Blackout: A Look Inside Wernickes
David J. Steele
Published by David J. Steele at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 David J. Steele
This book is dedicated with gratitude to my friend Karen East, who works with people suffering from Wernicke-Korsakoffs.
There's a man in a hospital bed in neural intensive care. He's thin, dark-haired, and in his late thirties. A short man, he weighs a hundred and thirty-nine pounds. Two IV's are stuck in his left arm. His left wrist is strapped to the rail in a soft restraint. He appears to be asleep. It's deeper than sleep, and has been for almost twenty-four hours.
That's me. That's where I was in July 2005.
He opens his eyes. Blinks. The environment isn't new to him, but he doesn't know that. As far as he's concerned, his name is Tom Benton and he's a prisoner of the Protectors Guild of Sexton. He's a character in a novel he started twenty years before he woke in that bed, and that's not good.
With a twist of his shoulders and fumbling hands, he frees himself. He sees in his arms. They bother him. He pulls them out one at a time. Looks around the room as if he expects to be attacked. When no one comes, he sits up in the bed and climbs out. His gate is unsteady as he walks out the door.
Don't worry. He won't get far before he blacks out again. Next time, they'll use a different restraint.
§
That was six years ago. I'm fine now. Sober. I enjoy being sober more than I ever enjoyed drinking, and that's saying a lot. I was a beer guy. I drank other alcoholic beverages, but my first choice was beer. I tried to turn it into a food group, a staple of my diet. Using drunk's logic, it seemed to me beer was liquid bread. (It's okay to smile from time to time as you read this. Humor gets people like you and me through a lot.) I used to make beer, and it was easy for Drunk Dave to imagine it had nutritional value: grains, yeast, water…stuff in bread. Why bother with taking wort pills when you can just drink a beer or two, or twelve? Drunk's Logic.
I became adept at drunk's logic, to my detriment. It's easy to look back and see the drunk's logic now, but believe me, it seems sound when you're caught in it. I offer no excuses. I'm also not going to offer a lot of detail about how and when I drank. Part of the reason I'm not going to offer a lot of detail is shame. I feel badly about my drinking. I don't tell you that in an attempt to find absolution from the guilt. I need to feel guilty about my drinking. It's part of how I stay sober. The other part of the reason I'm not going to share how much I drank is that I don't want people to hold my level of drinking up as any sort of measure of their own and think they're safe. I did that when I visited Alcoholics Anonymous meetings: compared how much I drank to how much whoever was talking said they drank, and from there figured I was okay. It doesn't work that way.
I drank a lot of beer. Every day I drank something, usually beer, but sometimes mixed drinks, sometimes wine, sometimes all three. People tend to have an image in their mind of alcoholics being continually drunk, but that's not always the case. I didn't drink to get drunk. I drank to get a buzz. I drank to relax. I drank for the taste….drank to get sleepy.
Wernickes is a nutritional deficit. Thiamin--Vitamin B1--doesn't dissolve in alcohol. With a belly full of beer, that stuff is going to sit around for a while, get bored, and go away. Other bad things happen to brain and body with excessive, chronic alcohol abuse. I'm not sure what they all are, but doctors and others can tell you. For the purposes of this story, you really only need to know a couple of things: I was a heavy drinker, I succumbed to Wernicke-encephalopathy, I have Korsakoffs, and I'm sober now.
You might ask yourself, as I'm asking myself while I sit here at eleven PM on a Saturday night sipping a mug of decaf…. If you're not going to tell us about your drinking, Steele, what are you going to tell us?
I'm going to tell you a story, nothing more and nothing less. Ready? Of course you are. I'm not sure I am, but here we go…
Section One – Prelude to the Storm
I
Spring day, 1993
I was a hot-to-trot executive with the Boy Scouts. I was good at what I did. I was a good fund-raiser, I could recruit and lead volunteers, and I was passionate about the program. I was ambitious in a good way. We had a new director, a man I like a great deal and who demonstrated a lot of faith in me. That meant I was working a lot. Eighty-hour work weeks were my normal. When I wasn't working, I drank beer. I was twenty-seven years old and was only a few months away from another promotion. I was recently married. Still married to the same women, and as you'll see later, I'm lucky to be married to the same woman.
There was a pavilion outside the office. The day was bright and sunny, and it was late enough in the Michigan spring that the first dandelions of the season were blooming a yellow rash in spots around the lawn, which was thick and green and ready for the first cutting of the season.
