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rainbowfic2014-09-28 02:08 am
starphotographs) wrote in rainbowfic2014-09-28 02:08 am
Admin Yellow 18, Folly 12
Name: starphotographs
Story: Corwin and Friends
Characters: Corwin (POV), Martin, Spenser.
Colors: Admin Yellow #18 (Did we actually accomplish anything here), Folly #12 (That’s easy, I can do it!)
Word Count: 4,483
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Choose not to warn.
Summary: Martin test-drives some new medical technology.
Note: Questions, concrit, and general natter all fine!
A Bag to Carry Yourself (Is Kind of a Bad Idea)
“…Okay, I need to pause. Just wait a sec.”
Martin sat his controller down on the coffee table, which struck me as unusual. Even if he wanted a drink or something, he’d usually wait until the round was up and he’d finished with any bragging or whining that needed doing. Then he’d either make me get it (if he won), or storm off to the kitchen in a rage (if he lost).
“Oh come on, you’re kicking my ass! You only say shit like that when you’re losing, so what gives?”
“I just need a minute, okay? Fuck off.”
I watched him shift in his seat, like he was trying to level his contents.
“Is it your thing going skewed again? Do you need more help, or…”
The “thing” in question was a mostly-normal black backpack. I say “mostly” normal because there was a thin metal rod on one side that stuck up about half a foot, then loosely coiled around a dangling bag of blood. And I didn’t want to say anything, but it kind of made Martin look like an awkward lamp.
“…No. Jesus Christ, Corwin. If you spent like an hour messing with it, and it’s still not sitting right, that means you have been disqualified on the basis of general fucking inefficacy, and are prohibited from any and all further contact with the goddamn blood rucksack. Okay?”
“I just thought…”
“…Well, you thought wrong, and I only have the dumb thing in the first place because you talked me into it. Hey, great job! I hate you so much right now.”
“I know. We’ve established that. I said I was sorry, okay? The demo model looked like it would work.”
To my credit, it kind of did, but only because I hadn’t seen it in actual use. I guess it’s the same thing that happens when you order something from TV. The product looks like the answer to all your problems, because that’s just what they want you to think. But then the package drops on your doorstep, and it turns out that whatever you ordered only works correctly when you, I don’t know, look at it exactly the right way. It’s hard to clean, and something always jams, and you realize that it’s about half the size you thought it was… Okay, in this case, it looked bigger. Martin is half a head shorter than the technician who tried it on and made us look at him for fifteen minutes while I tried to convince Martin it was a good idea, Martin gave me the stink-eye from under his hair, and we both quietly bickered through our teeth so we could argue and pretend to pay attention at the same time.
“…Well, maybe that one looked like it would work because the goddamn bag was friggin’ empty.”
“Hey, what the hell did I know? I didn’t think a bag of blood would weigh that much.”
The way Martin was looking at me, I thought he was going to take the bag off the pole and whip it around by the tube and start smacking me with it.
“Bag of blood versus empty fucking backpack! Mass versus fucking volume! …Grad school for fucking physics versus your thick skull, apparently!”
“That’s not even the right kind of physics!”
“…But you’d think, in all those years, it would have come up!”
“It did! Many, many years ago. Jesus. How do you think I fixed the damn thing?”
I fixed it, or at least tried, by increasing the mass of the backpack. With an old calculus textbook. So it wasn’t like my education hadn’t served me well. At first, anyway. When the weight of the book made the whole apparatus tilt backwards where it had once been listing sideways, I had to wing it a bit, and that‘s where it all fell apart. Literally, almost. I couldn’t think of anything besides straight-up duct taping it to the poor guy. This made Martin look like he was wearing a pair of metallic suspenders, which was probably why he was so cranky. But, between the added weight and that goofy tape, it finally seemed stable. Or at least, the backpack itself did. By that time, the weight of the blood bag had started to bend the flimsy metal spike that held it, only marginally, high enough for gravity to pipe the donor blood in. As opposed to, you know, siphoning Martin’s blood out. That, in retrospect, was the thing I should have thought of back at the hospital when I had the chance. This development turned the contraption from moderately uncomfortable to actually dangerous, which put an even higher priority on giving it an iota of structural integrity. With that in mind, I added more tape.
“…You didn’t fix it. You taped it to me and stuck a fucking book in it.”
“Um… I did my best, okay?”
I paused to bend the shitty little pole back into shape for about the tenth time that hour, and let Martin blow off some steam.
“…And anyway, even if the thing worked, which it doesn’t, it’s still mostly useless. You can’t even sit right! I’ve been sitting on the edge of the damn couch all day because if I lean back, the stupid piece of crap goes all screwy and we have to mess with it again.”
I kept focusing on the wire, wondering if I could use something to reinforce it.
“Mmhmm…”
“Fuck, you remember what that physical therapist said.“
“…Not really. That was when we weren’t keeping in touch.”
“Well, I’m sure I told you… Point is, I’m not supposed to sit on a backless chair. Well hey, with this stupid thing, every chair can be backless! And actually, I’m not even really allowed to use a regular backpack. Who the hell cleared this? Grab my phone, I‘m calling my fucking doctor.”
Martin’s phone was sitting right in front of him on the table, so either his back was too mangled for him to reach correctly, or he was just trying to make my life difficult. Probably both. I made my usual mistake: trying to reason with Martin when he’s on one of his hatred benders.
