Chapter 11
Monday morning comes way too soon; my father and I have to wake up before five o’clock in order to get to Birmingham in time. As I get dressed, my father comes in to see what I am wearing, which is shorts and a T-shirt. This seems good enough to me, but my father has other ideas.
“Son, I think maybe you might want to wear jeans and a light jacket.” It will be almost ninety today, but I don’t question. My father is usually right about these sort of things, so I put on long jean pants and tie the sweat jacket around my waist and, for luck, I grab the cap my grandfather gave me before he died. It is green with a convenient rim in the front and the word Mayflower stitched on top in yellow letters.
Mother sees us off, handing us each our own brown paper sacks while holding back her tears. My father carries with him a large, red backpack he gets out of the closet; I am amazed that I have never seen it before. We walk to the bus stop and wait for it to come and take us to the station. There we switch buses and get on one that is heading to Birmingham.
I stare out the window, watching one eroded building after another past by. I wonder if life will ever return to what it used to be. Where people were truly free, free from the State, with the ability to choose their own fate. I hope this surgery will be successful—not only for myself, but also for my family and those I have been helping. It feels like the bus is going extremely slow as every passing minute feels like an hour. I can feel anxiety building within my mind. I take in deep breaths and focus on how this is a good thing and how in the end somehow, someway, this experience will work to my good. As I focus on these new thoughts, my heart calms down, and then my father leans into me whispering.
“It will be okay, John. No matter what life throws at you, remember you are never alone.”
We arrive in Birmingham at about twelve thirty. As we draw closer to our stop, my father points out building after building that belongs to the hospital. The hospital is a city unto itself. Having eaten our lunches on the bus, we stride forward to the enormous UAB Hospital. We walk under an impossibly large awning that leads to the entryway of this massive structure that is full of gigantic cement pillars as big as redwood trees must be. I look up in awe and wonder.
Again, I don’t understand how the State builds such edifices while so many of its citizens live in poverty and others die because they decide who lives and who doesn’t. I understand the importance of research, but to neglect those who empowered you makes no sense and reminds me how fortunate I have been to be in the Young Army, or otherwise my life would have been forfeited due to the expense of this procedure.
“It’s built this way to make you feel small,” my father said. “To make you feel insignificant to their greatness and authority.” We go through the large doors that open by themselves. I have never seen anything like it. I want to go back and try them again, but the security guard at the front desk stops me.
“What is your name?” he asks.
“John Bates,” I answer him, turning around in order to face him fully. The guard sits behind a vast mahogany desk it is shaped into a semicircle. The lobby is full of giant trees that are artificial but are surrounded by other living plants in the same container. Other plants are placed along the wall and in boxes around the glass and metal escalator. I wonder if they are real or fake. The flooring is granite tile. A giant government flag hangs from the second floor, and above it all is a fantastically large pyramid-shaped skylight. The first thing I do is walk forward calmly and take a map of the hospital from the desk, folding it and placing it into the back pocket of my jeans. The security guard rustles through some papers that are attached to a white clipboard and asks, “And why are you here?”
“Heart surgery,” my father answers before I can.
The guard continues to rifle through the papers.
“Yes, I see your name here.” He comes forward, placing on my left wrist next to my watch a hospital ID tag. This thing is little more than paper and some glue. “Your father will not be able to accompany you beyond this point. When the nurse comes, your father will have to leave.” My father only nods and then turning to me, he thrusts the red backpack into my arms and hugs me tightly in his monstrous embrace.
He whispers in my ear, “Remember, son, remember that I love you, remember who you are, remember that you are a patriot, remember that you are a God-fearing man, and son, remember Jesus Christ.”
Just as he let go, an enormous, well-built woman dressed all in white comes down the hall. “You must leave now,” the nurse sternly instructs.
My father turns to depart and as he does so, I can see a glistening teardrop in the corner of his eye. Without so much as waiting for an okay, the nurse leads me up the escalators, across a suspended walkway between the buildings, with only glass and metal between me and the road below, down a generic hospital hallway before stopping in front of a small room. “I am Nurse Garrison,” she says, pulling a device out of her pocket. “Give me your arm.” I give her my right arm. “No, the other one, with the watch.”
I place my left hand inside her free one. She takes the small device and scans it over my watch, and it releases its grasp on my wrist as link by agonizing link withdraws from my skin. The pain is exquisite, and I have to bite my tongue in order not to cry out, as the chains retract back into the disk, ripping and tearing the tissue that had grown over it. It leaves a white wrinkly circle on the back of my wrist with a gash on either side that quickly fills up with my blood; the nurse wipes it with an alcohol wipe and wraps it in gauze and tape. Obviously, she is not the caring type. I can tell she and I are going to be best friends.
My wrist feels strange to me, with the watch no longer attached—the watch that made sure I brushed my teeth, ate my vegetables, told on me when I had eaten too much candy, made sure I went to church and recycled. If I run out of here right now, the government will never find me. But by the looks of this place, escape would be challenging, especially if all the nurses were built like her. But for a few minutes I would be free. But then I remember my heart condition. How long would I truly last? I am going to wait and see how this plays out. These thoughts soon fade away as I return my attention to Ms. Sunshine.
She hands me a set of hospital clothes and escorts me into a room where she leaves me to change into the white jumpsuit made out of a cotton fabric that looks to be quilted together. Before I dress, I take out the map of the massive hospital and study it, memorizing every useful detail. Truthfully, it isn’t a very detailed map. For example, this room is not on it. It only shows each building and how each walkway is connected to the different structures and where various exits exist throughout the facilities. I do this because you can never be too prepared. Who knows if there might be a fire or any other disaster that would mean immediate evacuation of the building. Understanding and knowing the map might be the difference between life and death. When I am done, I carefully fold the map and place it back inside my jeans pocket.
I dress in the white hospital attire; it is extremely comfortable, not at all what I had expected. When I finish changing, I am told by the stern nurse that I am to leave my things and follow her. We walk down the pastel hallway as one of the overhead lights flicker, threatening to go out. We turn right and then left before going through a set of double doors that leads into a brightly lit room. The room has dull carpet and various pieces of exercise equipment in it. Sitting in an orange chair is a man with a dark complexion and a white overcoat. He is deeply engrossed in his clipboard.