I walked out of the office in the late morning sun and took a seat on top of one of the picnic tables under the pavilion. With my polished black shoes on the bench and my blue suit-clad tush on top of the table, I put my face in my hands and rubbed my eyes. I was seeing a yellow blur flicker in the corners of my vision. I thought it was there because I was tired. I thought it was an ocular migraine.
It wasn't my first one. When I got tired, which was most of the time, I felt the skin under my eyes twitch. Sometimes, as then, I saw glittering shapes at the outer edges of my sight. There was no pain. Glittery, spangle shapes, floating in my glance. If I gave them time, they went away. I smoked a cigarette and waited for my vision to clear.
I remember thinking at the time that it might have something to do with the beer I drank. It was easy to shrug away the thought. Too easy. By the time I finished the cigarette, the light was gone from my vision. I went inside, tossing the butt in the can by the door, and went on with my day.
II
May 29, 1993
It was our first wedding anniversary. We were engaged for two years before we married and had known each other for a little over three years by then. She graduated from college just before we got married, and although she hadn't landed her first full-time teaching job yet, she was a substitute teacher who worked almost every day, and she had a part-time job as a clerk in a shop in town.
The plan was that we would go out for a nice dinner when she got home from her part-time job. It was a Saturday, a rare Saturday for me because I didn't have any appointments that day. I got up in the morning and worked on a quilt I was making. Yes, I'm a man and I like to make quilts. The one I was working on was a serious undertaking. It was a pattern I lifted from a counted cross-stitch pattern. A knight riding a pegasus. Instead of little stitches in a hunk of cloth, I cut out squares of fabric and sewed them together by hand.
I drank beer while I did that. Drank beer, stitched one-inch squares of fabric together, and watched television. I had worked three weeks straight without a day off before that day, and I was tired. About two o'clock that afternoon, I decided I needed to sleep for a few hours. That was my sad modus operandi for quite a while: get up, do stuff, drink coffee until about noon, switch to beer, sleep for a while, do some stuff, drink beer, go to bed. It's not a healthy cycle, by any stroke of the imagination. I make no excuse for it.
It was getting dark when I woke up. My wife was in the bed next to me, sleeping. I woke her up and said it was time to go out for dinner. She wasn't happy with me. Pretty mad, in fact. She said she tried to wake me up several times, and when she finally got something out of me, all I did was ask her to join me for a nap. She had been home for six hours, which meant I was asleep for eight hours.
I chalked it up to being tired from working for three weeks without a day off. I know now that I was wrong. I was in a deeper sleep than normal.
We went out for dinner. I didn't eat much. I wasn't sick, and I didn't feel drunk although I'm sure I was. I felt funny: kind of out of place. My sight was dim. I thought I might be coming down with something. I think it might have been a small bout of Wernickes, if such a thing is possible. I read somewhere that those who come through the most serious part of the disease might have had it before the ‘big one', but the researcher didn't have documentation. Wernickes seems to be as under-reported as it is under-diagnosed. Those are my non-medical opinions based on a lot of reading.
\III
August, 1997
I was promoted, and the promotion involved moving to one of the far suburbs of Chicago. It was a big change, and my wife and I were excited. The move went smoothly. We found a four-bedroom house in a subdivision about twenty miles from my office. Sarah found a job right away, teaching in a school district West of us--which meant she didn't have to brave Chicago traffic on her way to and from school. I had an administrative assistant, and a staff of five professionals to supervise. The house in Michigan sold for what we paid for it and I my former boss back there closed on it for us with power of attorney.
It seemed like life was good. Looking back on it now, I can see I wasn't very happy. I didn't enjoy the job as much as I thought I would, but I didn't admit that to myself. I was swathed in a couple of layers of denial: I didn't want to admit my drinking was getting out of control, and I didn't want to admit I was losing my love of my chosen profession. The timing of the move was good. A couple of days after I started the new job, the first national convention of all BSA professionals started. It was a good chance to get to know my old team while spending some time with my old friends.
….Those things were the farthest things from my mind when we boarded the plane at O'Hare to head to Nashville.
It was a convention of Boy Scout professionals, held at the Opryland Hotel. If you've never been there, you go see it. It's a glorious hotel. It's huge. It's enclosed in a dome. There are plants and trees, and a river, and a boat, and stores, restaurants, bars, and more. We were going to be there for five days and had no plans to leave the hotel. It's that big--you can have an entire vacation without knowing you never set foot outside.
I was impressed with the place, and we were having a great time. It had only been three weeks since we moved. I enjoyed my team, the team of professional Scouters I'd joined, and I missed the team I had just left. I was sharing a room with my former supervisor, but he was more than a supervisor. He was, and is, an excellent friend of mine.
