Borderlands Read online

  “I don’t know you yet. I hope we’ll like each other.”

  “Why you here? We got shrinks. Two of them. You on a field trip?”

  “Field trip?”

  “You know, like them school kids. Sometimes the local schools bring in their junior high kids. Show them around. Let them take little look-sees. Tell them if they are bad enough and dive into shallow lakes or don’t wear their seat belts, God’ll make them just like us.”

  Anne cleared her throat and loosened her coat from her waist. “First of all, I’m here on a volunteer program. Until the new center is finished down state, there will continue to be more students than can be properly provided for. The center called on our association to help out temporarily. You are a student with whom I’ve been asked to work.”

  “Student.” Michael spat out the word. “I’m thirty-one and I’m called a goddamn student.”

  “Second,” Anne said, “I’m not on a field trip. I’m not here to stare. I’m here to help.”

  Michael shook his head, then eased off his elbow to a supine position. “So who else is on your list besides me?”

  Anne opened the folded paper Janet had given her. “Randy Carter, Julia Powell, Cora Grant—”

  “Cora’ll drive you ape shit. She lost half her brain in some gun accident.”

  “And Ardie Whitesell. I might like Cora, Michael. Don’t forget, I don’t know her yet, either.”

  Michael sighed. “I don’t need no shrink. What the fuck’s your name?”

  “Miss Zaccaria.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m okay. I don’t need no shrink. Don’t need one any more than old roomie over there.” Michael tilted his head on his pillow, indicating a curtained corner of the room.

  “Roomie?”

  “Roommate. He don’t need no shrink, neither. I don’t ’cause I got things all figured out in this world. Nothing a little nookie can’t cure.” Michael looked at Anne and winked. “And roomie over there, he don’t need one ’cause he’s in some kind of damn coma. Not much fun to have around, you know.”

  Anne frowned, only then aware of the mechanical sounds softly emanating from the corner. The drawn curtain was stiff and white, hanging from the ceiling-high rod like a starched shroud. “What’s wrong with your roommate?”

  “Hell, what ain’t wrong? Come over here.” With a hissing of his arm, Michael rose again and clutched the bed switch, tapping buttons in a short series, and the bed spun around. The legless man rolled to the curtain. Anne followed.

  Michael shifted onto his right side and took the curtain in his hook. “Stephen’s been here longer’n me. He ain’t on no shrink’s list.” Michael pulled the curtain back.

  It was not registering what was before her that allowed her to focus on it as long as she did. There were machines there, a good number of them, crowded around a tiny bed like rumbling and humming steel wolves about a lone prey. Aluminum racks stood on clawed feet, heavy bags of various colored liquids hanging from them, oozing their contents into thin, clear tubes. A portable heart monitor beeped. Behind it, a utility sink held to the wall, various antiseptics and lotions and balms cluttering the shelf above. The rails of the bed were pulled up to full height. At one end of the mattress was a thin blanket, folded back and tucked down. And at the other end, a thin pillow. And Stephen.

  Anne’s coat and paper dropped to the floor. “Oh, my dear God.”

  “Weird, huh? I call him Head Honcho. I think he must be some doctor’s experiment, you know, keeping him alive and all. Don’t it beat all?”

  On the pillow was a head, with black curled hair. Attached to the head, a neck, and below that a small piece of naked, ragged chest, barely large enough to house a heart and single lung. The chest heaved and shuddered, wires pulsing like obscene fishermen’s lines. That was all there was of Stephen.

  Anne’s heart constricted painfully. She stepped backward.

  “Nurses don’t like him. Can’t stand to touch him, ’though they shave him every three days. Doctor checks him nearly every day. Head Honcho don’t do nothing but breathe. He ain’t much but at least he don’t complain about my music.” Michael looked at Anne.

  Anne turned away. Her stomach clenched, throwing fouled bile into her throat.

  “Hey, you leaving?”

  “I need to see the others,” she managed. And she went out of the west wing to the faculty rest room, where she lost her control and her lunch.

