The Losers

  “What’s that?” Raphael asked.

  “That’s you, Taylor. That’s what’s left of you. Full front, lower segment. You don’t have a left hip socket. The left side of your pelvis is shattered. There’s no way that side of you could support your weight. There won’t be any prosthesis for you, Taylor. You’re on crutches for the rest of your life, boy. You might as well get that down in your mind.”

  Raphael stood on his crutches, looking at the X ray. “All right. I can live with that if I have to.”

  “You still want to try to get off the dope?”

  “Yes.” Raphael was still looking at the X ray, a horrible suspicion growing as he looked at the savagely disrupted remains of his pelvis that the shadowy picture revealed. “I think it’s time I got my head back together again.”

  ix

  “There really wasn’t any alternative, Raphael,” the doctor told him. “The damage was so extensive that there just wasn’t anything left to salvage. We were lucky to be able to restore normal urinary function.”

  “That’s the reason I’ve got this tube?” Raphael asked. “The catheter? Yes. That’s to allow the bladder time to heal. We should be able to remove it soon. There’ll be some discomfort at first, but that’ll pass and the function will be normal.”

  “Then there was no damage to the—uh—”

  “Some, but we were able to repair that—to a degree. That’s a pretty tricky area to work with. My guess is that even if we’d been able to save the scrotal area and one or both testes, normal sexual function probably couldn’t have been restored.”

  “Then I’m a eunuch.”

  “That’s a very old-fashioned term, Raphael,” the doctor said disapprovingly.

  Raphael laughed bitterly. “It’s an old-fashioned kind of condition. Will my voice change—all that kind of thing?”

  “That’s mythology. That kind of thing only happens if the removal takes place before puberty. Your voice won’t change, and your beard won’t fall out. You can check with an endocrinologist periodically if you like, but it won’t really be necessary.”

  “All right,” Raphael said, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. He’d begun to sweat again, and there was an unpleasant little twitching in his left hip.

  “Are you all right?” the doctor asked, looking at him with concern.

  “I can live with it.” Raphael’s left foot felt terribly cold.

  “Why don’t I have them increase your medication for a few days?” the doctor suggested.

  “No,” Raphael said sharply. He lifted himself up and got his crutches squared away.

  “In time it’ll begin to be less important, Raphael,” the doctor said sympathetically.

  “Sure. Thanks for your time. I know you’re busy.”

  “Can you make it back to your room okay?”

  “I can manage it.” Raphael turned and left the doctor’s office.

  Without the drugs he found that he slept very little. After nine, when the visitors left, the hospital became quiet, but never wholly silent. When he found his hand twitching, reaching almost of its own volition for the bell that would summon the nurse with the needle, he would get out of bed, take his crutches, and wander around in the halls. The effort and the concentration it required to walk helped to keep his mind off his body and its craving.

  His arms and shoulders were stronger now, and Quillian had given him his permanent crutches. They were called Canadian crutches, a term that seemed very funny to Raphael for some reason. They had leather cuffs that fit over his forearms, and they angled slightly at the handgrips. Using them was much less awkward, and he began to develop the smooth, almost stately pace of the one-legged man.

  He haunted the halls of the hospital during the long hours of the night, listening to the murmurs and the pain-filled moans of the sick and the dying. Although he realized that it might have been merely coincidence, a series of random occurrences of an event that could happen at any time, Raphael became persuaded that most people die at night. Usually they died quietly, but not always. Sometimes, in the exhaustion with which he sandbagged his craving body to sleep toward the morning of each interminable night, he wondered if it might not somehow be him. It seemed almost as if his ghosting passage down the dim halls, like the turbulence in the wake of a passing ship, reached in through the doors and walls to draw out those teetering souls. Sometimes in those last moments before sleep he almost saw himself as the Angel of Death.

  Once, during his restless midnight wandering, he heard a man screaming in agony. He angrily crutched his way to the nurses’ station. “Why don’t you give him a shot?” he demanded.