He brought me a copy of a newspaper story that ran when I left Midland. Midland isn't a big city--it has a population of under 40,000. Great town. I loved the time we spent there. It's a Scouting town. One out of three boys of Boy Scout and Cub Scout age were members of the Boy Scouts of America, and I had the privilege of being their executive for seven great years. I read the article several times and looked at the picture--amazed that a newspaper would print a 1/4 page article about me.
The council I was serving had a suite for the night. It was on one of the highest floors of the hotel. Huge windows overlooked the miniature world that is the Opryland Hotel. I drank a lot that night. We all did. People came and went throughout the night and those of us hosting the party made sure they all had a good time. The party was showing signs of winding down at about one AM and the boss's wife let me know she wanted me to clear the room out.
I cleared my throat and said, "It's late and we all have a meeting tomorrow. I expect to see everyone at breakfast!" There were some good-natured boos and some ribbing back and forth. I remember that clearly. I meant what I said….
The next thing I knew, I opened my eyes in the hotel room. Someone was shaking me. It was Steve. He pulled back and shouted, "It's two o'clock. I thought you were up."
"Up?" I shook my head to clear it, but it didn't work very well. I looked around.
The balcony doors were open on the interior of the dome. I could see bright light, sunlight from the skylights, and green plants out the balcony. I rolled over and looked at the alarm clock on the nightstand. It was two o'clock in the afternoon!
So much for beating them all to breakfast. So much for the opening session. So much for….
"You must've gone back to bed."
"I wasn't up."
He grinned at me and tossed some stuff on his bed. I glanced at the stuff. It was a pile of the usual conference stuff: brochures, give-away pens, notebooks, etc. Stuff I should have been gathering between sessions. "You didn't miss much. Your staff was looking for you." He started to head back out. "Oh yeah…. You won a trip to Branson, air fare included. Weekend stay, or something like that. One of your team members claimed the prize."
"Where the hell is Branson?"
"Missouri. Second country music capitol of the world."
"Damn," I muttered. "Punishing me already, aren't they?" I'd rather have an unexplained rash than listen to country music. The joke was wasted. He was already gone.
I didn't feel well. My head felt funny, and not just with a hangover. I felt like I could have rolled over and gone to sleep for a couple of days. I jumped out of bed and started to pull clothes on. Guilt and worry hit me when I was in the shower. I was sure I was in trouble, and thought I deserved it. My new boss wouldn't be happy about me missing the first couple of sessions, and getting drunk and sleeping most of the day was far from the kind of example I wanted to set.
I had to live with the worry for a couple of hours. By the time I ran into my boss, I felt pretty normal. Guilty, but normal. He was on his way up a set of marble stairs leading to one of the big ballrooms used for a general session. He grinned when he saw me.
Before he could start yelling, I stopped him. "I overslept," I said, "….by a lot. I'm sorry."
He grinned, and waved to a couple of people standing at the top of the stairs, looking over the waterfall and river on the other side of the stairwell. "You've been through a lot in the last few days: moving, unpacking, getting used to the office." He slapped me on the back as he went by. "See you at dinner."
IV
January, 2001
In most fiction, there is a scene in which the protagonist could avoid the trouble that makes the story. This isn't fiction, but it is that moment….
I had just come back from lunch and was hanging my coat up on the back of my office door when the boss's administrative assistant stuck her head around the door.
"He'd like to see you when you get a chance."
She vanished before I said anything. I didn't think much of it at the time. I was in a pretty good mood. There was no reason I shouldn't have been in a good mood. We were at the start of a new year after a successful year of membership gains, goal accomplishment, and fund raising. I felt good, too good, after a couple of beers and as many bites of a hamburger for lunch.
I walked around the corner to his office and was surprised to see him sitting at the table by the windows. He was a big guy: broad shoulders, round face--the kind of face that could make a grin contagious--and expressive eyes. He wasn't smiling. There was a manila folder in front of him on the table. It was a thin folder without much in it.
"Take a seat," he said with neither smile nor preamble. "Close the door first."
I don't remember the exact details of the conversation, but I remember it felt surreal.
"Have you ever heard of the E.A.P?" he asked.
I said I hadn't, but he clarified for me. It was in the employee handbook--the one I just helped revise. I had no excuse for not remembering it.
"It stands for ‘Employee Assistance Program'. You have a drinking problem. I hear things…."
I didn't say a word. My mouth was dry, and my heart was beating too fast. Excuses piled up behind my teeth, but I didn't bother to utter them.
