Chapter 2
Blurred dimples of light pained my eyes when my eyelids cracked open in slits, forcing me to squint and come back to the world through a haze. One by one, my senses trickled back and allowed me to rediscover my environment. The air bit with a scent that scrubbed the nostrils raw, and I snorted it out and resorted to breathing through my mouth. I craned up and rubbed my back—softness cradled it, which only made it even more sore, and I realized I was on a bed. I blinked a few times to steady the world into focus and found myself in a room bleached of color. Besides the bed and its white sheets, nothing furnished the white room save for a white utility table with a white vase of artificial flowers that grasped on tinges of reds and blues. The flowers were only things in the room that seemed alive.
I reached over the table and felt for my glasses. After I put them on and allowed my eyes to refocus again, I spotted another decoration hanging on the opposite wall. It was a framed mat with a quotation stitched upon it:
Listen to my counsel: You can take nothing with you from
this life, and whatever you give away at death for the Lord's
sake you give because you cannot take it with you.
Give now to the true Savior, while you are healthy, whatever
you intended to give away at your death.Below the text was an accreditation to St. Lucia of Syracuse.
Ah, hell. St. Lucy’s Medical Center, Tetra’s own pet hospital. It sat near Summit and was available for use by its staff and their families. I must have been admitted while I was unconscious, no doubt after someone had stumbled across my miserable body on the hallway floor.
As the anesthesia of sleep wore off, a dull pain began throbbing in my skull. I felt my forehead and found a padding of bandages wrapped around around it. I tried to pull the gauze away to scratch at the skin, but I couldn’t pinch through all the layers. I must have taken a pretty hard hit from God-knows-what.
I was trying to make sense of what had happened when the door clicked open and invited in waft of cool air. I almost didn’t see the nurse come in, her white uniform camouflaging her against the room. A look of surprise stained her cute face when she saw me.
“Oh, you’re finally awake!” She came to the bedside and touched my forehead just past the bandaged area. “Are you feeling all right? You got a nasty hit there.”
I flinched when she brushed over the bandage. “Eh, it’s just my head. It’s not like I use it that often anyway.”
She smiled and did some checkups.
“I’ll tell the doctor that you’re awake,” she said when she finished. “He’ll be able to explain things better to you.”
Before she left, she poured a glass of water from the table sink and opened the window blinds to remind me how awful the world is in the morning.
I nestled back into the pillow and stared at the ceiling. A fucking hospital room, Christ. Well, it was an improvement over my usual accommodations. Despite all the pallor and barren sensibilities that numbed the eyes, the room was comfortable. In fact, compared to Summit, St. Lucy’s was absolutely inviting. It was a hospital that was actually hospitable—fancy that! It’s a depressing revelation when you discover that a hospital room, where the sick go to suffer and the old go to die, is more pleasant than your own workplace. All those years on the job had warped my sense of coziness.
I had relaxed on the bed for a few minutes, taking some sips of the water the nurse poured for me, when the doctor came in reading a smart tablet. He introduced himself as Dr. Cromwell. I wasn’t allowed the opportunity to engage in pleasantries as he went straight into the business of my health.
“Well, Mr. Ivano. It looks like you took a pretty bad hit on your head. You had a minor concussion.”
“Oh, that’s it? Whew, I thought I might have been gremlins. I hate those things.”
“No, I never heard of gremlin-related injuries before,” he said, still studying his tablet. “At any rate, the damage isn’t serious and you’ll be fine in a few.”
I sighed. Questions, I could think of nothing else but questions as I tried to piece together the night before. I sat up on my pillow and asked, “How did I get hit anyway, Doctor?”
He shrugged. “I was hoping you’d tell me. You were just carried into the ER by Summit security with a big gash on your head. Didn’t give any words on how or when or why.”
And the good doctor apparently didn’t see fit to ask them, either.
Cromwell gave me some care directions for my head and whatnot. I didn’t really pay attention. I just slumped back down, closed my eyes, and enjoyed the warming beams of sunlight filtering through the blinds. I almost dozed off when realization struck me. I interrupted his instructions.
“Doctor! What time is it?”
He peeked up from his tablet with an annoyed look. “About eight-thirty or so.”
Work! I was going to be late for work! I leapt off bed and scrambled around the room to find the closet I knew existed. I eventually found it, a hairline creak separating the door from the walls, and grabbed my clothes from inside. I was already out the room when the doctor tried to stop me with the conviction that I needed more rest. His pleas became distant echoes as I ran down the medical hall with my shirt, pants, and tie jumbled in my arms. I’m sure he didn’t lose any sleep over me, though. My health insurance didn’t pay enough for him to care.
I must have been an incredible spectacle: a drugged and slightly delirious half-naked man hopping across the street and trying to pull a pants-leg up through the angry morning traffic, just begging to create an entertaining accident for the morning news. I didn’t care and juggled the rest of my clothes on while cars honked and drivers swore at me. I was damned if I had to take another late pay.
