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“Oath For Life” by M. Christian

The new ER nurse reeked of soap and water. The florescents blazed down like the gaze of a stern desert god. Water tasted like boiled metal. The sound of the water cooler down the hall and the steady (heartbeat) beeps from the EKG in the ICU was a drumming nightmare—a jarring one-two-three, one-two-three beat. Jaslov's old wound in his left leg felt cored with hot wire. It was hard to look, to walk, to hear, to taste...anything.

By 1 a.m. it had ebbed enough for him to walk comfortably and to even stop for coffee and small talk with one of the nurses. In the space of a few minutes he learned that she was still getting used to the shift, that she was allergic to coffee, lived in Outer Richmond with a significant other named Rose, and had the habit of not making eye contact with doctors. Jaslov was close enough to her that one of his damned mustache hairs was wild and driving her neatness urges into a frenzy, that Rose was starting to bore her in bed, that she was preoccupied right now because her father had been making threatening phone calls to her mother again.

At 2:20 a.m. a call came in. Auto accident at 16th and Mission. Multiple fractures, possible internal bleeding, eyes fixed and dilated—concussion. ETA ten minutes.

The howl arrived, and with it a storm of precise movements. Jasmine and Rob, the two regulars, snapped in behind him and were there as the Caucasian male between 35 and 40 was hauled from the ambulance, past the screaming (one squeaky roller) automatic doors and into the ER.

Jaslov walked with his nagging limp over to the gurney and accepted the paramedic's chart, whipping his eyes over the important points (blood pressure, heart rate, eye dilation, injuries). Rob and Jasmine, meanwhile, had gloved themselves, eased the John Doe off the gurney and onto a table, and had most of his clothes off from around the massively traumatized chest and fractured right arm, left leg.

The patient was unconscious. His eyes (smacking wetly as Jaslov pulled the eyelid open) were large, pale blue, and dilated. Ron reported nothing important in his wallet: no allergy cards or next of kin. The staff nurse would have to go through the phone book to find his family.

Rob and Jasmine liked Dr. Jaslov, of that he was sure. Very sure. They liked the fact that for a middle-aged man, he moved surprisingly fast and had an almost comical way of pulling diagnoses and treatments out of his hat. They had even given him an affectionate nickname—Dr. Kildare—because of his almost too-perfect skill with a scalpel, pharmacist's pad, and firm hand. They thought of him as being cheerful, totally dedicated to being a doctor and prone to whining about the good old days (and, Jesus, where did he practice before—Bolivia?) of bare-bones medical training, bad drugs and no information. He's also a damned stick in the fucking mud they all sometimes hung after shift for sunrise coffee and rolls and chat chat chat but not him no not Dr. Kildare gone gone gone home before the sun...

Jaslov shook his head to clear it and got to work on the patient. A lot of it was show: the stethoscope, the gentle but firm touches, the probes with his long, pale fingers. He was a good doctor, sure, but he was also a damned good showman. Dr. Kildare had already determined that the John—pardon—that Charles P. Crocket, 35, had a pierced left lung, massive compound fractures of the left leg and right arm, a superficial facial wound, had lost about a liter of blood, was in some danger of lapsing into shock, and had a good chance of having some kind of internal injury—that faint whiff of lower GI blood and the minuscule discoloration of his lower abdomen skin tone pushed toward kidney damage—but that would have to wait till he got inside.

Hospital soap was like an incense burned in a great temple to Dr. Jaslov. Closing his eyes, he could easily imagine what this temple looked like, as he washed every inch and cranny of those long-fingered hands. It came like a vision, when it did, this temple of healing—it was like a painting, he could see it so vividly: a vast hall of green tile and pure white grouting, a vaulted ceiling—familiar to anyone who'd worked in hospitals.

