Half-Resurrection Blues_ A Bone Street Rumba Novel - Daniel Jose Older Page 0,16
didn’t start searing through me just as I was lunging toward the doorway. I’m caught off guard this time and collapse on the steps in a heap.
Things get dim. Those stupid Cheerio-shaped bubbles float across my view of the open door in front of me. For a second, I think I’m gonna make a comeback. The ngk’s screech still shreds from inside, but I’m strong. I’m trained for this. I’m—
CHAPTER NINE
Someone is wailing. It’s an intense, reverberating howl, then a yelp. It surges out from just above me.
I’m lying on my back. There’s a slightly chubby Latino guy looking down at me. He’s holding a metal scythelike tool a little closer to my face than I’m really comfortable with. “Oh!” he says when I open my eyes. I wrap one hand around the arm holding the scythe and the guy gets the point and puts it down. He slides two fingers against my neck and frowns. Then we hit a bump and the guy cascades forward, grabbing something for support at the last minute before he utterly crushes whatever’s left of me. He settles back in and takes my pulse again. “You’re . . .”
“What’s the deal, Victor?” someone yells from behind him. The driver. We hit another bump. Victor’s face disappears for a second, and I just see the plain gray ambulance ceiling. There’s a clear bag of fluid dangling from it that’s probably attached to me somehow. I try to shake the bleariness out of my head, but it turns out I’m strapped down hard to something.
This can go nowhere good.
“I have to go.” I rip the taped contraption from my forehead and pull myself upright, straining against all the crap that’s holding me down.
“No!” Victor yells, maneuvering around the stretcher and trying to push me back down. “You shouldn’t even be alive, man!”
“Well, I am.” I undo another strap.
“You have no pulse! How is that even possible?”
This is exactly why I won’t be going to no hospital. I cannot abide by all these ridiculous questions. Anyway, I have no answers. It just is what it is. “I have to go,” I say again, putting a little growl into it this time. Victor sits down on the bench and just looks at me. The driver lets out a few yelps of the siren and keeps barreling down the street.
“What . . . the fuck . . .” Victor says. It’s not a question, just a general observation.
I shake my head, sit up all the way. “I don’t know, Victor. But I won’t be accompanying you to the hospital, so you can tell your friend to pull this deathmobile over and I’ll be on my merry way, thank you very much.”
Victor’s having a lot of thoughts right now. They’re tangled and confused, a briar patch of curse words and years of street experience coming loose in his mind. “Can I just . . . ?” He reaches out to take my pulse one more time, and I let him, if nothing else because I’m still woozy and he seems like a decent guy.
“It’s there,” I say. “Just very slow.”
He nods, staring at me.
“But look, I’m okay. Okay? You want me to sign something?”
He does, but he can’t find the words to express that, so instead he shakes head slowly and then, without taking his eyes off me, says: “Rudy, pull over.”
“Huh?” The siren stops wailing.
“Pull. The fuck. Over. Rudy.”
Rudy swerves the ambulance to the side of the road and slows to a halt, mumbling a few curses along the way. Victor and I hop out, and Victor immediately puts a cigarette in his mouth and lights it. He could learn a thing or two from Baba Eddie about appreciating his vices. I guess I need to get my bearings, because instead of running off, I just stand there next to him. Then dizziness sweeps over me, so I sit my ass down on the bumper of the ambulance and light a Malagueña.
“Five-seven William,” Victor says into his radio. After a scratchy reply, he spits out some numbers that I assume mean their patient went AWOL and then sits on the bumper next to me. It’s surprisingly peaceful here, after the madness of the basement and then the rush of the ambulance.
“The Jewish guy called?” I say after a few minutes of quiet smoking.
“Mm-hmm. Said you collapsed. That’s why we hadta tape you to that backboard, in case you broke your neck or something.”