“I’m here to see Sam Renfield.”
The desk lady didn’t even look up.
Never get sick in in L.A. Everyone’s too fucking busy in Los Angeles. The nurses, CNAs, LVNs, janitorial staff – all flying by. Who’s not in a hurry you ask? The fucking doct…
“Room 116” The desk woman said. “Did you sign in?”
“No.”
“Here, you’ll need to sign in.”
The nurse never looked up. I could have been a gorilla or invisible and she wouldn’t have known. I could be somebody famous – like a writer and she would have missed it. Invisibility might as well be my super power… instead I got explosive diarrhea when I get nervous. Cat in a tree, Miss? No problem, just ask me out on a date and I’ll shoot it off the top branch with my ex…
“Sir?” She was looking at me now. “Your label.”
She was holding out a cheap adhesive name badge with my name on it: VISITOR – 116
I reached for the label and ripped the rice-paper in half. I stuck ITOR – 116 on the left breast pocket and then ever-so-carefully took VIS from the now smiling desk woman and affixed it to the matching side of ITOR – 116. I smirked back but she had already returned to her work. I thought we were sharing a moment.
With unconscious deep breaths in-out and an internal shudder, I prepare myself. I haven’t seen this man in over 30 years. He came to his mother’s funeral – that was the last time we spoke. It wasn’t a bad reunion – he didn’t seem like the same man that spewed hatred at “queers” and “spics” moments before teaching me good mann…
“David?”
The familiar but gravelly voice corrupting the busy, sterile sounds of the hospital around me. Hospitals have a pace. They sound like hospitals. Everyone is moving – can’t stand still in a hospital except in designated areas – The White Zone is for the immediate running and scurrying of hospital staff only, there is no bleeding in the White Zone. Patients have to tuck away into the crawl spaces if they want to die in peace.
“Are you coming in, dummy?”
Ah – that familiar refrain from childhood – like a song oft sung – it has resonated in soul for a lifetime.
“Yeah, sorry.”
I break the surface of the doorway as I dive in. The room is cold, but I’m in now. There’s a curtain all the way on the other side of the room. The gravity in this space makes it difficult to walk. Slowly I trod forward it’s only five steps away but I’m nearly out of breath when I realize I’ve been holding it the entire way. The curtain is hiding something probably best left undiscovered. My arm reaches for the curtain before I can stop its outward articulation. It’s heavy – the curtain weighs a thousand pounds but with great constitution I’m able to move it aside.
There he was. Ninety-four years of meatloaf and cigarettes.
The monster of Banner Avenue.