“Just… Settle down a little before you start calling people and yelling at them, okay? Did you take your pain meds?”
“…Yes. They just aren’t working, because I’m sitting here hunched over with a ten pound book and a sack of blood pressing right down on the most messed-up part of my spine. Because you thought that gee whiz, it would be just so great if I could have my transfusion at home!”
“It wasn’t just the transfusion. There’s a lot of stuff you can use an IV for, and if you’d have an easy way to do that at home… I mean, you probably wouldn’t have to inject yourself every day, and there’s a lot of stuff where I think you might be able to switch over and not take so many pills… Oh, and I actually just recently read that they can feed you through one, which would be good for when you like, freeze up in there like you do sometimes. Hey, wait a sec… You probably wouldn’t have trouble absorbing things anymore that way, so that would knock off about five pills right there… And if you ever need oxygen again, you can probably put the concentrator-”
“…Yeah, good idea! And hey, if my kidneys start to go, we can get some aquarium tubing and charcoal filters and shove ‘em in. Heck, why not just find a way to keep my brain in there, so you can throw out the whole rest of my piece of shit body and hang out with the fucking backpack all day! Just prop me up on the couch! I‘ll float around in my freakin’ brain jar, praying for death.”
This is when Martin would normally punctuate his big dumb monolog by falling back against the couch and sulking. Actually, he almost did, but he remembered the backpack and had to jerk himself back upright mid-sulk. He perched, furiously, on the edge of the couch. I thought he was being ridiculous, and also felt vaguely sorry for him, but communicating either of those sentiments would just make me a target again.
“…Point taken.”
Who am I kidding? With Martin, you’re a target until he decides you’re not.
“It’s not even that! Why the hell did you think this would be a better option? I could be kicking back in a nice hospital bed with my laptop right now. Or, hey, I could take a fucking nap without worrying if there’s somewhere above bed-level to put the fucking backpack, because I wouldn’t have a fucking backpack. I’d have… Wait, what was that thing? It’s metal, and like, sturdy, and taller than I am? And if I want to move around and sit down somewhere, I can do that, because it’s on wheels or whatever? Shit, if they wanted me to try doing it at home, why not just send me home with a pole?”
“…I don’t know? Maybe it’s like shopping cart rules?”
Either Martin wasn’t hearing me, or he just wanted to foam at the mouth in peace for a while. Admittedly, I would too, in his position. And if I’m being honest, I like listening to him when he’s angry. It’s something living people do, and Living-Martin was especially good at it. So I let him.
“What moron thought this would be more convenient? Who invented this thing? A baboon? A twelve year old? …Fucking Spenser?”
Then, as if we were all sitting in a TV studio and following a script, a voice echoed off the hard walls and floor of the garage, then cheerfully bounced into the living room.
“…Someone call me!?”
Right on the heels of the voice, Spenser himself popped up in the doorway like a horrible puppet. Something about him always reminded me of those dogs who can feel a hunk of food hitting the floor from any room of the house, but in his case, it’s less “food,” and more “any situation he might possibly want to be involved in.” Well, sometimes it’s food. But usually not floor-food. (Usually.) Anyway, I knew that Martin wasn’t in the mood to deal with him, so I almost waved him back into the garage, but I decided against it. I was never quite sure why, but Spenser is an easy person to feel sorry for. Especially when the light hits his glasses just right, and he smiles a certain way. You just can’t bring yourself to turn away someone who looks so disconcertingly unhinged, yet so pitifully eager, all the time.
Besides, I figured that if anyone could help us with this, he could. And it’s not like much can be done to deter him, anyway. You just kind of have to sit back and wait for him to either accomplish whatever task he set for himself, or get bored or frustrated enough to wander off and start causing mayhem somewhere else.
“No... I mean, Martin mentioned you. But it wasn’t like ‘hey Spenser, get out here!’ So you can…”
Of course, I knew he wouldn’t. Martin was staring at me and shaking his head. (“Fuck no! Make him go back where he came from or so help me…”) I stared back and shrugged pointedly. (“He’s here now, so just let this run its course.”) Spenser, having heard my explanation, decided I was useless to him right then. I figured he was Martin’s problem now, so I ignored him right back.
“…Oh yeah!? What’s your deal!?”
I could tell Martin wanted to ignore him, but good luck ignoring Spenser when he‘s already decided he wants to talk to you. Having gotten tired of me by now, Martin grabbed his new verbal punching bag and started flogging the hell out of him.
“…My ‘deal’ is that I want to go back to the fucking hospital and start this whole thing over again. So if you’re offering me a ride, that would be great.”
Spenser paused to take a sip of coffee from a gigantic paper cup, the kind you get at gas stations because the smaller ones are only five cents cheaper and feel like a ripoff.
“…Okay! Sure, I could do that.”
I decided to intervene before the two of them piled into the car and drove off, with no appointment and no plan, to start harassing doctors.
“He’s just having problems with that… The thing. That he’s wearing.”
I gestured in the general direction of the offending backpack, hoping that would be enough description for Spenser to understand what I meant. He had to look Martin up and down until he noticed what was out of place, but he found it, so I figured I was being clear enough.
“…Dude, what the fuck is that?”
Martin cut in.
“A bad idea!”
I elbowed him before he could get started again.
“It’s, like… Medical equipment.” (I use the term loosely because I don’t know what the hell else to call it.) “We’re trying to figure out how you’re supposed to sit down with it.”
