Rex was my birthday dog, an Irish Setter that my parents gave me on my ninth birthday. I didn’t expect him. Didn’t know that he was coming. My father brought him into the living room behind me, where I was sitting on our couch. And suddenly this big ball of puppy red fur was on my lap, jumping up on me and thrusting his wet black nose up into my face as his tongue slid over my nose and mouth.
Rex never lost his sense of joy, and he made me smile, made me laugh, every time I saw him after this, through all of the time he was with me. I used to get high with him. When I grew older and began to use marijuana, I would smoke it with him. It sounds cruel, but it wasn’t. Not at all. Rex knew I loved to get high, and each time I smoked a joint he would come over to me and stick his nose up near it. And I believed that he was taking it in, inhaling the smoke that drifted up around the ends of the rolled marijuana cigarette. Then he would run through my parents back yard, going around and around and leaping up into the air at the most unexpected times.
It has been 30 years since Rex died, and I still think of him at times, still miss him. 30 years. He was the essence of joy in my life during the time that I had him, a being without any pessimism, without any ulterior motives, without anything evil. And this is what I needed now, a joyful birthday dog, as I stared up at my supervisor Ken in my little cubicle on the 33rd floor of the Health Insurance company where I worked. Where it was my job to evaluate health insurance claims.
Really, it was my job to decline authorizations for continued insurance coverage for patients who had been admitted to a hospital for the treatment of various mental health problems. Things like depression, or anxiety, or even breaks with reality – psychosis. But I wasn’t very good at it. I didn’t like saying no to these claims. I didn’t want to tell people they could not get the care that they needed. This is why Ken was in my cubicle now, talking to me. He didn’t look at me, as he spoke.
“Excuse me, Lawrence.” He said. “H.R. wants to talk to you.”
This could not be anything good. Contact with Human Resources never lead to anything good. I had learned this working in the corporate world. It was their job to monitor people’s work performance, to deal with problem employees, to put them on plans of correction, to fire them. And so when I looked up at Ken, I wasn’t surprised. I knew this had been coming. I had been watched by H.R. for 3 months now, and things had not been going well. But nonetheless, I had to ask Ken.
“Is it urgent. I mean, I’m right in the middle of this project, and …”
My words trailed off, as I looked up at Ken. Now he was frowning down at me, and his look told me I was not going to be able to put this off.
“Sorry, Larry.” He said. But it can’t wait.”
Ken shook his head back and forth, and I knew. I knew by the frown. I knew by the way he called me ‘Larry.” He never called me Larry. It was always Lawrence. But not today. Today it was Larry.
I closed my laptop, and stood up. Now I was looking down at Ken. I was taller, much taller than him. I looked down at the balding spot near the back of his head, the area where he had tried to comb his hair over, to hide it. Ken was younger than me, maybe ten years younger, but he looked older than me. He turned away from me and motioned for me to follow him.
We walked past the cubicles on the 33rd floor, towards the back of the room. And as we passed each cubicle the people in some of them looked up and nodded at me. I knew most of them, except the new hires. There was Karen, with her dirty blonde hair and the nose ring that everyone stared at as they talked to her. You couldn’t avoid looking at it. And then Johnny, the only black guy in the room, staring down at his computer. He didn’t look up at me. He was a master at surviving, a ninja at keeping a low profile in this white world. And finally we passed Mary’s desk. Mary, who loved to show everyone pictures of her grandchildren, and to tell us all about them. She looked up and smiled at me. It was a weak smile, a smile like she didn’t really feel like smiling.
“Hi. Larry.” She said.
I smiled back at her, but I said nothing. And now we were at the row of Administrative offices in the back of the room. The Medical Director, the COO, the CEO. Ken turned around towards me.
“We have to go down one level to HR.” he said.
I nodded. As if I didn’t know that. I had been to the HR offices enough in my time here at the company. We walked out into the hallway, and over to the elevators. Ken pushed the button and turned towards me. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something. The elevator took a very long time to arrive.
