Sean opened his eyes to a slurry of blurred shadows. He wasn’t at his parents' house with his teddy bear at his side and no one cleaned the Terminal Hotel with antiseptics. An announcement muttered over a loudspeaker from the hallway and he sat on the bed, wishing he hadn’t, for the world spinning at 78 rpms pinned Sean into the pillows.
"Welcome to the world of the living.” cackled the heavy-boned black man in the hospital room's other bed.
Night lay heavily outside the window and Sean groaned, "I just get here?"
"They dropped you into that bed ‘bout four days ago.” The black man was a scarred monolith. His elephant flap ears were flattened against his head and his knuckles were mashed from countless impacts. Sean was a girl scout in comparison.
“Four days?” Sean struggled to recollect how he ended up naked in a hospital bed.
“It mighta been five.” The old man lowered the volume for MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL on the wall TV. “I pay no attention to the passage of time, they keep the food comin’ You been talkin’ plenty ‘bout a girl, Panny or Pammy. She the one beat you?"
“I hope not.” The gig, the riot, the alley with Tammi were challenged by a blank interrupted by Johnny’s mentioning a kidnapping and his freeing either Tammi or Caroline from a bed after which another vacuum had consumed the past four or five days. Maybe he had been a hero, but he didn’t feel like one.
"You can’t turn your back on a woman. That’s rule #1.” The black man lifted his hospital nightgown to reveal a tight cluster of old wounds. “I did one time and wuz stabbed a dozen times.”
"This city has too many rule #1s."
“It’s a big city with a lot of people.”
“I’m finding that out the hard way.”
“Always a tough way to get schooled.”
If Tammi had knocked him out, she had a faster punch than Ali’s left to Sonny Liston. Someone else had hit him and Tammi was in trouble. He staggered across the room to a closet. “I have to help her.”
“Your girl?”
“Who else?” His clothes were neatly hung and he grabbed his boots.
"Where you going?"
Sean spun around to face a perky nurse in a white uniform.
"Home?” He had no home.
"You sure about that?" The nurse looked over her shoulder for reinforcements.
"I’m in peak form." Sean tugged on his boots without reckoning on how to get his jeans over them.
"You should sit down." The nurse was advising him for his own health.
"No, I'm fine. Watch." Sean jumped in the air and clicked his heels together. He failed to part them to land and crashed onto the tiled floor. His body told him to stay there, but another night in this hospital wouldn’t help Tammi and he tottered to his feet. "I can't dance, but I can make it home."
"What day is it?” It was a simple question.
“I’ve been out four days.” Sean’s math skills were shot. "That makes it the 21st?"
"No, it's the 23rd." The nurse helped him to the bed.
“23rd?” He sought help from his roommate, except the old man was concentrating on Don Meredith berating Howard Cosell about the Raiders.
“Who brought me here?”
"Your chart doesn’t say," the nurse answered and a large orderly appeared in the doorway. "Mister, why don't you get back in bed?"
"I___" He couldn't offer a good reason why he shouldn’t obey his command. ''Maybe a doctor will sign me out.”
"You sit on the bed and I'll find one." She left the orderly to guard the doorway. He palmed the glass. It was cold. His money was in his wallet along with his ATM card.
Holding his head, Sean asked the orderly, "This Bellevue?"
No, Beth Israel." The orderly answered blandly.
Most unconscious cases went to the public hospitals and Sean asked, "Anyone visit me?"
His roommate said, "No one visits me. Why should anyone care about you?"
“Because____”
Names came to him and blood rage through his arteries. No one had visited him in four days. Not Tammi. Not Johnny. No one. And they were his friends. He breathed deeply and after a few minutes the pain subsided in his temples. A doctor in blue scrub entered the room to say with an Italian accent, "Welcome back to the living.”
"I had a good sleep."
"More a coma, due to a severe blow to the base of the skull. Probably owe your life to the muscles developed around your neck or plain dumb luck." The doctor was about his age and Sean wondered, whether he might have been a doctor or lawyer or businessman leading a normal life, if he had stayed on the straight and narrow path. Any further conjectures were forestalled by the doctor saying, "I hear you asked to go home."
"I’m fine.” Sean lied and the doctor examined his chart. "Let me see your eyes."
He beamed a flashlight into his pupils and waved for the nurse and the orderly to leave. "You had a severe concussion.”
“I’ve had one before.” More like two or three.
“Normally you should stay another night for observation.”
“That’s impossible.”
“You're young and your skull’s thick. So I’ll risk your release."
"You will?" Sean’s stomach proved he was lying about his condition with an inverted loop of nausea. “Why?”
"I saw you the other night at CBGBs."
"You did?"
"You were great. The band that is. You should take bass lessons."
"Nothing like waking from a sleep of the dead and hearing you suck on bass." The doctor’s appreciation of punk showed this scene was escaping from its niche. "Thanks for the advice."
"If you want to stay in that band, you should take it.” The doctor scrawled an indecipherable signature on a piece of paper. "This is your release form."
"Do I have to pay anything?" Sean tugged off his boots and pulled on his jeans.
"No, your bill had been paid."
"By whom?" Caroline must have brought him here.
"Doesn't say." The doctor lowered his report.
"I wish I could thank you." His t-shirt smelled only a little rancid.
"You have a gig tonight and I want to see the band tonight."
"We have a gig?" Tammi was okay, if GTH was putting on a show, and he felt better for the first time in minutes, then realized they were playing without him. GTH had a new bass player. Someone else. He was out, but he still had to see Tammi one last time. Her eyes would tell him the truth.
"In a loft in Chinatown. I’m off work in an hour. You mind if I come with you?"
"Sure, why not? By the way the name's Sean Tempo."
"Giancarlo Bertoni. You can call me Gianca. I'll be back in a few minutes with a Vitamin B shot. It’ll help speed your recovery.” The doctor ran into the corridor and the black man slid from his bed. His unbuttoned gown displayed a recent slash along his ribs next to a tattoo of ancient bullet holes. “I used to work with James Brown. Bodyguardin’.”
“I saw him at the Newport Jazz Festival. 1969. Nipsy Russell warmed up the crowd.”
“Nipsy was a dirty motherfucker.”
“Funny too.” His humor was called blue.
“Yeah, I ain’t met me no rock stars for a while. Changed jobs."
“I’m more a rock light bulb."
His roommate spread a smile across his ebony face. “I wuz sumthing of a light bulb myself. You wanna hear stories?”
The old man sat on his bed and Sean said, "I always like a story, if it's short."
"A thousand words or less. By the way name’s Jack Flood. It was in 1952 and I wuz a heavyweight fighter out of Seattle. You shoulda seen me fight. All muscle and bone. Nuttin’ cud knock me out. I did fifteen rounds wid a champeen. Joe Louis.”
The volume of his voice decreased to nothing and Sean drifted along with the monologue, nodding at the right times. Jack Flood appreciated that and Sean enjoyed not hearing anything, as the Doors’ THE END waffled from ear to ear.
Having had seen too many ‘ends’ this past month in New, York he hoped it wasn’t an evil omen, for he sought was a new beginning. He had from the day he left Boston. And he was close. Not close enough to touch, but he was getting there and it wasn’t maybe tomorrow.
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