refreshing, but I was scared. I didn’t know what was going on.
A few minutes later, four other women were milling around my bed, looking at the clipboard, then the machines. They seemed to be nursing students, crisp clean white uniforms, nervous-like, taking notes, eyes widened with curiosity.
A mid-40s white guy wearing surgical scrubs came to the head of my bed. He looked in-different, almost as if we were bothering him. He said to the dark-haired nurse, “Give me a 12-gauge syringe. I’m going to extubate him.”
“Do you want me to call for help?”
The doctor, whose badge identified him as Dr. Leighton, just looked her way and shook his head. “No. I’ve done this.”
“I’m going to get this tube out of your throat and then you’re going to have to talk.”
“What does he mean by that?”
A few seconds later, feeling that hard plastic tube scraping my throat, my tongue and tasting bloody, musty spit, I was coughing. To make things worse, he was sticking some other hard, smaller tube down my throat, a suction device, a hand-held vacuum cleaner, sucking all around my nose and my mouth.
For the next three-four minutes I just coughed. Hacking, and spitting, I sat up in the bed and wiped my mouth with the sheet.
The first nurse, the lady with the effervescent smile, dark hair and blue eyes, approached my bedside. “Oh, that should be better now. Isn’t it?”
I nodded my head, yes. A drop of spittle ran down my face, and the nurse wiped it. Embarrassed, I had never felt so vulnerable and helpless.
The doctor just walked out of the room with the tube in his hands and he dropped it on the table just beyond the door to my room.
The police officers came in. The taller one said to the nurse, “Can I talk to him now?”
“… Listen, just give us a moment please, and just give us a moment.”
I took a deep breath again and inhaled the antiseptic smell of the hospital. I caught a whiff of my morning breath, and was thinking, “I hope I’m not breathing too hard on this lady, she’s pretty. Don’t blow any bad, stinking breath on her.” Then I thought to myself, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute, your troubles are a lot deeper than worrying about throwing some stinking’ breath on someone.”
I looked down and saw bandages all over my stomach. I thought back, “Hell, I’ve been shot and I’m in police custody.”
“Phewwww, if I could just get to Job.”
“Excuse me?” she said.
“My family.”
“Do they know you’re here?”
“Where?”
The two police officers came over to me and one of them said to the other, “Listen, let’s not ask him anything right now. We’ve got to wait for the Assistant D.A. to come. We’ve got to get this guy back over to the holding.”
“Man, are you serious? Look at him. He can’t go anywhere. He’s not going anywhere. The D.A. can process him down here.”
All of a sudden I heard a familiar man’s voice. “Jake, Jake. How ya doing back there? Sweet
Jesus, thank you.”
It was my brother Job and his wife Rose. Job was my law partner in our firm, which we had opened a few years ago, after I passed the Louisiana bar. Out of nowhere, Rose, his wife of five years, appeared at my bedside.
One of the police officers turned to him and said, “No visitors right now.”
“I’m a family member.”
“Me too.”
The nurse said, “He can see some family members. He’s seen you guys enough.”
Job approached my bedside. I felt like this was a direct gift from God, hearing a familiar voice, even though Job and I hadn’t gotten along too famously over the past couple of months. Given the tension in our law practice, I was surprised to feel so much relief just hearing his voice. His wife handed me a rose, something she always did, “I like to give a rose for obvious reasons.” I had heard that many times before. I always thought that it was corny.
She placed it by the bedside, realizing I couldn’t grab it.
Job was 6’2”, chunky, thick, dark brown skin with dark balding fine hair. He was two shades darker than me, but we had the same head, people used to say. I had been in better shape than him for most of our lives. He had just made 43 and I was 11 years younger. His mid-section reflected his 5 years of marriage, and my thin, cut frame reflected my bachelor years. Standing side-by-side, you could tell that I had him by 2 inches. I used to kid him about shedding some stomach for some of my height.
“Man, what’s happening here?” Job glared at the police officers as if to say, “Can you guys leave us alone for a minute?”
The officers didn’t budge.
“Listen, dear, we can figure this stuff out later. Let’s just see how he’s doing. What’s the nurse saying? Can we get a doctor in here?” Rose turned.
The nurse was still in the room and said, “Yes, I’ll get his surgeon in just a moment.”
“How you feeling, buddy? I haven’t told anyone yet about what’s going on with you. You know how mom and dad are.”
“I told them,” Rose said calmly.
He looked up at her in an angry, ‘courtroom-type’ way and said, “Lord, Jesus.”
“What did you expect me to do? They had to know.”
I turned, looking at the clock: 3:30. Didn’t know if it was in the morning or afternoon, just that it was 3:30. Then I closed my eyes.
Moments later, I was awakened by the shaking of an unfamiliar hand and a voice I’d never heard before.
“How you doing? How you doing?” I saw a 60-ish, graying plump gentleman in a long white coat opened to reveal a Kano Branon suit and l’Homme Slice tie. “How you doing, son?”
I realized he was some sort of surgeon; several students in surgical scrubs surrounded him, all leaning in towards me. He seemed oblivious to the police officer’s presence, and began to ask me a series of questions.
“Hello, Jake. Dr. Helm.” He stuck out one hairy hand, while the other one held my chart. As he studied the notes he murmured, “Hmmmmm.” He turned to one of the students. “What’s his I and Os? What’s his BUN and creatinine? Does any-body know?”
Then he turned to me and said, “You’re going to be getting outta here soon, son. Whatever happens to you after this, I’m not quite sure. It was just my job to get you fixed up. You’ve undergone a pretty extensive surgery. You’ve been in the hospital for a couple of hours, and probably aren’t quite aware of what’s happened to you. We had to take out a portion of your colon, but you’re going to be
