Where the Road Ends by Larry Kramer

Author:Larry Kramer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Short stories.
Publisher: Pottersfield Press

Chapter 19

Dressed in OR greens. Hands and face covered in blood. Running to the scrub sink to wash, never getting any closer. The floor of the operating room moves underfoot like a treadmill in overdrive. A man dressed in tattered black clothes has no eyes and a charred black face. He pulls at one of my arms with unwashed hands and dirty fingernails. His tortured voice wails, “I have no dreams. I am torn to pieces. You are my first, my last, my only hope.” An American soldier with no hands and forearms made only of broken bones stabs at my other arm, and whispers, “HUA, HUA, HUA …”

Throughout the long night the ghosts shrieked their lamentations and Jericho never made it to the scrub sink. When he awoke in the morning it was like a sprinter to a starter’s pistol, full of adrenalin, but in his case, nowhere to run. Frantically, he looked around the room trying to establish a sense of where and why. Slowly, ever so slowly, his heart rate returned to normal and his panicked mind made a truce with his fallen angels. Sunlight streamed into the room through the small window overlooking the village below. This comforted him and his breathing soon calmed down. He sensed the cold of his sweat-drenched clothes and smelled the urine on the sheets. Sitting on the edge of his dishevelled bed, he felt exhausted. He closed his eyes and rubbed them aggressively, then glanced at his watch and forced himself to concentrate. Saturday, September 17, seven a.m., palm trees, Oasis. A small bar at the end of the road. For Sale. What had he done?

A long hot shower brought him closer to his present reality, but not so close that he could remember the precise events of the evening before. His usual “morning after” wasn’t this bad. He crossed the room and sagged onto a chair by the window. There, in the warm sunlight, he allowed himself to dry and collect the scattered remnants of his memory. After changing his clothes and stripping the bed, he moved gingerly out the door and down the stairs. Immediately he recognized the vague nausea, headache, gritty eyes, and general malaise that had been his regular morning friends for far too long. Mental note to self, he thought. Google Pub Med for the latest in hangover research.

At eight a.m., Frank Sinatra was doing it his way on the jukebox as Carlos moved a broom around the floor with the enthusiasm of Sisyphus at the top of the hill. He spotted Jericho halfway down the stairs, stopped sweeping, and leaned on his broom as he surveyed him with a look of mild commiseration. “Dr. Jericho, you look like a candidate for rehab … or a casket. Care for a little hair of the dog?”

Jericho wished he had sunglasses on. The bright light he had noticed upstairs flooded through the larger back windows of the main floor as well. His voice was hoarse as he spoke.

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