To Jaslov the god of healing wasn't that damned snake on a branch. Jaslov's god was an intern he'd served with in WWI: a chubby little cherub with fine, magic hands. Hands he'd had so many times enwrapped with his own, helping to stitch and sew and coax cannon fodder into young men with war stories. He remembered him fondly, as if he'd given Jaslov a pillow stitched with those fine, quick fingers and presented it to him with those glowing green eyes and a smile on his round little face—rather than how he had parted with him, holding those soft hands as he bled to death: the victim of being a kind, gentle man when everyone else had been killing each other. The victim of a beating that had ruptured his spleen.

Jaslov had immortalized the intern as his own little god of healing. He bowed to the vivid memory of the little cheerful man every time he scrubbed and walked into an OR.

Charles Crocket was laid out in all his wet magnificence. Jaslov had seen inside many men. Many, many men—either disarrayed like laundry on a line in an OR or flayed out on cold marble slabs in the morgue. It was a source of some shame that when he saw them, in either case, it always struck him that man was a beautiful creature. Everything in its place, and every place smooth and efficient. He knew that many thought of their flesh as being imperfect and rotting on their bones, that they expected and hoped Detroit would announce a new, more efficient model. But to Jaslov, man was an incredible work—it was a sign of this great design that it often took drugs, alcohol, wars, violence (in general), sports, failing to yield to a red light at 16th and Mission, to make men stop dead in their tracks. Jaslov didn't see himself as a mechanic who had to bang and weld and force and jimmy the wet stinky machine into working, but rather as an artist pulling life from half-dead flesh. He sewed it shut, while praising its orchestrations of air, tissue, muscle, bone, nerve, and—the most precious—hot blood. Jaslov, according to Jaslov, really didn't do anything except give the body time to rest and knit.

It was one of Jaslov's self-definitions: Dr. Jaslov.

Crocket was a mess. One of the OR nurses held up a clipboard and Jaslov glanced at the points again. Crocket was going to have a hard time of it. Shock was looming right around the corner, as was a collapsing right lung. The initials definitely implied that something (kidney? liver?) was leaking into his gut. His only recourse was to go inside and see where Mr. Crocket needed assistance.

The anesthesiologist nodded certain and quick that the patient was under. Skin knife to chest, knife softly kissing skin.

Jaslov hummed slightly to himself, a fraction of a tune picked up during his childhood in London. His memory sang with things like that, little fragments of his past: the smell of cordite and grease from the trenches, the color of dawn over London, that coughing jag Debussy had been struck with during that performance of his La Mer, that first time in boarding school—it was easy to drift in his memories, letting them flow and course around and through him, and let his fingers and instinct deal with the plumbing of Mr. Crocket. Right now, though, the tune was all that came from the attic of his over-furnished mind. It was Jaslov and Crocket, and the tinny tune from a baroque music box. Alone with each other.

They're everywhere, goddamnit, fuckin' everywhere. Ain't right, ain't right at all. Gotta get rid of them all—

Right off the bat (there!): a bone chip. With a quick grip and flip, it rang in a kidney bowl. Jaslov almost laughed. Christ! He's like a fuckin' magician when the OR nurse (Larris? Harris? Ferris?) almost didn't catch his movements. Jaslov liked playing with his nurses, entertaining them while he worked, letting his mind wander through its dim hallways as he joked, observed and reminisced. That was perhaps his favorite time—of so many of them—teaching the baby-faced “surgeons” under the glow of carbide lamps back in London. The freshness in their faces, those best and the brightest England had to offer. New doctors. Young men. Lots of curiosity about...men.

The experimental fumblings and kisses in boarding school. He remembered Robert, naked and pale in his London apartment. He missed Robert and those times, that chubby intern, but he knew that they were only good through a gaze of antiseptics, clean instruments, the quiet of blissfully sleeping patients, and the freedom of being himself and what he was (well—with an almost chuckle—some of what he was) in public. Back then, he and his students hadn't slept very well for the screams of their “patients” under the knife. Back then, he and his friends would have gone to jail for just holding hands.

