C Reiss - Sing

“Funny girl.”

“Your father has been in the cafeteria for a week to be near you.”

“Fuck, Monica. No. What did he say to you?”

I put my hands on either side of him and leaned over his face, blocking the light from the window.

“I’ll make a deal with the devil to save you.”

“Don’t. Whatever it is, don’t do it.”

“I’m giving you a reason to live.”

He swallowed hard and stared past me, at the ceiling.

“You are my reason to live. Fuck.” His lips moved in a litany of fucks that had no sound. They were made of breath and panic. I glanced at the machines, they seemed okay, not that I knew what that meant. They weren’t beeping or honking, the stylus that kept track of his heartbeat was making the same scritchy noise it always did.

“It’s okay,” I said, but was it? I had no guarantee I wasn’t being fucked with royally. I had no idea who I was dealing with. Declan seemed to be a different person to everyone who spoke about him. Who was he to me? And would I find out the hard way?

“I’m stuck here,” he said. “I can’t do anything but trust you, can I?”

“No. You can’t. I love you, you have to know that.”

“I know it. But your decision-making...”

“I decided to wait you out when you left me. I decided to ask you for exclusivity. I decided to let you kiss me on Mulholland Drive. I could go on.”

“Maybe later,” he said weakly.

“Will you do it for me, though? See your father?”

I put everything into the question, and that was a mistake. He shouldn’t see any emotion from me with regard to Declan. I should have played blithe or irritated. But I’d played it honest and I didn’t realize my error until the machines started whining and Jonathan’s eyes closed.

JONATHAN

Fiona had gotten kicked in the chest once, at the riding academy, as she was making a token attempt to learn to check a hoof for splits. The thoroughbred had just gotten annoyed, and Fiona, who never listened to a damn thing anyone said, had been sitting in the wrong spot. She went flying. Two broken ribs and a bruised ego later, she quit riding.

I’d probably never see Fiona again to tell her getting defibrillated repeatedly felt the same as getting kicked in the chest by a horse looked.

Monica stood in the corner, wringing her hands like she wanted to break a bone. She was terrified. I must have gone into arrest at some point in our conversation. I forgot what I’d said.

“How are you feeling Mister Drazen?” asked the doctor, a young guy I’d seen pass through a couple of times. He looked at his chart and barked orders immediately after the question. The number of people in the room had doubled in the minute I was unconscious.

“Like a newlywed.”

“Congratulations.” He listened to my heart, eyes on an instrument panel. “You’ve taken quite a beating. I don’t know how many more times we can do this.”

“What’s the world record? I want to break it.”

“Stop trying to be funny,” Monica said from her corner.

“Joking in this situation is common, Miss,” the doctor said as he scribbled something on the chart, speaking medicalese to the nurse before and after his statement.

“What situation is that?”

My wife was about to verbally cross-check the doctor, I saw it in the fact that she wouldn’t look at me. She only had laser-hot eyes for the guy in the scrubs. As if he could feel her seething, he stopped mumbling nonsense to the nurse and turned to her.

“He needs a heart, Miss.”

“Or what?”

I could see the thrust of this conversation a mile away, even feeling like a bag of shit, with the hiss of oxygen tubes drowning out much of what was being said. If the doctor mentioned, implied, or thought about my death, she was going to go ballistic and get escorted out. I didn’t want her to have to negotiate reentry. Every minute without her was a minute wasted.

“Goddess?”

She didn’t answer.

“Monica,” I tried to put dominance in my voice, and I know I came up short, but as if hearing the intention and not the result, she turned toward me. “Go get my father for me, would you?”

MONICA

Any shadow of a feeling resembling doubt left my mind when those machines went crazy. I was in empty panic when they all rushed in, and when they put this paddles on this chest and he convulsed, well, the empty panic turned to something else. Something like, when you feel pressure in your bladder, you go to the bathroom. You may stop and do other things, but your ultimate goal, at some point is to release that pressure. Everything else is either a distraction, or a means to an end.

When I walked out of Jonathan’s room to get his father, I had absolutely nothing on my mind but making sure some motherfucker put a new heart in him. I did not ever want to see that again. I never, ever wanted to get used to it. If I went to jail for killing someone who was already pretty much dead, fuck it. I could be cool with that.

Declan paced the lobby, phone pressed to his ear. Even as exhausted as he must have been, he looked clean, energetic and calm. This must be a Drazen thing. Only Leanne in her general slovenliness and Sheila in her constant backbitten rage ever seemed a tick to the left of perfect. And Theresa, who looked buffed and polished when I’d met her before, had looked like she’d run a marathon in pumps when she came to the hospital. Maybe they were all human after all.

Except, Declan of course, who had been described as less than human, yet somehow had shown me only a vulnerable face. He saw me and held up a finger for me to wait. I didn’t have time for him. I scribbled —Room 7719 NOW— in one of the last blank pages in my notebook, tore it out, and slapped it in his hand. I walked away before he had a chance to answer. I had to assume he’d go up. I didn’t have time to baby him, and I certainly didn’t want a verbal cat and mouse.

