Free Me & Death by Richard Scrimger Page B

struggled to my feet. Stood awkwardly beside my bed. “Thanks for coming by.”
    “There you go, saying thanks. Something happened to you, Jim. You’re not the kid I used to know.”

CHAPTER 19
    A s the days went by I continued to act strange for me. Like saying thank you to the lady with the train-whistle breath who brought me my meals. I’d open my mouth to make fun of her, and then I’d catch myself and say thank you instead. Or like when Chester dropped his cane on the way to the bathroom and slowly toppled, like a tree cut down by a lumberjack. I was going to laugh, but instead I hurried over to help him. That seemed like the right thing to do, and yet it didn’t fit the me I remembered.
    Or when I found my mean nurse crying, and I was sympathetic. We were outside, me with a smoke I’d borrowed from Chester’s pack and her with her cell phone. She was sitting by herself on a low stone wall, staring down at a text message, sniffing and swallowing. I went over and sat beside her on the wall and put my hand on her shoulder.
    She snapped the phone shut and took off her glasses to wipe her eyes. And I patted her shoulder and said, “There there.”
    I am not kidding.
There there
, like I was her dad or something.
    She didn’t tell me to put out my cigarette. She sniffed and said I was a good kid. And that men were shits.
    “You’re right about that,” I said.
    Turned out she was upset because her boyfriend had just dumped her. “I should have known when he called me
Zelda baby
last week. Zelda baby! He tried to cover it up, saying he thought he was phoning his sister, and her name is Zelda. But he doesn’t have a sister. He’s stupid.”
    “I’ll say.”
    She patted me on the cheek. Her hand felt soft. With her hair a bit messed up, and her glasses off, she looked okay. “What’s your name if it’s not Zelda?” I asked.
    Bertha, she told me.
    “Bertha.” I was going to say that’s a nice name, except it isn’t. I mean, it really isn’t. I didn’t know what to say next, but it didn’t matter because I let out this giant fart. Hospitals are big on bran muffins and stuff like that, and … well, there was no smooth way to pretend it didn’t happen. The fart ripped the air apart and then rumbled on and on, like a long thunderclap. We froze, both of us, like statues, and there was just the noise and gas.
    And we laughed and laughed. Bertha was crying, she was laughing so hard. I felt awkward, but sort of pleased, you know, for taking her mind off her troubles.
    I was not used to feeling like this.
    Bertha fanned the air. “And I thought your cigarette smelled bad,” she said, still laughing. “You’d better go back inside, Jim.”
    I had a visitor that afternoon during the soap opera. Chester was in his bed, and I was in the chair with my feet up. We had the TV angled so we could both see it. We’dbeen watching
Life After Life
all week. Chester was really into it.
    The knock came near the end of the episode. I turned. A woman in a kerchief and sunglasses stood in the doorway.
    “I’m looking for Jim, the young man who was run over,” she said.
    “That’s me.”
    She hesitated. “I don’t want to interrupt.”
    “Come on in, ma’am,” said Chester. “Sit on Jim’s bed there and watch the end of the show with us.”
    “Really?”
    I lifted my feet off the bed. She took a step forward. “Well, if you’re sure.”
    She took off her glasses and sat neatly, her plastic shopping bag in her lap. She watched with a frown on her face, like she was studying the soap opera in film school.
    INT. OFFICE BUILDING – NIGHT.
    RAVEN WORMCAST (32), a dangerous beauty, is moving through a darkened office with the aid of a flashlight. She is dressed in black turtleneck and jeans. She opens a filing cabinet and flips through the files until she comes to one marked BRICK McCOY.
    RAVEN (mutters)
    Oh, Brick. You poor, innocent fool!
    Now where oh where is that alibi of yours
…
    She opens the file, finds