Organ - Chapter 9

ORGAN

Chapter Nine

Oscar opened his eyes carefully, the unwelcome light was moving across them and burned his retinas, his head was pounding, and the taste of dry grossness was sitting on his tongue. When the vision was clear and the light departed, Oscar noticed a familiar face leaning over him, it was Boothe, his glasses and vastness of his face gave his identity away even with blurred vision. 

“You awake Oscar?” Boothe asked in his dry tone, “You took a nasty fall, but we have you all tidied up, just need to keep you on fluids through the IV for a few more hours and then we can get this equipment off you, I would suggest you limit your exercise from here on my boy” he continued explaining as he fiddled with some connecting tubes around the drip to Oscars left. 

“You are lucky Nurse Katie was passing your room, it would have been much worse if she hadn’t spotted you take a tumble.” Boothe said as he leaned closer to Oscars face and let out an ill-timed chuckle. 

“Where is she?” Oscar asked through a dry rough voice, his head was sore and seemed unable to move, but his eyes could not find her anywhere in the room.

 “She is getting cleaned up downstairs, you bled a fair amount, but I will have her pop by a bit later on so you can thank her personally” Boothe was assuming his meaning. 

Oscar was so delirious swirling inside his own blinded mind that he did not fight him. Once Boothe and the other nurses had stopped toying around with various medicinal bits and bobs around him, his least favourite doctor stared down at him with a grin strung across his face. 

“Could you give me a second with Oscar please?” Boothe asked, essentially ordering the two orderlies to leave the room and finish their work after he was done. 

They quickly put down their items in hand and left shutting the door to Oscars room behind them.

“Now Oscar” Boothe said with a  deep sigh as he half sat on the bed beside him, “What is it exactly do you think is going on here?” he asked the question with loaded aggression, the face he wore no longer smiling, it was morbidly placid, and his heavy breaths developed a thin fog at the bottom of his lenses that rode his nose like a saddled blobby beast. 

Boothe held up a glass of water from the bedside table and offered it to Oscar, 

“Here, take a drink so we can properly understand one another” he said pouring the water into the patients mouth forcefully. 

Oscar drank but was spluttering and gulping as Boothe watched his eyed widening from the overpour, he sat the glass back down and put his hands into his lap. Oscar coughed and choked for a second before calming himself. 

“Could you answer me please, Oscar? Let’s clear the air” Boothe asked pressing the subject. 

“I am not getting better, I don’t think you can help me” Oscar began blurting out truths and worries all the same, “I think you don’t know what is wrong with me” he added now seeing Boothes face twitch with wounded insult. 

“Oh, you silly boy, I know very well what is wrong with you Oscar, you are unwell, and you are suffering both in mind and body” Boothe replied, his voice was unchanging, and it made him all the more uncomfortable to be around. 

Boothe pulled back the covers that warmed Oscar in his bed, he drew from his pocket a small pair or shiny medical scissors and cut away a strip of fabric from the patience gown around his belly button, exposing a slither of flesh and young dark hair to the chill. Oscar attempted to adjust himself in efforts to pull away further up the bed from whatever the doctor was planning, but his body was sore, stiff, and rigid from distress. 

“What we have Oscar is an abnormality, a growth if you prefer, that is causing you significant pain, this is correct yes?” Boothe asked as he placed the scissors back into his large pocket on his white coat. 

Boothe brought his hand up and inserted two fingers into the sliced opening in the gown, wriggled around on bare flesh until he found the lump itself, he pressed his two fingers deep into the growth that wriggled beneath them like a recoiling ball, Oscar screamed and Boothe gently shushed him with a finger on the lips that lingered for a second. 

“I could cut this out now, or I could leave it in and perhaps discover a new condition, this parasite, which could put my name….and your name, Oscar…..into the medical journals for future generations. Together we could save countless lives in the future, wouldn’t that be nice Oscar?” He pressed his fingers in violently again, sending Oscar writhing spasming in suffering. 

“You are going to get better, but I am doing this my way and the way I see fit is to observe your progress, watch your actions and learn what I can learn from a living subject. Is that understood young man, you aren’t going to die here, but if you keep being a nuisance you will most likely not leave Greenwood alive” Boothe pulled his hand away from Oscars body.

Oscar nodded in fear and breathed deep relieving breaths that filled his rib cage. 

“I have the support of your mother, I have the support of our leading nurse on the case, and I have the support of the board who are categorically uninterested in the rambling complaints of a patient under psyche evaluation for self-harm, stop fighting everyone on this Oscar, you can’t win lad.” Boothe continued. 

None of this information was surprising Oscar but having his conspiracy theories confirmed felt like a swallowing spoonful of anti-victory. Boothe wiped of his hand on the bed sheet and went for his leave. 