I took the stairs to the fourth floor and strode to Dr. Thorensen’s office. He was going to assure me Jonathan was at the top of that list and I wanted an update on Paulie Patalano’s health. A cleaning cart stood outside the open door. He wasn’t there, but his screens were flashing and blazing with some twisted circle in the City of Dis, frozen in time, characters halted mid-action, a puzzle half-done. On the smallest screen, off to the right, a blinking text box with nothing in it, and above it, a list.

I couldn’t help myself. I looked. Each item on the list was the word PATIENT followed by a long string of letters and numbers. A location. A gender. A blood type. A colored box. Red. Orange. Yellow. It was all red at the top of the list, and the number two patient was in Los Angeles, California. He had AB negative blood. Jonathan. A fucking alphabet soup string with a red box at the end. My lover. My husband. Patient KJE873KP7988. M. LA, CA. AB-. Code red.

“Excuse me?”

A short lady in soft shoes and maintenance gear stood in the doorway. Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and her hands were covered in yellow plastic gloves.

I didn’t belong there.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was just leaving.”

I walked past her before she could ask me what new horror I’d seen.

MONICA

He was home. What a nerve. Sitting in his house on a hill with his manicured garden of native plants and his refinished wood porch. He’d been sorry he hadn’t gotten close to me sooner, well, let’s just see how he felt about meeting me at all.

“Monica,” he said when he opened the door in sweatpants and t-shirt. I’d banged on the doors with both fists, not caring if I woke him from a dead sleep or mid-video.

“Is he going to die?” I demanded.

“Can you come in?”

“No. Tell me. Is he getting a heart or not?”

“I have no way of knowing that.”

“Why is he second on the list?”

He held up his hands as if he was fending off an attack. “What are you talking about?”

“I went to your office and saw the list and he’s second. Which means he gets the second heart that comes.”

“First of all—“

“Yes I’m sorry I went into your office I was looking for you but, to be honest? Not sorry.”

He stiffened like he’d been hit been frozen in place. “It’s Sunday. You can call my Doheny office after 9am to make an appointment, but I’m booked until January.”

He didn’t exactly slam the door, but he closed it, and I looked through the leaded glass side windows to see him go out to the backyard. I stood still for a second, maybe ten, before I walked over to my house.

Not my house. Not my mother’s house. Not the bank’s house. J. Declan Drazen’s house.

It looked like I was going to have to move anyway. If I lost Jonathan, and that looked more likely with every passing hour, I couldn’t stay here. He’d married me so I’d have the means to avoid his father. The foolish manipulations of a sick man.

I passed the car and walked up to my porch. I didn’t go in the house, though I could have used a shower and the love of a toothbrush, but walked the floorboards where we’d stood as he put his pussy-soaked fingers in my mouth, and sat on the swing where he’d left me to protect me from ruination. Looking out into the street, I thought only of what I had to do next. Jonathan was talking to Declan right now, a stressful situation I’d put him in, and then Declan would create an opening for me to murder Paulie Patalano. But what was the use if he was second on the list? If they were shipping that bloody muscle mass to someone else, what was the possibility I was committing murder to save the wrong man?

I could have implored Brad to do something, anything, pull a string or ten, but I’d invaded his privacy. Should have known better.

My own heart started pounding as I wondered which of my fuckups was going to kill Jonathan. I played with the rings on my finger, both heavy with commitment to my course and my love.

A curtain moved in Brad’s house. He could see me, I knew that much. I also knew I didn’t want to be seen. I was thinking evil things. I might as well have been naked, in ready position on the porch.

Yes, I was thinking, evil, desperate thoughts and I knew they were all over my face. If Paulie’s heart went to someone else, at least I’d move Jonathan to the top.

I got in my car just as Brad opened his front door, taking off before he could catch me.

JONATHAN

I felt him come into the room. Even through the doctors and nurses, running around, poking, squeezing, barking orders at one another, his presence was a needle at the base of my spine.

“Son,” he said.

“What do you want?”

I didn’t look over. My scenery was the ceiling. If I lived, I was going to start a fund to put art on hospital ceilings for patients who were too fucked up to turn their head. No one should die looking at crusty paint and vinyl venting.

“I wanted to talk to you. To, ah, how do I say it?”

“Before I die. You want to live in peace.”

“Am I that selfish?”

I swallowed. I felt myself slipping into the shattered state of semi-consciousness that so often overtook me. Getting married had required more energy than my body could reserve. The last thing I should be doing was speaking to my father. I guessed, if I got one act to complete as Monica’s husband, it should be to make her happy. I wished she’d picked something easier. Like swallowing an elephant.

The room quieted, and a nurse whose voice I recognized as a woman named Lettie said, “We’re monitoring you closely, Mister Drazen. Is there anything you need?”

“No.”

“We’ll be in and out,” she said, patting my shoulder before leaving me alone with my father for the first time in ten years.

“Mom’s going to be here soon.”

“That was what I wanted to bring up.”

“Do it quick.”

He sat in Monica’s chair, and I didn’t have the energy to tell him to get the fuck up.

“I know what you and Carrie think of me. I know you think I’m a monster. Maybe, I don’t know. Maybe I am. I’ve always known I was different, but I want you to consider this. I’ve never done anything in a rage of emotion. I’ve never been ruled by what I don’t understand. I’ve never deceived myself into thinking my actions were anything but self-serving. However, I do want things. I do need things.”