Everything's Eventual

   My rolling bed is pushed in a new direction, and the question drumming in my head is What kind of a mess have I gotten myself into?

   Doesn't that depend on who you are? I ask myself, but that's one thing, at least, I find I do know. I'm Howard Cottrell. I'm a stock broker known to some of my colleagues as Howard the Conqueror.

   Second voice (from just above my head): "You're looking very pretty today, doc."

   Fourth voice (female, and cool): "It's always nice to be validated by you, Rusty. Could you hurry up a little? The babysitter expects me back by seven. She's committed to dinner with her parents."

   Back by seven, back by seven. It's still the afternoon, maybe, or early evening, but black in here, black as your hat, black as a woodchuck's asshole, black as midnight in Persia, and what's going on? Where have I been? What have I been doing? Why haven't I been manning the phones?

   Because it's Saturday, a voice from far down murmurs. You were . . . were . . .

   A sound: WHOCK! A sound I love. A sound I more or less live for. The sound of . . . what? The head of a golf-club, of course. Hitting a ball off the tee. I stand, watching it fly off into the blue . . .

   I'm grabbed, shoulders and calves, and lifted. It startles me terribly, and I try to scream. No sound comes out . . . or perhaps one does, a tiny squeak, much tinier than the one produced by the wheel below me. Probably not even that. Probably it's just my imagination.

   I'm swung through the air in an envelope of blackness—Hey, don't drop me, I've got a bad back! I try to say, and again there's no movement of the lips or teeth; my tongue goes on lying on the floor of my mouth, the mole maybe not just stunned but dead, and now I have a terrible thought, one which spikes fright a degree closer to panic: what if they put me down the wrong way and my tongue slides backward and blocks my windpipe? I won't be able to breathe! That's what people mean when they say someone "swallowed his tongue," isn't it?

   Second voice (Rusty): "You'll like this one, doc, he looks like Michael Bolton."

   Female doc: "Who's that?"

   Third voice—sounds like a young man, not much more than a teenager: "He's this white lounge-singer who wants to be black. I don't think this is him."

   There's laughter at that, the female voice joining in (a little doubtfully), and as I am set down on what feels like a padded table, Rusty starts some new crack—he's got a whole standup routine, it seems. I lose this bit of hilarity in a burst of sudden horror. I won't be able to breathe if my tongue blocks my windpipe, that's the thought which has just gone through my mind, but what if I'm not breathing now?

   What if I'm dead? What if this is what death is like?

   It fits. It fits everything with a horrid prophylactic snugness. The dark. The rubbery smell. Nowadays I am Howard the Conqueror, stock broker extraordinaire, terror of Derry Municipal Country Club, frequent habitué of what is known at golf courses all over the world as The Nineteenth Hole, but in '71 I was part of a Medical Assistance Team in the Mekong Delta, a scared kid who sometimes woke up weteyed from dreams of the family dog, and all at once I know this feel, this smell.

   Dear God, I'm in a bodybag.

   First voice: "Want to sign this, doc? Remember to bear down hard—it's three copies."

   Sound of a pen, scraping away on paper. I imagine the owner of the first voice holding out a clipboard to the woman doctor.

   Oh dear Jesus let me not be dead! I try to scream, and nothing comes out.

   I'm breathing though . . . aren't I? I mean, I can't feel myself doing it, but

my lungs seem okay, they're not throbbing or yelling for air the way they dowhen you've swum too far underwater, so I must be okay, right?

   Except if you're dead, the deep voice murmurs, they wouldn't be crying out for air, would they? No—because dead lungs don't need to breathe. Dead lungs can just kind of . . . take it easy.

   Rusty: "What are you doing next Saturday night, doc?"