“You still following baseball?” I finally said. “I hear those Mariners have hit a rough patch lately”
Ken laughed. It was a forced laugh, more like a cough, like he was short of breath. He shook his head back and forth again.
“Yeah.” He said. “Yeah, they really need some pitching. They’re really hurtin in that department.”
And then the elevator was there. The door slid open, and Ken ushered me inside. Ken had stopped talking now, and when the door opened on the 32nd floor he stepped quickly out into the hall and waited for me. Ken lead me down the hall to the Human Resource’s office, and opened the door for me. He didn’t look at me as I passed him, stepping into the office.
The secretary at the desk looked up as I entered the room.
“Hello, Mr. Keller.” She said. “They’re waiting for you in the conference room.”
‘They? They?’ Usually it was one person, the Assistant Director of H.R., waiting to talk to me, to review some problem, to encourage me to correct something. But not today. Today it was ‘They.’ The secretary didn’t smile as I walked past her, into the conference room.
The lights were bright in the room, shining down, and I had to squint to see who was in the room. ‘They’ all sat behind the big round table, staring at me as I stepped forward through the doorway. I only recognized a few of them. There was the Medical Director of the Insurance company, sitting way at the end of the table, so far away it was hard to see him clearly. And next to him sat the Director of Human Resources, a woman with grey hair and pursed lips that looked like they were ready to bite down on your hand if you made a wrong move. Ken took a seat across the table from me, and now he too was staring at me.
I didn’t recognize all of the people around the table. Their faces blurred under the lights. Most of them I had only seen in passing down the administrative hallway’s of the Health Insurance Company, peeking out at times from around corners like creatures caught in a maze, not knowing which way to go. As I looked at these people my vision began to fade and their skin took on a grey hue. I sat down in the one chair that was available to me, directly across from Ken.
“Do you know why we asked you to come down here today, Lawrence?”
The question came from the head of the table, from the Medical Director of the Insurance Company. I looked up towards him. Now he came more into focus, and I saw his face and grey beard. I had met him once in the past, and now I remembered him. I remembered how when we met he had reached out with his hand and grasped mine, squeezing down until my fingers hurt, not letting go. I had to pull my hand away, to slide it out of his grip.
“I’m not sure, sir.” I said. “Not really.”
But I knew. I really did. They were going to fire me. They knew I wasn’t up to the job. They knew I would keep authorizing care for the patients their company insured. I looked from the face of the Medical Director to the Director of H.R., to the woman with the grey hair and pursed lips. She was here to make sure that everything was done the way it was supposed to be done. To make sure I wouldn’t be able to sue all of them once they fired me. That’s why all these people were here, sitting around the table, staring at me. They were witnesses.
And then I had an idea, a thought about what I could do. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but I thought it was worth a try. I was probably going to lose my job anyway. So why not try it? I stood up from my chair and walked up to the head of the table, where the Medical Director was sitting. I smiled at him, and then I bent forward at the waist lowering my hands in front of me. I rested my hands on the table in front of me, to support myself.
I started to laugh, a little giggle at first, then louder, and louder, the sounds spilling out over my lips into the room. I could see, out of the corner of my eye, the Medical Director’s eyes widening as he watched me. I had surprised him. He hadn’t expected it. I laughed even louder, trying to drown out any other sound. I could hear back behind me the HR Director saying something.
“Mr. Keller. Mr. Keller.”
I couldn’t make out the rest of what she was saying, just a mumble of words all squashed together, one after another.
“please -- help you -- sit down.”
I couldn’t make any sense of her words, as if they were coming from a long ways away, rising up from the bottom of a hill. And then I thought of the Director of HR and imagined what it would be like if she bit down on my hand. That was it. That was it. She would bite my hand. That was her role – to nip and bite at the hands of employees who didn’t play by the rules.
