Read Theater Macabre for Free Online Page A

blazing lights.
    Attached to them, a car.
     
     
    *
     
     
    Anyone who wakes up in a hospital and says he doesn’t know where he is, is a daft prick. There are clear indicators.
    The smell of shit floating in a bottle of bleach.
    All the people walking around with stiff smiles and white clothing, oozing rehearsed concern from every pore.
    The machinery. If you find yourself hooked up to anything, you’re either a junkie, or a patient.
    The sheer cleanliness of it. Everything is white, like a practice run for Heaven, if such a place exists. The staff here clearly thinks so.
    After coming to and surveying my surrounds, I closed my eyes and ran an internal diagnostic, as they used to say on Star Trek , hoping I could get at least a passing idea of how bad my injuries were before the doctor had a chance to tell me.
    I was breathing. That was a start.
    I could move my head, my hands.
    Couldn’t move my legs.
    Fuck.
    When a doctor finally arrived, he looked me over, stuck a light in my eye, hummed thoughtfully, prodded my legs with what looked like a pencil, hummed again and stood at the foot of my bed jotting something down on his clipboard. I measured the length of his silence by the beeps from the machine to my left.
    “Well…?” I asked after what felt like an hour.
    He peered at me over his glasses. “You’re lucky to be alive, Mr. Kelly.”
    “Call me Ger.”
    “Ger.”
    “What happened?”
    “Hit and run, they’re saying.”
    “Bollocks. What’s the damage?” I could have been talking to a mechanic about repairs to my car.
    “You’re paralyzed from the waist down. I’m sorry.” He didn’t sound it.
    “Don’t be sorry,” I told him. “Fix it.”
    “Not sure we can,” he replied in that same emotionless tone, the same one I imagined him using to tell family members their loved one had died. Nothing more we could do. My condolences.
    “Not sure?”
    “You broke your back, Mr. Kelly.”
    “It’s Ger.”
    “Ger. There’s extensive trauma to the vertebrae, multiple lacerations to the spinal column. T-2 ab—”
    “Hey Doc?”
    “Yes?”
    “I don’t watch ER. ”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Speak English, or so help me, legs or no legs I’ll throw this fucking machine at you.”
    “I’ll have to ask you to keep your voice down.”
    “And I’ll have to ask you to tell me the long-term diagnosis before I realize the potential my dead legs have as bludgeons.”
    He screwed up his face as if I was some curiosity just off the boat from the Galapagos. “We’re going to keep you here for a while. See what we can do. But for now it’s best to be realistic. The chances of you walking again, barring a miracle, aren’t good.”
    I stared at him for a moment, brushing aside the awesome implications of what he’d just told me in favor of anger.
    “I bet you’re a real treat at parties.”
     
     
    *
     
     
    I was there a day and a half before I had any visitors.
    My family.
    Gathered around me, wailing and sobbing and praying like a bunch of religious fanatics whose lilac bushes had caught fire and delivered to them instructions on how to save the world.
    They fawned over me, all my sins forgiven, asked me if there was anything I needed.
    I said, “Yeah. My legs.”
    They smiled sadly. “We’ll pray for you.”
    Told them, “Thanks.”
    When they’d left, I instructed the nurse to take all their flowers and cards and toss them in the trash.
    “Maybe someone else would like them?” she suggested.
    I had been about to tell her where else she could put them, but registered how pretty she was, and how genuine her smile looked, so said instead, “Sure. If you can find another “Dear Ger” in here, feel free.” She was pleased, and with the help of another nurse, gathered up the flowers and cards and made off with them.
    They tried to put pajamas on me. I refused them. The stripy cotton reminded me too much of prison blues, though I didn’t bother telling them that.
    My world became a monotony