Fucking everywhere. Fucking disgusting. Kill 'em all—

Another fragment of bone came away easily and Jaslov checked that it hadn't done anything but nick the diaphragm a bit. Another fragment of memory came, too, and he was in London, again, listening to the soft hiss of the gas jets as Robert tried to tell him something. Jaslov had known what he was trying to say, but no one ever came out and said it. It was cloaked in verbiage and secrets. Innuendo and shy smiles. In the years since, and those were many years, it had gotten better. Much better. But there were still those nights when they came in, sometimes in the worst drag—blood clashing with bad wigs—other times they were just men and women with awful cranial fractures. Victims of no crime save affection.

It was another definition for Dr. Jaslov.

Fucking kill 'em all. Yeah, kill 'em. Fun ta pop 'em, fun to catch 'em standing there, all fucking prissy. Pop 'em real good and quick. One...yeah, but two, man, that's it. Pop 'em together, so's others'll know. Catch 'em holding fucking hands, yeah. Creeps. Teach 'em—teach 'em good. Pop 'em all. Watch 'em bleed and cry like girls—

No extraneous bleeding; a good sign. Jaslov felt the stirrings deep in his stomach and jaw, looking into the pooling blood in Mr. Crocket's chest. “Suction,” he said and (Larris? Harris? Ferris?) did just that, drawing the life of Mr. Crocket away with a slurping tube. Jaslov realized that he was ravenous, that his stomach was growling and that his teeth ached with the need for texture, the need to break. Damnit, he'd thought he'd tapped enough for the day. Guess not. Damned roaring day, day of amplification—it had burned through the few cc's he sated himself with that morning.

Oh, well (nimble fingers, nimble fingers, cut that, retract that—“forceps”), he'd been down this road many times. It was a bad ache (luckily he had a mask on, and when he'd have to take it off—well, that's why the mustache and never smiling with an open mouth), but nothing he couldn't get through. He'd just clean up Mr. Crocket here and stop by his office for some of Ms. Gilbert's workup samples.

Pop 'em all. Yeah, love to see 'em see it coming—bam!—watch them cry and try and crawl. Fucking creeps. Get 'em, get every last one of them—

With the vividness of all his memories, he remembered his last sunrise. He'd been stationed with other gentlemen doctors (and their wives and sailor-suited boys and pinafore-laced girls) back from the action, near Cardigan's own tents. He was probably the most experienced of all those there, already having studied at Saint John's for six years. His game leg (another sunset and a spooked horse at a friend's estate) kept him from charging along with the Brigade, but he would do his duty to the Queen by being there to put the pieces back together again.

He lived and administered to the milling hordes made up of the Army; gentlemen and ladies (and doctors), come to see the sights of the rout; journalists and capitalists, there to make shillings off the carnage and heroism; a smattering of lords and ladies, to make sure England's honor would be upheld; and a few rogues and thieves who, Jaslov knew even back then, would always be biting at mankind's calves, picking their pockets and, in general (and specific), drinking their blood.

Jaslov was back in England, ashamed of how he had been feeling. Yes, the honor of England, but also because Robert had left him for the acceptable arms of a young lady.

Dead of night. Insomnia. The flicking fires of the Sappers and the Infantry. The smell of horses. The stinging of flies. Mumbling and grumbling from rolls of blankets. A cheer from a knot of men as one laid down a spectacular hand of cards. Something slammed into him, throwing him down into offal, mud and urine. They rolled till the man was astride him. All Jaslov could remember was the weight of the man, the chill of the night air, the freezing water, the smell of blood, the singing of the night flies, the incredible pain in his neck, then the pistol shot, the face of another gentleman peering down at him. “My God, sir, are you all right? Bagged the little bugger—what was he trying to do, then, eat ye?”

Yeah, cocksuckers, I'm gonna get you. I'm gonna get you all. You just wait and see, faggots. I'm going to get ya, cut ya, bleed ya—

He was a smart man, and it didn't take long for him to figure out the rules—though that first morning the rising sun had blinded him for four hours. It was his last sunrise for...god, how long was it? It had been a long, marvelous trip, aside from certain urges he dealt with by over-estimating the size of blood samples. He had learned that if he didn't, he wouldn't die—just grow weaker and weaker till he was a corpse in all but mind. He had seen the arts he enjoyed and reveled in grow from guesswork and butchery into an orchestra of knowledge and wisdom. He had seen his predilections go slowly from a terrible sin to lifestyle choice.

