LAS VEGAS, Nevada
The vexatious squeak of business shoes and screams of patients filled the dust filled air. I could have drawn a picture in the air, it was that thick. The creaking floor boards of this run down hospice we had come in was giving me the chills. They were my new project, my new obsession, a fever I couldn't sweat out.
I had been following their every move after the shooting. I bolted once I realized what I had done, and I begged to tag along with the group. I was now sending my articles by mail, no return address. Looking up from my notes, I was fifty paces behind.
Why we were here, I could only guess. The ring leader insisted that the lion tamer should go, and eventually -with the force of a forest fire on a rabbit- got him to come.
We had stopped by a church before we went here. I was surprised, I didn't think this group would go. I found out, though, that everyone was Catholic, except the ring leader, he was Mormon.
The church that day, it was a Sunday, was filled with sinners. Old and young. The old were decaying and the young were growing. The rise and fall of Saint Everyone. Once you confess, you're a saint again.
There was a small, round coffee table covered in a silk cloth, and on top was a tarnished sliver bowl. In the bowl were folded up pieces of paper, and written on each one was a request by a member of a run down hospice. That's how we got here.
Each member took one.
I didn't.
I follow, I do not partake.
So, here we were, walking through the creaking hospice, on our way to room 207. Before the door was a crying mother. She had ratty blonde hair, twisted and knotted. Her eyes were blood shot as she held a light pink towel to her eyes. He nails were the red only ladies on cocktail dresses should be wearing. The mascara that ran down her face wasn't in steams, but in avalaches. It was horrible. She wore a nurses outfit, but you could tell she wasn't one.
Ten dollars bets she was the mother of the poor sonuvabitch that was kept in this horror show. She moaned and somehow, it seemed louder than the screams of insanity around us. No, this wasn't an asylum, as I've already said. But it could institutionalize you. The tag on the lady's new dress said 'Patty AGE: 27'. This woman, she was not
Fifty dollars bets she knocked out the poor bitch who owns this dress, and used it to get in. How they didn't get past the almost-sixty-year-old-in-the-almost-thirty-year-old-dress I don't know. But she did. And twenty dollars says she wishes she never did counting on what she saw in room 207.
"My boyyyy," she moaned, audibly this time. "Heesh in darrr. My boyyyy. Help im, will yas? You lo-ok like saints, yaa." She almost fell on top of the ring leader, and the scent of gin and scotch was all over her breath. Someone had sneaked into the alcohol section, and I'm guessing it was her.
Ironic, the hospice is for people with problems...that includes alcoholic ones. Here's a question: why isn't she in here?
The ring leader shoved her onto the door for 207, almost making it cave inward. His face was pure disgust.
The woman's eyes twinkled. "Oh, dats *hiccup* ow you like to playy, ahh?"
The ring leaders face twisted even more. "Watch your mouth. Your speech is slurred enough that you might swallow your tongue."
Before I forget, this is how they were dressed;
The ring leader wore something straight out of a film. He wore a mustard yellow/tan overcoat with cuffs and bronze buttons. He wore a vest that was almost a sea foam green, but it was more worn. It had cornflower yellow bars going across it, with big bronze buttons down the centre. His trousers were a worn down forest green with an almost velvet material. ventriloquist doll. Pink circle cheeks, lines for the jaw and all.
The lion tamer wore a dark green or brown coat with a brown vest. His white dress shirt had ruffles on the breast, which covered his neck and spilled over the vest. He also wore a paper boy hat, something out of 'Olive Twist'. He wore a tan sash round his hips, which hung down low over his left leg. His trousers were brown, which almost looked inside out. He wore black fingerless gloves and also the classy shows, but brown. He had made it look like he had a black right eye.
The tight rope walker was less elaborate than the other two. He wore a white dress shirt with puffy sleeves and ruffles that were almost the length of the front. He wore a greenish tan vest that did not cover the entire shirt. It had bars almost going across both sides, but they weren't all around it. He wore the same style trousers as the lion tamer, but they were more of a pink tan. His shoes were brown. He had red circles drawn under his eyes, and a drawn on beard and moustache looking like a matador in Spain.
Last, but not least, the dare devil. He was definitely more lax than the other three. He wore a black shirt, with a black vest thrown over top of it. There was fake gold around and edge on the jacket. He wore black slacks with pinstripes, and black shoes. That completed what they wore.
Back to what I was saying.
The ring leader shoved the lady out of the door way, and barged in the door. We all followed suit. We cramped into the room. There was a bed with an unnaturally pale boy in his twenties laying in it. His used-to-be-golden-hair was sticking to his forehead as is he had suffered a horrible fever or a relapse. The machine made a long beep sound.
