The French Quarter. Ken JD Mask

      Upon waking, I immediately thought I had died and gone to Purgatory. A beep-buzz, beep-buzz ... beep-buzz, beep-buzz sound resonated, echoing around a large bright-white room. A flashing red light from a big awkward-looking machine next to me accompanied the sounds. This was not a jazz riff.

      My gaze dropped down to the tubing attached to my arm, tubing attached to my neck, laying over my chest, wires and devices all over the room seeming to flow in and out of my body.

      A penlight shone in my left eye with a sweeping motion, pendulum-like, reminding me of a curtain drawn in the early morning and quickly closed, opened and closed, opened and closed. I was conscious but I couldn’t speak at the moment. I didn’t immediately recognize my surroundings or the individual on the other side of the sharp light. I thought I was in some sort of medical setting, but I really couldn’t see much past the light.

      ‘…so I’m in a hospital.’ Right away, I thought, ‘Lord, thank you for giving me another chance.’ I prayed silently, “Oh, Lord, thank you for this opportunity to live. What in the world has happened to me?” I attempted to swallow, but realizing there was a tube in my mouth, I took a deep breath, and then blew it out slowly. I scanned around the room, searching for anybody, anything and saw the back of what appeared to be a man dressed in plain clothes, but I noticed a holster at his side.

      “Doesn’t look like a doctor, doesn’t look like a nurse, and doesn’t look like a hospital worker. Who is he?” Thoughts spun around in my head like a kaleidoscope. This time it was the face of another, not a medical professional: a white male, built solid as a soldier.

      There were law enforcement officers and sheriff officers standing guard at the foot of my bed! “What have I got myself into? What has happened?”

      Out of nowhere, a warm face emerged from between the two large silhouetted figures. A twentyish white female, long dark hair which flowed over a crisp white nursing uniform approached my bedside. Her blue eyes, incongruous in a Hispanic face, twinkled as she flashed a deep bright smile.

      “How you doin’, hon? Good to see you came to.” She put her right hand on mine where some IV tubing was, not to adjust the tubing but just to squeeze reassuringly. The squeeze felt good.

      The two large men stepped away, providing the nurse with just enough room to examine me.

      “Are you ready to get that tube out of your mouth?”

      I responded with a nod.

      “You’re going to be okay.” She turned, writing on a clipboard, moved some tubing, picked up the phone, saying something, medical lingo I didn’t understand.

      “Yes, he’s ready to be extubated.” She spun around on her heels, and marched away. I studied her from the corner of my eyes. What brand of perfume was she wearing? I could smell it as her stockings swished against her uniform, and her rubber shoes squeaked on the floor.

      I saw her saunter over to the police officers.

      “Can you guys just give us some room for a moment? He’s not going anywhere. Look at him.” The nurse raised her chin in my direction.

      “You just do your job; we’re going to do ours.”

      “I’ve been doing mine. You guys have been in my way all night. Give us a break.”

      “A break! This motherfucker ….

      “Listen, be cool, man.” The officer with the deeper voice touched the shorter officer’s shoulder.

      “Gentleman, could you please step out into the hallway for a moment while we take this tube out of his mouth and then you can talk to him all you want.”

      “Fine with me.” The taller officer nodded his head as if to say, “Go ahead.”

      “Do your job,” said the other one.

      I saw the heart monitors, the tubing, the life support systems beeping, blinking. The antiseptic smell of the hospital seemed, at the moment, refreshing, but I was scared. I didn’t know what was going on.

      A few minutes later, four other women were milling around my bed, looking at the clipboard, then the machines. They seemed to be nursing students, crisp clean white uniforms, nervous-like, taking notes, eyes widened with curiosity.

      A mid-40s white guy wearing surgical scrubs came to the head of my bed. He looked in-different, almost as if we were bothering him. He said to the dark-haired nurse, “Give me a 12-gauge syringe. I’m going to extubate him.”

      “Do you want me to call for help?”

      The doctor, whose badge identified him as Dr. Leighton, just looked her way and shook his head. “No. I’ve done this.”

      “I’m going to get this tube out of your throat and then you’re going to have to talk.”

      “What does he mean by that?”

      A few seconds later, feeling that hard plastic tube scraping my throat, my tongue and tasting bloody, musty spit, I was coughing. To make things worse, he was sticking some other hard, smaller tube down my throat, a suction device, a hand-held vacuum cleaner, sucking all around my nose and my mouth.

      For the next three-four minutes I just coughed. Hacking, and spitting, I sat up in the bed and wiped my mouth with the sheet.

      The first nurse, the lady with the effervescent smile, dark hair and blue eyes, approached my bedside. “Oh, that should be better now. Isn’t it?”

      I nodded my head, yes. A drop of spittle ran down my face, and the nurse wiped it. Embarrassed, I had never felt so vulnerable and helpless.

      The doctor just walked out of the room with the tube in his hands and he dropped it on the table just beyond the door to my room.

      The police officers came in. The taller one said to the nurse, “Can I talk to him now?”

      “… Listen, just give us a moment please, and just give us a moment.”

      I took a deep breath again and inhaled the antiseptic smell of the hospital. I caught a whiff of my morning breath, and was thinking, “I hope I’m not breathing too hard on this lady, she’s pretty. Don’t blow any bad, stinking breath on her.” Then I thought to myself, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute, your troubles are a lot deeper than worrying about throwing some stinking’ breath on someone.”

      I looked down and saw bandages all over my stomach. I thought back, “Hell, I’ve been shot and I’m in police custody.”

      “Phewwww, if I could just get to Job.”

      “Excuse me?” she said.

      “My family.”

      “Do they know you’re here?”

      “Where?”

      The two police officers came over to me and one of them said to the other, “Listen, let’s not ask him anything right now. We’ve got to wait for the Assistant D.A. to come. We’ve got to get this guy back over to the holding.”

      “Man, are you serious? Look