A Deer and a Dear?

A DEER, And a DEAR?

I woke up, I think. I started to wonder if I was really alive, or maybe dead and in hell, and I fell back asleep.

I woke up again. This time I did wonder if I was in hell. I couldn't see, I couldn't move, not my head, not my legs, not my arms. I realized I could move my fingers a bit. I thought my wrists were immobilized by something. I realized I could smell, but only something like rubbing alcohol. I wondered if my heart rate was climbing. And then I knew it was because I heard a voice, a blessed, sweet, female, nurse kind of voice.

"Doctor, I think he's awake. His pulse is up to 74 and still climbing." And I felt her hand clasp my fingers. "Squeeze my hand if you can hear me." I squeezed like a drowning sailor holding on to a life raft. "Whoa, whoa, okay, I feel you. That's good, but please don't break my hand." She said that with a bit of a laugh, but with some nervousness in her voice also. I wondered what I had done to get into whatever hospital situation I was in.

"Mr. Dorado," said a new, male voice, with enough authority in it I knew he had to be a doctor. And yes, I am Mr. Dorado. John Dorado actually, and as I realized who I was I started remembering what had happened to get me in the hospital.

"Doctor, his pulse is skyrocketing, up to 133 and still climbing."

"20 milligrams propofol in the I.V., stat."

"Yessir." I pulled against my restraints and tried to open my mouth to scream something, but I lost track of everything as I fell asleep again.

"Good morning, Mr. Dorado," I heard, as I woke up once again, this time with a different hand in mine, bigger and rougher than the time before. "Please try to stay calm so I can care for you. I'm Franklin Johnson, your daytime nurse. I understand you had a bit of an outburst last evening. We don't want a repeat of that this morning, do we? I'll call the doctor now that you are awake, and he can fill you in on your situation. Squeeze my hand once if you are ok with that." I dutifully squeezed once and just lay there, remembering now what had happened. I needed to process those events, but the doctor was there quickly.

"Mr. Dorado, I hope you are feeling a bit better this morning. I know you must be confused and anxious, and I'm going to remind you of your accident, tell you about your injuries and describe what we are doing to get you better. Three days ago, a deer collided with your truck. The deer penetrated your windshield and its head collided with your head. That's according to the police report. An antler tore a hole in the left side of your neck and grazed, just grazed mind you, your carotid artery. Again according to the police, a driver a few minutes behind you saw your truck stopped. He also stopped and found you bleeding. He applied pressure on the carotid artery and held that pressure until the EMT's arrived some time later. They continued the pressure and transported you here.

"Once you got here, a team started work. One surgical team repaired your artery and started a patch on your neck. The hole is big enough, approximately three centimeters in diameter, that it will take some more work to get it to finally close. Another team worked on your right eye. The retina was detached, and the cornea was scratched, somewhat severely, by something. It may have been some part of the deer or something in your car. In any case, that team reattached your retina and the cornea is looking better. You also had one broken and other bruised ribs. Those are taped and should be okay in time.

"You are restrained because of the damage to your neck and eye. Any movement could disturb the dressings in those areas, and we absolutely don't want to have to go in for any more repair work. I would ask if you have any questions, but you also have a feeding tube down your throat and we don't want you to try to talk anyway because of the strain that could put on the carotid. I'm going to leave you in Franklin's care for now, and will check back later today. You need to rest, stay calm and give your body time to heal."

"That was Dr Amir. He is chief of surgery here at Mercy Hospital. That's in Warrensburg in case you didn't know." Franklin was filling in some of the pieces missing from the doc's info. "You were brought in early on Saturday May _, and today is Tuesday May --. Personally, I think you might be the luckiest man I have ever seen, and I served a tour in Afghanistan as a US Army medic. I know you can't talk or move, and that's why I'm talking. Our med health folks believe patients stay calmer if they have communications from their care givers and loved ones. We are not allowing visitors because of the risk of infection from that deer. Dr Amir forgot to tell you that we have you on high dose antibiotics. We'll give those a few more days to work, and then maybe your wife can visit for a few minutes. You should know she is outside in the waiting.... Whoa, your pulse is heading up again, and so is your blood pressure. Hold my hand again. Is it your wife? Squeeze twice if mentioning your wife is troubling. Jeez, ok, not so hard, I get it. Whatever is going on with your wife, I won't mention her again."