And no one checks these things?
Going to the side of the bed, the ring leader read his tab of paper. "'Hello, my name is Michael Nagelberg and I am twenty-three years old. I am addicted to coke. I am currently in a hospice. And my request is to have someone play music to me before I die. Thank you.'" He sighed, "I'm sure you'd want to give up the ghost with a little more poise than that. Or...was it God who chokes in these situations?" He was looking at the 'sleeping' boy.
"Running late?" I felt chills down my spine as I heard the voice of a boy of about twenty-three say. The worst thing of all was, the boys lips did not move and the machine still kept that deathly note.
"No, no. He called in," the ring leader answered. I guessed we all heard it.
As we filed out, the ring leader left the note in the boys frozen hand.
Next on our list of problems...er...deaths....wait...rooms, was room 309.
We moved down the hallway, which was empty and found ourselves at a dead end. The ring leader raised an eyebrow and kicked down a door that was there. No one noticed it's existence, except him. There wasn't a second hallway, but a stair case. Funny, I didn't know it had more than two floors.
Every stair creaked and threatened to fall in or stab you with a rusty nail. This must be where the 'special' patients go.
Right on the right was room 309. This was the lion tamers room. He sighed and looked at his card again in dismay. I lurked over his shoulder as he read it to himself.
"Hello. My name is George Ross, I am forty-nine. I am an alcoholic. I need someone to be my son. Mine has left me for a circus. I need to have a son before I die. Thank you."
The ring leader put a sympathetic hand on the lion tamer's shoulder. The door made a hash grating sound as he opened it. Lying on the bed was the forty-year old man, who looked a lot like the lion tamer. Like it was his father, or something.
Mr. Ross was staring out a window. The window's beautiful view was of a vacant lot next door. The door was closed. Mr. Ross looked at our lot.
His eyes were lazy, but inquisitive and they looked us up and down like police suspects. Watching our every move, our every breath go in and out. In and out. In. Out. In. Out. His face sagged with age, an age it shouldn't be at right now. The IV was stuck into his arm.
"So...it is you," he gurgled.
The lion tamer stepped forward. "Father...I..." He gripped the end of the bed, looking downward and fighting tears.
Another front page article for me. Pop drama. Broadway.
"Geogie, why-"
"I TOLD YOU NOT TO CALL ME THAT! My name is Ryan." Ah, we finally lean the lion tamer's identity. Ryan Ross.
His father looked broken. You could see it in his eyes that he knew he didn't have long to live.
"Ryan, my boy, why did you go off with these freaks?"
He did not answer. He only glared at his alcoholic father. "Problem: The hospice is a relaxing weekend getaway, where you are a cut above every sick and sad patient, where you're on first name basis with all the top physicians."
The ring leader caught on. "Solution: Prescribed pills to offset the shakes."
I couldn't help myself. If this mad was an alcoholic, no way would he be able to not down every pill in sight. "Um...take it a day at a time."
"Fix a vice with a vice." With that, Ryan, the lion tamer, stormed out of the room. We had to follow. The ring leader was first out the door after him, stopping him down the hall, hands on both of his shoulders. Tears landed in the dust on the floor, creating oceans for micro-organisms.
"We're leaving," said the ring leader, now enraged. He held Ryan to himself, telling him to stop the infernal crying. He obviously didn't want to become another sob story of this horror hotel.
We all briskly followed him down the steps, Ryan leading the pack.
The ring leader told us the stories of how some of these cases happen. He said he'd been there enough to know. Most of them happen like this, he said. You finally notice you have a problem, and then you try to fix it for the ones you love. But it all goes wrong. "That's when you stutter something profound to the support on the line. And with the way you've been talking," he shook his head in consternation, "every word gets you a step closer to hell."
We were walking back to who-knows-what-that-name-is-of-the-crappy-motel that we were staying to hide out in. As we walked, the sun set in the background set fire to every building we had gone by.
"A pessimist? No... I just-"
"Can't help it?"
He looked at me and nodded. I'd been where he's been. I knew what he knew. I think I was in love, but if not with him, with myself. To say what everyone else is thinking, well, let me state the obvious again.
A hospice is a place where sinners go when the church can't help them, and then send requests to the church that couldn't help them so a second sinner can become a saint for a day. To be s saint for just one day is like being God for two minutes, no, three seconds. A vicious succession of pain either way. It's like eating nails for breakfast, tacks for snacks.