He pulled a card from the file and slid it over the table to me. "This is the number for the referral program. It's an eight hundred number, and they answer it twenty-four hours a day. You're going to call that number, and you're going to do what they tell you to do. If you don't call that number in twenty-four hours, I have to fire you." He leaned forward, locking his eyes on mine. "I don't want to fire you. You're too valuable to this organization. If you weren't valuable, I would have already fired you. Call that number, Dave."
"I'll call."
I called that night. Hands shaking, ashamedly buzzed from a couple of beers to help me gather the nerve (a moronic move, an addict's move), I dialed the phone hoping it wouldn't be answered. It was answered. A very understanding person informed me they were expecting my call. She told me it was an employer referral. I asked what that meant. It meant, she explained, that my employer was sending me through the Employee Assistance Program and that in order to participate, I would be required to sign a waiver that would allow them to share information with my employer about my participation and progress in the program.
I stared at the phone for a long time after I hung it up. I drank a few more beers before my wife got home, knowing I would have to tell her about the phone call I just made. By the time she got home, I managed to convince myself it was all some sort of mistake. I wasn't an alcoholic. I was just a guy who liked beer. Liked it a lot, to be sure….but I just liked it. She would laugh and tell me to go through the program.
She didn't laugh. She thought it was a good idea. It was, of course. I know it now, you knew it when you started reading this, but I didn't want to know it then.
I went through the program. Nine weeks of alcohol education, mostly attended by people who had DUI's on their records and were required to attend the class before they could start the process to get their driver's licenses back. I stayed mostly sober through the nine weeks. When it was over, I went back to drinking. I drank at a slower pace, but I kept drinking.
V
Thoughts before we get to the important stuff
I started drinking beer again after I got through the program. That doesn't mean the program wasn't good, and that I didn't get any help from it. I didn't use what I learned, not until after I got home from the hospital five years later. During the nine weeks, I learned I could handle sobriety. I could have learned to enjoy sobriety, but I didn't. I also learned I didn't have to rely on beer to get to sleep. I took melatonin then. You'll hear more about that later.
In 2003, my wife and I moved to Racine, Wisconsin. It wasn't a promotion. I took a job as the number two professional in the Boy Scout council there. We liked living in Wisconsin. A year and a half later, we had a budget shortfall that was only a little bigger than my annual salary. When you're the number two guy in any company and the budget shortfall matches your salary, you know what you do? You pack your bags.
It might surprise you to know I had a very good performance record, in spite of my drinking. Several other middle managers in the organization were laid off, or otherwise displaced for budgetary reasons that year, and a lot of good professionals left the organization. I thought about leaving. I was vested in the retirement program, but I loved, and still love, the Boy Scouts of America and I wanted to hang on. The organization worked on my behalf. The day I was told my position had been eliminated, I called the Regional Personnel Director. We knew each other. Not well, but well enough that when I said….
"I didn't think I'd be calling you like this on my birthday…."
He said, "Wait a minute! It's your birthday?" He laughed. Hard. Very hard. It was such a surprised, happy sound that I laughed with him. Laughed with tears in my eyes, but I laughed. "They laid you off on your freakin' birthday?"
"Well," I said as I coughed through laughter and burning eyes, "I didn't tell them it was my birthday."
That brought another spate of laughter. I couldn't help it. I laughed too, and felt better for it. I was sitting in my car in the parking lot on a beach on Lake Michigan on December 20th. Wind was whipping over the car. I watched light snow blow around the parking lot.
"We'll find something for you, Dave." He wasn't laughing when he said that, thank God. "You have a great record, and we'll find something for you. I have to warn you, it might not be a promotion. There are a lot of guys in your position. A lot of councils hit a financial hard place this year, and lots of positions have been eliminated. Don't quit! We'll find something for you."
They did. I made phone calls. My boss made phone calls. The region made phone calls.
I got a job as a very senior district executive. It was in Cleveland, Ohio. The executive director there offered me the same salary and job classification I had in Wisconsin. It was a demotion in title, but the council there was looking to create management positions, and if all went well, one would be mine.
My wife took the news very well, in spite of never wanting to live in a big city. We always agreed that she wouldn't move during a school year and until then we were able to time our moves so we moved in the summer, but not that time. That time she stayed in Wisconsin, and I got a furnished one-bedroom apartment on a six month lease in Cleveland.
Was I smart enough to be sober when I moved to Cleveland and waited for her? We know the answer, but I'll say it anyway.
I wasn't.
