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“Señor, you have to get up.”
Zeke rolled over wearily and opened one eye.
“No se preocupe. Tengo dinero,” he said.
“Sí, sí, señor, but no sick people here. I have a business. Hotel. No sick people.”
Some hotel, Zeke thought, a few shabby rooms behind a bar in the middle of nowhere. The fuckin’ Ritz.
“Not sick,” Zeke said. “Tired.”
“One more day,” the man said. “Then you go. Then you go.”
“Sí,” Zeke said. “Okay.”
The man left, slamming the door behind him, and Zeke rolled back onto his side and closed his eyes. He was sick, but if he could just sleep , if he could just stay there and sleep for a few more days, he knew that he would be fine.
He’d gotten in trouble outside of Variegas, things had gone bad and fast, and Zeke wasn’t as quick as he used to be, and the guy, the little guy had pulled a knife. Zeke had gotten the wound patched up but he guessed the job hadn’t been too professional because a day later it had started to burn, and when Zeke had lifted the bandage to look at it, it had been swollen, red all around. He had cleaned it off with alcohol as best as he could but then—funny thing—a day after that he couldn’t get out of bed. He didn’t have a thermometer but he knew damn well he was running a hell of a fever, but still, if people would just leave him alone and let him sleep he’d be fine. He’d been worse off, he’d been shot for Christ’s sake, and had lived through that…Casey wasn’t here this time, here to call Stokely but still…he’d be fine.
Zeke fell into a sort of sleep, and dreamed of being in a motel room where the walls were oozing hot orange paint, only it wasn’t paint, it was poison, and he and Casey were climbing up on the furniture to keep it from touching them, because if it touched them, they’d die. Finally, Zeke was standing up on a table that shook beneath him, holding Casey in his arms as the orange poison filled the room, holding Casey above his head to save him, only it was useless, the poison rose up like flames, bright orange and lurid and Casey was crying, terrified, and Zeke said, I’m sorry, Casey, I’m sorry, I’m sorry… before he woke up again to the dirty room and the pain in his side, along with all the other pain that never went away.
Zeke managed to get up. There was a pitcher on the dresser, but no water was in it and the only bathroom in the place was all the way down the hall.
Fuck, Zeke thought. A crumpled pack of cigarettes was next to the pitcher; Zeke lit one and took two drags on it before the room started spinning and then he was down on his knees, vomiting into a bowl that had been under the bed, a bowl that Zeke suspected was a chamber pot—sure, why not, The Ritz always had chamber pots. He didn’t even know what he was throwing up; he couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten anything.
A fit of chills seized him but his side ached so badly that he had to lie down on the floor for a few minutes before he could climb painfully back into bed.
It’s okay, he thought. I’m okay. He passed out, dreamed of ice and snowy wastes and wintry blue sky, muttered, “I’m sorry…I’m sorry,” in his sleep.
_____
The man was back.
“You have to go. Can’t stay here.”
“Look,” Zeke said, struggling to focus, to speak. “Just…if you could get me some water, okay? Just a glass of water…”
The man disappeared and Zeke fell back, out of breath from that little effort. He watched flies circle and land on the ceiling, and wondered hazily if the man would come back.
The man returned with a pitcher of water. He filled a glass and handed it to Zeke. Zeke propped himself up and drank it, choking on the first mouthful.
“Gracias,” he said, the only Spanish he could remember. “ Gracias, man.”
“Now you go.”
“Okay,” Zeke said, but he was already half-conscious. “Yeah.”
_____
There were two of them now, two men, one on each side.
“What the fuck?” Zeke muttered.
“Comprobación,” one of the men said, and both of them laughed.
They dropped him and Zeke cursed, clutching his side. There was something wet under his hand, on his shirt. He glanced down and saw a smear of red.
“Wait, wait,” Zeke said, knowing it was pointless. He sounded so ridiculous to himself that he started to laugh, a pained, gasping sound. He kept laughing while they went through his pockets. That was funny too—anything he had was in his bag back at the hotel, where Zeke knew it would stay. They hadn’t portered his luggage out with him. Terrible service at The Ritz, quite dreadful. He would have to register a complaint with the tourism board.
“El muchacho es loco,” one of the men said, and Zeke nodded.
“You don’t fucking know,” he wheezed.
They took the watch off his wrist; he didn’t have anything else.
“Gracias, señor,” they said, and then they were gone.
_____
“Hey,” Casey said.
“What are you doing here, buddy?” Zeke asked.
“I should be asking you that,” Casey said, smiling.
Zeke shook his head. He didn’t know.
“Zeke.”
Zeke opened his eyes and looked at him. Casey put his hand on Zeke’s face, and Zeke turned into its coolness.
“Don’t go,” Zeke said.
Casey smiled. “I love you, Zeke.”
Zeke started crying. “Please don’t go. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Casey shook his head. “Nothing to be sorry for.”
“Casey,” Zeke said, but Casey was fading; Zeke could barely feel his hand.
_____
Zeke opened his eyes slowly, cautiously. He saw a white curtain and felt a breeze. A ceiling fan turned slowly above him. A vague pain haunted his side. An IV drip was in his arm.
