White Gowns

“What? Did you finally decide last night to kick the bucket? It sure as hell looks like it. Either that or your water broke”

I felt the resurfacing of my consciousness from the depths of nightmares. My perfunctory senses were slow to start up by this age, but as my hearing sharpened, I made out the cackled laughing from the bed over. My eyes fluttered open against inoperable cataracts.

“Look at that, you’re actually alive. Tell me, when you were fucking that slut in your dreams, did you piss in the dream? Or did you manage to at least imagine an orgasm?”

Without my dentures in and a sufficient amount of water from the night before, I ran the risk of gluing my gums together. It took the help of the nursing staff using pipettes of water to unlatch my jaw. Despite the relatively harmless nature of dehydration, I still tasted blood that morning.

“Your gums are glued together, aren’t they pal? That’s just swell! Let’s hope your bitch friend doesn’t come in here to ruin all the fun I’m gonna have.”

This was a miserable morning. Whether I could talk or not, I refused to encourage him.

“There’s been something I’ve been wanting to say to you…”

He coughed violently and wheezed desperately for 30 seconds. I wanted to relish the moments of quiet. The asthmatic lung cancer was attacking his second most vital function to survival. I wanted to take joy in the stabbing pain he must have felt. I wanted to remind him of the nicotine that would never meet his alveoli again while he was trapped in this sterilized coffin. Regardless, it was useless. He had managed to manipulate the nurses into connecting him to a morphine drip. He slid back into his bed, pressed a button a few times, and continued to harass me.

“You want me to hurt, don’t you? You want me dead? You would smile and laugh if you could. I know that you want to. It’s the sins of this world that people smile and laugh at; that people enjoy. No one wants to die because they know they won’t be able to taste their favorite prejudices again. Maybe you wouldn’t be in this God forsaken place if you had laughed more at the people you hurt.”

Almost as if on cue, she walked in.

“Are you being rude again, Bub? There is no need to bring hate into this room. The world sees enough of it already.”

I was grateful G was there. Not only was the desperation for water relentless, but also I could count on her to temporarily manage my miserable roommate. She helped rehydrate the cells in my mouth and revitalize my throat.

“Would you like me to tell you what I know about hate? What I know about the world? Hate is what builds kingdoms. Hate is what abolishes slavery. Hate is what saves starving children. Hate is what cures disease. We’ve all hated ourselves so much that we didn’t have enough hate for the rest of the world. It ends up doing everyone else a favor when you feel good after hitting the ‘donate’ button. Go ahead and remind yourselves how much you hate you each morning and watch the good it’ll do the world. I tell you what; the slaves don’t hate themselves. Starving children don’t hate themselves. Sick people don’t hate themselves. They hate everyone else, and look how far they’re getting. I’m doing this sod a favor by tearing him down.”

A twisted fallacy. A broken truth. These were what he would fight with, but I could never volley with a counter argument. I wasn’t capable enough to wield words against him.

“Haven’t you seen the love good does to people? I’ve seen fine folks that loved their whole life walk out those sliding doors, fighting back against all kinds of terminal sicknesses. I ain’t ever seen hate save a life.”

G always tried her best, but her comments paled in comparison to the ages of thought Bub had spent on cruelty. I doubted whether G was naïve, or if she just lacked evidential proof. Bub always supported his arguments with universal truths that seemed to trace back centuries. I remembered he used to make the girl scouts read him the story of Adam and Eve. Then he would whisper in their ears about what the sex must have been like.

“Love is just an illusion of pleasure and there’s plenty of pleasure in hate. Maybe you should ask ‘Water Works’ over here who he was getting sweet pleasure from last night that caused his leakage situation. It might even have been you, G.”

It was true. Not that I had dreamt of G. Whatever I had dreamt was gone. Regardless, my catching device had failed the night before and my inner thighs were soaked and losing heat. I was too old to blush, but there’s a certain embarrassment that still comes with not controlling your own micturition.

As for what Bub had said, I consistently wondered whether love was real. There had been people years ago and their faces drifted in and out of focus. There were memories, but I couldn’t give it too much thought. I endangered my heart condition if I spent too much time in the past. Like koi in a pond, memories would only cause ripples at the surface when they were fed. Some number of years ago, I stopped feeding them and their size has been dwindling since.