I could not stop laughing. I was laughing so hard that there were tears in my eyes and all that I could see was the white formica top of the table in front of me. I thought of my long dead dog Rex running around my parent’s yard in circles, joyously jumping up in the air for no reason at all. Joy. That was it. That was what my birthday dog understood. He understood there was no reason, really, for anything. That was my conclusion as I stood in that huge conference room as the words of the HR Director, and the Medical Director, passed over me like water.
It was much later that I awoke laying on a gurney in a hospital Emergency Room. At least that’s what I was told by the Nurse leaning down to speak to me. I had no memory of the time passing, no idea of what happened during that time. No idea at all.
I looked first to my right, and saw the white wall with medical tools – the stethoscopes, and the ear nose and throat devices, hanging down from their hooks. I was right next to the wall, and there wasn’t much of anything else there. Then I looked up at the ceiling, at the white tiles that spread out over my head. Why was everything white? I wondered that. Why was everything this antiseptic white color, spreading out over everything?
On my left and up above my head, a bag of intravenous fluid was attached to a hook on a pole, and it hung down with a tube arcing down from it into my left arm. I could see the clear fluid dripping down from the bag into the tubing.
What was in the bag? That was the next thought that went through my mind. What was dripping into my arm? I tried to sit up, and I found that I couldn’t move freely. I looked down, and I saw that my hands were restrained by leather straps. I couldn’t move my arms. I couldn’t move my legs either. I couldn’t see them underneath the white sheet that covered my body, but I assumed that they were being held in place by restraints as well.
I tried to remember what had happened. I recalled being in the conference room in the Human Resource office, sitting at the big round table. That came back to me. I even remembered leaning down over the Medical Director and putting my hands out on the table next to him to support myself. But that was it. That’s where everything stopped in my mind, like a car braking suddenly and lurching to a stop. There was nothing else. Nothing came up into my thoughts.
What had I done? What had happened? I tried to pull free of the restraints on my wrists, I twisted and pulled at my hands, but I couldn’t move them. It was then that the door to the room that I was in slid open and a man in a long white coat walked in. He was a short, rotund man and the coat covered up all of his body that I could see from the stretcher. The man walked over next to me and leaned down above the stretcher.
“Good morning.” He said. “I’m Dr. Benson.”
The man was white, with a full thick beard. He looked to be in his late forties, and his beard was starting to grey in parts. I nodded, and he went on.
“Do you remember what happened? Do you remember what got you here?” he asked.
I shook my head back and forth. The man smiled at me, and I saw the light glint off of his yellow stained teeth. He raised his right hand up to his beard, brushing it back and forth.
“You gave us quite a time.” He said.
His smile grew wider, as he waited for me to say something. Several seconds passed, as we looked at each other. Then he spoke again.
“They brought you in by ambulance. Your were screaming and yelling, and the EMT’s were holding you down on the stretcher that they rolled you in on.”
He paused again, and nodded his head up and down and waited.
Nothing came up into my thoughts. Not a thing. It was like a blank white screen was pulled down through my brain. And the harder I tried to recall what had happened, the bigger and brighter the screen became. Finally, I felt that I had to say something.
“I’m sorry, doctor. I don’t remember anything. Why am I here? Can you tell me why I’m tied down like this?
He didn’t nod, or anything. He just stared at me, like he couldn’t believe what I was telling him. He waited a few more seconds.
“You really can’t remember?” he asked.
“No!” I said. “Not a fucking thing.”
As soon as I said it, I regretted that I had sworn. But Dr. Benson didn’t seem to mind. He went on.
“Well, I wasn’t there.” He said. “ But this is what the police told me.”
The police. Did he say the police? I tried to sit up on the stretcher, but the restraints held me back. The doctor leaned down above me.
“Its probably OK to unhook these now.” He said. “You’re not going to try to escape, are you?”
He didn’t wait for me to answer. He just kept smiling, and he unfastened the restraints, first the one on my right wrist, and then the one on my left.
“There.” He said. “Now let me tell you what I know. Maybe this will jog some of your’ memory.”
The doctor pulled the back of the stretcher up, so that I could sit up and lean back against it. I sat up and rubbed my wrists. They both had deep red marks across the skin, as if I had been pulling up hard against them.
