The Touch

Alan

It turned out to be an only partially wasted Thursday. Alan managed to duck a lunch with an ebullient Congressman Switzer, grab a shuttle home, and get over to the Monroe Yacht and Racquet Club in time to see Ginny and Josie win their doubles match and progress to the semifinals. He couldn't help but get caught up in Ginny's excitement over the match. Maybe it was just as well she had stayed home—he would have felt rotten depriving her of the victory.

He made quick afternoon rounds at the hospital, then met Ginny back at the club for dinner. He was all set to spend a nice, quiet evening at home when the answering service patched through a call from Joe Barton, a longtime patient. He was coughing up blood. Alan told him to get right over to the emergency room and he'd meet him there.

Joe turned out to have a heavily consolidated lobar pneumonia. But because he was a smoker and there was the chance that something sinister might be lurking in the infiltrated area of lung, and because Alan knew Joe as the type for whom bed rest was impossible, he admitted him for treatment.

As he approached the ER nursing desk, a voice called out from the corner gurney.

"You! Hey, you! You're the one!"

The overhead light in the corner was out. Alan squinted into the dimness. A disheveled old man in shapeless clothes lay there, gesturing to him. Alan didn't recognize him, but threw him a friendly wave in passing.

"Who's in the corner cot?" he said to McClain when he reached the desk. "Anybody I know?"

"For your sake, I hope not," she said. "He's drunk as a skunk and doesn't smell much better. Doesn't even know his name."

"What's wrong with him?"

"Says he came here to die."

"That's encouraging."

McLain snorted. "Not on my shift, it ain't. Anyway, we've got lab and a chest X ray cooking, and EKG is on the way."

"Who's on service?"

"Your old buddy, Alberts."

McClain was one of the few nurses still around who would remember that Alan and Lou Alberts had been partners— how many years ago? Could it be seven years already since they'd split?

"I'm sure they'll get along fine together," he said with an evil grin.

McClain barked a laugh. "I'm sure!"

On his way back to say good night to Joe, the man in the corner cot called to him again.

"Hey, you! C'mere! S'time!"

Alan waved but kept walking. The man was in no distress, just drunk.

"Hey! S'time! C'mere. Please!"

There was a note of such desperation in that last word that Alan stopped and turned toward the corner. The man was motioning him over.

"C'mere."

Alan walked over to the side of the gurney, then backed up a step. It was the same bum who had banged on his car Tuesday night. And McClain hadn't been kidding. He was filthy and absolutely foul-smelling. Yet even the stench from his pavement-colored clothes and shoeless feet couldn't quite cover the reek of cheap wine on the breath wheezing from his toothless mouth.

"What can I do for you?" Alan said.

"Take my hand." He held out a filthy paw with cracked skin and blackened, ragged fingernails.

"Gee, I don't know," Alan said, trying to keep the mood light. "We haven't even been introduced."

"Please take it."

Alan took a breath. Why hadn't he just walked on by like everybody else? He shrugged and reached out his right hand. The poor guy did look like he was dying, and this seemed important to him. Besides, he'd had his hands in worse places.

As soon as his fingers neared the derelict's, the filthy hand leaped up and grabbed him in an iron grip. There was pain, but from more than pressure. Light blazed around him as a jolt like high-voltage electricity coursed up his arm, convulsing his muscles, causing him to thrash uncontrollably like a fish on a hook. Dark spots flared in his vision, coalescing, blotting out the derelict, the emergency room, everything.

And then the grip was broken and he was reeling backward, off balance, his hands reaching for something, anything to keep him from falling. He felt fabric against his left hand, grabbed it, realizing it was a privacy curtain as he heard its fasteners snap free of the ceiling track under his weight. But at least it slowed his fall, lessening the blow to the back of his head as it struck the nearby utility table.

His vision blurred, then cleared to reveal McClain's shocked expression as she leaned over him.

"What happened? You okay?"

Alan rubbed his right hand with his left. The electric shock sensation was gone, but the flesh still tingled all the way down to the bone. "I think so. What the hell did he do to me?"

McClain glanced at the corner gurney. "Him?" She straightened up and gave the derelict a closer look. "Oh, shit!" She darted out toward the desk and came back pushing the crash cart.

From the overhead speaker the operator's voice blared, "Code Blue—ER! Code Blue—ER!" Nurses and orderlies appeared from every direction. Dr. Lo, the ER physician for the night, ran in from the doctors' lounge and took charge of the resuscitation, giving Alan a puzzled look as he darted by.

Alan tried to stand, intending to help with the CPR, but found his knees wobbly and his right arm numb. By the time he felt steady enough to help, Lo had called the resuscitation to a halt. Despite all their efforts, the heart had refused to start up again. The monitor showed only a wavering line when McClain finally turned it off.

"Great!" she said. "Just great! Don't even know his name! A coroner's case for sure! I'll be filling out forms for days!"

Lo came over to Alan, a half smile on his Oriental face.

"For a second there, when I saw you on the floor, I thought we'd be working on you. What happened? He hit you?"

Alan didn't know how to explain what had happened when he had touched the man's hand, so he just nodded. "Yeah. Must have been some sort of Stokes-Adams attack or something as he arrested."

Alan went over to the corner cot, stepped inside the drawn curtains, and pulled down the covering sheet. The old man's head was half turned toward Alan, his mouth slack, his eyes half open and glazed. Alan gently pushed the lids closed. With his features relaxed in death, he didn't look so old. In fact, Alan was willing to bet that given a good shave, a shower, and a decent set of teeth, he would look no older than forty, Alan's age.

Alan cradled his right arm in his left. It still felt strange.

What the hell did you do to me?

He could think of no explanation for the shock that had run up his arm. It had come from the derelict, of that he was sure. But where had he got it? He had no answer, and the derelict wasn't going to tell him, so he pulled the sheet back over the face and walked away.