Sometimes it's the stranger who becomes the friend, the familiar who becomes the stranger.
Copyright 2006 by Jerry W. Engler
Big droplets of rain splashed the windshield of the car in the warm, steamy summer air outside while inside the vehicle Abner longed to roll down the window to feel the moisture against his face.
But Jane was complaining, her voice sending incessant spasms up his throat in his weakened ability to drive.
“Abner, can’t you turn that air conditioning up any more? She asked. Then she would fan her face, “Hah, hah, hah, I’m dying of heat. I should have worn a sun-dress shouldn’t I? Do you think my sandals look good with this dress?”
“Just turn the fan up if you want more air. You can do it. See, there’s the switch there. You’ll probably be cold in a minute anyway.”
Lord, but the acrid, eye-irritating smell of her hair spray was overcoming in this confined area. It would be good just to sit out under the trees in a lawn chair smelling green life while this rain dripped on you.
“There’s puddles on the pavement. I just did my tonails. Drop me off at the hospital entrance won’t you, Abner? You can walk in across the lot yourself, can’t you?”
He did walk, bent with it throbbing around the lumps on his neck, the heat of the pavement searing up through his shoes even with the cover of water. Abner tried to raise his head, feeling the welcome breeze across his face ripe with the smell of life across the countryside even if he was here in the city.
“Oh, what a beautiful big building this is,” Jane said as Abner entered the mechanical air through the entrance to walk with her to the desk. They had his papers ready, and they waited.
“Zoom, zoom,” said a hard-muscled looking little man, elbows working quickly from side to side, as he shuffled past their seats in a half-dance to the admissions desk in his sparkling white medical uniform.
Abner looked up, annoyed, the pain in his neck clinching him tightly with the effort. He was afraid. No, Abner thought, afraid didn’t cover the magnitude of the tightening knot in his gut. He was scared, terrified, at what faced him in this big sterile place with the big fake plastic fig trees and the faint smell of chemicals in the slow-moving atmosphere. If only one tree were real, it might have seemed a little better.
Even the breeze left by the moving little man was disturbance enough to set his nerves on edge a step further.
He looked at Jane in the next chair with the pink powdered face chewing her gum as placidly as any cow resting under a shade tree with a cud, he thought. She didn’t seem worried. Wasn’t she concerned for him? Maybe in her own way, he answered himself.
“My feet really show off well in sandals, do they Abner?” Jane asked. “I wish I didn’t have a crooked toe. Do you really think my toe is that crooked, Abner? Haven’t they decorated this place nicely? Don’t you really love the way they painted the walls in stripes?”
Routine surgery for this condition, they had tried to reassure him in one breath while in the next statement they added that any surgery in the neck area was sensitive. Abner had never been under the knife since a childhood tonsillectomy that left him vomiting from the ether so he could tell them that any surgery on him wasn’t routine. Besides, what if the malignant tumors grew again despite the surgery, like weeds that kept on coming back.
The little man was at the station, waiting on the computer printout, working his hands one over the other while he did a step in beat to music from the radio playing on the desk, bobbing his nearly bald-cut shiny black-haired head.
Why doesn’t he hold still with more dignity, Abner asked himself? He obviously was a nurse or nurse’s aid of some kind in the white clothes. At least the little guy looked alive in this place, but he wasn’t business-like.
“Mr. Duncard, Abner Duncard to the desk, please,” called a woman from the station nodding at them. As Abner and Jane walked up the woman said, “There’s a room ready for you. Patrick here will take you down in the wheelchair. You’ll be prepped for surgery there.”
“Zoom, zoom, as fast as we can go, take’em down, Patrick now, zoom, zoom,” said the small man moon-walking backwards to the wheelchair with his arms swinging in rhythm to the station radio music while he smiled with big, bright white teeth. “Here we go, Mr. Duncard, sit yourself down in the wheelchair, and we’ll have you down to your room before you know it, zoom, zoom.”
“Abner,” said Jane, “Do I need to stop at the girls’ room? Is my hair messed up so I need a mirror? I wonder if I really should have put that red tint in it, or just left it plain brown. Did we leve the hall light on at home? Maybe you ought to give me your car keys now. I’ll have to go home alone you know.”
Abner’s intestines were empty because they had told him not to eat the night or morning before, but they still clinched and rolled. Got to calm down, he told himself, try not to be so scared.
The small man patted him gently on the shoulder when he stopped the chair, and then helped him out to sit on the bed.
“The nurses will be right in, Mr. Duncard. Got to run with this chair for another guy, but you’ll see me again up and down the hallway, zoom, zoom, got to keep moving.
They had him take his clothes off, and put him in a gown with his back-end exposed. He had to take pills. They gave him a shot. They stuck an intravenous needle in his hand connected to a bag of fluid above his bed. Abner blinked his eyes at the white ceiling, they seemed so dry. He licked his lips, and bit one trying not to grind his teeth. The nurses smiled at him, and tried to be friendly, asking him questions about the farm.