“This isn’t time for revisiting the good ol’ days, faggot. Unless you somehow remembered who your ‘call-for-a-good-time’ was, in which case, I’ll take two.”

I wanted to leave. The white gowns were light on my shoulders, but the fluorescent lights bore down on my soul. Every day was a battle against beatings from the beeps on my EKG and the groans of a blood pressure test. My heart had lost its time and the rhythm was out of sync. The irregularities were easy to notice; they sounded like cries for help. Bub seemed to perk up when the red flags went up and the nurses had to come in. I’m pretty sure he had other things perked when the nurses came in as well.

After my vitals were taken, G left and I was alone. Even the max amount of morphine wasn’t enough to sedate the most persistent suffering in my daily annoyances. Bub would hardly flinch at an injection of horse tranquilizer. The anesthesiologist wasn’t talented enough to knock him out so I could rest.

I had been placed in a room where I could see the sky outside if the door was left ajar. My eyesight wasn’t great, but I was at least able to at least make out the forecast. That day, the sky carried heavy burdens, weighed down with dark cumulous matter. The clouds swirled aggressively and threatened to fall.

“Hey, Water Works, you ever think about all the things you used to have and lost?”

I had no choice but to talk that day. I tried to practice with my voice when I could, but it was a slow and lofty process.

“I only lose sleep,” I said.

“All you ever do is sleep,” Bub said.

I didn’t feel like mentioning the egregiously annoying respirator that was left on to assist his labored breathing at night. Even if I told him how many nights it had kept me up, he wouldn’t care.

“I’m talking about the things you miss most. Like an erect penis, a double bacon cheeseburger, or stealing money. I’ve seen the way your kids dress when they solemnly stalk in here. You had it real good. It definitely looks like daddy’s money. Did the silver spoon you shoved in their mouths carry the same bullshit you keep telling yourself? Your kids haven’t been here in a while. I guess they finally had the common sense to see a lost cause. Hey! There’s another thing you’ve lost. The reason for anyone to give a shit about you.”

“My kids are happy,” I managed to say slowly and uncertainly.

I had thought they were happy. It was harder to tell each time they came to see me. The visits became less frequent and the stories they told became more abbreviated. There were more errands to run and more grandkids to be picked up from rugby practice. I had remembered trying to tell a funny story about my wife at one point…

“Yeah, and your wife too. She was a nice piece of ass, wasn’t she? I mean, that wedding day photo you’ve got in here is cute, sure, but it’s not gonna change anything. It’s too bad she had to leave. I was curious as to what you thought about all that. Personally, I think you didn’t take enough when you had the chance and now, everything is lost. Maybe those wet dreams would’ve been more vivid if you had gone for a mistress. Those are better memories than the happy ‘white picket fence’ shit you pretended to have.”

I just wanted him gone. He was insufferable. In my attempt to tune him out, I spent time trying to find that memory of the story I was wanted to tell to my kids. It was harder than I thought.

It was my fault and I loathed myself for it. I fought to recall memories that I had shrugged off years ago. I let go of them as easy as I had stood when I had younger knees. Younger knees. They could stick a double layout full out. They could carry my full-grown German Shepard Holly when she sprained her ankle. They could do the bop after a couple scotch and tonics. Now they fold as easily as the wrinkles that shamefully hide them.

“Weren’t you a gymnast?” he asked.

“I was. I went to the championships.”

“What, like in the UK? Not like it matters. The universe throws everyone into chaos. All those athletes train for hours, wasting away their time. You might have done all those flips and shit, but none of that means anything to your body. It was destined to abandon you. I hope it got you laid, pal.”

It should have been harder to hear him over the rushing wind by the windows. Bub seemed to speak directly inside my head. I worked to concentrate on that memory I was trying to find as a means of shutting him out. I had started unearthing different memories, but none of them were any good. The longer I reflected, the longer I came across all the trials and tribulations. It seemed like life was filled with mishaps and misery. At the end of it all, it wasn’t hard to make ends meet. It wasn’t a happy reunion.

“You hear that shit? It’s really fucking blowing outside.”