  “It wouldn’t do any good,” the starched young nurse replied sadly. “He’s an alcoholic. His liver’s failed. Nothing works with that. He’s dying, and there’s nothing we can give him to relieve the pain.”

  “You didn’t give him enough,” Raphael told her, his voice very quiet, even deadly.

  “We’ve given him the maximum dosage. Any more would kill him.”

  “So?”

  She was still quite young, so her ideals had not yet been eroded away. She stared at Raphael, her face deathly white. And then the tears began to run slowly down her cheeks.

  Shimpsie noted from Raphael’s chart that he had been refusing the painkilling medication, and she disapproved. “You must take your medication, Raphael,” she chided. “Why?”

  “Because the doctors know what’s best for you.”

  He made an indelicate sound. “I’ve got the free run of the hospital, Shimpsie,” he told her. “I’ve been in the doctors’ lounge, and I’ve heard them talking. Don’t bullshit me about how much doctors know. They’re plumbers and pill pushers. I haven’t heard an original thought from one of them since I’ve been here.”

  “Why do you go out of your way to be so difficult?”

  “It’s an attention-getting device, Shimpsie.” He smiled at her sweetly. “I want you all to remember me. I quit taking the goddamn dope because I don’t want to get hooked. I’ve got enough problems already.”

  “There are programs to help you break that habit,” she assured him. Her voice was actually earnest.

  “You’ve got a program for everything, haven’t you, Shimpsie? You send a couple of orderlies to my room about nine times a week to drag me to meetings—meetings of the lame, the halt, and the blind—where we all sit around spilling our guts for you. If you want to fondle guts, go fondle somebody else’s. Mine are just fine the way they are.”

  “Why can’t I get through to you? I’m only trying to help.”

  “I don’t need help, Shimpsie. Not yours, anyway.”

  “You want to do it ‘your way’? Every client starts out singing ‘My Way.’ You’ll come around eventually.”

  “Don’t make any bets. As I recall, I warned you that you weren’t going to enjoy this. You’d save yourself a lot of grief if you just gave up on me.”

  “Oh no, Taylor. I never give up. You’ll come around—because if you don’t, you’ll stay here until you rot. We’ll grow old together, Taylor, because you won’t get out of here until I sign you off. Think about it.” She turned to leave.

  He couldn’t let her get in the last word like that. He absolutely couldn’t. “Oh, Shimpsie?” he said mildly.

  “Yes?”

  “You really shouldn’t get so close to my bed, you know. I haven’t gotten laid for a long time. Besides, you’ve got a nice big can, and I’m a compulsive fanny-patter.”

  She fled.

  Finally, when the craving for the drugs had almost gone and the last dressings had been removed to reveal the puckered, angry red new scars on his hip and groin, when the Christmas season was upon them, Flood finally came to visit.

  Their meeting was awkward, since there was very little they could really talk about. Raphael could sense in Flood that stifling unease all hospital visitors have. They talked desultorily of school, which was out for the Christmas holiday; of the weather, which was foul; and of nea
rly anything else except those uncomfortable subjects that by unspoken mutual consent they avoided.

  “I brought your luggage and books and your other stuff,” Flood said. “I decided to get an apartment off campus next semester, and I was pretty sure you wouldn’t want the college to store your things. They tend to be a little careless.”

  “Thanks, Damon.”

  “Are you going to be coming back to school when you get out of here?” Flood asked, a curiously intent look in his dark eyes.

  “I haven’t decided yet. I think I’ll wait a semester or so—get things together first.”

  “Probably not a bad idea. Tackle one thing at a time.” Flood walked to the window and stood looking out at the rain.

  “How’s ‘Bel?” Raphael asked, crossing that unspoken boundary.

  “Fine—as far as I know, anyway. I haven’t been going down

  there much. ‘Bel gets a little tiresome after a while, and I’ve been studying pretty hard.”

  “You?” Raphael laughed. “I didn’t think you knew how.”

