The Scream

The Scream

His screams carried well along the linoleum and cinderblock hallway. The kids in ICU would glance up whenever the howling started. The howl wouldn’t last long before the women in white would pounce and jab a long cold needle into his small leg. Then all that could be heard was simpering before he gave into the creeping drugs. The women in white would straighten his gnarled body, smooth the sheets and return to monitoring the others, knowing he would be out for a few precious hours. Blissful quiet would dissipate throughout the wing, motion would return; doctors went to their patients, nurses filled out paperwork, all denying that they had stopped in the first place.

David appeared on the emergency entrance ramp, covered with a thin dust of snow. He had been wrapped in a heavy woolen blanket, tucked into a large basket. His screams were tiny then, tinier than he. Wails of hunger are easily distinguishable from those of pain and hopelessness his were the former. The emergency worker nearly stepped on the small bundle when lifting the gurney out. Julie, a candy striper, gathered the bundle and rushed to the pediatrics wing. Dr. Zaleski extracted the precious find from the folds of wool and even though he had seen his share of injures he couldn’t hold in the gasp which forced the room to inspect his purple and red treasure.

A miracle occurred the night that Dr. Zaleski went to work on the cuts and bruises. A body that small shouldn’t have so much blood to give. Luckily the tissue was young and malleable. After a marathon session with the good doctor and various nurses, who would replace each other when exhausted, David was laid on a fresh set of sheets to wait. Dr. Zaleski smoothed the hair that was left on David’s repaired scalp and went on his rounds. The cuts were easy enough to fix, the overworked physician was concerned about the after effects once the bandages came off clean.

For the first couple of weeks, David was quiet as a mouse. Eating little, he stared into space for hours on end while the antiseptic did its job. The nurses would come by his bed every morning at 8 and 10, lunch came on a white austere tray at 12, and then more visits at 3, 5, and 8 p.m. and twice during the night. Each time she would straighten the flawlessly straight sheet, fluff the fluffy pillow, and hang over him smiling, all the while chirping about how nice it was outside or how well he looked on that particular day. The psychologist came by to see if he could coax David to talk or play. Bringing brightly colored stuffed toys, he would try to get the boy to respond. Some days he would leave satisfied if David blinked.

The first howl came as a shock at 3:17 a.m. on a particularly quiet night. The night nurses had been gossiping about the new interns when the stillness was ripped to shreds. Dana paged for Dr. Zaleski while Corinne dashed to the bed. When the doctor stumbled into the room barefoot, David had been hitting the same note for 3 minutes. His body had become a rigid arch with his heart as the keystone. The kids in the unit were staring through the dusky light of the room at David, caught in the spotlight of his overhead lamp, not bothering to stem the flow of spontaneous tears. This was the first night of his drugging.

David let loose his howl it was the same pitch, volume, and note. Sometimes he would go days without an outburst and then have seven within three days. When new doctors were introduced to the unit, their first stop was at the foot of David’s bed where his dilemma was described fully in dramatic detail. David lay there while being spoken about, he merely stared at some magical in-between only broken by a howl and drugged sleep. One unfortunate intern was listening attentively when the howl started. His tour guide calmly took the syringe from Dana while the intern pressed himself against the opposite wall. The unfortunate soul transferred out the next day.

It was 6:37 p.m. when David started. Dr. Zaleski was called in to document this particular screaming bout. Roaring settled into humming, transitioned into yodeling, growling, islands of silence and sudden screeches. Thrashing his sheets, twisting northern and southern hemispheres in opposite directions, levitating off the bed and slamming back to earth, David’s body raged against the terror in his brain. Climaxing with a glass-shattering shriek gruesome enough to turn a dead man’s hair white, the little body settled into a deep slumber. No drugs were needed tonight.