He woke up in a bed covered by blankets, daylight poking through window shutters. As his eyes adjusted, he saw he was in a small room. An old wooden icebox and a trunk covered with lace. A tall antique milk pail, streaked green by rust. None of this for daily use.
A guest room.
The blankets were dense and he was tucked in and he thought he was paralyzed until he moved his head to look around. On the nightstand next to a red faux-gaslight lamp was a glass with a straw. He couldn’t reach it. Someone had kept him hydrated, though. Underneath the nightstand a bedpan. Someone had done all this. Probably cleaned him. Put him to bed. Taken care of him.
He lay there for a long while looking at the air, lines of light the shutters let in, gold bars of sunshine. It was daytime out there, an awake world, and he was alive. His strange luck.
When he shut his eyes, he continued to see those golden bars of sunshine. He wondered about them. Were they a promise. Were they a warning. Could he hold the gold light in his hands. Could he cash it in.
He couldn’t sleep for the pain, for the memories of being sewn up. He tried to move, wiggling, tried to unleash himself from the bedcovers. It took time. The sharp pain in his hip shut him down whenever the blanket moved over his wound, and he couldn’t even feel his right arm at all, or maybe he was feeling it so much that he couldn’t locate it. The body-map in his mind was askew. But he kept slowly twisting, birthing himself. The blankets loosened and sloughed off him like a molt.
On his good side he dropped a hand to the wood floor and then put down his good foot and pulled himself up. Here he rested and sweated. He drank from the straw, leaning over a fresh agony. He looked at his arm, the bandage tight. It smelled okay, it looked okay. His hip was another matter. The bandage was loose and the stitches were ragged. He wondered what kind of doctor had fixed him. If it had been a doctor at all. He scooted himself around on the bed till he was close enough to the door to fall into it and make a noise.
He held himself on the doorknob until someone came.
When the knob turned he lost his grip and put down the right leg, the bad one, and it gave out and sent him to the floor. He couldn’t see anything, his eyes wouldn’t work, but he knew he wasn’t dead because he could smell hardwood and varnish, and that good nice clean smell helped him go safely into black he knew wasn’t death, not yet.
When he woke again it was morning. He heard the rooster.
This time he wasn’t tucked in as securely and was able to rise. There was a crutch here. He drank from the straw and then stood with the crutch and got himself across the room to the door. The hallway was dark and he opened the first door he came to and stood there, unable to find a light.
One came on. A bright hallway light.
“That’s not the bathroom.” A woman was talking behind him. “It’s down the other way. Turn around and I will help.”
Tomás realized he was looking into a closet. It was full of VHS tapes, hundreds of them stacked up neatly, like a video store right there in the closet.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Take my arm.”
She was a small woman, her head barely to his shoulder, but very strong. Wiry gray hair. She held him up and guided him in shuffling half-steps to the bathroom.
“Thank you,” he said when they got there. He felt like someone who’d completed a great task.
“It’s not a problem,” she said.
When he finished she was waiting there and helped him along, this time to the kitchen. It was slow going. They passed the living room. Furniture of wrought iron and wood. Again shutters on the windows. A TV in a wooden console, like his mother had.
In the dining room a long dark beautiful wooden table. It looked like a plank of a giant’s coffin. But they weren’t going to eat in the dining room.
There were more shutters on the windows in the kitchen, he’d never seen so many shutters in a house, they were open and the morning light was full and hot as it came through the windows. But the concrete was cool, as if it were still evening on the floor. He could feel it through the new white socks someone had put on his feet.
In the kitchen he sat at a round mosaic table. She put before him chicken soup with chiles and onions and hominy. A plate of radishes and cilantro.
There was a stack of almanacs on the table. He wanted desperately to flip through one but he didn’t think he had the strength to read and eat at the same time. He wanted to get away. He wanted a lot of things all at once.
He ate. When he finished the soup she brought a bowl of beans and a plate of tortillas and freshly pressed white cheese. He finished all that, too.
“How long have I been here?” he asked as she washed the dishes.
“A few days. You lost a lot of blood. Didn’t look like you’d make it.”
“How did I not die?”
“You’re lucky. We work on animals here, my husband and I. We sewed you up.”
“You didn’t want to take me to the hospital?”
“We thought maybe it would be worse to move you anymore. You kept screaming.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Well, that’s a good thing.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Your husband’s at work?”
“In the field, yes. He’ll be here for lunch.”
“I have money for you,” he said. Already wondering if his luck would extend.
She looked at him. “How do you feel?”
He was sweating. “I feel good,” he said.
“We should change your bandages.”
She washed and wiped her hands and came back over to him. He called out when she put her hands under his arms to help him up.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s all right. You’re very hurt. Try again?”
He nodded, and this time he clamped his teeth down and kept them clamped all the way to the bathroom. He was ashamed to have his pants down, but she covered his privates with a cloth so he could grip the edge of the bathtub on which he sat. She made a tsking sound when she saw the wound.
“It’s infected, I’m afraid.”
He looked down, and the skin was bright red and inflated.
“I should go,” he said, but they both knew he could not.
He didn’t remember walking back to the bedroom. She gave him pills she told him to chew and brought some water.
“We’ve got a little portable TV,” she said. “You want me to bring it in?”
“Maybe I could read.”
“Sure,” she said. “What do you want?”
“Anything,” he said.
She came back with almanacs and magazines and more water. She told him she’d leave the door a little open and he could call if he needed anything. She didn’t make any plans with him, and he suspected she wanted to consult with her husband.
“I have money for you,” he said.
He’d gotten an almanac and tilted it up on his chest with his good hand, but he couldn’t really make out the words. Something inside felt off. Like a magnet set next to his internal compass. He put the book down on his chest. Maybe he’d be able to do a better job later.
The almanac was still on his chest when he startled awake, again from pain. It was now night, nothing coming through the blinds. The hall light was on, and standing in the bright door were two dark shapes. He could tell they were police just by the outline and the creak of their belts. He lifted his good arm to show he was surrendering, but it was impossible for him to raise much more than a few fingers.
Maybe they’d think he was dead.