They called it tornado alley. I had remembered getting into a fight outside a bowling alley in the 60’s. The boy had kissed one of my friends’ girlfriends. I’m pretty sure she had instigated it, but that didn’t keep us from putting him on a stretcher. My father got the call from the police chief and challenged me to the same fight when I got home. He called all his friends over to help. He hit me twice before I hit back. I got scared and ran away when my mother started to sob.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about! I fucking love this weather! Look what it’s bringing out of you? When weather lets loose, so do we. It feels good. Hell, you even remember hitting your dad.”

The sirens were blaring and I thought I’d heard Bub mention me hitting my Dad, but that must have been impossible. That was all in my head. I hadn’t said a word. He was still unbelievably audible.

ICU patients were racing by with nurses scrambling after them, keeping tabs on pulses and blood pressures. My business partner was brought to the ICU after a motorbike accident. He was changing lanes and forgot to look over his left shoulder. I had been sleeping with his wife and I remember cursing the thoughts I had about not having the opportunity to sleep with her again at the funeral.

“When it comes to life and death, we always choose life. Even suicide is a choice of life. People that take their own lives have chosen to win. They beat all the suffering that life brings to us. Sure they pass up on all the good stuff, but nothing good ever lasts. Those of us that reach forward are only reaching for death. We’re programmed to keep going, no matter whom we bother. It’s a shitty mechanism. Thankfully we’re waited on hand and foot in this hellhole and we give nothing back. We make our kids pay for all the surgeries. It’s the price they have to pay for letting us live this long. It’s the price they have to pay for sticking around this long. This tornado is going to prove exactly how the next generation is going to take more to live a little longer. The staff is going to clear this ward last if at all. They know that we’ve reached too far. They’re ready to let us die.”

I heard a window shatter in the distance. When I was boy, I smashed a window. I punched walls. I screamed at closed doors. I couldn’t understand why the only memories I was pulling up were violent and barbaric. I had studied at Yale, there was more to me than this. The walls were falling apart around me.

And the moment I was hit in the head by my toppled IV stand, the strike to my temple brought me the memory I was looking for.

At a dingy theatre in London, my wife and I had gone to see Othello. A man in drag as it turned out played Desdemona. My wife was furious, and began to heckle the man. I was embarrassed and begged her to stop, but she refused. We had to be asked to leave by the ushers. I asked her what the hell that was all about on the way back home. She had said it was a disgrace to the beauty of Desdemona. It wasn’t until 17 years later that I realized she had been so excited to see a beautiful actress she had been writing letters too and had hoped she would be playing Desdemona that night. She had fallen in love for this actress and actively sought her out in small theatres. I had always found her love of small venue theatrics to be interesting and quirky. I never knew her obsession and eventual romance would turn into a marriage at the age of 67. We were married for over 31 years when she signed the last of the divorce papers. I’m not sure if I ever really knew, but I refused to let the marriage die. She never had the courage to be resilient until gay marriage was legalized.

I had thought it was funny when I realized that the incident in that small theatre and her sexuality were related. I wanted to tell my kids, but I stopped because I was afraid of what they would think of me.

I woke up to a hospital room in shambles. Bub was standing beside my bed.

“Looks like you’ve been given another chance, Water Works. You’ve moved beyond regretting all your life decisions, you’ve managed to laugh at yourself for all the mistakes you’ve made. That’s just the kind of person I like to work with. I think you’re ready to take a life you’ve been destined for. Your mentorship is complete. I want you to remember the words I’ve brought you in our short time together, and then I’d like to propose a deal.”

“And what would that be?” I said, surprised by my own ability to speak so fluently.

“I’m going to take you to the wedding day of you and your business partner’s wife. Well, she was his wife, but she’s yours now. She’ll be in a stunning white gown, and she’ll devote herself to you. If you manage to pick the right business partner, you’ll have the power to bring the world to its knees. Any temptation, any desire will only take the dialing of a number.”

It was just good enough to be true. An opportunity like this would obviously have costs, but at this point, I was willing to pay.

“What do I have to do?” I said.

“All you have to do is live exactly as you want to. I’ve been watching you, and you’ve been a devoted follower to me all this time. I’m proud of where you’ve come, but it’s time for you to tap into your potential. Consider this an investment into who I know you to be.”

I said yes and took the deal with the devil.