The Circus Comes to Town

Author © Scott D. Zachary

Ed Matlack moved from Florida back to New Jersey about the time that Bill Kesl moved to Lewisport. Ed came to see us several times over the years, both before and after Bill’s disappearance. Bobbie and I had also visited Ed in Clayton, New Jersey. Despite mine and Ed’s mutually volatile antagonism, we had become close friends with him and his girlfriend, Rene. Ed even drove a thousand miles each way to surprise me at my 50^th birthday party. Friends like that are keepers!

Earlier this afternoon, Bobbie had gone to Owensboro to buy bras. Rene called me to let us know that Ed had collapsed into a diabetic coma. The EMTs had found Ed naked and unconscious on the lawn in front of his RV. His blood glucose registered 1,600—far above crisis stage. She said they didn’t expect him to live. I called Bobbie, and she immediately returned home.

Although I sensed that my trip to New Jersey might be the proverbial last straw for Bobbie concerning our marriage, I instructed her to book me on the next flight out of Louisville and to send seven dozen roses to Ed. I told her to make each bouquet a different color.

She began to protest.

“Just do it,” I said, “and don’t let ‘em know who sent them.”

Bobbie ordered the roses and instructed the florist to attach a message card to each bouquet. She recited to the florist the seven obtrusively sappy messages that I’d concocted.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Rene picked me up at the airport that next evening. She guardedly gave me the good news that Ed had awakened from the coma but is extremely depressed and in critical condition. Moreover, the doctor had described Ed as “teetering on the brink.” Rene dropped me off at a hotel, saying she’d pick me up in the morning at nine o’clock and we’d spend the day at the hospital with Ed. I could readily see the toll that her 24-7 vigilance had taken from her usually happy face.

I went for a long walk early the next morning throughout the neighborhoods around my hotel. I strolled and pondered the gravity of my visit. It became all too evident that my mission to comfort and possibly say good-bye to Ed must devolve into a concerted campaign to jerk him out of his depression—he obviously needs a good rousting.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Ed was sleeping when we entered his room. Rene and I stood for a while on either side of his bed, holding his hands. I contemplated the incongruity of my holding Ed’s hand as I studied his incongruously peaceful face. His eyelids fluttered. “Welcome back, buddy!” I cheered.

His breathing labored and his face sallow, Ed still possessed enough spark to exchange a few barbs with me. The nurse came in and shooed Rene and me out while she attended to Ed’s unmentionables. I welcomed her shooing me away because my nicotine levels had dropped critically low during the hour-long drive to see Ed.

I patted Ed’s hand. “Don’t leave the planet, buddy. I’m not done with you, yet.”

“Yeah, you wish,” grumbled Ed.

I love it when I lose my self-consciousness as I did that day and the next—the way I frolicked in the Arkansas State Hospital. While smoking a cigarette at the far end of one concrete tentacle of the sidewalk that branched to form a large U in front of the hospital, Bobbie called. She wasted no words in telling me that she had talked to an attorney about filing for divorce. Persuading Bobbie’s intransigence to the contrary seemed senseless, and pleasantries seemed even more pointless. I took a deep breath. “If that’s what you want,” I resigned and hung up. Chagrin nearly prompted me to toss the phone into a puddle formed around a sprinkler head in the finely manicured hospital lawn, but a caveat restrained me.

A likely centenarian gentleman moseyed toward me. His distinct lack of purposefulness terminated my dazed reverie. The crest of his baseball cap announced his warrior status: “Omaha Beach.” I reached to grasp his hand, shaking it vigorously. “Thank you, sir!”

His expressionless face lit up in querulous surprise. “What?!”

I continued pumping his hand enthusiastically as I expounded, “For your valiant service, sir.” I snapped a smart salute.

He humbly smiled. His derailed tone apologized, “I wasn’t there. I wanted to go, but a seriously sprained ankle during training exercises left me side-lined to help with logistics paperwork back in England. One of the lucky fellows who survived gave me this cap.”

Unrelenting, “Your courage is inspiring. Thank you, sir!” He introduced himself as John Walker. As we ambled along, John recounted those heroically brash days, and his shoulders took on a military bearing.

As we approached the main entrance of the hospital, a thin, bouncy, middle-aged lady stood before us gesticulating uncertainty.

“Can I help you, ma’am?” I asked.

She pointed at the sign: UNATTENDED VEHICLES WILL BE TOWED. “I’ve got seven dozen roses to take up to the seventh floor.”

I grinned. “I’ll keep an eye on your van for you, ma’am?”

“Oh, would you?! You’re a darling.”

“Can I help?” volunteered my noble warrior friend as the florist opened the rear door of her van.

“Sure!” she exclaimed and handed him a bouquet of beautiful turquoise-colored roses.

I watched John Walker’s purposeful gate as he followed the flower lady through the hospital doors. I looked up into the powder-blue sky and warmly smiled. “Thank you, Lord.”

The centenarian and his bouncy cohort returned after their third foray to Ed’s room. John snatched the seventh vase from the van, and I turned to Miss Bouncy. Justine and I introduced ourselves, and she thanked me vehemently.