Spenser adjusted the coffee cup, crossed his arms, leaned on the back of the couch, and squinted at the bag for a while.
“…Dude, did like, an actual doctor do this, or did one of you? Who the fuck puts an IV on a backpack? If anything, it should be, like, on some kind’a fuckin’ beerhat or whatever!”
Martin clapped loud enough to make me jump a little, groaned exaggeratedly, and threw his hands in the air.
“…Yes! You’re a genius. When I go back tomorrow, I’m going to tell them that.”
Spenser tilted his head slightly, which is something he does all the time. Again, he reminds me of a poorly trained and not particularly bright dog.
“That I’m a genius, or that you should put it on-”
As far as I was concerned, both of them were being incredibly stupid, and I didn’t want to have to listen to this discussion for any longer than I already had.
“…Tomorrow, you can tell them whatever you want. But what are we going to do about it now?”
Spenser took another sip of coffee.
“…I dunno. Gotta think, dude.”
He drank more coffee, and looked around the room for about half a minute. Then, without another word, he went back to the garage. I glared at the back of his head. Jesus Christ, there he fucking goes again. Spenser had a history of thinking about a problem for five seconds, and then, with no warning whatsoever, jumping the tracks in his brain and drifting off to do something entirely unrelated. But it was extra annoying this time, since he usually only does this when he was going through one of his particularly discombobulated phases. And he seemed pretty Spenser-normal today, so I guess I hadn’t figured him out as well as I thought, and would have to start all over with him.
Turns out, I didn’t have to worry. He was back out of the garage almost as soon as he went in, dragging the battered office-in-name-only chair behind him with his free hand. Of course, I didn’t know what he was planning to do with that, so that just gave me something new to worry about.
“…Okay! Martin! Take that thing off and pass it to me, would’ya?”
Martin obviously couldn’t wriggle out of those straps soon enough, because this was about as compliant as I’d ever seen him. He struggled free from the backpack, ripped the tape off his shirt, and handed the whole mess to Spenser, who nearly dropped it as soon as he had it, but managed to catch it with his other arm and keep hold of his coffee the whole time. Which was actually kind of impressive.
“…Jesus H. Fuck, the hell is in here, dude?”
Martin paused mid-stretch to answer him.
“A forty pound book of math.”
Spenser shrugged, then unzipped the backpack with his teeth and dropped the book in my lap, all while still juggling that huge white paper cup. I opened the book and started flipping through it, because I didn’t know how long this would take and might as well keep myself occupied. Martin got back to the bone-crunchingly painful business of stretching, rolling his poor little shoulders, twisting his neck, and noisily cracking everything that was still articulated, his face set in what I knew as its “in agony; trying to be discreet” position. I was actually surprised by how much popping I heard, since I knew that a good chunk of his upper spine had been fused and wasn’t sure how much of him could still move. When he was finally done, he fell against the back of the couch, comfortable at last. I considered asking him if he wanted his controller back, so we could pass the time until Spenser was done with whatever the hell he was doing, but before I could get a chance, Spenser climbed up onto the chair, backpack in one hand, coffee in the other.
“…Might want to lift your arm a little bit there, dude.”
Martin turned around as far as his bolted-together spine would let him, glared in what, if he could turn around all the way, surely would have been Spenser’s direction, and stabbed his arm up into the air like he was trying to punch someone behind him. Actually, I wasn’t sure quite sure if that wasn’t actually what he was doing, but either way, Spenser was oblivious, too focused on wobbling around up there with his quart of coffee and Martin’s pint of blood. I wished he would have had the good sense to pass the cup to one of us until he was done.
But no, when Spenser has a plan, he becomes somehow convinced that he has an extra set of limbs. I once watched him install a new hard drive in his computer, shout at Hal through his phone, drink vodka directly out of the bottle, and snarf Mexican food from a styrofoam container at the same time, hands moving so quickly between tasks that it almost looked like he had six of them. If his phone rings while he’s eating in the car, he’ll fish it out of his pocket and drive with his feet. And I thought that was bad for a while, but then I had the misfortune of being in the car with him when he decided to clean his glasses, running several stop signs and nearly flattening a pedestrian because his feet weren’t available to operate the brake, which didn’t matter anyway, because he was functionally fucking blind. Again, all this can look pretty impressive, but even in fairly innocuous situations that don’t involve vehicles, fire, or a bag full of someone’s blood, it seems somehow unsafe, like he’s eventually going to put out an eye or accidentally eat a nail one of these days.
In this case, he was swaying around with outstretched arms like a surfer, having apparently forgotten what was in his left hand, but not that he had to keep holding onto it for some dumbfuck reason. Then he almost lost his balance and caught himself, sloshing lukewarm coffee directly onto my head in the process.
“…Spenser, what the hell!?”
“Fuck, sorry, dude! Calm the shit down, s’not even hot! And even if it was, isn’t that like, the side of your face that’s all melted and crap anyway? Really not a big deal.”
“…Look, I shouldn’t have to justify not wanting some asshole to dump coffee all over me. So just pass it the fuck down to me until you’re done, alright?”
He crouched down on the chair, handed the cup to me, and immediately got back to whatever he was doing.
“Fine. Just don’t fuckin’ drink it, okay? Don’t. You drink my coffee, I bash you over the head with this fuckin’ chair, got it?”
“Uh. Okay.”
