Mystery

Beneath the flaring pain in his hips, groin, and right leg there moved another level of pain like a shark waiting to strike. This pain would obliterate the world. When he had experienced it he would never again be the person he had been. He would be set apart from himself and everything he had known. Tom expected this deep lurking pain to move upward and seize him, but it continued to circle inside his body, as lazily powerful as a threat.

Tom turned his head to look sideways, and caused only a minor flare from his right shoulder. As he did so, he unconsciously rubbed his left hand over the smooth rounded curve of his groin where his penis should have been—something down there was peeing, he could not imagine what, could not think about it or begin to picture it. Just past his head on the far end of the sheet stood three curved tubular guard rails that marked the edge of his bed, and past the bed was a white table with a glass holding water and a funny-looking straw. His mother’s straw bag lay on a chair. A door stood open on a white corridor. Two doctors walked past. I’m here, he wanted to shout, I’m alive! His throat refused to make any sound at all. The doctors continued past the door, and Tom realized that he had seen a glass of water. His eyes came back to the glass on the bedside table. Water! He reached for the glass with his left hand. In the instant his hand touched the table Tom heard his mother’s voice coming in through the open door.

“STOP IT!” she yelled. “I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!”

His hand jerked by itself and knocked the glass into a stack of books. Water sheeted out over the table and fell to the floor like a solid pane of silver.

“I TOOK IT ALL MY LIFE!” his father yelled back.

The secret pain deep in his body opened its mouth to devour him, and far too quietly to be heard Tom cried out and fainted again.

The next time he opened his eyes a jowly face peered down at him with quizzical seriousness.

“Well, young man,” said Dr. Bonaventure Milton. “I thought you were coming up for air. Some people have been waiting to talk to you.”

His great head swung back and away, and the faces of Tom’s parents crowded into the empty space.

“Hiya, kid,” his father said, and his mother said “Oh, Tommy.”

Victor Pasmore glared at his wife for a second, then turned back to his son. “How do you feel?”

“You don’t have to talk,” his mother said. “You’re going to get better now.” Her face flushed, and tears filled her eyes. “Oh, Tommy, we were so—you didn’t come home, and then we heard—but the doctors say you’re going to heal—”

“Of course he’s going to heal,” said his father. “What kind of guff is that?”

“Water,” Tom managed to say.

“You knocked that glass right off your table,” his father said. “Sounded like you threw a baseball through the window. You sure got our attention.”

“He wants a drink,” said Gloria.

“I’m the doctor, I’ll get a new glass,” the doctor said. Tom heard him walk out of the toom.

For a moment the Pasmores were silent.

“Keep breaking those glasses, you’ll cost us a fortune in glassware,” his father said.

His mother burst into outright tears.

Victor Pasmore leaned down closer to his son, bringing a dizzying mix of aftershave, tobacco, and alcohol. “You got pretty banged up, Tommy, but everything’s under control now, isn’t it?” He managed to shrug while leaning over the bed.

Tom forced words out through his throat. “Is my … am I …?”

“You got hit by a car, kiddo,” his father said.

And then he remembered the grille and the bumper advancing toward him.

“I had to go through hell and back to get a new glass,” complained Dr. Milton, coming back into the room. He stepped up alongside his father and looked down. “I think our patient could use some rest, don’t you?” He held the glass in front of Tom’s face and gently inserted the curved plastic straw between his lips.

The water, liquid silk, invaded him with the tastes of strawberries, milk, honey, air, sunshine. He drew another mouthful up from the glass, parted his lips to breathe, and the doctor slid the straw from his mouth.

“Enough for now, son,” he said.

His mother brushed his left hand with her fingers before stepping back.

Sometime after that, an hour or a day, Tom opened his eyes to a vision that seemed as unreal as a dream—at first he thought he had to be dreaming, for what he saw was the slim, fantastic figure of his cranky old neighbor on Eastern Shore Road, Lamont von Heilitz, gliding toward him from a dark corner of the room. Mr. von Heilitz was wearing one of his splendid suits, a pinstriped light grey, with a pale yellow vest that had wide lapels; in his left hand he held gloves of the same shade. Yes, it was a nightmare, for the darkness seemed to follow the old man as he approached the bed and blinking Tom, who feared that his strange neighbor would begin shaking his fist and screaming at him.