BROOD BEHIND A WHEEL

"NURSE!" SHOUTED ARCHIMEDES BROOD at the top of his lungs. "Nurse!" he shouted. "I'm shivering, I tell ya'. Gimme a blanket!"

No response.

"That's typical," he scoffed. "Nobody cares. S'pose I have to get up and get it myself."

Archimedes threw back his sheet and sat up with a huff. He set his bald feet carefully upon the floor, fearing sudden movement might jar the wheeled gurney out from under him.

"I can't see anything, either," he grumbled.

True, the room was dimly lit and his mind still foggy from anaesthesia. The combination could make getting to the door an effort. Archimedes stood fully, wobbling unsteady. Something spilled. "Nurse..." he warbled, growing nauseous. The world then listed and Archimedes fell forward. "Nurse!"

A door handle stopped him. He clung to it a while, cool, smooth aluminum pressing against his cheek. "Those sons-of- bitches," Archimedes said to the handle, biting back bile. "Uncaring bastards," he added. "I'm not a well man, goddammit! You hear me? I'm sick!"

Archimedes leant ear for an answer and held his breath. Quiet. He heard footsteps approach. A doctor being paged. A moment longer and they were gone. Archimedes cursed and pushed at the door. His foot found something slick and slid through it. Lurching awkwardly, Archimedes fells, arms flailing wide. He yelped and found the handle again, held onto it. Something soft landed on the floor with a smack. There was dripping. Too dark to make out.

"Wha-the hell is that?"

Regaining equilibrium, Archimedes shifted his weight. He pressed again against the door, shoving on through and into the hospital corridor.

Florescent light. Painful bright. Covering his eyes, Archimedes' hand struck something. "AGGH!!!" Archimedes said.

Pain -- piercing, riveting -- blasting deep into his left eye to the core of his spine with an instantaneous shudder that throttled his body with excruciating white seizure. He lay on the floor in a wad. He rolled and wriggled and moaned, clutching the side of his skull 'til he could muster enough strength to form therapeutic words.

"Jesus Christ," such words went. "Goddamn son-of-a-bitchin' bastards..." Archimedes gasped. "Wha's wrong with my eye?"

Something protruded from Archimedes' left eye that should not have, from there, protruded at all. He touched it again flooding his entire system with the same searing agony. Pinching it firmly, Archimedes breathed deep and pulled...

Once the worst of the pain subsided, and with the pain the seemingly unyielding vicious tremors that racked his slight carriage, Archimedes focused on what he'd extracted.

It was long and thin -- a good four inches -- and had the appearance of a stainless steel hat pin on which, skewed at one end, was a dilapidated bulb. The bulb was Archimedes' left eyeball.

It look pink and deflated.

"NURSE!"

Archimedes felt his stomach quake. He wanted to wretch, felt it instead slop onto the floor in a quivering mass. The sight of his dislodged maw troubled him fierce --

"My stomach!"

The wide cavity from which it came, even more so.

"Get a doctor!"

The cavity was red and purple.

"Somebody!"

And out of it ran yellow fluid.

"U-uck..."

Archimedes tried to gather his feet, found them entangled in his small intestine, which unraveled across the floor behind him in a milky colored vermiform trailing all the way back to the room he'd abandoned.

"Aghh!"

His liver was stuck in the door.

Archimedes yelped and an old woman croaked: "Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death I will fear no evil..."

Toward the nurses' station did Archimedes then crawl. Just the faintest outline of it could be made out at the farthest end of the hallway, down near the elevator.

"Help!" Archimedes pleaded.

"For thou art with me..." continued the old woman.

"Help me!" Archimedes' bottom teeth splayed across the floor. He tried to gather them up.

"Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me..."

Archimedes' spleen dropped out midway down the hall. It squished underhand and squirted juice in his face.

"Yechhh!" Archimedes coughed.

Foul, odorous juice.

"Though preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies..." the old woman's voice resounded, very nearly drowning out the noise Archimedes Brood's sternum made grating at the split of incision.

"Dammit lady, shuttup!"

"You shuttup and let the old broad pray!" came the voice of another.

"But I need help!" Archimedes replied.

"Be quiet!"

Archimedes felt cartilage in his right shoulder splinter. Tear. Twist. Pop.

"Goodness and mercy shall follow me all of my life..."

And with a grisly snap, break off.

"And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever!"

Beneath his weight Archimedes' chin bounced off the floor, jaw clapping shut. Caught between what teeth remained in his mouth, his tongue was cleanly bitten off.

It had been at that precise moment when Archimedes Brood demanded for the very last time that the old woman cease her maddening recital. But what anybody listening at the time actually heard was Archimedes saying this: "You old cow, for the love of God will you please be thummppck-ck-ck!" followed by the sound of sucking drool and spit.

Nobody then on the ward understood what Archimedes had meant by "thummppck-ck-ck!" followed by the sound of sucking drool and spit.

Then, lying there on his side in the middle of the corridor, Archimedes Brood had him a vision. He felt warm hands fondling his spindly body. Felt them hoist him up and guide him to a chair. It was in this chair that Archimedes Brood was deposited. The chair faced a metal desk representing the nurses' station at the farthest end of the hall, down near the elevator. Nurse Grusome emerged from the elevator and sat on a swivel behind the desk.

"Mr. Archimedes Brood..." said Nurse Grusome with the sustained emphasis every letter of his name allowed.

"Oh, no you don't," spat Archimedes. "Now you listen to me. I'm the one who's sick here. I'm the one that needs help."

"You have nothing to say about this, Mr. Brood."

"Of course I have something to say -- I'm the one that was in the accident. I'm the victim here."

Nurse Grusome interrupted, unable to understand Archimedes without the benefit of his tongue. "Mr. Brood, you did sign the card, did you not?"

Archimedes regarded her dully. "What card?" he asked.

"Glok clumph?" Nurse Grusome heard him say.

She removed a manilla file from a drawer, held it up close for Archimedes to see. Something clipped to it. She tapped it with a digit. "This card," came her reply.

Archimedes forced himself a look. It was his driver's license attached to the file. It denoted clearly and incontestably that he, motorist Archimedes Charles Brood, was in fact, in the event of accidental death, a voluntary organ donor.

Nurse Grusome leveled a look. "Do we quite understand each other, Mr. Brood?"

What was left of Archimedes' tongue was tied. And, anyhow, there was nothing left he could say.

Copyright © 1989, Michael Steven Gregory. All rights reserved.