“Advocate” by Terrance Wedin
"I told him what kind of drugs I did. I lied. I told him I did the boring kind. He asked how long it had been since I'd done them. I lied again."
A couple months ago, Kevin M. Kearney reviewed two recent books under the title, “The Sons of Jesus’ Son: Recent Books from Michael Deagler and Nick Rees Gardner Channel the Spirit of Denis Johnson.” It’s a great review, and pushed me to pick up Gardner’s Delinquents and Other Escape Attempts, which I am now in the middle of and really loving (and, revisiting the review now, I am going to use my own intro here this morning as a reminder to pick up the other, Deagler’s Early Sobrieties, when I head to the bookstore later this afternoon). It also got me thinking of that influence and specter of Denis Johnson that looms over myself and so many of my writer friends. (I launched this very project with “Two Tacos,” my own explicit homage and nod toward Johnson’s “Two Men,” borrowing a few phrases and sentence constructions, all while trying to capture and write my own versions of sentences that snap and crack the way Johnson’s do for me when I read them.)
I don’t want to be presumptive and I don’t know what Wedin thinks of Denis Johnson, but when I read this story, I texted a few friends that I’d just fallen in love with a submission that almost feels like a Jesus’ Son outtake. Which, no matter Wedin’s relationship to the book, I hope to be understood as one of my biggest compliments. In his review, Kearney writes, “If a writer is compared to Johnson, it means they’ve cut their sentences to the bone without sacrificing their poetry. If a book is compared to Jesus’ Son, it means the work authentically captures the harrowing world of addiction.” And, indeed, this story is about a fuck-up and an addict, but it’s the precision and depth and razor-sharp sentences that, to me, feel reminiscent. While also always feeling new and unique to Wedin and this story itself. That’s what I really fell in love, and that’s what I hope you do too.
—Aaron Burch
My guts were about to fall out. I was sure of it. The expired Percs weren’t working. Then I saw the blood in the toilet.
So, I called Erica even though she’d stopped answering my calls. I could have called somebody from the bar to come cart me to the hospital, but I called Erica.
She found me in my studio apartment, pants around my ankles, sweating on the toilet. It probably didn't look much different than the last time she'd come over. The beer cans in the sink, the mattress on the floor, the poster board duct taped over the windows.
At the ER intake, Erica held my hand while they wrapped a cuff around my arm to take my blood pressure. It felt familiar and strange to have her touching me again. She looked healthy, tan. Like she'd started running Town Lake again.
The hospital was a hospital like any hospital. They put me in a room filled with medical equipment. Chair next to the bed, a television mounted on the wall. I didn’t have insurance, but I was in so much pain, I didn’t care anymore.
I told Erica that she didn't have to stay, that I was fine.
She tapped a pencil on the arm of the chair next to the bed. A fresh notebook lay in her lap, ready to write down what the doctors told us. She'd brought her work computer with her, but set it on the tiled floor. I could see sketches and schematics and rectangles clogging the screen.
When we were still together we drank beer and watched documentaries in bed. We watched one about a guy who had the wrong lung removed. His family started a crusade raising awareness for surgical advocacy.
The note taking, the record keeping, that was her making sure the hospital didn't hurt me.
She was ready when the radiologist came back in holding the CAT scans. She asked to see the flimsy images. He tugged at the silver watch hanging loose on his wrist, then handed her the black and white images off his clipboard.
“Have you lost any weight recently?” he asked.
“Maybe. I don't weigh myself,” I said. I'd covered the mirror up with a black trash bag weeks ago so I didn’t have to look at myself.
“What does your diet consist of?”
“Junk. Fast food.”
“Smoker?”
“No.”
“How many alcoholic beverages do you consume in a week?”
“I'm a bartender,” I said.
The radiologist looked at me and waited for a real answer.
“I don't know. Twenty. It depends.”
The radiologist scribbled on his chart.
“How about drugs?”
“Do you mean do I do them?”
“Just answer him,” Erica said, looking up from her notebook.
