FICTION
"Purple Dolphin"
/ Nick Sylvester
06.18.08
"Purple Dolphin" from Ten Minute Wait
By Nick Sylvester
You'd think from cop shows and medical-type dramas that the E of ER implies quick, undivided, indiscriminate emergency attention, like ASAP, indefatigable nurses and superhuman degrees of sympathy from everyone within a broken arm's length distance, a 'treat the wound first, sweat the cost later' attitude to caretaking and ice cream for everybody. But this was not the case at Beth Shalom, where the man had arrived a few hours back. He was now sitting in the second emergency room waiting room, which came after the first emergency room waiting room and which he worried might lead to a third. He was sitting there, waiting for something to happen to somebody, for anyone at all to catch a break already, and in this m.t. he was trying his best to divert himself, to concentrate on the television monitor to his left. It was the episode of the Simpsons where Bart gets famous, where he becomes the "I Didn't Do It" kid. The other bodies in ERWR2 were quiet but not exactly copasetic. Ten minutes ago the biggish and racially ambiguous receptionist woman behind the bulletproof glass had been watching Young and the Restless, an unbearably sexy soap and, for that reason, one protested by several ERWR2 comrades. She ignored them, but they banged on that glass, and they cursed, and when they cursed they sprayed and spittled who knows what and where, and it was this epidemiological threat, wiped off the glass post-haste, that got them their channel change. ––Two clicks up, that's it, she conceded. It was General Hospital; the coincidence was too much for everybody even her. They got a click more then, and they got Frasier, and they all tried, really tried hard to find something in it to like. When that ended, the Simpsons came on, and now, any second now, Bart would cut his rap to the tune of "U Can't Touch This," and maybe something, anything really, might approach some state of dandy.
The spasms had subsided, sorta. It might have been an embarrassment thing. Beth Shalom wasn't a place for pickup––granted. But convulsions, major sweats, paleness ad literally nauseam aren't the best look anywhere, especially when the lockjaw has already set in and the man's mouth can't move and he can't even defend himself before the receptionist or the rent-a-copper by the entrance––can't even cross his heart and hope to die that it's not from no junk. It was from worse, from something much stupider. It was from that stupid knife, and it had gone untreated, and now tetanus made a puppet of him. Physical pain but cosmic too, as if punishment, the mental aggravation one suffers after being conned and pawned and exampled-out-of––though that was something else entirely. He tried his best to rein himself in, keep his movements minimal, get that mind good and distracted. Otherwise he'd do The Dance again––he called it The Dance, it was a terrible dance––right there in ERWR2, his arms flailing and head jerking and twitching and everything sweating everywhere, just like what had happened in ERWR1. It never occurred to him, or maybe he was too sick to ask, whether The Dance got him this far, to the second waiting room, or whether his relocation meant a move forward or backward in the emergency queue. He would have asked but it hurt to talk. And so he sat here, in obedience to the Way Things Work, for what had to be the third or fourth hour now, time in the park of three or four past midnight, and he thought about what a bummer it was not to know who or what was moving him around and making him dance if not he himself.
The waiting room seats were more like airport benches. Long bent metal tried hard to be ergonomic, with uniform swiss cheese holes on the back supports, and frank bars demarcating one's sitting area––so something like six seats to a bench. There were no books or magazines to read, so he counted the holes on the bench in front of him. The man was not a math guy. Had he been, and thank the Christ he wasn't, he would have determined the pattern and multipied his way out of that distraction in no time. But he wasn't a math guy. He counted each hole individually, seventy-six, seventy-seven, seventy-eight, and he always lost it around there, always lost his place. When he wasn't counting he wondered about the spasms. He anticipated them, and when the numbers grew higher and duller he wished they would just come again, wished he could just get them out of the way. Then he'd get back to not wondering, not anticipating, which was better than their opposites. The spasms weren't so bad a shake, so to speak. They were definite, a bona fide excuse. Under their threat, the man abdicated control over his body and, in its own devious way, this meant he had no responsibility for his actions. His right arm could pop that Latin American woman's baby right out her arms, or jump between the old men sharing an oxygen tank and or throw elbows at anybody or anything upwards infinity, maybe like twenty elbows, before they would suspect intentionality. But otherwise the spasms were yes, that that, a bummer.
There was a little guy, quite maybe one of those actual-midget midgets, sleeping in the seat to the man's left. The midget might have been a dwarf, who ever remembers the distinction, which is to say the man was happy this midget and/or dwarf was asleep, otherwise he might break midget/dwarf rule number one and just ask the guy. Apparently there was some kind of curse involved, to asking. The midget's black head and Jheris had made their way under the demarcating bar, and had made (he just now noticed) some oily impression into the man's black pant leg. The whole of his body was stretched out the entire width of his seat, face towards the back of the bench, with only his small velcro sneakers dangling over, the feet resting upon a bag of his own belongings. The midget and the man were the only two on the bench. Everyone else had moved, on account of the midget's smell, which was heinous––as if he had cannonballed into a tub of high fructose corn syrup then just baked in it, a really sticky, really nauseatingly sweet smell, like the blue dumpster outside a lesser restaurant, or the fountain soda hookups at the bowling alley snack bar. But he wasn't sick, he could tell. He was just hanging out, it seemed, he was probably just waiting for somebody.