       “I’m the impetus behind your task of delivering seven dozen roses,” I divulged. “I just happened to be walking by and noticed your troubled expression. I thank you, Justine, but God deserves the ultimate thanks for making it all possible—we just get the fun of doing it.”

Justine cocked her head, visibly shivering. “I just had a rush of adrenaline go up my spine.” She paused. Hopelessness draped her face. “My father died two weeks ago.” She leaned ever-so-slightly closer and peered into my seemingly faith-rendering eyes with a little girl’s uncertain voice, pleading, “Will I see my daddy again?”

Justine cried as I hugged her tenderly and whispered in her ear, “I’m sure of it.”

She gathered herself, wiped the tears from her eyes, and glowed with renewed hope. “I knew I was coming here for an important reason today.”

John returned, hoping for more roses to deliver. Alas, there were no more. Justine and I thanked him effusively for his help. Going our separate ways, I jaunted up to the seventh floor.

Five nurses jammed Ed’s doorway, their curiosity jostling for a peek at the virtual rose garden in Ed’s hospital room. I stood behind them, amused by the way they acted as though they’d never seen a bouquet of roses. They seemed to be just as interested in scoping out the lucky recipient. Their pot-shot questions showed their desire to learn what kind of person merited such a unique honor. I slid sideways between them, popped my head out through the swarm of nurses, and surveyed the gazes of Ed, Rene, and another couple.

Ed’s dumbfounded look instantly ripened into one of a monumental discovery. “You!” he accused.

“Who? Me?”

“Yeah, you! You did it, didn’t ya?!”

“Did what?”

“All this!”

I looked around at the vases of flowers adorning every flat surface in the room, made a stab at pretending ignorance, and then giggled sheepishly.

“I should’ve known by these disgustingly sentimental cards.” Ed punctuated his sentence by flinging all seven cards across the room.

My giggle erupted into unabashed laughter.

Ed gestured with his hand at the growing crowd of nurses at the door. “The doctor ordered me to rest!”

“Well, rest then. I’m not stopping you.”

Ed grunted exasperatedly.

I heard an authoritative masculine voice in the hallway order, “Break it up here,” and the doorway slowly cleared.

“What possessed you to do something so outlandish, Scott?” chirped Rene.

I looked at Ed as I restrained a silly smirk. “I remembered how much you said you hated the disingenuous gesture of giving a bouquet of flowers as a gift. I wanted to see how disingenuous you thought seven would be.”

       Ed struggled to catch his breath. “Get out of here!”

I shifted to a purposeful seriousness. “Okay, but first, I need to check to make sure my cell phone is waterproof.” I turned on the faucet at the sink near Ed’s bed.

Rene, Ed, and the couple standing next to Ed’s bed each chimed some variation of “I’m sure it’s not.”

I bulldozed past their objections. “I need to find out, anyway.” I up-ended my cell phone beneath the stream of water until it spouted back out of the electronic mechanism. I flipped it open and held it up in animated wonderment for all to see. The cell phone’s display screen rapidly flashed its death throes. “Wow, check that out!” I beamed.

“Get outta here!!” lashed Ed.

I left the room holding my belly, convulsing in laughter as Ed repeatedly grunted his displeasure with my antics. I went outside for a smoke and returned a while later. I shed my heretofore sheen of merriment and informed Ed and Rene that Bobbie was filing for divorce.

       At that moment, an Arabian doctor came in and spent twenty minutes or so detailing a long list of “dos and don’ts” that Ed must adhere to if he wished to continue living. The doctor ended by asking Ed and Rene if they had any questions. Their blank expressions answered him.

       I had maintained silence throughout the briefing, but as the doctor walked past me, I stood and piped up with a look of consternation. “I have a question.”

The doctor spun around to face me.

I addressed Ed as I asked the doctor, “Would it be okay if I put two bananas up to Ed’s ears like this, and go EEENNH?”

The doctor smiled. “Sure.”

“You’ve been warned, buddy! Now you know the consequences if you don’t behave!”

“Get—out—of—here!”

Strutting toward the door, “I can take a hint. You don’t like me anymore, do you?”

An impulse abruptly switched my sulky pretense to one of grave realism. I about-faced and slowly approached Ed’s bed, placing my hands on the railing. I staged an exaggeratedly deep breath. “Before I leave, there’s something I do need to tell you.” Perfectly donning the demeanor and tone of a doctor delivering the worst possible news, “The reason Bobbie’s divorcing me is…” I paused, taking another deep breath. “She found out about my sex change.” I looked down and whimpered in apparent shame.

Rene and Ed both winced and cooed their extreme sympathy.

I pointed at Ed and instantly brightened. “Gotcha!”

“GET OUTTA HERE!!!”

“Okay, I see how you are.” Leaving the room, I muttered, “I can’t believe you fell for it!” I laughed all the way into the parking lot.

Rene found me outside a little later. “Ed’s asleep now. The nurse said we should let him rest.”

Driving back to my hotel, Rene declared, “I think every nurse in the entire hospital came to visit Ed’s floral shop today.” We laughed in unison and after a few minutes of silence, she mused, “Our Ed is back to his old cantankerous self. They need to change that old saying about the best medicine. Who would’ve thought?” We shared a gleam.

Click here to read Part 2 of “The Circus Comes to Town”