  Flood turned back from the window, grinning. “I’m not much of a scholar,” he admitted, “but I didn’t think it’d look good to flunk out altogether. Old J.D.’d like nothing better than to find an excuse to cut off my allowance.”

  “Look,” Raphael said uncomfortably, “I really ran my mouth that night at ‘Bel’s place. If you happen to see her, tell her I apologize, okay?”

  “What the hell? You were drunk. Nobody takes offense at anything you say when you’re drunk. Besides, you were probably right about her. I told you about that, didn’t I?”

  “All the same,” Raphael insisted, “tell her I apologize.”

  “Sure”—Flood shrugged—“if I see her. You need anything?”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  “I’d better get going then. I’ve got a plane to catch.” “Going home for Christmas?”

  “It’s expected. Scenic Grosse Pointe for the holidays. Hot spit. At least it’ll pacify the old man—keep those checks coming.” He looked at his watch. “I’m going to have to get cranked up. I’ll look you up when I get back, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Take care, Gabriel,” Flood said softly, and then he left. They did not shake hands, and the inadvertent slip passed almost unnoticed.

  The hospital became intolerable now that his body was mending. Raphael wanted out—away—anyplace but in the hospital. He became even more irritable, and the nurses pampered him, mistakenly believing that he was disappointed because he could not go home for Christmas. It was not the holiday, however. He simply wanted out.

  Shimpsie was going to be a problem, however. On several occasions she had held her power to withhold her approval for his discharge over his head. Raphael considered it in that private place in his mind and made a decision that cost him a great deal in sacrificed pride. The next day he got “saved.” He went through the entire revolting process. Once he even broke down and cried for her. Shimpsie, her eyes filled with compassion and with the thrill of victory, comforted him, taking him in her arms as he feigned racking sobs. Shimpsie’s deodorant had failed her sometime earlier that day, and being comforted by her was not a particularly pleasant experience.

  She began to talk brightly about “preparation for independent living.” She was so happy about it that Raphael almost began to feel ashamed of himself. Almost.

  He was fully ambulatory now, and so one day she drove him to one of those halfway houses. In the world of social workers, everything had a halfway house. Ex-convicts, ex-junkies, ex-sex offenders—all of them had a halfway house—a kind of purgatory midway between hell and freedom. Shimpsie really wanted the state of Oregon to pick up Raphael’s tab, but he firmly overrode that. He was running a scam—a subterfuge—and he wanted to pay for it himself, buying, as it were, his own freedom. He paid the deposit and the first month’s rent for a seedy, rather run-down room in an old house on a quiet back street, and Shimpsie drove him back to the hospital. She fervently promised to look in on him as soon as he got settled in. Then, just before she hurried off to one of her meetings, she hugged him, a little misty-eyed.

  “It’s all right, Joanie,” he said consolingly. “We’ll be seeing each other again.” That had been one of the marks of his rehabilitation. He had stopped calling her “Shimpsie” and used “Joanie” instead. He cringed inwardly each time he did it.

  She nodded and went off down the hall, exuding her smug sense of victory.

  “So long, Shimpsie,” Raphael murmured under his breath. “I’m really going to miss you.” The funny thing was that he almost meant it. He turned and crutched his way toward the gym. He wanted to say good-bye to Quillian.

  “I see you’re leaving,” Quillian said, his voice harsh as always. Raphael nodded. “I stopped by to say thanks.” “It’s all part of the job.”

  “Don’t be a shithead. I’m not trying to embarrass you, and I’m not talking about showing me how to use these.” He waved one of his crutches.

  “All right. Did you finally quit feeling sorry for yourself?” “No. Did you?”

  Quillian laughed suddenly. “No, by God, I never did. You’re going to be okay, Taylor. Be honest with yourself, and don’t be afraid to laugh at yourself, and you’ll be okay. Watch out for booze and drugs when you get out there, though,” he added seriously. “It’s an easy way out, and a lot of us slip into that. It’d be particularly easy for you. All you’d have to do is shamble into any doctor’s office in the country and walk out fifteen minutes later with a pocketful of prescriptions. You’ve got the perfect excuse, and Dr. Feelgood is just waiting for you.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  Quillian looked at him for a moment. “Be careful out there, Taylor. The world isn’t set up for people like us. Don’t fall down—not in front of strangers.”