With Spenser, you have to get used to a certain ambient level of empty threats. I took the coffee out of his hand and sat it down. On the coffee table. A genre of table that exists for just such an event; when a bozo on a swivel chair hands you a cup of coffee and you need somewhere to put it. I watch Martin relax his raised fist and stop grinding his teeth, obviously relieved that he doesn’t have to listen to us anymore. Then I look down at the book again, and I almost start reading, but before I do, I look back up at Spenser, and realize that I’m not sure if he actually has a plan, or if he’s just playing Human IV Pole until the bag empties.
“Um… So, you’re just standing there?”
“Nah, man. I’m tryin’ to, like, put it on the hook.”
I close the book in my lap and scrutinize the ceiling. I’d forgotten that we even had a hook. Sorrell used it for a spider plant that Martin’s mom had given her when we were visiting, but she ended up moving it when it started dropping clones on the couch and people complained. The hook remained, though, because we all assumed it would be used for something else, eventually. So this was actually an interesting development.
“Huh. Look at that, Martin. We can hang it on the hook. Remember that for next time.”
“The tube doesn’t reach the ceiling. I’d have to sit here with my arm like this. For as long as it takes to give myself two bags of blood. Even this long, it feels like my shoulder is going to lock up. Fuck this shit.” Spenser tried to get a strap on the hook and missed again. Martin lifted his arm higher. “…See, even holding my arm like that, it doesn’t reach. It would only work if I used a vein in my wrist and sat here like I was being strung up from the ceiling in a torture dungeon. Again, fuck this.”
He leaned forward and held his head in his right hand, the left still waving listlessly in the air, like he was the only one in the class with the answer to an unspeakable question. He sat back again, staring into space. Then he started staring through it, eyes glazed.
“…Spenser, Martin just blinked out. Maybe we should take five.”
“Eh, just as well. He was getting on my nerves. I think I can get it without him whining and shit.”
That said, he swung the bag forward with more force, weight shifting just enough to send the chair rolling backwards and his body falling forwards. It all happened in the space of about a second. The chair flew across the room, Spenser hit the ground like a ton of bricks, the tube ripped out of Martin’s arm, a thin jet of blood squirted the carpet and the couch and my shirt and my face. Martin rejoined the living, and he was pissed.
“…What the Christfuck did you do to me!?”
He leapt to his feet, grabbed the coffee cup off the table, whipped around and threw it at Spenser’s head, then fell back down on the couch because, yet again, he forgot that he can’t stand up that fast anymore. I watched him long enough to make sure he hadn’t fainted, then reached up to touch my sticky face. I didn’t even know who this blood belonged to, which was kind of upsetting. All I wanted to do was fling myself into the shower, but before I did that, I had to get these two fucking assholes squared away, and clean up the carpet, and get on the internet and find out how much money I could get if I sued the stupid jerks down at the fucking medical backpack factory for all they were worth. I took a deep breath, got up off the couch, and calmly walked towards the hall closet, where we kept the steam cleaner. Then Martin staggered to his feet, and I thought he was going to help me, but no, he got up to kick Spenser in the stomach. This in itself didn’t bother me much. Martin, such as he is, can’t really do much damage, and I figured Spenser deserved a little bit of damage, because all this shit was mostly his fault.
As far as I was concerned, I didn’t deserve any of this. I was covered in some total stranger’s blood, I had to drag out the fucking steam cleaner while the two of them kept bedeviling each other, and I was in a perfectly foul mood.
“…Martin, if you can stand up long enough to do that, you can help me clean up!”
Predictably, he slumped to the floor.
“I can’t, like, really stand up. I just had to kick the shit out of him.”
God, how I wanted to pick up the steam cleaner and smack him in the head with it. But he did genuinely look like he needed to be sitting, and I probably didn’t have the upper body strength for that, anyway, so I refrained.
“Fine. Whatever.”
I went to find a plug, and took a good look around the room. Spenser was lying in a pool of stale coffee, the fallen blood bag was leaking its contents on the floor, and the goddamn flying chair had taken out a potted plant on the other side of the room. I stormed away from the steam cleaner, grabbed the book off the couch, made some kind of inhuman growling noise in the back of my throat, and threw it as hard as I could. Martin was looking considerably more alert, Spenser was now sitting in the stale coffee, and they were both staring at me like I’d lost my mind. Which, I guess, I did.
“…One of you pick up that fucking tube before any more gross-ass goddamn stranger blood gets on the carpet, or I cover this entire house in asshole ex-friend blood, okay!? Do you understand!?”
They both sat motionless, and kept staring at me. Three beats later, Spenser delicately picked up the end of the tube and held it at shoulder level. I turned on the steam cleaner, and they just sat there, quietly watching as a blood-spattered crazy person vacuumed the floor. No one said anything. Until Sorrell opened the door and came in with a bag of groceries, looking at us like we’d all gone insane.
“…Corwin’s gonna fuckin’ kill us!”
“I am not, you jackass bullshit artist! You just got goddamn blood and dirt and coffee everywhere like a friggin‘ cave troll!”
“…You have to drive me to the hospital tomorrow. I didn’t finish my transfusion.”
She takes a moment to process all this new information, then nods.
“…Alright. Just call them so they‘re know you‘re coming in.”
Martin follows Sorrell into the kitchen, because at least putting away groceries gets you away from the lunatic in the living room. Spenser follows Martin, but not before righting the coffee cup and placing the leaking end of the tube inside.