“First, I need to tell you that the police have arrested you. Once we medically clear you, they are taking you to jail.”
Again, he waited a few seconds before speaking further.
“You apparently slapped your boss, the medical director, across the face. And then you climbed up on a table in this conference room where you were meeting, and started to crawl towards this woman sitting next to him.”
“Doctor Benson shook his head back and forth.”
“They said you made a dive towards her, and it took four people in the room to pull you off of her.”
It was as if a switch clicked on inside of my head, and now the big white screen was suddenly filled with color and I saw what I had done. I saw it clearly. Too clearly! I saw myself turning towards the Medical Director at the top of the large circular table. I raised my right hand and began screaming at him. I couldn’t make out what I was saying. And then I swung my open hand out towards him and slapped the side of his face hard. He tried to raise his hands, to block the blow, but he was too slow.
And then I climbed up onto the table on my hands and knees and began to crawl towards the H.R. woman with the thin pursed lips. I twisted my body around on the table top, and I tried to kick her with my right foot. But I slipped backwards and missed. Then I felt hands grab ahold of me from behind, pulling me backwards onto the table. Faces looked down at me from above, several of them all blurred together in a pulpy mass. My arms were pinned to the table, and I could hear voices talking to each other, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. It just sounded like a loud humming sound. Then I heard a few distinct words.
“Let’s get him out of here.”
I felt myself being pulled backwards along the top of the table, and now the white screen in my head returned and all memory of what occurred next was gone. And it never returned. I looked back up at doctor Benson.
“So what happens next?” I asked.
He nodded his head up and down.
“Right.” He said. “Well, we didn’t find anything medically wrong with you, so from my perspective we can discharge you. I will let the police know.”
Dr. Benson smiled at me. He looked rather pleased with himself. He turned his back to me quickly and walked out of the room, leaving me sitting on the stretcher with my legs still shackled to the stretcher. In the distance, outside of my ER room, I heard the sounds of sirens as ambulances rolled up to the hospital.
I laid back down on my back on the stretcher and stared up at the ceiling, at the white tiles that stretched out above my head. It was a long time, maybe half of an hour, before two police officers, a man and a woman in their uniforms, finally entered the room along with a nurse. The first one, a black man, came up to me.
“You’re not going to give us any trouble, are you, Larry?”, he asked.
“Fuck you!” I responded. “My name is Mr. Keller.”
“Well, Mister Keller, we are going off to jail now. And we don’t want to get any shit from you. None at all. Do we, Julie?”, he asked his partner.
He emphasized the words ‘Mr. Keller’, like he was choking on them. He laughed and looked over at his partner, a short white woman, and winked. She just nodded and smiled. In the Emergency Room a cacophony of noise collected around me. The sounds of the ambulances outside, announcements coming through the overhead speakers in the hospital that I couldn’t quite make out, a patient screaming in pain in the room next to me, and machines beeping on and off all around me. And then I saw three large men brush past the two police officers and come towards me.
The hospital orderlies took hold of my arms and legs, and then a woman with a syringe slipped between them.
“This will help you to relax, Larry.” She said.
“Wait.”, I shouted. “Wait.”
But it was too late. I felt the orderlie’s hands on my arms, holding me still, and then the sharp prick of the needle. I tried to struggle, to sit back up, but I couldn’t, and then I felt things begin to move slower and slower, and my vision begin to fade like a sheer white shade being pulled down in front of my eyes. Things became less clear in my vision, more distant, and I closed my eyes. And then I heard a dog barking.
There, before me, my pet dog Rex appeared. He licked my face and nuzzled me, pushing his nose up into my neck. I smiled, and a warm feeling spread out over my body. The feeling that I always had when I thought of Rex. I suddenly felt good, and I knew that everything would be all right. I tried to reach up, to scratch behind Rex’s ears. He always loved that. But something pushed my hand away. Then the sound of the barking was gone, and everything vanished.
Comments