“Yes, I've done drugs.”
“Have you been doing them recently?”
“Yes.”
“What kind are you doing?”
I told him what kind of drugs I did. I lied. I told him I did the boring kind. He asked how long it had been since I'd done them. I lied again.
“Stop lying to him,” Erica said, interrupting me. She filled him in on the drugs I'd left out, the ones she knew about, anyway, and the last time I'd left a message for her in the dead of morning asked to borrow money. She knew a lot, but not everything.
She said, “Did I miss anything?”
*
They were looking for what they found in my stomach. The radiologist explained the CAT scan images to Erica. She took notes. He described my insides in a couple ways. Asked me to imagine that someone was pinching a garden hose.
“See this,” he said, pointing to the image. “See how that looks like an apple core? See?”
He explained that that was what they called it: an apple core lesion. The reason I hadn't been able to eat or sleep or shit the past three days. And I saw it, the part of the blotchy image that looked missing on either side. I told him I didn't want to look at it anymore.
Erica kept asking him questions, though. She asked what having an apple core lesion meant, where the term came from, how this kind of thing happens to a young man, how long this had been going on inside my body. She jotted down every answer. She kept on him until he started asking some questions of his own.
“Now, you're his wife, I assume?” the radiologist said.
“No,” Erica said.
“Girlfriend?”
“Not anymore.”
They moved me from emergency intake and put me into a private. Strips of window tint were coming loose, letting light in. The bed was hard, the sheets sterile and rough, but the drugs that they dripped into my arm made my limbs feel weightless. Made the pain in my stomach disappear.
Erica sat in the chair next to the bed. She worked a pencil slowly over one of her drawings.
“They're not going to steal my kidneys,” I told her.
Erica snapped her head up. “Who else is going to stay with you?” she asked. “Your bar friends?”
“I don't need anyone to stay with me,” I said. “I'll be fine.”
“Then why did you call me?”
“Nobody could give me a ride.”
“Nobody?” Erica said. “You’re such a liar.”
“And you still believe everything you hear,” I said.
It was true. One magazine article, documentary, or conversation with someone at a bar and her worldview changed on a dime: No more dairy, never go to the hospital alone, end the night with a shot of pickle juice and you'll wake up hangover-free.
Erica frowned. She angled her drawing away from the bed. The thinly sketched lines were corners of concrete blocks, the angle of an exterior wall. Brutalism. A building that looked like a fortress, like death standing up. She put her drawing on the bed near my feet and turned away from me to look out the window. There was a concrete parking garage and sky and not much else.
“People told me things about you,” Erica said.
“People?”
“People from the bar,” she said.
“What’d they tell you?” I said.
“That I should’ve left you before I did.”
*
Later, a surgeon visited. He told me the radiologist had asked him to come talk to me before they administered the scope. He carefully moved Erica's chair next to the bed to shake my hand. His hand was rough with calluses, like someone who spent lunch breaks lifting. He didn't have my chart but the radiologist had told him I was a bartender and he asked me about Scotch, about cocktails, a bunch of shit I didn't care about anymore. Erica stood back near the door, giving him some space, took notes when he started speaking.
“So this guy, patient of mine, he lost his eyes in a car accident years ago so I give him a glass one,” the surgeon said. “So one night he goes out drinking. And I mean, he gets hammered, totally butthoused. But he gets home. But before bed he dumps his glass eye into a water glass on his bedside table. Middle of the night, he’s dying of thirst, he drinks the water, the glass eye.”
The surgeon grins, looks back at Erica taking notes.
“So he comes in. He says, ‘Doc, It’s been three days and I can’t take a shit.’ So I tell him to get on the table, put his legs up. I take a look and I’m shocked. I say to him, ‘I’ve looked up plenty of assholes before, but this is the first one to look back at me.’”
“That didn’t happen,” Erica said.
“Wife?” the surgeon asked.
“No,” Erica said.
“Well, look, you have to act quickly in situations like this,” the surgeon said.
