Sunlight streamed through the window, causing Glen to blink his eyes several times as he awoke. A blonde nurse was looking over his chart at the bottom of his bed and flashed him a smile as she noticed him awaken. “Good morning, Mr. Chase. How are you feeling?”
He mentally took inventory of various aches and pains through his body– including his throbbing head– and grimaced. “Not great, but pretty good considering where I am.”
She smiled again. “Let’s check your vitals and I’ll send the doctor around to speak with you.” Pushing up the sleeve of his hospital gown and revealing a tattoo, she affixed the blood pressure cuff. “Military man, I take it?”
“Used to be. Medical discharge after they found a heart murmur on a routine physical.” He stayed quiet while she nodded and took his blood pressure, and continued when the cuff came off. “Then again, I think I might have gotten out at the right time with everything going on these days.”
“True enough. Got a cousin in the Army Rangers over in Iraq, and I really worry about him some days. Your blood pressure is fine, a little on the high side, but that’s to be expected when you’re in pain. Open?” She popped the thermometer in his mouth until it beeped, then wrote everything down on the chart.
“Alright, I’ll send the doctor along in a minute. Feeling up to some breakfast, soldier?”
“Sure thing.” He grinned and said, “Hospital food can’t be worse than military rations, can it?”
She chuckled as she placed the chart back at the bottom of the bed and turned to leave. “Oh, I almost forgot… someone sent you flowers, but it looked like you were having an allergic reaction to them last night, so we disposed of them. Are there any allergies that you know of we should record?”
“Not that I’ve ever encountered… weird. I’ve never had problems with allergies at all, even as a kid.”
“Ok, hon. Rest up and I’ll send the doctor in in a moment.” He caught himself staring at her as she walked out the door and reminded himself, You’re engaged now… stop checking out every chick you see.
Yeah, right, like that’s going to happen, his more rebellious side argued, and he sighed. He took stock of the room, standard hospital issue, white walls, uncomfortable chairs, TV tuned to some morning talk-show. Politics… not something he really cared to listen to anymore. He picked up the remote and flipped through the channels, finding nothing but more of the same old early morning crap he never bothered watching. Can’t they get a bloody TiVo in here or something? Christ.
An older doctor entered the room, sunlight illuminating the silver in his hair. He offered his hand to Glenn and said, “Mr. Chase, I’m Doctor Rogers.” His grip was firm, and after they shook hands he pulled out a penlight from his pocket and examined Glenn’s eyes. “I understand you had a bit of a rough night. Can you tell us what you remember?”
“Not much, doctor. I was at work, at the club, and I saw something in the alley… after that it’s just a blur. Images that don’t fit together… being hit on the back of the head is the only thing that stands out clearly from them.”
The doctor put his light away and jotted some notes on the chart. “It was a substantial blow, blunt force trauma to the back of your skull. You were unconscious for some time, but luckily, you seem to have a hard head. All your vitals are fine, within normal healthy parameters, and it does not appear from any of the tests last night that there was any swelling of the brain. Mild memory loss is quite common in this type of injury, indicating a minor concussion.
“All that being said, given the injuries you sustained, I would be more comfortable with you remaining overnight for observation to ensure that there are no further complications. Especially when coupled with your heart murmur. Do you have any objections?”
“None at all, that’ll be fine. Today’s my normal night off from work anyways.”
Dr. Rogers nodded and wrote some further notes on the chart and set it back down. “I believe Nurse Andrea is bringing you some breakfast. I imagine you still have some strong pain from the trauma, so just ask her to bring you something for that and she’ll see to it. Also,” he said as he drew a business card from his jacket, “a detective asked me to give you this. I believe he is the one assigned to investigate your assault.”
“Thank you, doctor. I’ll give him a call right after I eat.”
“If there’s anything further you need, just ask the nurses. I’ll check back in on you again this afternoon.” As the doctor turned to leave, he nearly bumped into the nurse on the way out the door. Glenn chuckled as his stomach rumbled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten in far too long.
* * *
After breakfast, he had the nurse help him set up his laptop and got online. Thank God for whomever put my pack into the ambulance with me. I think I’d go crazy if all I had was the TV to ‘entertain’ me all day, he thought. A quick post to LiveJournal letting folks know that he was ok, and then he disconnected and gave a call to the police officer.
The detective was personable, but with no eye-witnesses at the club and Glenn being unable to recall most of what happened, was not very optimistic about finding the attacker. Apparently not long after Glenn had gone to check the alley, someone else had heard something as well. They arrived in time to see someone fleeing the other end of the alley, but given that the far streetlight had been broken for weeks, didn’t see anything worthwhile… other than Glenn sprawled out on the ground.
After he hung up with the detective, he stared out the window for a while, trying to go over the events from the night in his mind. Trying to see if there was anything else he could dredge up, feeling that there was something that he was subconsciously missing. He gave up when he started getting another headache and brought the laptop online again and updated LiveJournal again. Several friends had sent him emails, wishing him a speedy recovery, and he took the time to write each of them back thanking them for their support.
He signed on to his instant messenger account, and noted that Melissa wasn’t online. He rubbed the stubble on his cheek absentmindedly as he frowned. That wasn’t normal– she usually had it running all day long, even when she was working. Shrugging, he dropped her an email to let her know that he was ok. She must be out on a field trip or something for the school. I don’t remember any scheduled, but maybe she just forgot to tell me.
Maybe. Setting an away message, he pushed the table with the laptop to the side and stood up carefully, anticipating the wave of dizziness that swept over him. When it passed, he carefully stretched and rolled the IV with him over to the window.
I just wish I could make sense of this. It’s not like I like picking fights, and I certainly don’t remember trying to yesterday night. Didn’t even have to throw anyone out of the club, either. Maybe someone I butted heads with from before, but that’s just a risk of the business.
Maybe it’s time to find a new line of work. Could be worse, I guess, I’m not over in Afghanistan with people trying to kill me. But try as he might, he couldn’t shake the feeling that things weren’t that much safer here, and there was something larger going on that he wasn’t seeing yet.
Just another mushroom, fed bullshit and kept in the dark, he thought grimly. If something bigger was going on, the way his gut told him it was, then last night was no accident. The cops might not be inclined to follow up on one more random act of violence, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t. He promised himself that he’d look into things as his head started pounding and he gagged with sudden nausea. Bright lights appeared from out of nowhere, swirling and strobing with a painful intensity.
Staggering, he made it back to the bed– barely– and hit the call button before the darkness surrounded him. His vision faded from him, first grey, then black, deepening until a pindrop of red exploded within and he felt no more.
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