Section Two – The Storm
§
Intro to Green Goblin
Looking back on it, I see Wernickes coming on. I didn't see the little warning signs then. Some medical professionals will say there aren't any warning signs. Others will say the signs are often missed, and those are the ones I agree with. I've read some stuff that says Wernickes comes on suddenly. I don't know which ones are right, and which ones are wrong. I think some of the things I've described so far are indicative of Wernickes.
I was also having problems with my memory, but I didn't know or believe I was having problems with my memory. My wife, bless her, told me I was forgetting things, but I was able to cloak her assertions in denial.
Then I got sick. Really sick. I had breakfast the other day with an old friend from camp staff. He said he was surprised at my recovery. My father told him I was ill when I was in the hospital for Wernickes. This is what my friend said:
"Your Dad told us the hospital said you probably weren't going to make it. When I saw him a couple of weeks later, I was almost afraid to ask. Your Dad said you were home and doing fine."
I was lucky. I was blessed. I didn't know how lucky, or how blessed, until much later.
The next part of this book is a book on its own entitled Green Goblin. It’s available as a Nook book, a Kindle book, and in hardcover and paperback from www.lulu.com/spotlight/Misticuf
You don't need to buy it unless you want to give it to someone as a gift. The full text is included in this book.
§
Green Goblin
Werknicke-Korsakoff Syndrome: A disorder of the central nervous system characterized by abnormal eye movements, incoordination, confusion, and impaired memory and learning functions.
Wernicke's Aphasia: A type of aphasia caused by a lesion in the Wernicke's Area of the brain and characterized by grammatical but more or less meaningless speech and an apparent inability to comprehend speech.
Part I
Bed Sheets and Brimstone
1
The journey I was about to take was both long in coming and a surprise. Recently I read description after description of the illness I suffered. I'll tell you what it is at the end of this story. If I remember. If there is an end to this story.
It began with a dream.
The Klingons were blowing up the Enterprise and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. No one responded to my orders to fire the phasers and I have no idea how to run a starship. The deck shook. I turned to Worf and ordered him, again, to fire. He wasn't there--no one was.
My pulse hammered in my neck. I was scared but determined to go out fighting. Then I saw her: my wife Sarah, dressed in Deanna Troi's uniform. She was crying and giving me a strange look. I wanted to hug her and tell her it would be okay. We'd beat the bastards but I needed her to fire the photon torpedoes and do it now.
"Don't stand there and cry! We're going to die if you don't fire the torpedoes!" I hated myself for shouting at her. I don't shout. It's not my style. Of course, getting killed by Klingons isn't my style either.
Then I woke up. I was lying on the floor on her side of the bed, pulling myself up with the quilt. "It's okay," I said. "I'm awake now."
She looked scared. Sarah doesn't looked scared any more often than I shout. She told me to get dressed. We were going to the hospital.
Blackout…
2
I stood on the driveway on her side of the garage. Sarah was behind the wheel and we were waiting for the light to turn green. I was in the passenger seat looking at First Baptist Church through the window. I was an executive with the Boy Scouts of America at the time and we had several meetings a month at that church.
"I don't think I can go to a meeting tonight," I said. "I'm not in uniform."
Sarah sounded calm. "We're going to the hospital."
She had been fighting colitis for more than two years and her symptoms led her to the hospital only a couple of weeks before.
"Why are you driving?" It didn't make sense for her to drive herself to the hospital.
"You're drunk."
She had me there. I was drunk. I drank too much anyway, but for the couple of weeks prior to the Klingon invasion, drinking large amounts of beer was the only way I could find to get rid of the double vision.
I saw double for at least two weeks before I went nuts. I should have gone to the doctor in early June, but it was a busy time of year for us. I felt fine physically so I didn't see double vision as a high priority symptom. Instead of going to the doctor like I knew I should, I got new glasses. I still saw double, but I saw double clearly. I kept an empty foam cup in my car for the random bits of puking I experienced. There was a lot of random puking, but it was okay. There wasn't much to throw up. It's hard to eat when you see double and puke every now and again.
But I didn't need to go to a hospital. I was fine. She was the sick one.
Blackout…
3
I was in a hospital trauma center waiting room very late at night. I didn't know how I got there. Sarah was filling out paperwork at the counter. I wanted a cigarette. I reached in the left pocket of my jeans, but for some reason I didn't have my cigarettes.
I started to walk to the car. It was the first of July and a nice night--warm but not hot. The parking lot was almost empty. They usually are at 2:00 in the morning. I turned around and went back thorough the emergency room entrance. I thought Sarah would be admitted soon and didn't want to bother her for her keys. My plan was to walk home, get my cigarettes and drive our other car back.