I guess he’s pretty smart after all.
starphotographsStory: Corwin and Friends
Characters: Corwin (POV), Martin, Spenser.
Colors: Admin Yellow #18 (Did we actually accomplish anything here), Folly #12 (That’s easy, I can do it!)
Word Count: 4,483
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Choose not to warn.
Summary: Martin test-drives some new medical technology.
Note: Questions, concrit, and general natter all fine!
“…Okay, I need to pause. Just wait a sec.”
Martin sat his controller down on the coffee table, which struck me as unusual. Even if he wanted a drink or something, he’d usually wait until the round was up and he’d finished with any bragging or whining that needed doing. Then he’d either make me get it (if he won), or storm off to the kitchen in a rage (if he lost).
“Oh come on, you’re kicking my ass! You only say shit like that when you’re losing, so what gives?”
“I just need a minute, okay? Fuck off.”
I watched him shift in his seat, like he was trying to level his contents.
“Is it your thing going skewed again? Do you need more help, or…”
The “thing” in question was a mostly-normal black backpack. I say “mostly” normal because there was a thin metal rod on one side that stuck up about half a foot, then loosely coiled around a dangling bag of blood. And I didn’t want to say anything, but it kind of made Martin look like an awkward lamp.
“…No. Jesus Christ, Corwin. If you spent like an hour messing with it, and it’s still not sitting right, that means you have been disqualified on the basis of general fucking inefficacy, and are prohibited from any and all further contact with the goddamn blood rucksack. Okay?”
“I just thought…”
“…Well, you thought wrong, and I only have the dumb thing in the first place because you talked me into it. Hey, great job! I hate you so much right now.”
“I know. We’ve established that. I said I was sorry, okay? The demo model looked like it would work.”
To my credit, it kind of did, but only because I hadn’t seen it in actual use. I guess it’s the same thing that happens when you order something from TV. The product looks like the answer to all your problems, because that’s just what they want you to think. But then the package drops on your doorstep, and it turns out that whatever you ordered only works correctly when you, I don’t know, look at it exactly the right way. It’s hard to clean, and something always jams, and you realize that it’s about half the size you thought it was… Okay, in this case, it looked bigger. Martin is half a head shorter than the technician who tried it on and made us look at him for fifteen minutes while I tried to convince Martin it was a good idea, Martin gave me the stink-eye from under his hair, and we both quietly bickered through our teeth so we could argue and pretend to pay attention at the same time.
“…Well, maybe that one looked like it would work because the goddamn bag was friggin’ empty.”
“Hey, what the hell did I know? I didn’t think a bag of blood would weigh that much.”
The way Martin was looking at me, I thought he was going to take the bag off the pole and whip it around by the tube and start smacking me with it.
“Bag of blood versus empty fucking backpack! Mass versus fucking volume! …Grad school for fucking physics versus your thick skull, apparently!”
“That’s not even the right kind of physics!”
“…But you’d think, in all those years, it would have come up!”
“It did! Many, many years ago. Jesus. How do you think I fixed the damn thing?”
I fixed it, or at least tried, by increasing the mass of the backpack. With an old calculus textbook. So it wasn’t like my education hadn’t served me well. At first, anyway. When the weight of the book made the whole apparatus tilt backwards where it had once been listing sideways, I had to wing it a bit, and that‘s where it all fell apart. Literally, almost. I couldn’t think of anything besides straight-up duct taping it to the poor guy. This made Martin look like he was wearing a pair of metallic suspenders, which was probably why he was so cranky. But, between the added weight and that goofy tape, it finally seemed stable. Or at least, the backpack itself did. By that time, the weight of the blood bag had started to bend the flimsy metal spike that held it, only marginally, high enough for gravity to pipe the donor blood in. As opposed to, you know, siphoning Martin’s blood out. That, in retrospect, was the thing I should have thought of back at the hospital when I had the chance. This development turned the contraption from moderately uncomfortable to actually dangerous, which put an even higher priority on giving it an iota of structural integrity. With that in mind, I added more tape.
“…You didn’t fix it. You taped it to me and stuck a fucking book in it.”
“Um… I did my best, okay?”
I paused to bend the shitty little pole back into shape for about the tenth time that hour, and let Martin blow off some steam.
“…And anyway, even if the thing worked, which it doesn’t, it’s still mostly useless. You can’t even sit right! I’ve been sitting on the edge of the damn couch all day because if I lean back, the stupid piece of crap goes all screwy and we have to mess with it again.”
I kept focusing on the wire, wondering if I could use something to reinforce it.
“Mmhmm…”
“Fuck, you remember what that physical therapist said.“
“…Not really. That was when we weren’t keeping in touch.”
“Well, I’m sure I told you… Point is, I’m not supposed to sit on a backless chair. Well hey, with this stupid thing, every chair can be backless! And actually, I’m not even really allowed to use a regular backpack. Who the hell cleared this? Grab my phone, I‘m calling my fucking doctor.”
Martin’s phone was sitting right in front of him on the table, so either his back was too mangled for him to reach correctly, or he was just trying to make my life difficult. Probably both. I made my usual mistake: trying to reason with Martin when he’s on one of his hatred benders.
“Just… Settle down a little before you start calling people and yelling at them, okay? Did you take your pain meds?”
