Dying Inside

Carefully he sits up. A tumult of impressions strikes him. The room is crowded and noisy, with beds pushed close together. The beds have curtains but no curtains are drawn. Most of his fellow patients are black, and many of them are in serious condition, surrounded by festoons of equipment. Mutilated by knives? Lacerated by windshields? Friends and relatives, clustering around each bed, gesticulate and argue and berate; the normal tone of voice is a yelping shout. Impassive nurses drift through the room, showing much the same distant concern for the patients as museum guards do for mummies in display cases. No one is paying any attention to Selig except Selig, who returns to the examination of himself. His fingertips explore his cheeks. Without a mirror he cannot tell how battered his face is, but there are many tender places. His left clavicle aches as from a light, glancing karate chop. His right knee radiates throbbings and twinges, as though he twisted it in falling. Still, he feels less pain that might have been anticipated; perhaps they have given him some sort of shot.

His mind is foggy. He is receiving some mental input from those about him in the ward, but everything is garbled, nothing is distinct; he picks up auras but no intelligible verbalizations. Trying to get his bearings, he asks passing nurses three times to tell him the time, for his wristwatch is gone; they go by, ignoring him. Finally a bulky, smiling black woman in a frilly pink dress looks over to him and says, “It’s quarter to four, love.” In the morning? In the afternoon? Probably the afternoon, he decides. Diagonally across from him, two nurses have begun to erect what perhaps is an intravenous feeding system, with a plastic tube snaking into the nostril of a huge unconscious bandage-swathed black. Selig’s own stomach sends him no hunger signals. The chemical smell in the hospital air gives him nausea; he can barely salivate. Will they feed him this evening? How long will he be kept here? Who pays? Should he ask that Judith be notified? How badly has he been injured?

An intern enters the ward: a short dark man, concise and fine-boned of body, a Pakistani by the looks of him, moving with bouncy precision. A rumpled and soiled handkerchief jutting from his breast pocket spoils, though, the trig, smart effect of his tight white uniform. Surprisingly, he comes right to Selig. “The X-rays show no breakages,” he says without preamble in a firm, unresonant voice. “Therefore your only injuries are minor abrasions, bruises, cuts, and an unimportant concussion. We are ready to authorize your release. Please get up.”

“Wait,” Selig says feebly. “I just came to. I don’t know what’s been going on. Who brought me here? How long have I been unconscious? What—”

“I know none of these things. Your discharge has been approved and the hospital has need of this bed. Please. On your feet, now. I have much to do.”

“A concussion? Shouldn’t I spend the night here, at least, if I had a concussion? Or did I spend the night here? What day is today?”

“You were brought in about noon today,” says the intern, growing more fretful. “You were treated in the emergency room and given a thorough examination after having been beaten on the steps of Low Library.” Once more the command to rise, given wordlessly this time, an imperious glare and a pointing forefinger. Selig probes the intern’s mind and finds it accessible, but there is nothing apparent in it except impatience and irritation. Ponderously Selig climbs from the bed. His body seems to be held together with wire. His bones grind and scrape. There is still the sensation of broken rib-ends rubbing in his chest; can the X-ray have been in error? He starts to ask, but too late. The intern, making his rounds, has whirled off to another bed.

They bring him his clothing. He pulls the curtain around his bed and dresses. Yes, bloodstains on his shirt, as he had feared; also on his trousers. A mess. He checks his belongings: everything here, wallet, wristwatch, pocket-comb. What now? Just walk out? Nothing to sign? Selig edges uncertainly toward the door. He actually gets into the corridor unperceived. Then the intern materializes as if from ectoplasm and points to another room across the hall, saying, “You wait in there until the security man comes.” Security man? What security man?

There are, as he had feared, papers to sign before he is free of the hospital’s grasp. Just as he finishes with the red tape, a plump’ gray-faced, sixtyish man in the uniform of the campus security force enters the room, puffing slightly, and says, “You Selig?”

He acknowledges that he is.

“The dean wants to see you. You able to walk by yourself or you want me to get you a wheelchair?”

“I’ll walk,” Selig says.