On my way back from the lobby I saw three or four wheelchairs and decided to take one home instead of walking. I heard Sarah shout and try to catch up with me, and thought, she doesn't have to worry about me. They'll help her soon.
"Wait!" she shouted.
I waved over my shoulder. "See you at home dear!"
So there I was, rolling my wheelchair toward Mayfield Road at two o'clock in the morning, going home to get my cigarettes and my car. I stopped before I turned left on Mayfield. Even at that hour, there were cars on the road. Safety first!
I'm a good driver and try to be polite. I intended to use my turn signal, but couldn't find it on the wheelchair. It seemed like a bad idea to get killed in the center lane while driving a wheelchair. It didn't take long to figure out wheelchairs don't have turn signals. I started to roll out in the road anyway when I heard someone running behind me.
I turned. Two men were gaining on me. One was bearded and big. He was in front of a short, stocky guy. They grabbed the wheelchair just as I threw caution to the winds and went for the road. I struggled, but one held the wheelchair while the other grabbed me.
I told myself not to hurt them. They weren't hurting me; they were restraining me. It sounds funny, I know. I'm a little guy--five foot six and a hundred twenty pounds--but size doesn't make any difference in some situations. What matters is who walks away and who doesn't.
I stopped struggling when I realized I couldn't get away without hurting them. Better to wait and see what happens.
They rolled me back through the doors. Sarah hugged me just before they took me into the patient storage area--you know, where they put patients until they get around to fixing them. She was crying, I was confused.
So ended July 1, or so I thought. It was actually the wee hours of July 4th--I'd been unconscious at home for at least thirty-six hours since leaving work for vacation on the first.
Blackout…
4
I opened my eyes and found myself looking at a woman's face. She was a blond gal, neither ugly nor pretty. She was talking to me, but I didn't understand what she was trying to say. It's funny, but I was more curious about why I was sleeping sitting up in bed than why I was there.
"You have to sign this." She put a clipboard on my lap.
I looked at the piece of paper on the clipboard. It was broken in block paragraphs. There were a couple of lines at the bottom for signatures. I tried to read the document. I don't sign anything without knowing what it is I'm signing.
I tried to read it. I couldn't.
"Don't you have one of these in English?" I laughed but I wasn't kidding. Not one word made sense.
"It's in English." She looked worried.
I looked at it again. I'm pretty good with languages. I can read some French and Spanish. I recognize German, Russian, and Hebrew when I hear them. I didn't recognize the language on the paper in my lap.
She didn't know what was holding me back. She sounded desperate when she said, "You have to sign it! Your wife has been calling me every day! She's very worried about you. She loves you very, very much."
I looked at the form, then at the nurse. I wanted to sign the document…but I didn't know how.
"We can't tell her you're here if you don't sign it. It breaks my heart to hear her cry. Please sign it so we can tell her you're here."
I looked at the document again. It was hard to think, but I found the words I was looking for. "How do I sign it?"
She looked surprised, then more worried. For the first time I noticed a man standing behind her. I didn't see his face. I remembered Sarah took me to a hospital. If these people couldn't or wouldn't tell her where I was, that meant I'd been taken from the hospital. That meant I was a hostage.
Kidnapped? Me? If they wanted a big ransom for little old me, they could forget it. We didn't have money to pay a ransom. I decided to get out of there, but first I had to sign the form. Play along and watch for an opportunity to escape. "I don't know how to sign it."
She talked me through it. I formed the letters as she said them. By the time I wrote "David J. Steele" in childish cursive letters, I remembered how to write. I tried to hand the clipboard back to her, but she pushed it toward me. "Please date it."
I nodded and stared at the blank. "What's the date?" What she said didn't make sense to me, but I wrote it anyway.
"Seventh floor," she said.
"It's a four-story building."
She looked at me an enunciated every syllable. "Sev…en. …Four."
That made less sense than seventh floor. So I wrote seventh floor hoping she would accept it and let me go back to sleep. I had an escape to plot and needed to rest before I executed whatever I came up with.
I heard her say to the man behind her, "I think that's as good as we're going to get."
Blackout…
5
I felt a sharp pain in my arm and opened my eyes. There were two men holding my left arm. The shorter one, the one at my shoulder said, "He's awake!"
I yanked my arm free by pulling it toward my chest. They let go. I bent my elbow and thrust for the throat of the man closest to my wrist. His face changed as my hand got closer to his neck. He looked happy, then surprised. I pushed my hand closer. My first thought was to crush his windpipe. Push the hand; push it toward his neck. Squeeze--crush, don't choke--crumple his esophagus like a beer can.