  It was three days before Anne could bring herself to visit the center again. The AP partners were asking her for her volunteer hours chart, and as the newest member of the firm, she couldn’t shrug it off. And so she returned. Her pulse was heavy in her neck and the muscles of her back were tight, but she decided she would not allow herself more than passing acknowledgment of them.

  She talked with Cora in the art room. Cora had little to say, but seemed pleased with the attention Anne gave her painting. Randy was in the recreation hall with Ardie, playing a heated game of billiards, wheeling about the table with teeth gritted and chins hovering over cue sticks. Anne told them she’d visit later, after the match. Julia was shopping with her daughter, and Michael was in the pool on a red inner tube.

  “Hey, Miss Zaccaria!” he called when he saw Anne peering through the water-steamed glass of the door. “Want to come in for a swim? I’m faster in the water. Bet I could catch you in a split second. What do you say?”

  Anne pushed the door open and felt the onslaught of chlorine-heated mist. She did not go any closer to the pool. “I never learned to swim, Michael. Besides, I’m not exactly dressed for swimming.”

  “I don’t want you dressed for swimming. What fun would that be?”

  Anne wiped moisture from her forehead. “How long do you plan to swim? I thought we could visit outside. The day’s turned out pretty fair. It’s not as cold as it has been.”

  “I’m finished now, ain’t I, Cindy?”

  The poolside attendant, who had been watching Michael spin around on his tube, shrugged. “If you say so.” She pulled Michael’s wheeled bed from the wall and moved it to the pool steps. “Get over to the side so I can get you out.”

  “Hey, Miss Zaccaria, do me a favor. My blue jacket is in my room. It’s one of those Members Only things. Anyway, I’m not real crazy about wind, even when it’s warm. Would you get the jacket for me? Door’s unlocked.”

  Anne’s head was nodding as she thought, Oh, Christ, yes, I mind. “No problem,” she said. She left the pool, telling herself the curtain was drawn.

  They would always keep the curtain drawn.

  Michael’s door was indeed unlocked. The students of the center kept valuables in a communal vault, and the staff moved about the floor frequently, so chances of theft were slim. Anne went into the room, expecting the jacket to be in plain sight, prepared to lift it coolly and leave with her self-esteem intact.

  But she did not see the jacket.

  She checked Michael’s small dresser, behind the straight-backed visitor’s chair, in the plastic laundry basket beside the vacant spot where Michael’s bed rested at night. It was not there.

  Anne looked at the curtained corner. Certainly the jacket would not be behind the curtain. There was no reason to go there, no reason to look.

  She walked to the curtain and edged over to the hemmed corner of the heavy material. It’s not over there, she thought. Her hands began to sweat. She could not swallow.

  She pulled the curtain back slowly. And let her gaze move to the bed.

  Again, it was a flash image that recorded itself on her startled retinas before she looked away. The head was in the same place, eyes closed, dark hair in flat curls. The neck. The breathing, scarred half-chest. Anne stared at the sink, counting, rubbing thumbs against index fingers, calming herself. She would look for Michael’s jacket. There was a chair like that on Michael’s side, and a laundry basket, although this one held no clothes, only white towels and washcloths. By the wall beside the sink was a pile of clothing, and Anne stepped closer to
search through it. There were shirts, mostly, several pairs of shorts and underwear. And a blue jacket. Anne picked it up. She looked back at the small bed.

  And the eyes in the head were open, and they were looking at her.

  Anne’s fingers clenched, driving nails into her palms. She blinked, and glanced back at the pile of clothes, pretending she hadn’t seen the eyes. Chills raised tattoos up her shoulders, and adrenaline spoke loudly in her veins: leave now.

  Her hands shook as they pawed through the clothes on the floor, acting as though she had more to find. Calm down. And leave.

  But the voice made her stop.

  “I didn’t mean to stare,” it said.

  Anne flinched, and slowly stood straight. She looked at the bed.

  The eyes were still open, still watching her.