The surgeon got serious. The sterilized smile he'd walked into the room with was gone. His words moved closer toward what he believed the scans revealed about the lump in my stomach. Fear dragged through my chest, down my limbs, the drugs doing nothing. I focused on Erica as the surgeon spoke. Her pen moved faster when he mentioned the effects of drug abuse, addiction counseling. She wrote each word like she was adding to a file she'd started months ago.
“Of course,” the surgeon said. “This all depends on what the camera reveals.”
“And what if it's nothing?” Erica asked.
“Well, if it's nothing, it's nothing,” the surgeon said. “But I saw the scans and it looked like something. I hate to say it—but it's probably something.”
“But you'll make sure before you operate, right?” Erica asked.
“I wouldn't operate on somebody who didn't need to be operated on,” the surgeon said, bored by his own words.
“It's happened before,” Erica said. “I’ve seen the news stories. That man who had the wrong lung removed.”
“The BBC did an exposé on surgical error,” the surgeon told me.
I already knew all about it.
The surgeon rubbed his veiny bicep. Sailboats covered his scrubs in an all-over pattern, like a child's pajamas. The kind of guy it was hard to take seriously until he started talking. He was, of course, familiar with surgical advocacy and explained the steps he'd take to make me and Erica more at ease about the procedure he assumed I would need. He explained how he could sign the skin, how Erica could also sign, as witness, above the point of entry if it came to surgery.
“Do I put you down as his advocate?”
“He thinks it's stupid that I'm here,” Erica said to the surgeon.
I said, “We don't even know if I need surgery yet.”
Erica's cell rang. She put her notebook and pen down and disappeared down the hallway, leaving me and the surgeon together in my room.
“So, be honest with me,” the surgeon said. “How much have you been using?”
“I already told the other doctor.”
The surgeon looked back at the door for Erica, but she was still gone. He gave me this two-guys-talking, no-bullshit look.
“Look, I can see it in you. You don’t want her to know what kind of guy you are or how much you’ve been using or whatever. That’s okay. I’ve seen the blood tests. But I need to hear it from you so I can make the right diagnosis.”
I told him I’d been lying.
“The things we don’t tell people can hurt more than the things we do,” he said.
“It’s not her problem anymore,” I said.
“Well go easy on her. She's looking out for you,” he said, patting my leg. “Meanwhile, don’t worry too much. After the camera gets a look tomorrow, we’ll have a better sense of how long you’ll be in here.”
Erica left. It felt strange being alone in that hospital room. Being around her again after so many months. Like at any minute we could slip back into being the people we’d been when we met each other.
Erica came back to the room. She sat back down in her chair, picked her notebook off the floor. The pages that weren’t full of transcribed doctor conversations were full of sketches—shapes, dots and angles.
“Who called?” I asked.
“Work,” she said. “They want to know when I’m coming back.”
“What did you tell them?”
“As soon as this is over,” she said.
*
That night, they stopped my eating. The nurse came and checked my vitals, took long looks at the tubes in my arm, then pressed a hand to my stomach and asked me where the pain had shifted. I asked for more drugs because I could. The nurse called Erica sweetie. Told her, “We've got someone bringing up a cot for you in a few.”
I was still trying to do what I always did—lie to myself and to everybody else about what was going on, about how bad or good things were, about why I was or wasn’t doing something.
But Erica stayed. She lay in the cot next to my bed, her spine curved away from me like a question mark, and we talked like we did when we were together. She had taken me as I was until she couldn’t and she walked. I loved her even more for that.
“You don't have to stay,” I said.
Erica turned in the cot. She reached across, found my hand.
“I don't mind this,” Erica said.
*
The sky turned. That fine layer of guilt that dusts the heart—all night I worked to wipe it away. The night nurse appeared every two hours to take vitals, waking me from a half sleep, speaking to me in a hushed tone. Erica was asleep only a few feet away from me. But I wasn’t ready to admit anything. I still had some excuses to get through. The night nurse tugged at my arm, touched my stomach, checked my vitals. She placed a big jug of cloudy liquid on the nightstand next to my bed. I didn't say a word.
