the man said. He looked at his right hand. His head turned slowly on his neck, and Steven thought it needed oil. The man looked at his right hand, the grenade hand. He smoothed out the fingers until they looked normal. For the first time since the war, his hand looked normal, without fingers around a ball of air. He clenched them into a fist.
         “I’m alive.” The man looked out the little window in Steven’s room to outside. “I’m really alive.”
         “Of course you are,” Steven said. “Why wouldn’t you be?”
         “DOCTOR HE’S IN HERE!” A voice thundered from the door as it flew open. An orderly shot in and tackled the man, pining his hands behind his back. “Are you all right?” The orderly asked Steven.
         “I’m fine. What-” More orderlies and doctors poured in, followed by Steven’s father.
“Thank God Steven! He could have killed you!”
         “Him? Nah, he’s okay. We’ve been talking,” Steven said with a wave. The man was being hauled to his feet and put in restraints. “Why are you doing that?”
         “He’s dangerous, son,” Steven’s doctor said. “He killed three people in the hospital.”
         “But why?” Steven cried. “He didn’t seem that bad!”
         “His brain was injured when a grenade exploded. It damaged him so badly he started to kill. It was very lucky for you that you’re safe,” the doctor said.
         “He’s okay now!” Steven shouted as the doctor and orderlies hauled the man out. “I fixed him!”
         “You couldn’t have, son,” dad said. “He’s very sick.”
         The orderlies bore the man away. He didn't struggle.
         “He wasn’t bad,” Steven said. “He was good.” He began to cry. His father put his arm around him. “We were talking. He was happy he was alive.”
         “I’m sorry son, but it was too dangerous. It’s a lucky break for you that he didn’t do anything to you.”
         Steven’s doctor came in. He moved slowly. When he stood beside Steven’s bed, next to the machines, he spoke.
         “It’s true, he’s different now, Steven. But we can’t be sure he’s safe. He wants to be taken away, and we’re going to do him that honor. He’s going to a nice place, for people with…problems.”
         “He doesn’t have problems now!” Steven cried out. “I fixed him.”
         “I’m sorry Steven, we can’t be sure.”
         He waited for Steven to calm down and stop crying.
         “Can I visit him?”
         “Maybe. We’ll see.”
         “What was his name?” Steven asked. He looked up into the doctor’s eyes. They were blue, and flitting about.
         “He had none. I guess that’s what we called him. None. He…he said something, just one thing. That’s a little miracle. He said to tell you ‘thank you.’”