I’d spent ten years working in a hospital. Some smells never change.
Robin and Allison sat across from my bed.
Next to each other. Like friends.
Robin in black, Allison still in the baby-blue suit.
I remembered pokes and probes and other indignities but not beingtransported here.
The CAT scan and X-rays had been boring, the MRI a bit of claustrophobicfun. The spinal tap was no kind of fun at all.
No more pain, though. What a tough guy I was.
Robin and Allison—or maybe it was Allison and Robin—smiled.
I said, “What is this, some kind of beauty contest?”
Milo stepped into view.
I said, “I redact and retract and refract any former statement vis-àvisaesthetic competition.”
Smiles all around. I was a hit.
“At the risk of utterly banalistical cliché, where the bleep am Ihospital-wise?”
“Cedars,” said Milo in a slow, patient waythat suggested it wasn’t the first time he’d answered the question.
“Didja get to see Rick? You really should, you guys don’t spend enough timetogether.”
Pained smiles. Timing, it’s all about timing. I said, “Ladies and germs.”
Milo edged closer. “Rick says hi. He madesure they did all the necessary crap. No concussion or hematomas and yourbrain’s not swollen—at least not more than it usually is. You do have somebruised disks in your cervical spine and a couple of cracked ribs. Ergo, KingTut.”
“Ergo. Pogo. Logo.” I touched my side, felt the stiff swaddle of bandages.“Rick didn’t get to operate? No unkindest cut?”
“Not this time, pal.”
He was blocking my view. I told him so and he retreated to a corner of theroom.
I looked at the girls. My girls.
So serious, both of them. Maybe I hadn’t said it loud enough.” Nounkindeness cutaroo?”
Two pretty attempts at sympathy chuckles. I was dying up here.
“Just got in from Lost Wages,” I said, “and boy, is my vertebral discographytired.”
Robin said something to Allison, or maybe it was the other way around,making sense of all this was a pretzel, a pretty girl p............