Short Story / Johny at the Hospital (Analysis)
Johny eased to the end of the drive in front of his father’s patio home and parked beside the white Lincoln Towncar. The door already stood propped open by the jamb guide and a small travel bag sat on the porch. He stepped through the doorway and stopped.
“Dad?”
“Back here son,” his father called.
His father leaned back in his lazy boy with his reading glasses balanced at the end of his nose, a tattered bible in one hand and the remote control in the other.
“What ya watchin?”
“Girl’s college volleyball. These girls don’t look like the girls I dated in college. They’re in such good shape.”
Johny stood in front of his father and held out his hand.
“You ready?”
“Why, I don’t think I need any help but,” he said holding out his hand.
Johny grabbed it in both hands and planted his feet, and his father rocked back in the chair and forward, allowing his son to pull him up and out of the chair with an explosive grunt.
“Thank you son. Hopefully after this surgery that won’t be necessary. I hate going to the hospital, it’s such a pain in the neck!”
He walked down the hall behind his father, who took short stiff steps like an troll frozen by some magician’s spell.
“Can I borrow a book for the hospital Dad?”
“Of course, you know where they are.”
He waited for his father to clear his bedroom doorway then went in his room and dipped down before the bookshelves he’d put together himself and scanned the options.
“I know if I tell you a book is good you won’t like it, but those Alan Furst novels are tremendous. They’re the kind of stuff you like, dark. But the one thing about his novels is that the hero never gets killed off like so much of the modern stuff.”
“That sounds pretty good to me right about now,” he called back to the doorway where his father leaned.
He grabbed a book entitled Night Soldiers and walked to the door and took the keys outstretched in his father’s hand and locked up and they got in the car.
“Dr. Ushami said this knee replacement would take much less time.” He paused. “You know I don’t know what I’d do without you son.”
Johny’s shoulders tensed up and he kept his eyes on the road.
“No problem,” he finally said. “How long until you are able to go home? Tomorrow?”
“You know there’s a shortcut right up here,” his father said looking out the window.
“Do you want me to take the short cut?”
“You can do whatever you like, son.”
“Okay,” Johny said, keeping his present course.
“But the short cut is faster. E street.”
“Yes sir.”
Johny sat in the pre-op waiting room a fourth of the way into the book. The rotary phone on the wall by the door rang, and he rose up to get it.
“Mr. Lessman?” a woman’s voice asked.
“Yes?”
“Your father is out of surgery, but the doctor said he’ll be staying here tonight. Do you want to see him?”
“Is he cognitive?”
“Excuse me?”
“Is he conscious?”
“Sir, I don’t know that.”
Johny hung the phone up softly and gathered his book, dog earring his place.
Peter Lessman opened his eyes and reached for the hanging triangle and gripped it and pulled himself up. He blinked hard and looked at his son.
“Did I miss the tee time? There was traffic.”
“Dad.”
Johny watched as his father looked around the room. His father’s face was pale, he licked his lips, looking weak.
“Where do you think you are?”
“What is this an investigation? I know exactly where I am. Pine Bluff Arkansas.”
“No dad, you’re in Baptist Hospital, you’ve had your other knee replaced.”
“I am? Well. Where are the snack nuts? Christmas isn’t the same without snack nuts.”
“Dad we had Christmas last month. It’s almost February. Do you know who am I? Do you recognize me?”
“You’re that twerp.”
Johny’s furrowed brow to melted into easy creases, and he doubled over shaking despite himself.
“It’s been two days,” Johny said standing in the hall outside his father’s hospital room.
“I know but you have to consider the fact that he’s seventy four years old and everyone recovers differently,” answered the nurse, a grizzled looking Air Force vet.
“His last knee replacement took twice as long and he was nothing like this. It’s like he’s had some type of psychotic break.”
“His body could be in shock, it is a major surgery. He’ll probably be his old self tomorrow when you come back in the morning.”
“I respect your opinion but I want to talk to Dr. Ushami.”
“She’ll be in tomorrow at 10am to see him.”
Johny looked at him for a long moment. Then he turned and went back in his father’s room and eased himself back down in the chair.
“You’ve never had a lot of talent son. You’ve just got to hustle, if the coaches see you hustle they’ll put you in, and then at least you’ll get to play.”
Johny picked up the book and opened it, watched his father squirm in the sheets, he legs tangled. He rose to fix it.
“Hi Mr. Lessman. Here’s your medicine. How was your breakfast?” asked the overweight black female morning nurse.
Johny straightened up in his chair, rubbing his neck, groggy.
“That guy ate it, not me.”
“Did you eat your father’s breakfast?” she asked looking at him with her hands on her hips.
“No, I haven’t eaten anything,” he told her. “He ate most of it. He’s been delusional since he woke up from surgery.”