The liquid tasted like ocean water. I waited for it to hit my insides.
I went into the bathroom and left the door open, and when Erica woke she came and held my hand from the other side of the doorway. I pushed, the noise my body made like the sound of a broken air conditioner. The pushing spiked the pain in my stomach, and I cried out.
“You're doing so good,” Erica said.
I pushed until I felt empty.
Later, they wheeled me into another room on another floor. They put a mask on my face, asked me to count backwards.
When I was cleared for movement, they moved me back to the room upstairs where Erica was waiting. She asked me how it went and I told her what the doctors had explained to me—removal, reattachment, resectioning. I told her they’d be explaining it to us again. Erica pressed her body into mine on the bed. She buried her face into my pillow, holding onto me. I held her back.
It didn't take long before the surgeon was in the room with us again.
He explained what was going to happen next. How they had to remove the collapsed section of my stomach, before it spread. They had to cut it out of me immediately. If I hesitated over having the surgery, the outcomes could change. Erica tried writing it all down, until I asked her to stop. Just listen.
“You two should start thinking about your next three or four weeks,” the surgeon said. He handed Erica pamphlets, directed this part of the spiel to her. “Recovery from this procedure is a slow process. You'll need to help him through the first week or two while his walking is limited.”
The surgeon reassured me that they’d get me fixed up. Then left, just as quick as he’d arrived.
Erica said, “I can help you.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I said.
“I can stay with you until this thing is over.”
“Don’t say that.”
“You need someone,” Erica said. “Who else do you have here?”
“What about your job,” I said.
“I'll tell them I had an emergency,” Erica said. “I’ll start after the surgery.”
“I’m not your responsibility anymore.”
“You never were,” Erica said.
I looked out the window. I wanted to rip that dirty film off the window where it was peeled up.
“There were others you know,” I said. “Regulars.”
“I know what you were doing,” Erica said, standing, moving away from me. She was biting her lip so hard that it bled. “We're way beyond that. You don’t see that do you?”
“So why are you doing this.” I said, pointing at her notebook on the floor.
She picked the notebook up, shook it at me.
“You still think that's what this is about? You cheating?” Erica said.
I pulled at the plastic clip attached to the tubing in my arm, unscrewing the drip chamber, like the night nurse did. My body shook as I stood, blood moving through the piece of hard plastic still in my arm like a coded message I couldn't read.
I told her what she already knew.
I told her not to go.
*
The night after surgery, Erica went back to work. It would be another decade before I saw her again, but that's a different story. That morning she woke up on the cot, sat on my bed, and we looked over the notebook. 'Hospital,' written in the corner.
The surgeon appeared wearing burnt orange scrubs with a Longhorns logo on them. “How are we feeling?” he asked.
He explained the procedure again to both of us. How they removed the infected section of intestines, how they reattached them. He asked me to pull up my hospital gown, and took a large marker out of the pocket of his scrubs.
Erica watched him gently initial just below my belly button.
“You get to do the honors, too,” he said to Erica.
He handed her a thick black marker. She looked puzzled.
“We'll wipe it off before we get him sterilized,” the surgeon said. “But as his advocate I thought you should sign, too. Peace of mind.”
I kept the gown pulled up. I was still getting used to my ribs being visible. Out the window, a helicopter hovered above the parking garage. The surgeon pointed at a spot on my stomach next to his initials—the point of entry, he said.
She touched the marker to my skin. She signed her initials.
“You don’t have to stay,” I told her.
She smiled. She said, “Consider me gone.”
STORY:
Terrance Wedin was born and raised in Blacksburg, Virginia. His writing has appeared in Esquire, Fourth Genre, Ninth Letter, Washington Square Review, New World Writing, and other journals. He is an assistant professor at Texas State University.
*
ART:
Matthew Austin is an artist & designer from Maryland, he can be reached at www.matthewaustin.net.
Next Tuesday, we’ll feature a bonus interview with Terrance about this story!
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Damn.