When Hutch
stopped by—the man can’t dance but he has perfect timing—he showed up just as I
was pitching off the porcelain to one side. He propped me upright, and when I
nearly fell the other way, he hauled me back to bed and dusted off my old
bedpan. I could’ve cried.
“This,” he said, “or I take you to
County.” He didn’t have to say another word. I took the metal monster from him,
shoved it where it had to go. Which wasn’t where I felt like shoving it, if you
get my drift. He plumped my pillows, pulled the covers up around my neck, and
found me a big piece of Tupperware to puke in if I had to.
I must have gone to sleep not too long
after.
Later on, Hutch woke me with his
banging around in the kitchen. He said that he was making tea. Sounded more
like he was beating pans together for the hell of it. It pissed me off—I had
the right to die in peace this time—and so I told him. He came at me then,
waving a ladle like he was a cut-rate Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Told him that, too.
And that my head hurt. And my guts. And my butt, like someone put a blowtorch
to my asshole.
So he said he’d go get his Colt and
plug me, give me a new asshole between my eyes so everyone would know exactly
what a shithead looked like. He looked mad enough to do it, too.
My wit sometimes amazes even me; I
think I told him to go fuck himself ’cause obviously he hadn’t had a better
offer if all he had to do in his off duty hours was bug the hell out of me. I’m
pretty sure that’s what I said.
God in his mercy must’ve knocked me
out again at that point.
When I came to, Hutch was still there.
He spent the next eight hours, give or take,
nursing me through dry heaves and the cramping clenches of my emptied gut and
making me drink tea, getting me to swallow chicken soup he’d made from scratch.
And that’s on top of glass after glass of water. But you know what they say:
what goes down, must come up . . . or something like that. It’s weird but the
water was the worst of it, dripping down into my guts like nitro, blasting up
and out of me. And Hutch cleaned up each time.
But some of my new liquid diet must’ve
made it to my bladder after all, and I knew I was never going to make it to the
bathroom—hell, it felt like I was never going walk again. . .
There’s nothing like peeing in a
bottle to put you in your place; there’s nothing like having a friend who’ll
rig you a bottle to pee in to tell you that, as places go, yours ain't so bad.
Hutch put a hole in an empty milk jug
and handed it to me.
“Watch that edge,” he told me,
pointing to the hole. “We wouldn’t want you cutting off your dick,” he added,
heading to the kitchen again.
I inspected the facilities. A quart
jug should have been enough, but at that moment I felt I could piss a gallon so
I yelled after him.
“It's not big
enough!”
A pause . . . and
then he hollered back, “It’s plenty big enough; I've seen your dick.”
And to be honest, the size of the hole
he’d cut out? It was pretty flattering.
When I was done I said, “Hey, Hutch,”
half-hoping that he wouldn’t hear me. But he strolled right in and took the
bottle, emptied it and rinsed it out, then brought it back again.
How
are you supposed to thank a guy who does a thing like that for you? You start
off by letting him treat you like you’re five years old and then stop acting
like you’re four. You behave yourself: drink when he says drink and eat the
soup and crackers and dry toast. And when he slaps some pills into your palm,
you swallow them without complaint, even the big blue one that’s “just a
multivitamin” but leaves a taste like chalk and something bitter in your mouth.
And you say
“thank you.” A lot.