  Her own mouth opened before she had a chance to stop it, and she said, “I was looking for Michael’s jacket.” Leave now! cried the adrenaline. That thing did not say anything. It can’t talk. It’s comatose. It’s brain dead. Leave now!

  The eyes blinked, and Anne saw the muscles on the neck contract in a swallowing reflex. “Yes,” it said. And the eyes closed. The whole ragged body seemed to shudder and shrink. It had gone to sleep again.

  The jacket worked in Anne’s fingers. Michael was in the pool, waiting for her. It’s brain dead, Anne. Get hold of yourself. “Stephen?” she whispered.

  But it did not open its eyes, nor move, and Anne took the jacket down to the pool where Michael was fuming about on his bed, spinning circles around the yawning attendant.

  “So I store my stuff on Stephen’s side of the room, ’cause he don’t complain none. And when I get visitors they don’t think I’m a slob. Nurses don’t care. I get the stuff from over there into my laundry basket when it’s really dirty.”

  Anne was in Michael’s visitor’s chair. He was on his side, his gaze alternating between her, his hook, and the curtain. “He’s never complained to you?”

  Michael chuckled shallowly. “You serious? He’s in a coma, I told you already. Listen to this, if you don’t believe me.” Michael reached for the sleek black cassette player on the nightstand beside the bed. He pushed the switch, and an instant blast of heavy rock shattered the air. Above the shrieking guitars and pounding percussion, Anne could hear the sudden, angry calls from the neighboring students.

  “Go, look, quick,” Michael shouted over the music. “Go see before those damned nurses get here.”

  Anne shook her head, smiling tightly, brushing off the suggestion.

  Michael would have none of it. “Shit, just go on and look at Dead-Head Honcho.”

  “I don’t think it’s my place to bother him.”

  “Get on now, the nurses are coming. I hear them damn squeaking shoes down the hall!”

  Anne got up and looked behind the curtain. The head was silent and motionless. The eyes were closed.

  “What’d I tell you? Deaf, dumb, blind, and in a coma. Sounds like hell to me, and God knows I seen hell up close myself.”

  “You have?” Anne went back to her chair. “What do you mean, you’ve seen it up close?”

  “Look at me, Miss Zaccaria. You think the love of the Lord do this to me?”

  There were then three nurses’ heads at the door, clustered on the frame like Japanese beetles on a rose stem. “Turn that down, Michael, or the player’s ours for the next week.”

  “Shit,” said Michael. He grappled the button; pushed it off. “I ain’t no goddamn student!” he told the nurses who were already gone. “It’s my business how loud I play my music!”

  “Tell me about your accident,” said Anne. But she was thinking: Hell, oh, yes, it must be like hell, living in a coma. But he’s not in a coma. He is conscious. He is alive. And when you are already in hell, what is hell to that?

  Her next session with Michael was canceled because he was in the infirmary with the flu. And so Anne sought out Julia and spent an hour with her, and then with Cora, who did not want to talk but wanted Anne to paint a picture of a horse for her. Randy and Ardie were again at the billiard table and would have nothing to do with her. Then she visited the faculty lounge, and listened with feigned interest to the disgruntled banter and rehab shoptalk. A few questions were directed her way, and she answered them as cordially as possible, but she wanted to talk about Stephen. She wanted to know what they knew.

  But she could not make herself bring up the subject. And so she went to the west wing, and let herself into Michael’s unlocked room.

  She went to the curtain and took the edge in her fingers. Her face itched but she shook it off. No, said the adrenaline. “Yes,” she said. And she pulled the curtain back.

  The tubes flowed, nutrients in, wastes out. The monitor beeped. Bags dripped and pumps growled softly. Anne moved to the end of the bed. She forced herself to see what was before her, what she needed to see, and not be distracted by the machinery about it.

  The flesh of the chest twitched slightly and irregularly with the work of the wires. Every few seconds, the shuddering breath. It would be cold, Anne thought, yet the blanket was folded back at the foot of the bed, a regulatory piece of linen which served no purpose to the form on the pillow. With the wires and tubes, a blanket would be a hindrance. The neck did not move; swallowing was for the wakeful. The head as well did not move, except for the faint pulsing of the nostrils, working mindlessly to perform its assigned job.

