CHAPTER 27
A SEARING PAIN SHOT THROUGH HIS HIP AS HE REACHED FOR THE remote control.
He turned up the volume and fumbled with his glasses before righting them on his face and staring at the flat screen that hung on the wall.
A reporter’s face filled the television as she offered a tutorial on skull fractures.
The scene flashed to a pathologist dressed in scrubs as she explained on a skull model what was happening to the cadaver as they struck the back of the head with an oar.
It was a chilling and engrossing sight that brought Gus back to his past, vicariously reliving through television the moments of his career when he spent time with medical examiners in the morgue.
He pressed a button on the guardrail and the bed hummed as it pushed him upright. A few deep breaths and the pain in his hip settled as he squinted at the television. He’d requested a larger one weeks ago, even offered to purchase it himself, but “Nurse Ratched” ignored him.
“If we give you a bigger television, then we’d have to give everyone a bigger television, Mr. Morelli,” she had said in her condescending voice.
“Then do it,” he had responded. “Damn things are practically free nowadays. And I’m sure most poor folks in this place are half blind. Don’t you want them to be able to see Alex Trebek’s face each evening?”
His request went over about as well as when he refused to use the bedpan just after surgery.
Now, weeks from the night he lost his right leg—a difficult choice between his lower limb and cancer—the pain was more manageable, his health no longer on the brink, and his attitude toward the staff, although far from pleasant, was certainly less hostile.
Except for Nurse Ratched. She was a cruel woman the day he met her, and would continue to be counted as such until the day she died.
“What’re you watching, Gus?”
The young physical therapist named Jason walked into the room in his purple scrubs.
Out of every miserable person he’d encountered on this road to hell, Jason was a standout.
Young and vibrant, he appeared to be, besides Riki the Friday-night nurse, the only one in this godforsaken place who enjoyed his job.
And evidenced by his muscular biceps and forearms, Gus guessed that Jason pushed himself as hard in the weight room as he pushed his patients in therapy sessions.
Handsome and charismatic, he reminded Gus of himself decades ago before the job and life and cancer had turned him bitter to the world.
Jason stood in stark contrast to the robots that strolled from room to room, jabbing needles and yanking catheters on their way to five o’clock.
Gus Morelli had spent his fair share of time in prisons during his career, and these ladies would fit in just as well barking at inmates at the local penitentiary as they would screaming at the elderly patients here at Alcove Manor.
Most patients were here to rehabilitate from some catastrophic disease that had placed them at death’s door. Many, Gus determined as he snooped through the hallways in his wheelchair, would be better off if someone had answered.
“Some documentary,” Gus said.
“Here,” Jason said. “Let me help you.”
The young man pulled Gus forward in bed, rearranged the pillows behind his back so he sat more upright.
“Oh, Jesus. That feels better.”
“Gotta keep pressure off the hip,” Jason said. “Lean left and your incision will heal faster.” He pulled bedsheets that had become tucked and trapped around Gus’s leg and behind his back. “Did you get into a wrestling match?”
“I’ve been tossing and turning for an hour, trying to get myself free.”
“Just call the nurses.”
Gus smiled at him. “That’d be like little Anne Frank calling the Nazis to help her out of the attic.”
Jason laughed. “That’s pretty cold. Funny, but cold.”
“At least you appreciate my humor. My charisma has been lost on the rest of the staff. Except the nice nurse that helps me Friday nights.”
Jason shrugged. “I heard you called Ruth an icy bitch the other day. Not exactly the definition of charisma.”
“Hell, I can’t argue with you there. When I hear it like that, coming from you, I feel like a piece of shit for having said it. They manage to bring out my ugly side. I’m really not such an asshole.”
“You lost your leg,” Jason said. “You deserve to be a little bit of an asshole. Just pick your battles. Fighting with Ruth is pointless.”
“I’m figuring that out. Have you seen this show?”
Jason turned to the television. “Oh, yeah. I’m hooked.”
“What is it?”
“The Girl of Sugar Beach. A documentary about Grace Sebold.”
“Who?”
“Grace Sebold. From when she killed her boyfriend down in the Caribbean.”
Gus blinked at the screen as a still shot of Grace Sebold from medical school filled the television.
The documentary cut to an interview of the girl, now a woman, slightly haggard with short-cropped hair, which was graying in random areas.
Prison-issued, thick plastic glasses covered her eyes and reflected the overhead lights.
“It’s addictive,” Jason said. “It’s a real-time documentary.
The investigator is producing the episodes from week to week and then airing them.
The audience is finding out what she discovers almost simultaneously as she discovers it.
It’s very popular with . . . younger people.
And it looks like she might actually be innocent. ”
“What episode is this?”
“Four,” Jason said as he typed information into Gus’s chart. “I’m trying not to pay attention. It’s on every television in this place. Mostly for the staff. I’m not sure the residents are keeping up with it.”
“I thought you said you were watching it.”
“I am. Gotta see what happens now. See if she did it or not.”
Gus pointed at the screen. “You’re missing it.”
Jason smiled. “I’m DVR’ing it.”
Gus lifted his chin, squinted at the young man.
“Recording it. I’ll watch it tonight, so don’t tell me what’s going on.”
“How can I do that?”
“Record it? You can’t. No DVR in this place.”
“How can I watch the first few episodes? Are they replaying them?”
“Replaying?”
“Yeah. Like a rerun.”
“It a prime-time documentary, Gus. Not I Dream of Jenny.”
“It’s Jeannie, you snot-nosed teenage punk.”
“I’m thirty, but I’ll take that as a compliment. No reruns, but you can stream the earlier episodes. Watch them whenever you want.”
“What’s that mean? Stream?”
“Watch ’em off the Internet.”
“I don’t have Internet here.”
“Sure you do. Whole place has Wi-Fi.”
“Can I do Wi-Fi through the TV?”
Jason smiled. “I thought you used to be a cop. Didn’t you use computers?”
“I was a cop when you were in diapers. I finished my career as a detective, and I’ve never loved computers. I’m sixty-eight years old and don’t plan to learn now.”
“TV’s don’t have Wi-Fi, unless you have a smart TV. You don’t. You need a computer to stream old episodes. Laptop or a tablet.” Jason plugged more information into Gus’s chart. “You still having trouble sleeping?”
“If by still, you mean for the last twenty years, then yes.”
“Nurses can give you something to help you sleep.”
“I’m sure they could. Probably cyanide.” Gus looked back at the television. “Say her name again.”
“Grace Sebold.”
“Who was the guy she killed?”
Jason glanced at the screen, where he saw Grace Sebold sitting in a St. Lucian jail cell talking directly to the camera. “Julian Crist. Her boyfriend. You don’t remember this story?”
“I do. My mind is just slow from all the meds they’re pumping through me.”
Gus cocked his head as he stared at the television, brought his eyebrows together so they looked like wings of a diving hawk.
It was something he did often, back in the day, to get his mind into the right mode for thinking.
It took him a while longer now to get his brain churning than it used to when he was working and sharp and on his game.
Despite the delay, his mind finally made the connection.
“Looks like she’s innocent, though,” the young man said.
“That’s what’s all over the Internet. Everybody’s talking about it.
Tonight’s episode is supposed to feature a medical examiner who ran some experiments that blew the forensics straight out of the water.
People are starting to scream for her release. ”
“Son of a bitch,” Gus whispered to himself.