  “We all fall down once in a while.”

  “Sure,” Quillian admitted, “but those bastards out there’ll just walk around you, and you can’t get up again without help.”

  “I’ll remember that, too. Take care, Quillian, and thanks again.”

  “Get the hell out of here, Taylor. I’m busy. I’ve got people around here who still need me.” They shook hands, and Raphael left the therapy room for the last time.

  He stored most of his things at the hospital, taking only two suitcases.

  The pasty-faced man from the halfway house was waiting for him outside the main entrance, but Raphael had planned his escape very carefully. He already had his reservation at a good downtown hotel, and he had called a cab, telling the dispatcher very firmly that

  he wanted to be picked up at the side door. As his cab drove him away from the hospital, he began to laugh.

  “Something funny?” the driver asked him.

  “Very, very funny, old buddy,” Raphael said, “but it’s one of those inside kind of jokes.”

  He spent the first few nights in the hotel. It was a good one, and there were bellhops and elevators to make things easier. He began to refer to it in his mind as his own private halfway house. He had his meals sent up to his room, and he bathed fairly often, feeling a certain satisfaction at being able to manage getting in and out of the tub without help. After he had been in the hotel for two days, he bathed again and then lay on the bed to consider the future.

  There was no reason to remain in Portland. He was not going back to Reed—not yet certainly—probably never. There were too many painful associations there. He also knew that if he stayed, sooner or later people would begin to come around—to look him up. In his mind he left it at that—“people”—even though what he really meant was Isabel and Marilyn. It was absolutely essential that he have no further contact with either of them.

  He called the desk and made arrangements to have the hotel pick up the rest of his belongings from the hospital and ship them to his uncle in Port Angeles. He could send for them later, after he got settled. The sense of resolve, of having made a decision, was quite satisfying
; and since it had been a big day, he slept well that night.

  The next morning he called Greyhound. A plane would be faster certainly, but airlines keep records, and he could not really be sure just how far Shimpsie might go to track him down. Shimpsie had full access to the resources of the Portland Police Department, if she really wanted to push it, and Shimpsie would probably want to push it as far as it would go. Hell, as they say, hath no fury like a social worker scorned, and Raphael had not merely scorned Shimpsie, he had tricked her, deceived her, and generally made a fool of her. Right now Shimpsie would probably walk through fire to get him so that she could tear his heart out with her bare hands.

  It was difficult to explain things over the phone to the man at Greyhound. It was really against policy for an interstate bus to make an unscheduled stop at a downtown street corner. Raphael waved the missing leg at him and finally got around that.

  Then there was the question of destination. Raphael quickly calculated the amount of time it would take for a messenger to reach the depot with the money and return with a ticket. He concentrated more on that time than upon any given destination. He wanted to be gone from Portland. He wanted to go anyplace as long as it wasn’t Portland.

  Finally the man on the phone, puzzled and more than a little suspicious, ventured the information that there were still seats available on the bus that would leave for Spokane in two hours, and that the bus would actually pass Raphael’s hotel. That was a good sign. Raphael had not had any good luck for so long that he had almost forgotten what it felt like. “Good,” he said. “Hold one of those seats for me. I’ll be outside the front door of the hotel.”

  “Are you sure you want to go to Spokane?” the man at Greyhound asked dubiously.

  “Spokane will do just fine,” Raphael said. “Everything I’ve always wanted is in Spokane.”

  Fortuna plango vulnera stillantibus ocellis

  i

  It was snowing when they reached Spokane, a swirling snowfall of tiny crystalline flakes that glittered in the streetlights and muffled the upper floors of the buildings. The traffic on the white-covered streets was sparse, and dark, ill-defined automobiles loomed, bulky and ominous, out of the swirling white with headlights like smeared eyes.