I was in Summit’s courtyard when I finished “dressing”—if you could call it that, with my shirt mis-buttoned and half-tucked and my pants unzipped. I raked through my hair using my fingers as a comb and tried to pluck as much fuzz off my chin as I could with my fingertips. I hadn’t even removed my hospital gown, electing to wear my clothes over it. Despite my rush, I still had the right mind to buy a small bottle of mouthwash at the hospital’s pharmacy before I hurried out. I gargled the minty fluid and spat the brew out on the steps up to the Spire.
The air that swooshed out and welcomed me, fertile with the sounds of business, helped dry off the sweat that collected on my face. I hunched over with my hands on my knees, took a breather at the entrance for a few moments, and then pulled up my fly and stumbled, with as much dignity as I could muster, into the lobby. The automated PA system announced the time as 8:50 AM and started another repeat of the morning broadcasting agenda. Whew! I could now devote some energy to clutching the bandaged area on my head, which started whining in throbs after I had neglected it for so long.
I thought about the night before. The engineering labs. The security guards. Those awful screams. My ability to completely wreck myself and run around like a raving lunatic without a drop of sweat.
They say that extraordinary circumstances allow the best of men to become free and for heroism and courage to stand up in the face of incredible odds. For me, however, the “extraordinary” feat I possessed was the ability to break down like a schoolgirl. Forget that, I knew some tough schoolgirls back when. My reaction was not deserving of even a scathing mention in Wuss Monthly. All it took was an empty hall (a hallway, mind you, I had used hundreds of times) and some scary noises. There it is: a broken and whimpering Lyle. I wish that I could say that last night was a one-off occurrence, an outlier in a lifetime of rationality. But I would be lying.
Ain’t anything hard for Lyle, ’tis all.
I greeted Aimee at the reception desk and received her usual smile. I considered asking her if she knew what happened yesterday night, but it would have been a waste of both our times. A receptionist—a recyclable one at that—wouldn’t be on Tetra’s need-to-know list. Besides, she seemed to have lacked the “Recognize Lyle’s Head Bandage” subroutine.
Memories of last night halted me at the security checkpoint. I closed my eyes and replayed the memories. Dark shadows, blood-red lights, and terrible cries. As my eyelids fell, my concentration drowned out the ruckus of the lobby and I strained to hear any noise that would shake me back to reality. Silence. I blinked my eyes open and made my way in.
A group of engineers lumbered past by me. They voiced their conversations to each other in irritated mumbles. I looked back to see them exit out to the lobby and, eventually, out of the building. Then, even more groups made their way to the out, and I had to brace myself against the wall to allow the herd to pass. All they left behind were dirty footprints. Strange.
I rounded the curve and found Mark staring at the wall adjoining SE-2’s entrance. He strained out a beet face that complemented the mumbling curses he spat to the wall, mostly proper names mated to various adjectives. Every few seconds, he pounded his fists into the wall and cursed a new name. The plastic panel would buckle under his blows and then plop back out as if to antagonize him some more. I stood clear and listened him bark off about a dozen different names. I’ve heard them all before. “Fucking Jenson,” our department head, “Asshole Trudeau,” the CIO, “Motherfucker Hammond,” the CEO, “Cocksucking Jackson,” the HR head, “Motherfucking Samuels,” the janitor, et al. The standard Mark Ellis shitlist.
“Assblowing, dickfucking, shitnecked, fucks-his-mom Lyle!”
That one was new.
It probably would’ve been a good idea to just turn around and follow the rest of the saner engineers out of Summit, but dammit, I wanted to work. I thought I could sneak by Mark. The concussion told me I could totally do it.
“Lyle!”
Lying rat bastard.
Again, I pressed my back onto the wall, and I braced myself for Mark. I flinched when he brought up a fist seemingly to pound my face, but it struck the wall next to me in a hollow thud. I slunk down a little and had to look up to him. He pulled me up by the shoulders and rattled me.
“What the goddamn hell happened last night?” His voice sounded as red as his face.
“Last night?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, goddammit. I want to know what the fuck happened last night in the fucking lab!”
“Well actually, I was hoping that you’d tell me…” I trailed off when veins started popping up on his forehead.
“Tell you? Tell you? If I knew, I wouldn’t have to ask you, asshole!”
He started blasting the walls again, now with both hands sandwiching my head. I had no escape from the enraged foreman, so I braced myself on the vibrating walls and rode it out. When the pounding finally stopped, Mark drooped his head down and took a deep breath, his fists still nested against the wall.
“Lyle,” he said with a voice that crackled to remain calm. “Just give it straight. Just tell me what happened. I need to know, dammit.”
“I wish I could tell you, I really do. But I really, honestly don’t know what the hell happened.”
He brought his head up. “And why the hell not? You were here last night, weren’t you?”
“Yeah, but I don’t remember anything. I was taken to the hospital after being knocked the hell out.” I pointed to the bandage on my head.
He looked over my head for a bit and just uttered a terse “dammit.” Then, he dropped his hands to his side, swirled around until his back met the wall next to me, and slid down to the floor. “Goddammit,” he murmured.