  Anne moved her hands to the railing of the bed. She slid around, moving along the side to the head of the bed. Her feet felt the floor cautiously as if the tiles might creak. She reached the pillow; her hands fell from the railing. Her face itched and again she refused to give in to it.

  Through fear-chapped lips, she said, “Stephen?”

  The monitor beeped. The chest quivered.

  “Stephen?”

  The sleeping face drew up as if in pain, and then the eyes opened. As the lids widened, the muscles of the cheeks seemed to ease. He blinked. His eyes were slate blue.

  “I hope I’m not bothering you,” she said.

  “No,” he said. And the eyes fluttered closed, and Anne thought he was asleep again. Her hands went to her face and scratched anxiously. She pulled them down.

  Stephen’s eyes opened. “No, you aren’t bothering me. Why would you think that?”

  “You were sleeping.”

  “I always sleep.”

  “Oh,” Anne said.

  “You’ve been spending time with Michael. What do you think of him?”

  “He’s…fine. It’s good to spend time with him.”

  The head nodded, barely, sliding up and down the pillow, obviously an effort. “You are Miss Zaccaria.”

  “Anne,” she said.

  “Anne,” he repeated. His eyes closed.

  “Do you want me to go now?”

  His eyes remained closed. “If you wish.”

  “Do you want me to?”

  “No.”

  And so she stood those very long minutes, watching Stephen slip into sleep, trying to absorb the reality of what was before her, counting the beepings of the heart monitor.

  Again the eyes opened. “You are still here.”

  “Yes.”

  “How long has it been?”

  “Only a few minutes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, that’s all right. I don’t mind.”

  Stephen sighed. “Why don’t you sit? There is a chair over there somewhere.”

  “I’ll stand.”

  “Michael is wrong. I do mind his music. I hate it.”

  “I could ask him to keep it down.”

  “It’s not the volume. It is the music. Music was created for movement, for involvement. I feel a straightjacket around my soul when Michael plays his music.”

  Anne said nothing for a moment. Stephen looked away from her, and then back again.

  “Why do you let them think you are comatose?” Anne asked.

  “That way I can sleep. When I s
leep, there are dreams.”

  “What kind of dreams?”

  “Ever the clinical social worker,” said Stephen. And for the first time, a small smile crossed his lips.

  Anne smiled also. “That’s me,” she said.

  “My dreams are my own,” he said. “I would never share them.”

  “All right.”

  “And I would not ask you to share yours,” he said.

  “No,” said Anne.

  “I’m tired,” he said.

  And when she was certain he was asleep once again, Anne left.

  “I liked college, my studies there. The psyche of the human is so infinite and fascinating. I thought I could do something with all I’d learned. But I wasn’t smart enough to become a doctor.”

  “How do you know?”

  Anne shrugged. “I know.”

  “And so you are a therapist,” said Stephen.

  “Yes. It’s important. Helping people.”

  “How do you help?”

  “I listen to them. I help them find new ways of seeing situations.”

  “Do you like your patients?”

  “I don’t call them patients. They are clients.”

  “Do you like them?”

  “Michael asked me something like that when we first met. He wanted to know if I liked him.”

  “Do you?”

  Anne crossed her feet and angled her face away from Stephen. There was a lint ball on the floor by the bed. The nurses and orderlies were obviously not quick about their business here.

  “Of course I do,” she answered.

  “That’s good. If you like people you can help them.”

  “That’s not a prerequisite, though. Liking them.” Stephen closed his eyes momentarily. Then he looked at Anne again. “You have a husband?”

  “No.”

  “A boyfriend, certainly.”

  “No, not really. I’ve not wanted one.” Anne hesitated.

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “What do I think?”

  “That I’m a lesbian or something.”

  “I haven’t thought that.”

  “I’m not.”