Believe Me Believe Me
Edam is just getting off his shift in the O.R. when he opens his gunmetal gray locker and finds the little scoundrel there again, perched over the shelf next to his street shoes.
“What are you doing here now?” Edam asks, trying like hell to be nonchalant. His eyes are tricking him again; he’s been on for sixteen hours straight and his vision is waving with fatigue, which must be generating this recurrent image. Besides his throat is raspy dry.
“You don’t see me, do you?” the imp asks. He has a red mustache, bushy white eyebrows and is wearing an absurd green Alpine hat with an orange feather.
“I’m seeing my shoes, and my way home, and the pillow I’ll be putting my head down on.”
“Or perhaps a wee drink first just to unwind.”
“Make up your mind: you’re leprechaun, yodeler or demon?”
“I couldn’t be any of them, as you yourself know.”
“Can’t you haunt some other place—they’ve got enough trouble here.”
“Let’s go then.”
“I was planning to put something down my gullet, and it has nothing to do with your power of suggestion. Here’s to you, Bub,” Edam says, tipping his cap to the cartoon-like character and slamming the locker, quick before he could escape. He snaps the hoop down with a crack, inserts the lock and swirls the dial. “And don’t be following me home either, because she’ll get out the broom.” There’s some mumbling behind him: the others starting their shifts in crisp aqua scrubs are staring at him. He thinks it’s best to shove off.
He was terribly thirsty. All day and evening at the surgery desk, checking people in and out, with only a few minutes’ break once, in the morning. The mother with toxemia has a C-section and seizes; at least they saved the baby. Edam walks by the window with the hashed, embedded wire and sees that scamp in the next gurney, lying under a plain white sheet with his nose sticking out and snickering, staring straight back at him. The woman is covered, left to the side as the naked baby is being worked over in a corner with glaring light. The hollow-eyed father paces just outside with those huge hammy fists waving, disproportionate to his scrawny body with the bowed legs. The grandmother holds the baby’s sister in her arms, a little girl just like Edam’s before she was taken away, the same dark eyelashes and sweet sleeping face. The woman catches her son with her eyes, holding him in check.
Then, there was the car accident: the boy’s leg is mashed and they’re not sure they’ll be able to keep it. The father sits beside the boy, and his own head must be wrapped in a dozen feet of gauze. The rogue sits in the chair next to the father, tying a purple kerchief over his squat forehead and mock-syncing the man’s grieving gestures, crossing his short legs as the father crosses his, thumping his hairy red fingers against his forearms and sighing along with the man, adding a treacherous little sneer to his imitation.
As usual, the little fellow does his Houdini thing and catches up with Edam.
“Trying to give me the slip again, are you? Why try so hard if I’m imaginary?”
“Go on with you.” Edam shrugs.
“One beer is only reasonable with such a thirst; it can’t be good for one’s throat to get so dry. Besides, you’ll disappoint your friends—it won’t be the same there without you.” Stopping anywhere is a bad idea, since his wife will wait up and have words. Still, humoring the gleeful, conniving fiend is always a good strategy. Keep him occupied, for the good of the patients at least. He’s not the type you want near your bed of pain. And for the new baby’s sake. Just to prove it wasn’t the hellion’s idea but his own, Edam will have a quick drink anyway, a coke or something to slake his thirst after such a wretched day.
“Of course it’s your idea,” Bub answers aloud.
“I’m not messing with Gina again.”
“So who’s in charge anyway? Isn’t this for yourself, and after all your work? Besides, you know you can get up and go home whenever you want.” Edam stops answering. Everyone knows soda makes your thirst worse. One beer and at least he’d sleep, with two he might even doze through her complaints. Gina always wants to hear about everything at work, but it’s easier to argue about being late and the company he keeps, or which keeps him. There’s much he can’t explain.
As Edam walks into the house, the little man takes off his hat and waits on the porch.
“What the dickens are you doing?” Gina asks, standing in the hallway in her white gown like she’s been there for hours. “Don’t bring that hooligan in here.”
“Which one?” Edam asks. The little man takes a few steps back down the walk.
“Bub out there, your favorite adversarial-type. You’re the one who sees him. I won’t have him here with the baby sleeping in the other room. I’ll get out my broom.”
“You think that’s all it takes to get rid of him? Tell that to the people who come in with their sick kids and wives. You have no idea.”
“Don’t I? I know as well as you. He’s just a yapping little dog, snapping at the end of his leash.”
“Not to worry, let’s not rattle the little lady. I’m leaving already,” Bub says, hopping from foot to foot as if the corn bristles were already sweeping at his hairy cloven feet as he moves briskly down the walkway.
“You can’t be leaving, if you haven’t even come,” Edam says, scratching the side of his head.
“Ho, ho, ho, that’s right. I’m not here,” Bub calls out from the sidewalk.
“Now he’s some damned elf. Best scram--don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Good riddance,” Gina says, with the broomstick slung at her side like a coiled whip, and she turns to Edam. “And how many beers would it be then?”
“I had to do a double shift and no breaks. Julie never showed, and somebody has to cover that desk.”
“I see. You met the little fellow there, I suppose.”
“It’s a joke, like I already told you, and it’s not so funny when you keep repeating it.”
“Of course. And how many of the beers were a joke too?”
“Gina, a man needs a drink once in a while; I didn’t get anything all day.”
“You know you don’t have to entertain him—he can’t touch this one.”
“So you say.”
“Now you’ll have to watch the baby while I take a shower in the morning, with or without a hangover. And tonight, for once, you’re coming straight home. And leave that rascal where you found him.”
“Believe me, I intend to.”
2005