He tried to sit up and couldn’t.
“Not yet,” someone said. “Take it slowly.”
He turned his head and saw a middle-aged woman beside his bed, graying hair neatly trimmed, a wooden cross on a leather cord around her neck.
“Are you thirsty?” she asked and he nodded.
She took a glass of water from the table beside the bed. Zeke managed a few sips before she took it away.
“That’s it,” she said. “You have to take that slowly, too.”
“What…” Zeke said, feeling like he hadn’t spoken in years. “Where…”
“You’re in the hospital, in La Paz. Do you remember how you got here?”
Zeke tried to think, but the last thing he could remember was a stifling room…and Casey. Casey’s cool hand. He shook his head.
“Two women from town found you, and came to tell us. They thought you were dead. You almost were.”
Zeke closed his eyes, feeling a ghost of Casey’s hand on his face.
“Do you want us to call anyone?” the woman asked.
Zeke’s mind touched briefly on the only people he could possibly call. Stokely. Skinner. His mother. He shook his head.
_____
A nurse brought him something to eat a little while later, some sort of broth that tasted like salt water and not much else. The woman who had been there when Zeke had first woken up came while he was eating.
“Do you have a name or should we just make one up for you?” she asked.
Zeke briefly considered giving her an alias, but then said, “Tyler.”
“First name or last?”
“Last.”
“Well, Mr. Tyler, I’m Doctor Lanz. I’m also Sister Martha. You can call me either one. Just don’t call me Doctor Martha, it makes me feel like I should be hosting a talk show.” She smiled and put out her hand. Zeke shook it and said nothing.
“I don’t think I need to tell you how lucky you were, Mr. Tyler. If you’d been…”
“Look,” he said abruptly. “I don’t have any money, I can’t pay for this. So if the police are going to lock me up as soon as you’re sure that I won’t die in jail, then tell me right now and spare me the small talk.”
“This is a charitable institution, Mr. Tyler,” she said calmly. “We don’t put people in jail for getting sick. Or hurt. Or even stabbed.” She raised an eyebrow at him.
Zeke looked away. “All right,” he said. “Sorry.”
“Not a problem. I’ve had worse things said to me.” She studied him. “Are you sure there’s no one you’d like us to contact?”
Zeke nodded mutely.
She reached underneath his pillow and brought out a battered laminated card. The Virgin Mary, with beams of light radiating from her halo.
“This was the only thing that you had on you. We kept it for you.”
Zeke looked at it, remembered where it had come from. “A whore gave me that,” he said.
Dr. Lanz was unfazed. “I’m sure she thought you needed it. Maybe even more than she did.” She tucked the card beneath his pillow again. “Are you in any sort of trouble, Mr. Tyler? Is anyone going to come here looking for you, hoping to finish what they started?”
“No…it was just an accident. I didn’t even think it was that bad.”
“It wasn’t, but someone did a pretty sorry job of stitching you up. The infection was making you sick, not the wound itself. You have to watch that sort of thing in this climate.”
“I’ll remember that next time.”
“Please do,” she said. “Or at least, try not to come in here criticizing my conversation skills.”
Zeke smiled in spite of himself.
“I’ll come by to see you in the morning. Good night, Mr. Tyler.
“Good night,” he said, and watched her walk away.
_____
Dr. Lanz came to examine him the next day. She lifted the gauze bandage on his side and Zeke saw a small ladder of fresh stitches closing a wound that hardly seemed worth the trouble it had caused.
“That looks good,” she said. “Let’s see how the rest of you is doing.”
Zeke wasn’t in the mood but didn’t have the strength to protest. He submitted quietly while Dr. Lanz went over him.
Listening to his breathing, she asked, “How long have you been an alcoholic, Mr. Tyler?”
“I’m not,” he said, startled.
“Will you hold out your hand for me, please?”
Zeke put out his hand, palm down. It trembled slightly. Zeke tried to steady it, and couldn’t. He looked at Dr. Lanz. “I’ve been sick,” he said defensively.
“That’s true, but you’ve also been drying out, for what looks like the first time in a long time. I’ve seen a lot of people in your shape. Not as young as you, though. How old are you?”
Zeke realized he didn’t know. There had been too many years when something as prosaic as a calendar hadn’t mattered, when birthdays had just been one more of an endless series of days to get through. How old had Casey been…when he…
“Thirty,” he said finally. “I think.”
Dr. Lanz nodded. “I would have taken you for older. Still, too young to be in this condition. I’m not going to preach at you, Mr. Tyler, but as a doctor and a counselor, I do have to tell you that if you continue with your current habits, you certainly won’t live to see forty. You might not even live to see another birthday.”
“I guess that’s my problem, isn’t it?”
“I guess,” she said, and helped him put his shirt back on. She rearranged the pillow behind him, then paused and looked at him. “Is it really that bad?”
Zeke looked away, swallowed hard, looked back. “Yes,” he said.
She nodded, put her hand on his arm for a moment, then left.
_____
For the next two days, Zeke recuperated. The hospital was noisy and overcrowded, but Zeke didn’t mind. He’d slept in a hell of a lot worse places. And, to his surprise, he found himself looking forward to Dr. Lanz’s visits. It was the most he’d talked to anyone in almost two years.