That scared him. He tried to force my hand back, but I wouldn't let him. We struggled. He couldn't push my hand away and I wouldn't stop reaching for his neck.
I didn't want to kill him. I only wanted to injure him, severely if I had to, and hoped his partner would care more about saving a coworker than the little prisoner in the bed. I intended to pluck his adams apple from his neck and hold it up for the other guy to see.
It doesn't take long to recognize a bad plan. I couldn't get to the man's neck. I gave up on the idea of ripping his throat apart and switched to escape mode. I lashed out with my right arm to grab the rail on the other side of the bed. Grab the rail, pull hard, and vault out of bed. Then run for the door and get the hell out of Dodge.
My hand slammed on a woman's wrist resting on the rail. I heard a choked cry and looked up. She was wearing a white coat. I didn't look at her face; I looked at her hand.
Think! I needed time to think, but didn't have it. Stalemate. The men had me and I had the woman. I didn't want to take a woman hostage, and I didn't want to hurt her, but I hated the idea of getting killed more. Since when did the bastards in the Protectors Guild use women? There were no female guildsmen the last time I was in this world.
I had to do something. It went against the grain for me--hurting a woman. I didn't want to do it, but I knew she would slide a dagger between my ribs with none of the hesitation I felt toward hurting her. I wanted to tell the men I would let go of her if they let go of me. The words wouldn't come. I couldn't say anything…I didn't know how.
I squeezed her wrist. In my mind's eye I could see her bones just above my curled fingers, the twin, not quite parallel bones in her forearm. My fingers were clenched. Squeeze. Tighter. Pop the hand off her wrist like the flower from a dandelion! I locked eyes with the man holding my left wrist. I wanted him to look in my eyes and see I would rather kill him ten times than lie in that bed as their prisoner. As I did that, I squeezed the woman's arm harder. She would tell them to let me go any second. I smiled at the Guildsman to intimidate him.
"David! Stop it!" the woman shouted. "David! You're hurting me! Please…stop!"
…That was the last thing I expected her to say. She sounds like my Mom! No one but my mother calls me David. Guild bastards. How was I supposed to hurt someone who sounds like my mom?
I couldn't.
I let go of her arm and waited for them to kill me. The last thing I heard was a man's voice. "The little fucker smiled at me! Did you see that? He tried to kill me and he fucking smiled!"
Blackout…
6
I woke up when I heard someone walk in the room. I opened my eyes to a woman standing between the bed I was in and an empty bed next to it.
"You're awake!" she said. "How do you feel?"
I felt fine and said so. I didn't know where I was or why I was there, but the bed was comfortable and I just woke up.
"You look terrible," I said. "You should sit down.
She
sat on the other bed and gave me a warm smile. I was looking at a
woman in her mid-fifties. Slender, attractive. She had dark hair with
a few strands of gray. I liked it when she smiled; it was a nice
smile. She looked me over from her perch on the other bed. Her
expression held curiosity and surprise. She seemed very relieved
about something, but I couldn't tell what. "You are a nice man.
You're a very nice man." She smiled again. "I told them you
were, but they said you were dangerous. They said you tried to kill
them."
I almost figured out what was going on. Almost. It slipped my mind's grasp before I could stop it. The person she was talking to, the patient in the bed, was somewhere between Dave Steele and Tom Benton.
Tom Benton is the protagonist in a novel. I'm the author. Benton is an American who went to a world called Sexton. He was trained to be a killer/cop in a world of swords and sorcery. Rather than serve in a force he grew to recognize as evil--the protectors guild--he became an outlaw. He took the name ‘Viper' and is merciless in his defense of freedom.
She locked eyes with me. "You are a nice man," she said again. I'm not sure if she was trying to convince herself or me. "Every time you started to hurt me, all I had to do was tell you to let me go and you let go right away."
Hurt her? Kill? I was shocked. "I can't hurt anybody. I'm a little guy."
She shook her head, lips pressed together. "You're a strong little guy. Very strong! Don't play weak little man with me. You're strong!"
I knew that--I just didn't want anyone else to know it. Then I saw the brace on her left arm and almost remembered. I didn't remember what happened, but there was no doubt in my mind I was the one who hurt her arm. I was devastated.
I think I was crying. "I didn't mean to hurt anyone."
She tried to calm me. "Of course you didn't, you're a nice man. You were scared, that's all. Absolutely terrified." She stood up and moved closer. "You are forgetting things. You must remember this, even if you remember nothing else. You can never drink again."
"I don't drink." It's true--Viper doesn't. Not much. It would get him killed. She didn't know who she was talking to. She was talking to Tom Benton, AKA Viper. I was gone. Dave? There's no Dave here, man.