Franklin lapsed into silence after that exchange. I was thankful for the silence because.... Well, it was not really silent. Now that I was listening, I could hear all sorts of noises: curtains swishing, pumps gurgling, voices speaking quietly, even a fluorescent light tube making that buzzing sound. But none of that kept me from remembering last Friday night.

I had been away all week, working. I'm an insurance adjuster, but not an ordinary insurance adjustor. I calculate losses payable for crop loss insurance, both the insurance provided by the government and by private companies. And farmers are some of the trickiest, most devious claimants in the whole insurance world. Most of the time I enjoy my work, measuring the insured acreage, reviewing the actual crop loss, assessing its value, comparing my assessment to current pricing and to the payment provisions of the various insurance policy forms. I spend most of my actual working time outside. I get to know the farmers and work on getting some idea of how honest they are. This past week, I had had a run-in with two brothers who were claiming a huge loss on some wheat that I believed they had actually harvested and then flooded their own fields. I was scheduled to work all week, but I was tired and frustrated and decided to take off and head home.

Joan and I had been married almost 25 years, still in love, still loving to be in bed with each other. Our life together had gotten calmer over the last year. Our twin boys, now 19, had gone off to college and the house had certainly gotten quieter. That was good and bad: good because Joan and I had more time together without the constraints of boys, young men really, filling the house with their friends, boys and girls, with lots of noise and hullabaloo, sort of sucking the oxygen out of the air; but bad because I missed all hullabaloo.

As I drove toward home on that Friday afternoon, missing my boys and remembering lots of good times, I realized it would be past midnight before I got there. I decided I would stop at a motel before dark and then finish the drive Saturday morning. But as I drove, I get angrier at those two brothers from earlier that day, and I think that fired up my adrenalin. When it was time to stop for the night, I stopped instead for some coffee and sugary apple pie to fuel me up for the last few hours to home. I decided not to call Joan because I didn't want her to wait up for me. I thought I might stop the car for 40 winks if I got really tired, and I did not want her to worry about me. I kept driving and did start getting really sleepy. I kept myself awake by thinking about crawling into bed with a warm, sleeping Joan, who might not have any panties on. I could spoon in behind her and maybe wake her up with a little prodding from what was getting to be a hard penis there in my pickup. Those fantasies did keep me awake, and I pulled into our driveway just after midnight. All the lights were off so I knew she was asleep.

I ran the garage door up and stopped. A strange car was parked on my side of the garage. What the fuck?! A friend of Joan's spending the night? The car was older, not a rental car, so no visiting relative. Plus, Joan and I had talked Thursday evening, and I had told her I would be home Saturday afternoon. She had not told me about any plans for a visitor, especially an overnight visitor. Maybe, just maybe, the visitor was a female friend, but I was doubting that. I reached over to the glove box and pulled out my.38 Ruger. I had a concealed carry permit because my job sometimes had some animosity involved, and with doing work for the government, it had been fairly easy to get the permit.

I walked into the breezeway between the house and garage and opened the door into the kitchen. No noise and no lights on. We have a one level house so it was easy for me to walk quietly down the hall to the master bedroom. The door was pulled closed, but not latched, so I just pushed it open with the barrel of my pistol.

Before that night I loved the smell of sex. When Joan and I finished making love, she would want to get up to take a shower. I would hold her in bed and just breathe: the combined smells of her juices, my semen, our sweat would intoxicate me. Sometimes we would go to sleep without Joan getting her shower, and I would wake up, hard again, in the middle of the night. She liked to sleep on her side so I would cuddle behind her and my cock would slip into her still-wet pussy. As she woke up she would start to push back against my stroking and our smells would drive me crazy. She told me once that her sweet, gentle orgasms in the middle of the night were some of the best she ever had. And then she would slide into sleep again, and I would too, as I smelled those delicious smells.