“Oooh, look who’s here, Abner,” said Jane. “It’s Molly come to see us before you go into surgery.”
“Well, I couldn’t stay away in your hour of need,Honey,” said the square-built bleached blonde in the rose-patterned dress. “Oh, I like the way you’ve done your hair, and aren’t those just the cutest sandals.”
The little man was back, looking down on Abner with what seemed to be the biggest, most lustrous brown eyes.
“Came back fast didn’t I, Mr. Duncard, zoom, zoom. How you doing here? Did those nurses take good care of you?”
“I’m cold, really cold. My stomach’s upset.”
“Here, let me pull that blanket up some for you, quick as a wink.” Then he took Abner’s hand in his own warm hand. “You’ll be good to go yourself, Abner. Don’t worry now. It will be over quick, zoom, zoom.
In the background they could hear Molly speaking, “What are you going to do, Honey, if Abner doesn’t make it? Are you set to go it alone? You know, it would have been tough when my husband died because my pension wasn’t much, but he ended up having quite a few benefits.”
“Oh, Abner’s got a life insurance policy for $100,000. It’s all up to date. I checked the file before we came in. Of course, we don’t owe any money on the place anymore either. I don’t know, I might jut move to Florida or somewhere like California or Texas you know, somewhere where you can see the ocean out of a window. I don’t like winter, and you can always air condition.”
“Out of here,” said Abner, choking. “Both of you just get out of here if you have to talk like that. Go out in the hallway.”
The little man was patting his shoulder again. “It’s going to be fine, Abner, over with quick, zoom, zoom. Here, I’m going to pray for you real quick, and then you’ll see me again soon before you know it, got a lot to do, zoom, zoom.” He put his hands on Abner’s chest while he bowed his head, and then he was gone.
They rolled Abner to surgery on a gurney, his head seeming to roll from side to side as he lay tranquilized trying to suppress a tear that rolled from the corner of his eye, Jane and Molly plodding behind with a constant volume of chit chat.
A man held his arms as he descended into a black unconsciousness, blacker than anything he had ever known. He tried to raise his arms at the last moment.
There was a noise somewhere, something that made him blink awake. He tried to focus on shiny metal, the raised rail of the surgery gurney. “Good, Abner, you’re waking up,” said a vice above him from the foggy shape of a nurse’s face. “You’ll be coming around now. You’re fine, you’re fine. We’ll be taking you out soon to see your wife. She’s been waiting, she and your friend.”
The next time, Abner could see the brown hair and rounded face of the nurse more easily, and he gasped out two words at her, “Zoom, zoom.” Then he added, “I want Zoom Zoom.”
When the nurse bent over Abner the next time, he made her jump when he made a major effort to take her hand. “Zoom Zoom,” said Abner.
Another nurse behind her said, “I think he might mean Patrick.”
After a quick kiss, Jane walked down the hallway behind the gurney chatting with Molly again. A man he called Zoom Zoom walked beside the gurney, his smaller, black hand holding Abner’s big-knuckled white hand.
Two nights later, Jane tried to call Abner’s hospital room from home, but received a continuous busy signal. She called the nurses’ station. “I really need to talk to Abner about papers we need to have signed,” she told the nurse.
The nurse looked down the hallway through the open door of Abner’s room to where two men sat of different cultures who had spent most of their lives less than 30 miles apart. “It looks to me like he just has his phone off the hook.
“He says Zoom Zoom has stopped by after shift, and they’ve had their prayer. They’re talking. I think if you’ll call back in just a little bit, they’ll be done quickly.
“You know, zoom, zoom.”
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Reviewed by Julie Murphy
3/28/2008
A terrific story, with much to consider within it. A message without preaching, and the best and not-so-best of humanity. Nicely done. Thanks.
Reviewed by Candace Ho
6/13/2007
Wow, I really really enjoyed this story. I was getting sick of his wife, but I liked Zoom, Zoom. It gave a nice theme to the whole story. As for the living only a little bit apart, I love when I meet someone that lives so close to me that it was suprising we hadnt met before! All in all, marvelous job.
Quite a story, and quite a lesson for us all, Jerry. I think we often treat strangers better than we do our own family and friends. And Zoom Zoom is quite an interesting character.
Jerry, this is my kind of story. I can say without hesitation that this is definitely my favorite one yet. I love the warmth and compassion of "zoom zoom," and was so very touched by Abner's awakneing from surgery and immediately asking for this aide who had shown him such kindness (so much more than his own wife.) I loved: A man he called Zoom Zoom walked beside the gurney, his smaller, black hand holding Abner's big-knuckled white hand. That line really said it all. Just marvelous!
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