By Nick Sylvester
You'd think from cop shows and medical-type dramas that the E of ER implies quick, undivided, indiscriminate emergency attention, like ASAP, indefatigable nurses and superhuman degrees of sympathy from everyone within a broken arm's length distance, a 'treat the wound first, sweat the cost later' attitude to caretaking and ice cream for everybody. But this was not the case at Beth Shalom, where the man had arrived a few hours back. He was now sitting in the second emergency room waiting room, which came after the first emergency room waiting room and which he worried might lead to a third. He was sitting there, waiting for something to happen to somebody, for anyone at all to catch a break already, and in this m.t. he was trying his best to divert himself, to concentrate on the television monitor to his left. It was the episode of the Simpsons where Bart gets famous, where he becomes the "I Didn't Do It" kid. The other bodies in ERWR2 were quiet but not exactly copasetic. Ten minutes ago the biggish and racially ambiguous receptionist woman behind the bulletproof glass had been watching Young and the Restless, an unbearably sexy soap and, for that reason, one protested by several ERWR2 comrades. She ignored them, but they banged on that glass, and they cursed, and when they cursed they sprayed and spittled who knows what and where, and it was this epidemiological threat, wiped off the glass post-haste, that got them their channel change. ––Two clicks up, that's it, she conceded. It was General Hospital; the coincidence was too much for everybody even her. They got a click more then, and they got Frasier, and they all tried, really tried hard to find something in it to like. When that ended, the Simpsons came on, and now, any second now, Bart would cut his rap to the tune of "U Can't Touch This," and maybe something, anything really, might approach some state of dandy.
The spasms had subsided, sorta. It might have been an embarrassment thing. Beth Shalom wasn't a place for pickup––granted. But convulsions, major sweats, paleness ad literally nauseam aren't the best look anywhere, especially when the lockjaw has already set in and the man's mouth can't move and he can't even defend himself before the receptionist or the rent-a-copper by the entrance––can't even cross his heart and hope to die that it's not from no junk. It was from worse, from something much stupider. It was from that stupid knife, and it had gone untreated, and now tetanus made a puppet of him. Physical pain but cosmic too, as if punishment, the mental aggravation one suffers after being conned and pawned and exampled-out-of––though that was something else entirely. He tried his best to rein himself in, keep his movements minimal, get that mind good and distracted. Otherwise he'd do The Dance again––he called it The Dance, it was a terrible dance––right there in ERWR2, his arms flailing and head jerking and twitching and everything sweating everywhere, just like what had happened in ERWR1. It never occurred to him, or maybe he was too sick to ask, whether The Dance got him this far, to the second waiting room, or whether his relocation meant a move forward or backward in the emergency queue. He would have asked but it hurt to talk. And so he sat here, in obedience to the Way Things Work, for what had to be the third or fourth hour now, time in the park of three or four past midnight, and he thought about what a bummer it was not to know who or what was moving him around and making him dance if not he himself.
The waiting room seats were more like airport benches. Long bent metal tried hard to be ergonomic, with uniform swiss cheese holes on the back supports, and frank bars demarcating one's sitting area––so something like six seats to a bench. There were no books or magazines to read, so he counted the holes on the bench in front of him. The man was not a math guy. Had he been, and thank the Christ he wasn't, he would have determined the pattern and multipied his way out of that distraction in no time. But he wasn't a math guy. He counted each hole individually, seventy-six, seventy-seven, seventy-eight, and he always lost it around there, always lost his place. When he wasn't counting he wondered about the spasms. He anticipated them, and when the numbers grew higher and duller he wished they would just come again, wished he could just get them out of the way. Then he'd get back to not wondering, not anticipating, which was better than their opposites. The spasms weren't so bad a shake, so to speak. They were definite, a bona fide excuse. Under their threat, the man abdicated control over his body and, in its own devious way, this meant he had no responsibility for his actions. His right arm could pop that Latin American woman's baby right out her arms, or jump between the old men sharing an oxygen tank and or throw elbows at anybody or anything upwards infinity, maybe like twenty elbows, before they would suspect intentionality. But otherwise the spasms were yes, that that, a bummer.
There was a little guy, quite maybe one of those actual-midget midgets, sleeping in the seat to the man's left. The midget might have been a dwarf, who ever remembers the distinction, which is to say the man was happy this midget and/or dwarf was asleep, otherwise he might break midget/dwarf rule number one and just ask the guy. Apparently there was some kind of curse involved, to asking. The midget's black head and Jheris had made their way under the demarcating bar, and had made (he just now noticed) some oily impression into the man's black pant leg. The whole of his body was stretched out the entire width of his seat, face towards the back of the bench, with only his small velcro sneakers dangling over, the feet resting upon a bag of his own belongings. The midget and the man were the only two on the bench. Everyone else had moved, on account of the midget's smell, which was heinous––as if he had cannonballed into a tub of high fructose corn syrup then just baked in it, a really sticky, really nauseatingly sweet smell, like the blue dumpster outside a lesser restaurant, or the fountain soda hookups at the bowling alley snack bar. But he wasn't sick, he could tell. He was just hanging out, it seemed, he was probably just waiting for somebody.