“If you do plan on going walkabout again Oscar, remember that I am always around, I can keep you company. Now get some sleep, we have some big days ahead of us young man” he declared, leaving the room, and shutting the door firmly behind him. 

That warm sting of salty tears driving down his cheeks begun uncontrolled, the hurting was subsiding, but his body still felt sore and abused. Did that really happen, he thought to himself, it was so hard for him to determine. It certainly felt unreal. The sound of a door being opened filled the room, Oscar looked around with his slow swivelling eyes, the room was still barely lit but he could see the bathroom door creaking slowly open, the darkness inside it was masking any shapes, his mind racing with fear, was this to be another tormenting spell coming to finish the job that his Doctor had started. Oscar looked around for the buzzer but in his stress could not find it dangling at the side of his bed, then to his dread a figure stepped out into the light, human features, and a familiar face, Katie emerged from the shadows. 

“Oscar” she whispered, darting her eyes about to see if they were truly alone. 

The patient did not speak but his face locked into hers, tears still falling despite his efforts to stem the tide at her presence. Katie made her way over to the bed and knelt down on the floor, hiding from plan view of the window into the ward, she gripped his hand tightly with hers and held his forearm with the other, bringing the covers back up over his body for warmth in the process seeing the slice in his gown left behind. 

“Did he do that?” Katie asked with her own eyes now watering, her hand feeling at the slash in his stomach coverings, 

Oscar nodded but did not speak her hand resting on his body confusing his bodies reactions. 

“I heard everything” Katie said “I am so sorry” she continued; her voice was riddled with guilt. “I am going to do everything I can to help you okay” Katie declared, stepping up slowly and making a gentle silent exit from the room.

 Oscar lay alone again with the shadows keeping him company, drying tears on his pillow and the noise of falling fluid from his drip. Katie confirmed the assault had happened; His nurse was now his only tether to truth. Morning broke in through the hallway, the light barely emanating into his room, Oscar only knew this because of the reflecting light from the shiny floors that illuminated the side of his ward. Staff had been coming and going since the early hours to remove his drip and tidy away the remaining pieces of apparatus that helped stabilise him after another fall, add it to the slate he thought. Faces seemed duller that day, perhaps it was Oscars harmed state of mind, but the nurses all carried a secret with them that morning. Oscar pulled himself to his feet, on the chair beside his right-hand side table was a new gown, he imagined this was a teasing reminder from Boothe to remind him of his warning, Oscar felt at the slice in his current top letting the reality cement itself, his doctor did in fact deliberately harm him last night, but it was not all for nothing, Boothe had not let on that he expected another escape attempt, nor was Oscar worried for a second that Katie had told Boothe of their conversation before his latest episode. 

Even greater news, Katie heard the doctors threats directly and he believed she had surely become an ally without question. Despite all this, his new comrade in the quest to freedom had not shown her face that morning, Oscar was worrying with every moment they were not sharing that Boothe had discovered what the two had been discussing the days before. He considered his situation in the isolation that he had been left with, it would likely be a while before Boothe came swooping back into his realm, although the ominous warning of “big days ahead” did hang menacingly in the back of his mind, nothing welcome had come from any tests thus far, he doubted this would suddenly change now that Boothe had let the shoe drop. This lone pondering hour was interrupted rudely by his phone buzzing itself across the bedside table, he noticed the time on his lock screen before opening his phone and assumed it must have been his mum calling on her break, unfortunately he was correct and for a second he considered rejecting the call. Oscar could not shake the idea that Boothe had been in touch with her with some new stress inducing story of Oscars latest disappointment for them both, he swiped right and brought it to his ear nervously awaiting the latest delivery of his guilt laced takeaway.

“Hello Mum” Oscar said with attempt of a regular sounding voice.

“Hello, how are you feeling?” his mother asked down the phone, her inflection led Oscar to believe that she already knew more than he would have appreciated her knowing on the latest events on his feverish soap opera. 

“Had a bit of a fall yesterday, got dizzy and went down. I feel okay now though, they have me on fluids” Oscar began explaining what he imagined she had been made aware.

“Yeah I did hear about that, Doctor Boothe called me and explained it was likely stress related” she sniffled as though stifling tears at the end of the line, “he said it isn’t uncommon for patients on long stay, and when you aren’t sleeping properly he said it isn’t surprising” she continued, but the explanation was worrying. 

Oscar had no idea that Boothe knew he still was not really sleeping well, those nurses continuing feeding flies of information to the mother spider. 

“I am okay though, still getting those pains in my stomach but I can feel when they are coming on now so I can get help straight away” he said trying to ease her worry, lies after lies he told.

Oscar loved the idea of being able to predict those random intrusive grasps his condition had over him, it was not something he had any control over in frequency or urgency, not now he needed a relative shroud cast over his next move. 

“That’s good to hear, hopefully it is getting better then. Did Doctor Boothe tell you what’s next?” his mother asked tentatively.