Now he had only one thing to hide.

He had seen many changes, and all it took was a little blood once in a while: It wasn't so much a definition as something Jaslov had learned to—sort of—live with.

Kill the fuckers, yeah. Gonna kill them all; kill 'em like I've killed them before. Got my bat, got my gun, got the knife. Look for me all you want, fucking creeps. Cops ain't gonna get me, you all ain't gonna get me. I got you, man. I got you before. Gonna get you again. Done it plenty of times, plenty. Even got my little trophies. Wanna see my cock, faggot? Wanna see all my cocks?

One of the nurses handed Jaslov a suture needle, and flashed why am I doing this, god, all I want to do is go home and get some sleep, god, I just want to rest and close my eyes. A noisy day, a loud day. The lights were still staring down at Jaslov with an examination that felt like his head was going to boil. The hunger was an ache that the slowly growing pool of blood in Mr. Crocket (gonna get them all. Gonna cut, bleed and kill 'em all) didn't help. “Suction,” he may have snapped, may have too tersely ordered the nurse.

Deep breath. Deep breath. Keep the feelings at bay. Keep those thoughts at bay. God, it was like trying to operate with a dance band playing in the room. In his head. Full volume that only his quick and immune hands seemed to be able to ignore.

The EKG was a sharp pain behind Jaslov's head, a pounding beat that normally meant life, but now was just pain. These days came and went, luckily only every few months or so. Normally he could just retreat somewhere and let it pass, but Mr. Crocket's body needed work, needed his art of touch and skill to make it. The room was noise and lights and glares and his damned leg was a flaming pillar. One of the nurses commented on the scars around Mr. Crocket's groin (“Jesus!”) and he snapped (knew he snapped) at him to keep his mind on things and keep that damned suction going—

“Sorry, sorry,” Jaslov said, moving his head so one of the nurses would wipe his brow “—just tense tonight.”

“That’s all right, doctor.” Hope he's okay, never seen him this tense before.

“It's me. Just been a tough night for some reason. God knows why—”

Yeah, man. Gonna get you all. Wanna see my cocks, faggot? Wanna see them all?

The din was gone, washed away with a sip from a specimen tube. All the thoughts were gone with a coppery sip. The ache retreated till it would growl again for more. The night was deep and dark and very, very quiet. The ER was just a drunk Latino getting stitches and a homeless woman who was snoring loudly in a corner.

In ICU, Mr. Crocket rested in a dull state of healing. His body would recover in time, his bones would knit, his internals would heal.

Jaslov watched him, chatting with the nurse when she came in to check Crocket's tubes and progress. She might have thought Jaslov a good, kind doctor for watching Crocket, but he couldn't tell: the lights were just florescents, the air was just slightly warm, and his leg was as it always, always, always had been—just a little stiff.

When the night was even darker and deeper, he sank his teeth into Crocket's jugular vein and drank a hefty swallow, then kicked back into him some of his own life's blood—just as that stranger had done to him so many years back by accident.

Jaslov didn't think, didn't allow himself to think, about what he had just done. He knew his reasons, but he didn't allow himself to think it in thoughts. He was a doctor; he healed and prolonged life. He loved man. He worked towards life, not away from it. He was a man who also loved men.

He knew the outcome of what he'd done: trapped at the moment of the change, Crocket would wake, but wouldn't get any stronger, wouldn't walk or speak or move or stand again. He would last a very, very long time (longer than he would have normally)—till the change was complete and then he would lapse into the still-life.

Jaslov left, leaving Crocket in ICU. He left, wondering quietly to himself if he had served that chubby intern, if he had helped a life—and many other lives.

He walked away, down quiet, cool, hospital halls, humming a very, very old tune.

 

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