"Yes you do!" Her anger was genuine. "You were drunk when they brought you in here! You were almost dead. We saved you this time, but you're not safe yet. We can't do it again. If you drink again, you will die. Remember this…you can never drink again."
I didn't remember that. Not for a long time.
Blackout…
7
"Time to go!"
I thought someone shouted that very close to my ear, but when I opened my eyes I was alone. Alone in a bed in a hospital room. I remembered being tired, but I couldn't remember picking a bed and going to sleep. I had to get out of there before someone found me.
I tried to get out of bed, but my left arm was strapped to the rail. Idiot! Fell asleep in the open and let the guild tie me down. There wasn't time to wonder why they didn't kill me. The voice I heard in my head might have been imaginary but it wasn't wrong. It was time to go.
There must have been a little of myself left. I looked at the table next to the bed to see if there was a note from someone, maybe Sarah, telling me to stay put or run like hell. When I found no note, I almost called for help.
Viper answered that one. If you call for help, who do you think will come? Those friendly people who strapped you to this bed, that's who!
That was all the answer I needed. I stared at the binding. I rubbed my forehead…and laughed. "Stupid guild bastards! You forgot I have two hands."
Now that I had an assessment of the problem, all I had to do was untie myself… I lost a few minutes while I tried to decide what to do after I freed myself. Should I wait there and kill my captors, or leave and recruit an army to come back and kill them?
I decided to leave and let the chips fall as they may.
Untying myself proved more difficult than I thought. The restraint didn't buckle or lace. There were two straps holding it to the bed. I reached over my body and the lower rail with my right hand and followed them down as far as I could reach. The end of the straps was beyond me. I tried another way: tight over my chest, reaching down between the top of the mattress and the bottom rail. I rolled to my left as far as I could.
My hand hit the end of the straps. They were wrapped around the bed frame and looped through a double d-ring. I could picture it--two straps going under both rings, then around and between the curved part of the ‘D'.
I'm left-handed. It was more difficult to untie the straps with my right hand than it would have been with my left, but I could do it. In a strange way it was almost refreshing. I found no ambiguity: I was a prisoner against my will; I had no higher priority than freedom. It didn't take long to untie the thing, even right-handed. That's when I noticed the needles in my left arm. They led to IV bags on a stand above my shoulder.
The needles worried me. I hate them. I was afraid I would pass out when I pulled them out, but then I chuckled. I was already in bed. If I was going to pass out, what better place to do it?
I was pleasantly surprised to find it doesn't hurt to pull the needles out. It only hurts when they stick you. When the first needle dangled over the floor, I thought about the mess it would make when the fluid dripped out. I laughed at myself again--what kind of prisoner cleans up after himself when he escapes? The empty restraint would tell them I was gone whether there was a mess on the floor or not. I pulled the other needles out one at a time, jumped over the bed rail, and headed out the door.
No one seemed to notice me in the hall. It was daylight and there were staff and patients around. As I approached the door to the stairs I realized I was wearing only a hospital gown. That was fine in the hospital, but would look mighty strange on the streets.
Our buddy Tom Benton is a resourceful guy. The plan was to go down the stairs and find someone of similar build, knock him out, drag him to a closet, and steal his clothes. Then walk home taking back streets.
I was foiled at the door to the stairs. It was locked. The lock was old, a combination lock with small buttons and Roman numerals engraved in the brass above them. I stared at it and tried to remember what little I knew about the type. I didn't think the combinations on them were changed easily, and therefore weren't changed often. That meant the buttons involved in the combination would be more worn than the buttons not involved. Of the seven buttons on the lock, I could narrow the possibilities to three or four. Good idea, right? It would have been if they gave me time.
I heard a shout from behind. I turned to look over my shoulder at the door I left only a few minutes before. A big redheaded guy came out. He saw me and shouted "You! What are you doing out of bed?"
I wasn't going to stand there and take his pop quiz. I turned to run in the other direction, but couldn't. There were patients in wheelchairs by the window. They blocked my way. I thought about jumping over them, but ruled it out as an option. Good guys don't risk hurting the injured and infirm trying to escape. I had to go through the guy I've come to call "Big Red."
I gave myself up. Before I knew what was going on, there were several people around Big Red. He stood behind a wheelchair, waiting for me. I sat in the chair and wondered if they were going to kill me. The other people gathered around us. The thought of springing from the wheelchair and doing as much damage as I could crossed my mind. I discarded the idea. Live to fight again, I thought. Can't win if you're dead.