But not that night. I hated that smell, of her sex and his, of their sweat, their goddam body odor. I raised the gun and walked into the room. Enough light shone thru the windows that I could see both of them were asleep. Of course that motherfucker was on my side of the bed. Well, what used to be my side. I was never sleeping there again. I saw his clothes in a pile on the floor and stopped to examine them. I quickly found his wallet and look at the contents. His driver's license said he was Samuel Fonderot, with a local address. I put the license in my pocket and stepped closer to the bed.

"Hey, motherfucker," I said, as I poked his forehead with the point of the.38. He stirred and I helped him wake up: I raked the gunpoint down his forehead hard enough to leave a gouge. He started bleeding and tried to sit up. But he stopped when I pushed harder with the gunpoint. He lay back on the pillow, blood running into one of his eyes. He squinted up at me with his other eye as I twisted the gunpoint deeper into his bloody forehead. "You're dead, motherfucker," I said, but before I pulled the trigger I smelled this horrible, acrid stench of piss. The asshole had wet himself in my goddam bed, and then he started sobbing. That woke up Joan, and she started screaming, even before she recognized who was sticking a gun into her lover's forehead. But then she did, recognize me, I mean.

"Oh my god, John, John, no, no, please, please John, no," she kept repeating as she sat up in bed. I stepped back from the bed, and from the stench, and looked at her, hair a mess, wide eyed, breasts almost glowing in the almost dark, nipples sticking out, still beautiful, in bed with another man.

"Joan, you, you.... Joan, I thought better of you, and now I can only think the worst of you. And you, asshole," I said as I pointed the.38 at her lover, "I'm glad I didn't kill you. You're not worth is, and neither are you, Joan." I turned and walked out of the bedroom and out of the house. Joan was crying and saying something as I left, but I ignored her. I got in my truck, threw my gun back in the glove box and drove away, toward town.

By the time I was driving away from the house I was exhausted, my adrenalin rush from the bedroom confrontation had collapsed and I was just trying to focus on staying awake until I got to town. We live, well, we did live, in the country, about six miles from town along a two-lane, curvy, blacktop road. I suspect I was driving a little too fast and I remember having only a split-second shock of seeing something in front of my windshield. Then, nothing until I woke up in the hospital.

I lay there, in the hospital, thinking about the news from Dr Amir and Franklin. I felt like time had stopped and I was sentenced to this immobility forever. I started to cry, about my accident, my wife's betrayal, even my truck. I didn't love the truck, but I did love my wife, and now they were both gone.

"Hey, hey, buck up, it's not the end of the world. You're beat up, but you survived, and you

will

recover." I heard the words from Franklin, as he dabbed at my undamaged eye with a Kleenex. "And think about the poor deer." He laughed at his own joke and hearing his laugh did help me a bit. I knew feeling sorry for myself wouldn't help and I did try to 'buck up'.

I moved my right hand a bit, then started making writing motions. Franklin caught on pretty quickly. "You want to write, right?" He laughed again, this time at his poor pun. "Wait there a minute and I'll fix you up." He laughed again and I was actually pissed off a bit that his poor jokes and laughing were making me feel better. But I did feel better and I was going to get better. And I did. Slowly, really slowly.

Franklin brought me a whiteboard and pen and I could write messages and questions and even requests, like 'no visits from wife.' I didn't try to tell Franklin or anyone else why I was driving toward town that night; I kept that to myself, just like I kept to myself the ways I might get revenge on Mr. Fonderot, and on Joan too. I imagined catching him outside somewhere and hamstringing him, the way ancient Romans did to slaves who tried to escape. Or maybe taking one of his eyes, to make up for the damage to my right eye.

But that all changed after a cop stopped by to get an accident report. Franklin stayed with us as the cop asked questions and I answered, using the whiteboard. The cop kept telling me how lucky I was, that the motorist who stopped saved my life. If he had not kept pressure on my carotid artery until help arrived, I would have bled out in a mater of minutes. I wanted to thank this good Samaritan so I asked for his name.

"Umm, let me check," the cop said. "I know he had a big cut, kind of a gouge, down the middle of his forehead. He and the woman driving his car were on their way to the emergency room to get his cut looked at when they stopped to help you. Here it is. Samuel Fonderot is his name," the cop reported, "he kept the pressure on while his driver called 911." Franklin quickly got the cop out of my room because my blood pressure and heart rate both spiked. He was ready to call the doc, but I got his attention with hand motions and stopped him. I settled down and told him, thru the whiteboard, some of what happened that night. And I started rethinking my plans for revenge.