“I’m no magician!” his father scolded.
She gave him two Percocet and another small white pill with a clear plastic cup of water. He fumbled the pills and she dug in his sheets to recover them, then manually helped him take the pills and swallow. Then she took his breakfast tray and left the room with a suspicious backwards glance.
Johny paced the room, looked out the window, and picked up the Alan Furst book looking for his dog ear. His father grabbed the triangle leaning up and started coughing hard. Johny set the book back down and started for the plastic water jug. He father’s body convulsed, his face turning blood red. Johny hurried to the hallway and called out for the nurse, then turned back in time to see a yellow chunky spume geyser out of his father’s mouth onto his bedsheets and the floor.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” his father said coughing and laying back down, gasping for air.
“It’s ok, you’re just sick, it’s no problem.”
Johny went to the bathroom and yanked a stack of napkins out of the metal holder and turned back into the room. The smell in the air reminded him of sour garbage. His eyes glistened and he cursed under his breath.
“You’re not getting into heaven talking like that, Tabby.”
“It’s John dad, John!” he spit out, frustrated.
As he mopped up the puke, which didn’t seem as sickening as he thought because it came out of his father, he wiped across two somewhat digested brown pills in all that slop. He knelt on his knees on the tile and scooped the fuzzy smeared Percocets up quickly and moved into the bathroom. He washed the pills off and looked in the mirror briefly at himself, his hand shaking. His eyes swallowed by his brow, the shadow from the light casting his sockets dark but two twin moons in the middle of all that quivering in the mirror back at him. Then tossed them in the back of his mouth and bent to the running water and swallowed.
“Either you change something, his medications, his room, or whatever. Or I’m taking my father out of here.”
“The captain has spoken, now the Japs are in trouble!” his father added.
“Calm down, calm down, Mr. Lessman. I promise we’re doing the best that we can for him,” Dr. Ushami said with a soothing voice.
Johny snatched the drooping sleeve of her white jacket and pulled her into the hall.
“Let go,” she demanded, no longer calm.
He did, looking at the crumpled sleeve, then up at her eyes.
“This is the third day. The third day and he doesn’t know where he is or what’s going on. He’s either had a psychotic break or this is Alzheimers or dementia or something.”
He took a step forward, she took a step back.
“You know what I do for a living right? I write for the News Journal. If you don’t change something now, if this doesn’t get better, this is going to be my life forever, trying to fuck you. Make a goddamn change or you’ll be on the front page. Big picture. Of you. And my dad. Do something.”
She stared at his red face and wild eyes for a moment.
“Okay, we’ll take him off his pain meds. But your father is in pain. Will that make you happy?”
“Yes it will make me happy.”
He dreamt he was leading a prison insurrection. There were fires, smoke. He ran in mud, couldn’t run fast enough, and had no strength in his arms as the guards grabbed him. But somehow he managed to squirm away, and led a crowd behind him of angry prisoners, a platoon of guards at the gate, a showdown. Then through a sniper’s sight he saw his face, defiant. Red mist, a bell tolled, he saw clouds running over him in the sky.
Woozy eyed and unbalanced, he rose from the chair, moving across the room unsteadily and pissing in his father’s bathroom. When he emerged he sidled up to his father’s bed and looked down upon him. Peter’s eyes snapped open, then relaxed, focusing on his son’s face.
“Johny…I’m thirsty.”
“I’ve got a pitcher full of ice water right here, you want some?”
“How’d the surgery go?”
“Well it’s been a couple days, but your knee is fine. Do you know where you are?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“Just a question.”
“I’m at Baptist hospital. And I’m thirsty. Don’t be disrespectful.”
Johny poured the crushed ice and water into the cup and tilted it to his father’s lips. His father swallowed and blew.
“Ahh.”
Worth started to move away from the bed but his dad grasped his lingering hand and squeezed it, licking his dry lips as his eyelids closed again.
“You’re a good boy.”
Worth made his way around the bed and back into the bathroom and ran the faucet, sat down on the toilet. Peter thought he heard sobbing coming from behind the closed door, but he couldn’t be sure.
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This 102 word review has not been unlocked.
good story. good style.
problems occur in the second page and continue: the extreme overuse of the word “and”, lack of comas at key points, changing of tenses, pronouns and the occasional dropped word or two. if you need line reading specifics, ask.
also, who the hell is Worth? and where did this name come from?
mind you, all that can be fixed very easily.
as a side note, i would make the transitions from locations more pronounced by describing the scene and having the characters perform actions involving props from those various locations…
and dont hate me, but the ending…? really, seems incomplete.
nice that he finally has a moment to relax now that his fathers mind has returned but it lacks the blunt force of a good ending for such a short piece.
all that said…
love the work.
peace
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