“…Yes. They just aren’t working, because I’m sitting here hunched over with a ten pound book and a sack of blood pressing right down on the most messed-up part of my spine. Because you thought that gee whiz, it would be just so great if I could have my transfusion at home!”
“It wasn’t just the transfusion. There’s a lot of stuff you can use an IV for, and if you’d have an easy way to do that at home… I mean, you probably wouldn’t have to inject yourself every day, and there’s a lot of stuff where I think you might be able to switch over and not take so many pills… Oh, and I actually just recently read that they can feed you through one, which would be good for when you like, freeze up in there like you do sometimes. Hey, wait a sec… You probably wouldn’t have trouble absorbing things anymore that way, so that would knock off about five pills right there… And if you ever need oxygen again, you can probably put the concentrator-”
“…Yeah, good idea! And hey, if my kidneys start to go, we can get some aquarium tubing and charcoal filters and shove ‘em in. Heck, why not just find a way to keep my brain in there, so you can throw out the whole rest of my piece of shit body and hang out with the fucking backpack all day! Just prop me up on the couch! I‘ll float around in my freakin’ brain jar, praying for death.”
This is when Martin would normally punctuate his big dumb monolog by falling back against the couch and sulking. Actually, he almost did, but he remembered the backpack and had to jerk himself back upright mid-sulk. He perched, furiously, on the edge of the couch. I thought he was being ridiculous, and also felt vaguely sorry for him, but communicating either of those sentiments would just make me a target again.
“…Point taken.”
Who am I kidding? With Martin, you’re a target until he decides you’re not.
“It’s not even that! Why the hell did you think this would be a better option? I could be kicking back in a nice hospital bed with my laptop right now. Or, hey, I could take a fucking nap without worrying if there’s somewhere above bed-level to put the fucking backpack, because I wouldn’t have a fucking backpack. I’d have… Wait, what was that thing? It’s metal, and like, sturdy, and taller than I am? And if I want to move around and sit down somewhere, I can do that, because it’s on wheels or whatever? Shit, if they wanted me to try doing it at home, why not just send me home with a pole?”
“…I don’t know? Maybe it’s like shopping cart rules?”
Either Martin wasn’t hearing me, or he just wanted to foam at the mouth in peace for a while. Admittedly, I would too, in his position. And if I’m being honest, I like listening to him when he’s angry. It’s something living people do, and Living-Martin was especially good at it. So I let him.
“What moron thought this would be more convenient? Who invented this thing? A baboon? A twelve year old? …Fucking Spenser?”
Then, as if we were all sitting in a TV studio and following a script, a voice echoed off the hard walls and floor of the garage, then cheerfully bounced into the living room.
“…Someone call me!?”
Right on the heels of the voice, Spenser himself popped up in the doorway like a horrible puppet. Something about him always reminded me of those dogs who can feel a hunk of food hitting the floor from any room of the house, but in his case, it’s less “food,” and more “any situation he might possibly want to be involved in.” Well, sometimes it’s food. But usually not floor-food. (Usually.) Anyway, I knew that Martin wasn’t in the mood to deal with him, so I almost waved him back into the garage, but I decided against it. I was never quite sure why, but Spenser is an easy person to feel sorry for. Especially when the light hits his glasses just right, and he smiles a certain way. You just can’t bring yourself to turn away someone who looks so disconcertingly unhinged, yet so pitifully eager, all the time.
Besides, I figured that if anyone could help us with this, he could. And it’s not like much can be done to deter him, anyway. You just kind of have to sit back and wait for him to either accomplish whatever task he set for himself, or get bored or frustrated enough to wander off and start causing mayhem somewhere else.
“No... I mean, Martin mentioned you. But it wasn’t like ‘hey Spenser, get out here!’ So you can…”
Of course, I knew he wouldn’t. Martin was staring at me and shaking his head. (“Fuck no! Make him go back where he came from or so help me…”) I stared back and shrugged pointedly. (“He’s here now, so just let this run its course.”) Spenser, having heard my explanation, decided I was useless to him right then. I figured he was Martin’s problem now, so I ignored him right back.
“…Oh yeah!? What’s your deal!?”
I could tell Martin wanted to ignore him, but good luck ignoring Spenser when he‘s already decided he wants to talk to you. Having gotten tired of me by now, Martin grabbed his new verbal punching bag and started flogging the hell out of him.
“…My ‘deal’ is that I want to go back to the fucking hospital and start this whole thing over again. So if you’re offering me a ride, that would be great.”
Spenser paused to take a sip of coffee from a gigantic paper cup, the kind you get at gas stations because the smaller ones are only five cents cheaper and feel like a ripoff.
“…Okay! Sure, I could do that.”
I decided to intervene before the two of them piled into the car and drove off, with no appointment and no plan, to start harassing doctors.
“He’s just having problems with that… The thing. That he’s wearing.”
I gestured in the general direction of the offending backpack, hoping that would be enough description for Spenser to understand what I meant. He had to look Martin up and down until he noticed what was out of place, but he found it, so I figured I was being clear enough.
“…Dude, what the fuck is that?”
Martin cut in.
“A bad idea!”
I elbowed him before he could get started again.
“It’s, like… Medical equipment.” (I use the term loosely because I don’t know what the hell else to call it.) “We’re trying to figure out how you’re supposed to sit down with it.”
Spenser adjusted the coffee cup, crossed his arms, leaned on the back of the couch, and squinted at the bag for a while.