She didn’t ask him many questions; she mostly talked about herself. Her work, how she came to Mexico. On the second afternoon, she told Zeke she’d grown up in Cincinnati.
“Do you know Ohio?” she asked, and just the name raised a host of sensations in Zeke’s mind—the sound of cheerleaders at the homecoming game, the feel of autumn leaves underfoot, the scent of spring rain and mown summer grass. He was overwhelmed by a sudden, desperate homesickness, for a place he had never even thought of as home.
“I’ve passed through,” he said. He told Dr. Lanz he was tired then, so that she would leave. He lay awake thinking about Ohio, Herrington, high school and home. He got up and went to the bathroom, looked at his reflection in the dull mirror above the sink.
_____
On Zeke’s third day after waking up, Dr. Lanz came to examine him one last time, to tell him that he would be released the next day.
“I can’t keep you here, Mr. Tyler, but I wish I knew that you had someplace to go. What will you do about money?”
He smiled. “I’ll be all right.”
“I think you should consider going home, wherever that is. Whatever you left behind can’t be worse than this.”
Zeke looked down at his hands on the white sheet. He thought about Marybeth and Principal Drake and Elizabeth Burke. About doctors and men with shiny black shoes and smooth offers. Delilah, Stan, Stokely. Casey.
“Mr. Tyler…”
“Zeke,” he said. “It’s Zeke.”
She nodded. “All right…Zeke. Are you sure you don’t want to talk about anything, Zeke? It can help, to tell someone.”
Zeke opened his mouth, closed it.
You want me to tell you? You would have me locked up if I told you.
“Whatever you tell me will never be repeated.”
Zeke took a deep breath. “What if…” he began, then stopped, struggling for the words.
“Yes?” Dr. Lanz said.
“What if something was going to happen, something terrible and someone stopped it? And because he stopped it and told the truth about it he was…people screwed him over, the people who had wanted it to happen, they did things to him and he wasn’t the same, he wasn’t himself anymore. And then you tried to help him and…and…”
He paused, his hand over his eyes, a thousand images of Casey flooding his memory.
“…and you thought you had? You thought you had, but you didn’t, you couldn’t save him?” Zeke clenched his teeth. “You lost him, he died, he just… died after everything and he died because of them…and because you…you…”
He stopped and composed himself.
“And they’re winning,” Zeke continued, quietly. “He’s dead and they’re winning and nothing you do matters. It doesn’t matter that you tried to save him, it doesn’t matter that you tried to stop the thing from happening, it doesn’t matter that you…” Zeke closed his eyes. “…that you loved him. Nothing matters.” He finally looked at her. “It never did.”
Dr. Lanz was quiet for a while before asking, “Do you think he believed that? Your friend?”
“No,” Zeke said bitterly. “That’s why they fucked him. That’s why he’s dead.”
“I don’t believe that’s true. I think your friend was very strong. And I think that’s what you loved in him, and why you miss him so much. So much that you think you have to do this to yourself.”
“You don’t understand…” Zeke said, and closed his eyes.
Dr. Lanz took his hand. “No, I don’t understand. I don’t know the whole story, and I don’t want to, but I can’t imagine you didn’t do everything you could for him. Zeke, look at me.”
He opened his eyes.
“Whatever happened to him wasn’t your fault. You loved him, you did your best. Don’t you think he knew that? Do you think he would want you here, killing yourself the way you are? Zeke?”
Nothing to be sorry for, he heard Casey say. Had he dreamt that?
In that moment, something almost broke in Zeke, the dam of anger and sorrow that had built up in him over all the years, but the most over these last, since he had lost Casey. Then suddenly, he saw himself in Minnesota, Casey wrapped in a white sheet from Wal-Mart, lying across his lap, motionless. How long had he sat there that day, with Casey in his arms?
He pulled his hand from Dr. Lanz’s.
“I don’t know what he would want. He’s dead.” He turned his face away. “When can I get out of here?” he asked.
“Tomorrow,” she said softly. “In the morning, if you like.”
“Fine,” he said, and closed his eyes until she left.
_____
Zeke was released the next day, wearing a new shirt that the hospital had given him. Dr. Lanz walked him to the door, but they didn’t speak.
At the door, Dr. Lanz gave him a white card with the address of the hospital on it, her name, and the name of her order.
“I know you take gifts from whores, but I hoped I could persuade you to take one from a nun. If you ever need help, please come, or call. I’ll do whatever I can.”
Zeke took the card, and put it in his back pocket, next to the Virgin Mary.
“Thank you,” he said. He looked at her sadly, regretting the way he had spoken to her the day before. “I’m sorry…I…”
“Don’t,” she said. “Just take care of yourself. For your own sake. And your friend’s.”
Zeke didn’t answer or nod. He looked out into the sunlit square before the hospital.
“Vaya con Dios, Zeke.”
He looked back at her, wishing he had her faith.
“Thank you,” he said again. “For everything.”
She nodded and smiled, put her hand on his arm briefly. Zeke turned and went down the steps, out into the southern sun.