In an effort not to seem conspicuous by staring at him, I turned away and looked around the hallway. It was completely empty save for the two of us. I pressed onto the door to SE-2, but it refused to budge open.
“It’s locked,” Mark mumbled. He stood up and brushed off his pants. “Everybody’s gone home.”
“They shut down the labs?”
He pulled his shirt out from his pants to scratch his stomach. He wandered around the hallway, seeming to have expended his rage, so I followed him.
“Whatever you assholes did last night,” he said, “it was enough for them to shut down the whole goddamn department. Primary, Secondary, fucking everything. No holiday pay, either.”
Oh damn it all. First, I lose half my pay for yesterday, and now I was forced to eat a sick day. Not only that, they’ll drive us all into extra shifts tomorrow to make up for today’s work queue. This week was turning absolutely lovely. I began to regret not taking Dr. Cromwell’s prophetic advice and staying back at St. Lucy’s. There, at least, I had a pretty nurse to tend to me.
“The fucking shits won’t even tell me why, either,” he continued. “And you just had to get your dumb ass knocked in the head. I’m left with just an empty, locked lab and a bunch lemon doughnuts. I hate lemon.”
“Why don’t you ask the other guys? I wasn’t the only one that stayed late.”
“Of course you weren’t, you dumb bastard. You think I haven’t tried asking them?” He fumbled inside his pocket and produced a cigarette, lit it up, and took in a long, methodical drag in defiance of Summit’s non-smoking policy. “The brass came in and took them for questioning. Those sons-of-bitches won’t tell me anything worth a damn.”
“Summit’s pretty good with the memos, though. I’m sure we’ll get answers soon.”
“Not Summit, chief. Tetra. Straight from corporate.”
My stomach churned. Corporate? Coming to investigate some petty disturbance in Secondary, of all places? That’s like the President coming down to Boise to inspect a pothole that just popped up on the highway. Fuck me. I really should’ve just stayed in bed and get that sponge bath.
A group of footsteps in the distance caught our attention. “Speak o’ the devil,” Mark sputtered when he saw our new visitors.
He nodded towards a group of three dapper-looking gents walking toward us. Black sharks in the corporate ecosystem. Their footsteps echoed in mechanical claps that sounded more expensive than my life’s wroth. A gold emblem of interlocking triangles on their breast pocket advertised their employ: these were the Tetra administrators Mark bitched about. Like seasoned predators out for prey, they swooped down upon me, and I had nothing to defend myself but Mark, who grabbed my shoulders again.
“Mr. Ivano,” one of them called out. He stopped a meter in front of me, and his lackeys posed on either side of him like corporate cheerleaders. “You are Lyle Ivano, correct?”
I only had time to nod before Mark intervened. He wedged himself between me and the suits and started pounding his fists into the air.
“Damn right he is. Let me introduce you all. Lyle, meet tight-asses. Tight-asses, meet Lyle.” He pantomimed exaggerated handshakes as he made the introductions. “Now that you’ve all been acquainted, let’s get down to business and tell me what the hell is going on.”
The suit looked straight past him to me.
“Mr. Ivano, we are aware that you were present last evening when a certain disturbance took place.”
I nodded again. Mark moved to block me and waved his arms around for attention.
“Hey, I’m talking to you!” he shouted. “I’m his goddamn boss and I want some goddamn answers!”
The executive peered around the angry foreman. “We would like to have a word with you, Mr. Ivano. Please come with us.”
His words carried a tone that made clear it was not a request.
I nodded again, and they led me down the hall to the security station. Along the way, I could hear a screaming and cursing Mark, followed by the hollow drumming of beating walls, which stopped only when I entered the security room.
Sleep came easily that night. I slept with my all clothes on, including the hospital gown, since changing took too much effort that could be better spent sleeping. It wasn’t exhaustion from work, obviously, with the labs shut down and all. My life’s discovery for the day was that sharing an hours-long conversation with a bunch of corporate suits in a security room wasn’t all that fun and was, in actuality, pretty grueling. They interrogated me on issues that eluded me and offered no answers in return. It was like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle with blank tiles. It consisted of the same questions—what I saw, what I did, and how I did it—repeated and reworded until I stumbled on a permutation of answers that satisfied them. Apparently, being unconscious in a hospital wasn’t an acceptable excuse for uninformed answers.
It took an authenticated record from St. Lucy’/s (which took an additional hour to produce) to finally convince them of my veracity. That large, bandaged gash on my head was falsifiable, of course, but papers never lie. They left me with a warning not to disclose last night’s events under the penalty of termination and possible criminal charges. Heavy threats for someone who hadn’t the foggiest idea what those fucking events were. By the day’s end, I had nothing but an incredible headache from the roundabout Tetra fed to me. The concussion probably didn’t help either.
I resigned myself to the idea that I’d never know the truth, and it comforted me. Tomorrow, the executives will be on an airfoil back to Albuquerque and leave the rest of us to continue gallantly on the same grind no worse for the wear. It was the nature of things. I finally took to bed with an empty head and a clear conscience. I didn’t even need to resort to the pills.
It was the fullest sleep that I had in a long while.