“…Dude, did like, an actual doctor do this, or did one of you? Who the fuck puts an IV on a backpack? If anything, it should be, like, on some kind’a fuckin’ beerhat or whatever!”
Martin clapped loud enough to make me jump a little, groaned exaggeratedly, and threw his hands in the air.
“…Yes! You’re a genius. When I go back tomorrow, I’m going to tell them that.”
Spenser tilted his head slightly, which is something he does all the time. Again, he reminds me of a poorly trained and not particularly bright dog.
“That I’m a genius, or that you should put it on-”
As far as I was concerned, both of them were being incredibly stupid, and I didn’t want to have to listen to this discussion for any longer than I already had.
“…Tomorrow, you can tell them whatever you want. But what are we going to do about it now?”
Spenser took another sip of coffee.
“…I dunno. Gotta think, dude.”
He drank more coffee, and looked around the room for about half a minute. Then, without another word, he went back to the garage. I glared at the back of his head. Jesus Christ, there he fucking goes again. Spenser had a history of thinking about a problem for five seconds, and then, with no warning whatsoever, jumping the tracks in his brain and drifting off to do something entirely unrelated. But it was extra annoying this time, since he usually only does this when he was going through one of his particularly discombobulated phases. And he seemed pretty Spenser-normal today, so I guess I hadn’t figured him out as well as I thought, and would have to start all over with him.
Turns out, I didn’t have to worry. He was back out of the garage almost as soon as he went in, dragging the battered office-in-name-only chair behind him with his free hand. Of course, I didn’t know what he was planning to do with that, so that just gave me something new to worry about.
“…Okay! Martin! Take that thing off and pass it to me, would’ya?”
Martin obviously couldn’t wriggle out of those straps soon enough, because this was about as compliant as I’d ever seen him. He struggled free from the backpack, ripped the tape off his shirt, and handed the whole mess to Spenser, who nearly dropped it as soon as he had it, but managed to catch it with his other arm and keep hold of his coffee the whole time. Which was actually kind of impressive.
“…Jesus H. Fuck, the hell is in here, dude?”
Martin paused mid-stretch to answer him.
“A forty pound book of math.”
Spenser shrugged, then unzipped the backpack with his teeth and dropped the book in my lap, all while still juggling that huge white paper cup. I opened the book and started flipping through it, because I didn’t know how long this would take and might as well keep myself occupied. Martin got back to the bone-crunchingly painful business of stretching, rolling his poor little shoulders, twisting his neck, and noisily cracking everything that was still articulated, his face set in what I knew as its “in agony; trying to be discreet” position. I was actually surprised by how much popping I heard, since I knew that a good chunk of his upper spine had been fused and wasn’t sure how much of him could still move. When he was finally done, he fell against the back of the couch, comfortable at last. I considered asking him if he wanted his controller back, so we could pass the time until Spenser was done with whatever the hell he was doing, but before I could get a chance, Spenser climbed up onto the chair, backpack in one hand, coffee in the other.
“…Might want to lift your arm a little bit there, dude.”
Martin turned around as far as his bolted-together spine would let him, glared in what, if he could turn around all the way, surely would have been Spenser’s direction, and stabbed his arm up into the air like he was trying to punch someone behind him. Actually, I wasn’t sure quite sure if that wasn’t actually what he was doing, but either way, Spenser was oblivious, too focused on wobbling around up there with his quart of coffee and Martin’s pint of blood. I wished he would have had the good sense to pass the cup to one of us until he was done.
But no, when Spenser has a plan, he becomes somehow convinced that he has an extra set of limbs. I once watched him install a new hard drive in his computer, shout at Hal through his phone, drink vodka directly out of the bottle, and snarf Mexican food from a styrofoam container at the same time, hands moving so quickly between tasks that it almost looked like he had six of them. If his phone rings while he’s eating in the car, he’ll fish it out of his pocket and drive with his feet. And I thought that was bad for a while, but then I had the misfortune of being in the car with him when he decided to clean his glasses, running several stop signs and nearly flattening a pedestrian because his feet weren’t available to operate the brake, which didn’t matter anyway, because he was functionally fucking blind. Again, all this can look pretty impressive, but even in fairly innocuous situations that don’t involve vehicles, fire, or a bag full of someone’s blood, it seems somehow unsafe, like he’s eventually going to put out an eye or accidentally eat a nail one of these days.
In this case, he was swaying around with outstretched arms like a surfer, having apparently forgotten what was in his left hand, but not that he had to keep holding onto it for some dumbfuck reason. Then he almost lost his balance and caught himself, sloshing lukewarm coffee directly onto my head in the process.
“…Spenser, what the hell!?”
“Fuck, sorry, dude! Calm the shit down, s’not even hot! And even if it was, isn’t that like, the side of your face that’s all melted and crap anyway? Really not a big deal.”
“…Look, I shouldn’t have to justify not wanting some asshole to dump coffee all over me. So just pass it the fuck down to me until you’re done, alright?”
He crouched down on the chair, handed the cup to me, and immediately got back to whatever he was doing.
“Fine. Just don’t fuckin’ drink it, okay? Don’t. You drink my coffee, I bash you over the head with this fuckin’ chair, got it?”
“Uh. Okay.”
