The Losers. David Eddings
what I told you about crutch paralysis?”
“All right. Don’t make a federal case out of it.” He went back to his slow, stumping shuffle back and forth across the small, gymlike therapy room. “This is bullshit,” he said finally, collapsing into his wheelchair near the door. “I told you people it was too early for this.” He sat massaging his aching hands. “They haven’t even taken the dressings off yet.”
“Taylor,” Quillian said coldly, “if you lie around for another two weeks, you won’t be strong enough to lift your own dead ass. Try it again.”
“Screw it. I’m tired.”
“Do you enjoy being an invalid, Taylor?”
“Come on,” Raphael objected. “This is hard work.”
“Sure it is. You afraid of hard work?”
“Where’s the difference? I mean, I’ve seen people on crutches before—sprained ankles, broken legs—stuff like that. They pick it up right away. What makes it so damned hard for me?”
“Balance, Taylor, balance. A broken leg is still there. You’re a one-legged man now. You’ve lost nearly a fifth of your body weight. Your center of gravity is in your chest instead of your hips. You’ve got to learn balance all over again.”
“Not all at once. I’m tired. I’m going back to my room.”
“Quitting, Taylor? I thought you were an athlete. Is this the way you used to win football games?”
“I’m hurting, man. I need a shot.”
“Sure you do.” Quillian’s voice was contemptuous. “But let’s not lie to each other. Let’s call it by its right name. You need a fix, don’t you? You’re a junkie, Taylor, and you need a fix.”
Raphael spun his chair around angrily and wheeled himself out of the therapy room.
Later, in the hazy euphoria the drug always brought, Raphael lay in his bed and tried to bring his mind to bear on the problem. “Junkie,” he said, trying the word out. It sounded funny to him, and he giggled. “Junkie,” he said again, and giggled some more.
A day or so later a starched nurse came into his room with a brightly professional smile on her face. “You have a visitor, Mr. Taylor,” she said.
Raphael, gritting his teeth at the pain that seemed to have settled in his phantom knee and knowing that it was still hours until they would give him another shot, turned irritably toward her. “Who is it?” he asked harshly. “A Miss Hamilton.”
“No! I don’t want to see her. Send her away.”
“Oh, come on,” she coaxed. “A visit might cheer you up.”
“No!” Raphael shouted. “Now get the hell out of here and leave me alone!” He turned his face toward the wall.
After the nurse had left and he was sure that he was alone, he cried.
Her name was Miss Joan Shimp, and Raphael hated her from almost the first moment he laid eyes on her. She was led into the room by the hospital chaplain, who said a few nice things about social workers and then left. Miss Shimp wore a businesslike suit. No starched white uniform for old Shimpsie. Nobody was going to ask her to empty a bedpan by mistake. She was a pear-shaped young woman with enormous hips, narrow shoulders, and no noticeable bosom. Her complexion was acne-ravaged, and she had dun-colored hair, an incipient mustache, a nasal voice, and what might best be described as an attitude problem. “Well now,” she started briskly, “how are we doing?” The nurses on the floor had all learned rather early not to say “we” to Raphael.
“I don’t know about you, lady,” Raphael replied in a flat, unfriendly tone, “but I’m doing lousy.”
“Self-pity, Mr. Taylor? We must avoid self-pity.”
“Why? It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.”
“This just won’t do,” she scolded.
“We’re not going to get along, lady. Why don’t you just go away?”
“We can play this either way, Taylor.” Her voice was sharp. “You’ve been assigned to me, and I am going to do my job. There are programs for people like you, and like it or not, you are going to participate.”
“Really? Don’t bet the farm on it.”
Things deteriorated rapidly from there.
Shimpsie talked about programs as if programs were holy things that could solve all the world’s problems. Raphael ignored her. His half-drugged mind was not particularly retentive, but he soon had a pile of books at his bedside, and every time Shimpsie entered his room, he would select a book at random and use it as a barrier. In one of his more outrageous moments Flood had once described social workers as representatives of a generation of bright young ladies who don’t know how to type. Raphael clung to that definition. It seemed to help for some reason.
Shimpsie asked probing questions about his background and family. She liked the phrase “dysfunctional family,” and she was desperately interested in his “feelings” and “relationships.” Shimpsie, he felt, was queer for feelings and relationships. On one occasion she even screamed at him, “Don’t think! Feel!”
“And abandon twenty-five thousand years of human development? Not very likely, Shimpsie.”
“Miss Shimp!” she snapped.
“Whatever.” He said it as insultingly as possible. “Angleworms feel, Shimpsie. So do oysters, I imagine. I don’t know about you, but I hope I’ve come further than that.”
Just for the sake of variety he would sometimes lie to her, inventing outrageous stories about a background as “dysfunctional” as he could concoct. She lapped it up, her eyes begging for more.
He hated her with a passion, but he began to long for her visits. In a strange sort of way Shimpsie was therapeutic.
“That’s better, Taylor,” Quillian said a week later. “You’re starting to get the rhythm now. Don’t stump. Make it smooth. Set the crutches down, don’t jab at the ground with them. Try to keep from jarring your arms and shoulders.”
Raphael, sweating profusely, grimly moved back and forth across the therapy room, gritting his teeth at the burning pain in his arms.
“Why are you picking on Miss Shimp?” Quillian said in a half-amused way.
“Shimpsie? I pick on her because she’s an asshole.” Quillian laughed. “Never heard a woman called an asshole before.”
“Would you prefer asshole-ess?”
“Asshole or not, you’d better at least try to get along with her, Taylor.”
“Why should I bother?”
“Because you can’t get out of here without her okay. She has to sign a release before they’ll discharge you. Okay, enough bullshit. Get back to work.”
A week or so later Uncle Harry made another trip to Portland, alone this time. “Good to see you again, Rafe,” he said, shaking Raphael’s hand. He glanced at the crutches leaning in the corner. “I see that you’re getting around now.”
Raphael looked at him through the haze of the shot he had just been given. “What brings you down here, Uncle Harry?”
“Oh …” his uncle replied a bit evasively, “this and that. I thought I’d stop by and see how you were doing.”
“I’m coming along.”
“Good for you. Have they given you