Oscar now was certain she knew more about his coming days punishments Boothe was planning than he did, he was being kept purely in the sinking darkness. 

“No, he didn’t tell me anything except that I should stay hydrated after my fall” Oscar was being honest, hoping his clarity would encourage his mother to do the same and divulge what she knows in its entirety, his next words stalled in his mouth.

He needed to get this information without his mother doing one of two things, or both, telling Boothe that Oscar knows of his plan or suspecting him of making another run for it. 

“What did he say was next?” Oscar asked now pacing around his room, always watchful of the corridor, that nagging sense that Boothe was listening was unnerving him, 

“Apparently they have some experimental keyhole surgery to take a sample of the growth, not sure how it all works, but it sounds like something they are excited about. Probably means they are optimistic it could help right?” she explained and then asked, his eyes tightened to a squint. 

“Sounds good, I don’t love the idea of surgery, but if it helps it helps right?” Oscar answered giving his mother the reassurance that he was seemingly in a clear frame of mind. 

“Well, I am glad you agree, so what have you been doing with your spare time?” Mary asked gently changing the subject to something pedestrian, less depressingly urgent. 

“Well, the TV remote broke, so I have been stuck watching the weather channel for a few days, that’s been great. Some nice nurses have been keeping me company” Oscar joked and for a second he thought he heard his mother laughing, it wrenched his heart forward slamming into his sternum.

“You be careful around all those woman ay?” she burst into laughter for the first time in a depressingly long time.

“I miss you Mum” he said sadly with his lip almost dropping. 

There was a brief moment of silence and a sniffle that was lost in the background noise. 

“I miss you too Hun” Mary replied. 

They chatted for a while longer and shared some more little jokes about his mothers work, Oscars hatred of the gowns and the harsh weather that her son had become an expert in due to the stuck TV channel, he felt normal for a while, he did not want the call to end. Later that evening Katie clocked in for her shift and immediately made her way upstairs to see Oscar, when she arrived at his door he was missing, the shower was running and Katie knocked on the door of the bathroom, the water shut off immediately as she called out. 

“Oscar, it’s me, I just wanted to check in and see if you are okay before I start my rounds.” 

The door swung open, and a dripping wet Oscar came plodding out with a washed-out bathrobe wrapped around his shoulders, he looked  thinner than when he first arrived, it concerned her but not enough to worry him about. He moved across the room and ran a loose towel over his head drying his messy main of scraggly brown hair, heat steaming off his face from the temperature drop.

“You okay?” Katie asked again, “As good as I can be, have you seen Boothe today?” Oscar replied getting immediately to business, 

“I did, he told me that they are going to put you forward for surgery” Katie said, her face a neon flashing sign of reluctance to give him the unwelcome information. 

“I know, Mum told me earlier” Oscar explained. 

“Oh, your Mum came by?” Katie asked. 

“No, just gave me a call earlier to check in. She seemed to know more than she was letting on, I have no idea what Boothe told her” he thought out loud. 

“Well, I’ll see if I can find some details out, she didn’t mention a date?” Katie asked trying to take control and give Oscar some sense of comfort, Oscar shook his head at the question. 

“I have a meeting with him today, one of my new reviews, so I will casually try and feel about for the date” she continued. 

Their conversation was interrupted momentarily by a passing nurse who quickly glanced across into the room, nosily observing the makers of the chatter she was hearing in the corridor. 

“Are you still thinking of leaving?” Katie asked, that nervous look was back painted across her face. 

“I am, I just don’t know when, or how, I still need your help if I am going to even try” Oscar said subtly attempting to guilt her into accepting this task he was offering up. 

Katie looked at her shoes and back up at him, 

“I should go, I don’t know who Boothe speaks with besides me, don’t want him finding out that I have been giving you any information he doesn’t want distributed” Katie nervously said.

Oscar nodded in agreement and watched as Katie left in a hurry and headed off to her job. 

“What do I do, what do I do now” Oscar asked himself in hushed repeating whispers as he walked about the room wearing out the floors cheap vinyl tiles. 

Katie was holding out on answering his call to action and his patience in desperation was starving thin. Oscar paced around his room once again and picked up his phone, his battery was low but with enough charge to survive a quick text, he found his mother’s number and started typing, it read. 

‘Hello Mum, hope work is going well today, did Doctor Boothe tell you when my surgery was booked for? Haven’t been told so thought you might know. Love you x.’

Oscar thumbed the send button and threw the phone back onto the bed bouncing satisfyingly off the pillow. His impatience was getting the better of him. Oscar attempted to go for another wander through the ward, calling Beverly as his chaperone using the buzzer at this bedside for her to come unlock his cage. Their walk could only exist on his floor of course, he would not dare risk passing Boothes office or the main nurses station, too many eyes and not enough allies in that stinging hornets’ nest.