He descended the steps of the gray-painted wraparound porch, his heart thudding. The air was salty and the sun was so bright he had to blink a few times before his eyes adjusted. When he was a good ways down the long driveway, he heard a noise behind him. There was a scuffing sound, like a shoe against gravel, and he turned his head and for a fraction of a second he saw something in his peripheral vision: a person.
Then something walloped his upper back with such force it sent him sprawling to the ground. He heard a cracking sound on impact and wondered if it was a bone. After a brief moment of nothing, a supernova of pain exploded in his upper back, of a magnitude he’d never experienced before. Needles of pain were shooting down his arms, his hands, and radiating down to his lower back. His right cheek had scraped against the asphalt, but that hurt was insignificant. What the hell? He looked up, saw a guy looming over him, holding a baseball bat, silhouetted against the bright sun.
“Leave it… the fuck… alone,” the man said. It was the bouncer from Jugs, and the man clearly intended to kill him.
He scrambled to his feet, as the ground beneath him tilted, and he lunged unsteadily toward his car. He tried to run but for some reason he found himself moving slower than usual; maybe it was the pain that had gripped his back and shoulders.
The bouncer pulled the bat back and swung it hard at his face.
Rick watched it come at him, as if in slow motion, and he knew that the bat would derange his face as soon as it made contact, break his nose and cheekbone and probably other bones he didn’t know he had. For a split second he considered contracting into a fetal position to protect himself. But at the last moment, as the bat came at him, he spun and flung out his hands to try to block the blow, try to grab the bat out of the guy’s hands, but he managed only to have the fingers of his left hand crunch against the shank of the bat, slowing its speed and maybe altering its trajectory just enough so it cracked into his jaw. His field of vision exploded in a constellation of stars. His left arm flopped uselessly against his side and he screamed in pain. The bones in his left hand felt as if they’d shattered like glass.
He tasted the metallic tang of his own blood. A part of his brain, the project manager that was overseeing everything at a cool distance, wondered whether the bouncer intended to kill him or just inflict brain damage. Maybe he’d get hit on the side of his head and suffer a stroke, and he’d end up just like his father.
“Hold on,” he huffed. “Listen.”
Or maybe he only thought he’d spoken these words aloud. His jaw felt broken and his mouth wasn’t working.
“Leave it… the fuck… alone,” the bouncer said again.
He tried to lift his arms to ward off the next blow, but he couldn’t lift his left hand, and this time the bat connected with his trunk, slamming into his solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him, doubling him over. He couldn’t breathe. For a brief instant he saw stars again. He crumpled to his knees. He gasped for air uselessly like a goldfish out of its bowl. Everything went quiet, and all he could hear was a high-pitched squeal, like feedback from a microphone. He collapsed into a ball.
But the man wasn’t done yet.
The bat connected one more time, smashing into his right shoulder and his right ear, and somehow the starburst of pain was even worse, a crescendo of agony, and his field of vision went dark and he was gone.
48
He wasn’t able to move.
“Stay still, sir,” a voice said.
“No… no…” Rick moaned.
Someone was doing something to his left arm. He tried to pull his arm away but it wouldn’t move. Then he remembered vaguely a baseball bat colliding with his hand and rendering it useless.
Someone else was jabbing something sharp, a pin or a needle of some kind, into his other arm. He was aware on some level that it hurt, but he was in such a world of pain that one more hurt barely registered.
A second voice, a woman’s, said, “Say your name. What’s your name?”
Rick Hoffman, he may have said, or maybe he only thought it.
“BP one hundred palp,” said the first voice, a man’s voice, high and nasal.
“Out… out…” Rick said. He was trapped in something, he now realized. Or on something. His entire body was frozen in place, and he struggled with all his strength to get free.
“Big poke again,” said the woman.
“Ahh,” Rick groaned.
“You get it?” the man said.
“He feels that,” the woman said. “There’s the flash. Good IV.”
“Here’s your liter,” the man said.
Rick saw faces coming in and out of focus, in and out. “Run it wide,” the woman said. “You still with me, sir?”
Rick moaned some more and tried to tell them to leave him the hell alone.
The faces were gone now, and he could see blue sky, and then it began to move, and he saw shadows and a dark shape of some sort and he didn’t know where he was, somewhere inside now, not outside, and everything had gone dark, and he was gone.
A couple of people stood over him now. They wore yellow paper gowns. One of them said in a low, hoarse voice, “Gimme the story.”
A familiar voice-a man’s voice, high and nasal-said, “Thirtysomething male assault. Unwitnessed but the person who called 911 said something about ‘bats.’”
Rick was moving, rolling. He passed through glass doors that slid open on his approach. One of the people in the yellow paper gowns, alongside, said, “Sir, what’s your name, sir?”
Rick said his name again.
“What’s he saying?”
“Been that way the whole time.” The woman’s voice from before. “GCS maybe ten. BP one hundred palp. Pulse 120s.”
He finally understood he was in a hospital. He saw beds with patients lying in them, uniformed nurses ducking out of the way, then there was a tight turn and he was in a large space, bright and hectic, filled with people.
“Easy on my count.” The low, hoarse male voice. “One-two-three.”
He was lifted high up into the air, then down.
“No other medical history,” the nasal voice said. “He’s not talking much. We got a liter going.”
Now he was aware of several people looming above him, men and women. They were making him dizzy. He let his eyes fall shut. Now all around him was a hubbub, yammering indistinct voices, and everything had gone dark.
A man’s voice: “Field line in the right AC. Liter up.”
A woman’s voice: “Open your eyes, sir! Tell me your name.”
Obediently, Rick opened his eyes. He said Rick Hoffman but what came out sounded more like brick house. His mouth wasn’t working right. It hurt when he tried to speak.
“Sir, do you remember what happened?” the woman said.
Rick saw the woman’s face, looked into her eyes. He tried to nod.
“Don’t move, sir,” a man said. “Got a second line, eighteen gauge left AC.”
“Okay,” the woman doctor said, “protecting his airway for now.” She had a stethoscope in her ears and was putting the diaphragm end of it on his chest. Meanwhile someone was cutting his shirt open with a large pair of shears. “Bilateral symmetrical breath sounds.” Her voice was low and husky.
A new voice now. Male. “On the monitor-BP 108 over 64, pulse 118, sats 92 percent.”
“Good peripheral pulses all around,” said another voice.