With Spenser, you have to get used to a certain ambient level of empty threats. I took the coffee out of his hand and sat it down. On the coffee table. A genre of table that exists for just such an event; when a bozo on a swivel chair hands you a cup of coffee and you need somewhere to put it. I watch Martin relax his raised fist and stop grinding his teeth, obviously relieved that he doesn’t have to listen to us anymore. Then I look down at the book again, and I almost start reading, but before I do, I look back up at Spenser, and realize that I’m not sure if he actually has a plan, or if he’s just playing Human IV Pole until the bag empties.
“Um… So, you’re just standing there?”
“Nah, man. I’m tryin’ to, like, put it on the hook.”
I close the book in my lap and scrutinize the ceiling. I’d forgotten that we even had a hook. Sorrell used it for a spider plant that Martin’s mom had given her when we were visiting, but she ended up moving it when it started dropping clones on the couch and people complained. The hook remained, though, because we all assumed it would be used for something else, eventually. So this was actually an interesting development.
“Huh. Look at that, Martin. We can hang it on the hook. Remember that for next time.”
“The tube doesn’t reach the ceiling. I’d have to sit here with my arm like this. For as long as it takes to give myself two bags of blood. Even this long, it feels like my shoulder is going to lock up. Fuck this shit.” Spenser tried to get a strap on the hook and missed again. Martin lifted his arm higher. “…See, even holding my arm like that, it doesn’t reach. It would only work if I used a vein in my wrist and sat here like I was being strung up from the ceiling in a torture dungeon. Again, fuck this.”
He leaned forward and held his head in his right hand, the left still waving listlessly in the air, like he was the only one in the class with the answer to an unspeakable question. He sat back again, staring into space. Then he started staring through it, eyes glazed.
“…Spenser, Martin just blinked out. Maybe we should take five.”
“Eh, just as well. He was getting on my nerves. I think I can get it without him whining and shit.”
That said, he swung the bag forward with more force, weight shifting just enough to send the chair rolling backwards and his body falling forwards. It all happened in the space of about a second. The chair flew across the room, Spenser hit the ground like a ton of bricks, the tube ripped out of Martin’s arm, a thin jet of blood squirted the carpet and the couch and my shirt and my face. Martin rejoined the living, and he was pissed.
“…What the Christfuck did you do to me!?”
He leapt to his feet, grabbed the coffee cup off the table, whipped around and threw it at Spenser’s head, then fell back down on the couch because, yet again, he forgot that he can’t stand up that fast anymore. I watched him long enough to make sure he hadn’t fainted, then reached up to touch my sticky face. I didn’t even know who this blood belonged to, which was kind of upsetting. All I wanted to do was fling myself into the shower, but before I did that, I had to get these two fucking assholes squared away, and clean up the carpet, and get on the internet and find out how much money I could get if I sued the stupid jerks down at the fucking medical backpack factory for all they were worth. I took a deep breath, got up off the couch, and calmly walked towards the hall closet, where we kept the steam cleaner. Then Martin staggered to his feet, and I thought he was going to help me, but no, he got up to kick Spenser in the stomach. This in itself didn’t bother me much. Martin, such as he is, can’t really do much damage, and I figured Spenser deserved a little bit of damage, because all this shit was mostly his fault.
As far as I was concerned, I didn’t deserve any of this. I was covered in some total stranger’s blood, I had to drag out the fucking steam cleaner while the two of them kept bedeviling each other, and I was in a perfectly foul mood.
“…Martin, if you can stand up long enough to do that, you can help me clean up!”
Predictably, he slumped to the floor.
“I can’t, like, really stand up. I just had to kick the shit out of him.”
God, how I wanted to pick up the steam cleaner and smack him in the head with it. But he did genuinely look like he needed to be sitting, and I probably didn’t have the upper body strength for that, anyway, so I refrained.
“Fine. Whatever.”
I went to find a plug, and took a good look around the room. Spenser was lying in a pool of stale coffee, the fallen blood bag was leaking its contents on the floor, and the goddamn flying chair had taken out a potted plant on the other side of the room. I stormed away from the steam cleaner, grabbed the book off the couch, made some kind of inhuman growling noise in the back of my throat, and threw it as hard as I could. Martin was looking considerably more alert, Spenser was now sitting in the stale coffee, and they were both staring at me like I’d lost my mind. Which, I guess, I did.
“…One of you pick up that fucking tube before any more gross-ass goddamn stranger blood gets on the carpet, or I cover this entire house in asshole ex-friend blood, okay!? Do you understand!?”
They both sat motionless, and kept staring at me. Three beats later, Spenser delicately picked up the end of the tube and held it at shoulder level. I turned on the steam cleaner, and they just sat there, quietly watching as a blood-spattered crazy person vacuumed the floor. No one said anything. Until Sorrell opened the door and came in with a bag of groceries, looking at us like we’d all gone insane.
“…Corwin’s gonna fuckin’ kill us!”
“I am not, you jackass bullshit artist! You just got goddamn blood and dirt and coffee everywhere like a friggin‘ cave troll!”
“…You have to drive me to the hospital tomorrow. I didn’t finish my transfusion.”
She takes a moment to process all this new information, then nods.
“…Alright. Just call them so they‘re know you‘re coming in.”
Martin follows Sorrell into the kitchen, because at least putting away groceries gets you away from the lunatic in the living room. Spenser follows Martin, but not before righting the coffee cup and placing the leaking end of the tube inside.
I guess he’s pretty smart after all.
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You're the audience. It's kind of your job. XD