For the next two weeks, I mean two weeks of eating and peeing through tubes, lying flat on my back, tortured almost daily when Dr Amir prodded my neck and some other doc was messing with my damaged eye, I thought about Fondeot and Joan, and what I should do when I finally got out of the hospital.

Finally, Dr Amir and a whole crew were at my bed, getting ready to get me up. "Remember now," said Dr Amir, "three absolute conditions: one, no violent exercises, no jumping, no neck twisting, no movements that would jar your neck; two, no speaking above a whisper until I give you permission, maybe another week or so; and three, soft, soft diet. We'll work on all these things for the next week, and then maybe get you out of here and home to your family." I heard Franklin cough at that last comment, and he must have given the doc some kind of sign." "Well, we'll see about the future after we get you up. I'm going to give you something to make you a little sleepy while we disconnect you and then we'll get you out of that bed." Whatever he gave me did more than make me sleepy, because the next thing I knew, Franklin and someone else were sitting me up in the bed and pulling my feet toward the floor. Whoa, really dizzy there, not saying anything but looking around, finally seeing the room, Franklin, even bigger than I had imagined, Dr Amir, Indian I assumed, two other people waiting to catch me I guessed. Everyone was watching me, waiting for some reaction to my finally joining the world again.

"Okay, okay, thank you," was all I whispered to my audience.

"We'll just sit here for a few minutes," said Franklin.

"Okay," said Dr Amir, "You're in good hands," as he and the other people left the room.

"Franklin, thank you for everything," I whispered. "You got me through this."

"Now, none of that, just doing my job, including the bad jokes. When you're ready, we need to stand you up and get you walking again. I know you are weak, you've been lazing in the bed for two weeks, so we need to take it slow, but we need to get you moving. Ready?"

"Okay," I whispered, and I pushed off with one hand while Franklin pulled up on my other side. And I was standing. More dizziness, but it passed pretty quickly, and with his help I walked, just to the door that first time, and then to a chair, and sat down.

"You did good. For a treat, how about a popsicle?" That actually made me laugh. I hadn't had a popsicle since I was a kid, but I was ready for one now. That popsicle was the start of my in-hospital rehab. A week later, my eye patch was off, I could see out of both eyes, and Dr Amir was ready to talk about discharge. He wanted some assurance that I would have someone at home to keep a close eye on me. I asked him to give me another two days and I would have that figured out. Then, finally, I called my wife.

"Hello." She answered her cell phone at the small law firm where she worked as the office accountant, HR person and general manager.

"Joan, it's me," I said as I spoke to my wife for the first time in almost a month. I heard her break into sobs as she tried to speak to me. But I continued, "Joan, listen to me, please. I would like you to come to the hospital tomorrow morning to see me."

"Oh yes, yes, John, it's so good to hear your voice. I'll be there at ten o'clock as soon as visiting hours start. And I'm so sorry...."

"Stop. Listen to me. I also want you to bring Samuel Fonderot with you. You both have to come. If you can't bring him, don't bother to come. Do you understand?"

"John, no, please, that's all over and...."

"Joan, listen to me: both of you or neither of you. If you want to see me, you have to bring him with you. Got it?"

"Oh John, I... you... this.... This can't be a good idea. But, I want, I need to see you, and talk to you and tell you how sorry I am, so, yes, I will call Sam and we will both be there at 10 tomorrow morning."

"Good, see you both then." And I hung up. That evening I bribed a staffer to bring me a chocolate milkshake from Dairy Queen. It didn't take much of a bribe: I bought her a milkshake also. God, it tasted good. And I think I walked a mile through hospital corridors. The next morning, I had scrambled eggs and yogurt for breakfast, still on my soft diet, but a good breakfast anyway. And then I waited for visiting hours to start.

Just at 10 o'clock I heard a soft knock on my door. "Come in," I called out. And in walked Joan and asshole Fonderot. Fonderot had an inflamed looking red mark down the middle of his forehead. I took some measure of comfort from seeing that.