A Thousand Naked Strangers - Kevin Hazzard Page 0,56
inside. The last thing he remembered was a terrible salty taste in his mouth, as if the whole ocean had washed over him. And then he passed out.
The noise woke him. Then there was the motion, constant and jarring. How long he’d been out, where he was, he couldn’t say. He knew only that he was alive, and whether that was a good thing, he also couldn’t say. He opened his eyes in time to see his left arm pinched off and once again everything going black. They weren’t done with him. More arrived, too many to count—lines of them, waves, like Chinese soldiers cresting a hill. Each time he looked up, more had been let loose upon him. His skin was pierced again and again. Even his dick, man, they put something up his dick, and whatever you wanna say about creatures that travel halfway across the universe just to fuck with a dude, you enter a whole new realm when you touch a man’s dick.
Days later, months later, maybe a year later, he woke up here. At Grady. He’s lost weight, he thinks. He knows for sure he’s a good two inches shorter. Whatever it was they did to his left arm, it’s back on, stronger than ever. They cured him of the booze, too, but he’d kill for a cigarette.
“That’s it,” he says. “Start to finish. Aliens snatched me up, and I don’t know where they took me, but I’m here now.” Deacon leans back, spreads his arms. “I don’t know a motherfucking thing. Except I’m broke. So, you got a dollar? Maybe two?”
Marty and I are just showing up at work. And though we don’t hear the story, we see the hand extended, the awkward smile of the man Deacon has cornered. The guy has wide, terrified eyes. He’s a tourist, maybe, or the uncle of a patient, and he’s just in town to deliver flowers or dinner, and then he’s off, back in his car to leave Atlanta and all its madness behind.
We could tell him. We could explain this is just Deacon, that he drinks but never takes his medicine and sometimes he has to be picked up and brought in. We could say that we brought Deacon here two days ago. We could point out that the story he’s telling now, about the aliens and the probes, the bright lights, that was us. But we don’t.
Instead, we walk a wide arc. We keep going and the man stays where he is, simultaneously transfixed and terrified. This story, this moment, will live on forever. He’ll tell his grandkids this story. And it’ll all be true.
“I was abducted by aliens,” Deacon says. “Snatched me right up. Honest to Christ.”
27
Nobody Dies Tonight
Marty doesn’t think anybody’s dead. He’s shaking his head at the dispatcher, as if she’s not just a voice but right here with us. “This is bullshit,” he says as he flips on the sirens. We’re on our way to Pine Street, the city’s largest homeless shelter, for a man who’s down and possibly dead. Or not. “I’m deader than this motherfucker is,” Marty says, shaking his head again. “I can promise you that.”
“Can you stop saying that?” I’m treating patients tonight and Marty’s driving, which means if this guy is really dead, I’ll be the one to deal with it. “You’re gonna jinx us.”
He’s undeterred. “These guys call all the time,” he says. “And it’s always bullshit. Dude’s not dead.”
“Feel good enough to bet on that?”
“That he’s not dead?”
“That he’s not dead.”
He smiles as he blows through an intersection, sirens screaming. “Okay. Yeah.” He’s nodding. Confident. “If he’s dead, I’ll run the whole call.”
“Paperwork, too,” I add.
“Fine.”
We shake. “But you’re gonna lose,” Marty says. “Because this dude’s not dead.”
He’s probably right. We bet all day—that someone’s not dead or that the psych patient in the library won’t be wearing pants—and from experience, I can say that I’ve likely made a bad bet. When someone calls 911, a dispatcher answers and asks a series of leading questions to determine the nature of the emergency. Most people will, when asked, say the symptoms are worse than they are. So bleeding is always heavy, pain is always severe, and birth is always imminent, even when it’s not. Sometimes it’s because callers are hysterical and overreact, but often it’s because if they say it’s anything other than a full-on emergency it’ll take an ambulance twenty minutes longer to arrive. If they say he’s dying, it’ll only take six.