Shipler - The Man in the Next Bed

A Division of Penguin Random House LLC

New York

Copyright 2019 by David K. Shipler Living Trust

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Vintage Books eShort ISBN9781984899644

Series cover design by Megan Wilson

www.vintagebooks.com

v5.4

ep

Gibson, in the gray haze of hospital sleep, was nudged by an unfamiliar sound that made his eyelids squint open. Heavy from oxycodone. On his right, the blurry, billowing curtain between the beds was being drawn closed. It made a whirring swish. Ah, little wheels racing along the curved track on the ceiling. So that was it. He closed his eyes.

Then the cursed lights went on. They were bringing in someone else, past his bed near the door to the empty one beside the window. His night of privacy was over.

There were things Gibson actually loved about being in the hospital: the gadgets, all the electronic whistles and toys that surrounded him, that were attached to him by wires and tubes or were carried about by staff. Like Star Treks hologram doctor, nurses probed him with little devices just bigger than cell phones to measure his temperature, his creatinine, his bloods oxygen level, his blood pressure and heart rate, scan the bar code on his wristband, and then scan a new bag of intravenous fluid to confirm a match.

Gibson didnt let a gizmo go by without asking about it. He was a shiny-bald, cheerfully moonfaced, nerdy engineer, recently retired from his job but not from his passion to know what made things tick. He peppered the nurses with questions that delayed their rounds but pleased them, and as they lingered for conversation, he asked about their work and training and families. He liked to know what made people tick, too. He brightened their shifts with sassy little jokes.

Whats this for? he asked Sally, an ample night nurse who handed him a little paper cup with two white pills.

Its for pain, she said.

What if I dont want pain? he asked. And after a beat of confusion in her eyes, she gave a big guffaw, and they laughed together past his throbbing soreness, her fatigue, and the uncertain futures of all the patients on the oncology floor.

When his distinguished surgeon came in with a somber expression to tell him the results of his brain scan, Gibson tensed. Not good news, the doctor said. Theres a tumor, about three centimeters, in a place we cant operate on, Im afraid.

Gibson waved his hand dismissively. Well, cancel my appointment at Burberrys. The doctor failed to smile, even a little, so Gibson looked hard at the docs controlled face and said, Id hate to play poker with you. The surgeon cleared his throat, gave Gibson a coldly sympathetic gaze, and said hed be back with some thoughts about how to proceed with chemo and perhaps radiation. Then he glided quickly out of the room.

Gibson had only his brother to tell. No wife, no children, only a few friends close enough. He left voice mails that August afternoon, but people were probably on vacation somewhere. His cell phone didnt ring, and after his evening meal was delivered, he resolved to find interludes of sleep between the intrusions of hospital routinealthough he had written a little sign on a piece of paper and had a nurse tape it to the door: If Im asleep, please wake me up. Id like to talk.

When the lights glared on that night, he had a quick glimpse of the man they were bringing to the next bed. The curtain, a blue-and-white paisley design more fitting for a shower, had been pulled from between the heads of the beds past the feet until it reached close to the far wall and turned to the right. Another curtain, to his left, blocked the door from his sight. His view was limited to an opening straight down past the foot of his bed, between the two curtains, where he caught a fleeting vignette of his new roommate as he passed.

He seemed younger than anyone else in the oncology wing, and he walked on his own, followed closely by two men in pale green uniforms with small patches high on their sleeves. From then on, the narrow line of sight seemed like a tiny stage on which actors moved rapidly from the wings in both directions, as the drama played quite audibly from stage left. For the curtain provided only privacy of image, not of sound, and even Gibson, whose poor hearing gave him trouble eavesdropping in restaurants, had no difficulty following every word of conversation in this acoustically perfect room.

Date of birth? asked an orderly who had whisked across the stage. The standard question of identity; Gibson had answered it so many times that hed begun to doubt his own accuracy, not to mention the questions relevance. It sought only the fact of when, not why, who, how, or whether. But while he toyed with the impish thought of changing his birth date every time someone asked, he suppressed the prank beneath a worry of losing his truth and seeing his identity escape unmoored in a drift of hospital errors.

June 15, 1985, said a man behind the curtain.

Name?

Thomas Sanguino.

Then another mans voice: Could you please sign here? It shows we brought you from Northern Medical.

Nice ride in the ambulance, said Thomas Sanguino.

The uniformed actors passed quickly across Gibsons stage, and he closed his eyes again, hoping to sink, sink, sink into sleep.

Are you comfortable, Tommy? It was a womans voice. Do you want this pillow?

No, Im okay. A pause. Im thirsty, though.

Ill get you some water.

Gibson opened his eyes in time to see a plump young woman move calmly across his stage and out the door.

What are ya in for? Gibson asked, the way prisoners ask new inmates. No answer from beyond the curtain. Hey, Tommy? Im Gibson. What ailment brings you to this temple of medical brilliance?

Id rather not talk about it, if you dont mind.