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Since Mary has friends in high places at the Poughkeepsie Medical Center, I’m admitted right away and stuffed into a long plastic tube that rattles and hums for fifteen minutes. Most people feel claustrophobic inside a medical photo-imaging machine or what you and I know as an MRI machine. But I just close my eyes and allow my exhaustion to take over. Before I know it, I’m asleep.
I find myself down inside a dark, dank space. The only light is coming from a naked overhead lightbulb and from a bunch of lit candles that are set on a long table on the opposite side of the room. The walls are concrete, but several sheets of particleboard have been attached to them. Tacked to the particleboard are posters of my book covers. Mixed in with them are photos of me at various stages of my career.
There’s even a photo of me taken immediately after I won the Thriller Award in Manhattan. Laura and I are dressed to the nines and holding hands because we were so happy about having won the award and we were still in love. Who knew that just a few months later I would try and burn the house down when I found out she’d been conducting an affair behind my back with a college professor who taught creative writing of all things. There’s a big X drawn over Laura’s face in red Sharpie. Looks like somebody doesn’t like sharing me.
I try to move, try to escape the room. But it’s like I’m glued to the chair. Set before me is a manual typewriter, like something I used back in college. There’s a blank sheet of paper inside it. A tall person dressed in a black robe and wearing a hockey goalie mask is standing beside me. She’s holding a long French knife in her rubber-gloved hand.
“Write, Martin,” she says. “Write for me. I love you. Don’t you love me?”
The long table I’m lying on suddenly exits the tube by remote control. I hear a voice coming over a ceiling-mounted monitor.
“All done, Mr. Jordan,” an invisible man says.
My eyes are dry. So is my throat. The invisible man is not so invisible because I find him standing right over me, smiling down upon me as if I’ve died only to discover that Jesus is an MRI technician. Haha.
“Boy, I wish all my patients were like you, Mr. Jordan,” he says while unbuckling the harness that held me in place. “Some people get so claustrophobic they scream for me to free them. They end up not being tested and whatever is ailing them eventually kills them.”
He tells me I can sit up, which I do. I’m a little lightheaded, not because of the two dye injections he administered prior to the test, but because of all the booze I’ve been consuming since this morning. And of course, there’s the fact that I passed out once already and took that blow to the head. Makes me wonder if they’re going to keep me overnight for observation. It’s exactly how I put it to the techie since no way in hell I’m staying inside this petri dish of a Medical Center one second longer than is necessary. I might have a phobia over spiders, but I also have a phobia for hospitals. Let’s face it, they’re full of sick and dying people. Who in their right mind wants to be around that?
I slide off the table in my hospital gown and plastic booties while the technician crosses the room and opens the door for me.
“Whether or not you stay the night will be up to the doctor,” he says. “You’re in luck because she’s reviewing the results as we speak. Go get dressed and by then, you should know what the future holds.”
“I hope I don’t get dressed only to be told to get undressed again,” I say, grinning.
“You sure seem fine to me, Mr. Jordan,” he says. “And by the way, I enjoy your books. They provide me with a great escape especially when I don’t have the money to go anywhere.”
“Things are tough out there,” I say.
“You should try living on my salary with three kids and a wife who’d rather shop than work,” he says dejectedly. “It must be nice,” he adds.
“What must be nice?” I ask as I go for the door.
“Being a rich and famous writer,” he says.
If only he knew the truth about being a famous writer and our finances.
“Son,” I say, “believe me when I tell you the money goes out just as fast as it comes in. Even then it doesn’t come in fast enough. But as for the bills, it’s amazing how right on time they are.”
He looks at me with a scrunched brow.
“Really,” he says. “I just assumed...”
“You assumed the same thing everyone assumes,” I say. “That we’re all Ernest Hemingway. Did you know Hemingway’s second wife Pauline’s family started Pfizer Pharmaceuticals and were one of the richest families in the world?”
His eyes light up.
“Oh, so no wonder he lived such a great life,” he says.
“Until the end,” I say. “When his brain snapped.”
He nods.
“Let's hope your brain is functioning properly, Mr. Jordan,” he says.
I go to my locker, punch in my three-digit code, and start getting dressed, including storing my semi-automatic in its holster and concealing it with my black leather coat. I’m tossing my gown in the laundry basket when the technician tells me the doctor will see me now in her office. He tells me her name and where her office is located inside the medical center.
“Good news?” I say, smiling.
“She never tells me one way or the other,” he says. “Good luck, Mr. Jordan.”
“Take care of your family,” I say. “They need you.”
He nods, turns, and disappears into his control room. As I make my way out into the brightly lit corridor, it dawns on me that it’s only a matter of time until the MRI technician slips out the back, Jack, and makes a new plan, Stan. Why? Because that’s the kind of world we’re living in today in the once free and brave United States of America.