Moondogs - Alexander Yates [99]
The doctors complete their final stitch and a happy commotion grows in the theater below. Everybody shakes hands, posing beside Racha’s bloodied form as a nurse takes pictures with her telephone. The head surgeon looks up at the observation window and flashes a big bloody thumbs-up. Stripping off his gloves and mask, he joins them in the cool air behind the glass. He tries and fails to look somber, pacing and twitching like a meth-addled junkie. “I once had a patient,” he says, “stabbed deep through the chest. He lived only because of the slimmest—the stupidest—luck. The knife navigated the maze of his guts perfectly, damaging nothing. Let me be clear,” he says, “your friend is not this patient. It’s no less crazy, but your friend is the opposite. The blade has done minor damage to virtually every organ in Racha’s body. Pierced skin, cracked ribs, hewn heart valve, nicked lungs, skewered liver, grazed stomach lining, whittled esophagus and—at the point where it came to a denting stop—a fractured upper vertebrae. It took an effort from every department in this hospital, but we’re confident he’ll survive. He has a long and extremely painful recovery ahead.”
“I’m sure you’re right about the painful part,” Reynato says. He approaches the viewing glass and knocks hard. “Racha! Quick-quick this time. That cocksucker Fuentes needs my ass in Manila by Friday. I already got flights, and so help me, if I get charged a rebooking fee on account of you being a sulky baby I’ll take the difference out of your paycheck!”
Racha is unresponsive below. Reynato looks at where the viewing glass meets the wall to gauge its thickness. He turns back to the head surgeon. “Can he hear me down there?” he asks. “I think I’d better go to him.”
The surgeon takes Reynato by the wrist. “Sir! Mr. Ocampo … I don’t think you understand. He’ll need months of bed rest. He’ll need supervised rehabilitation. Traveling this week isn’t just unhealthy, it’s impossible. And besides, you can’t go down there. There’s no smoking in the operating rooms.”
Reynato plucks the cigar from his teeth and taps it with his pinky, as though ashing. “You see smoke?” he asks. He frees himself politely from the surgeon’s grip and leads Ka-Pow below to collect their friend.
HE’S RIGHT, OF COURSE. Racha recovers in three days, but in that time he travels through more pain than Efrem thinks it possible to emerge whole from. Wide awake the whole time, he shivers and calls for blankets even with the air-conditioning off, mosquitoes buzzing joyfully though open windows. He picks his stitches, sweats blood, bleeds sweat, and loses his screaming voice before running out of things to scream about. Efrem and Elvis tend to him as best they can, which mostly means hitting rewind, play, and sometimes slow-motion on pornos in the VCR. “You see what I mean?” Elvis asks, patting Racha’s hacking torso. “This boy came up short in the bruho department. This isn’t the kind of power you wear a costume for.”
By Friday Racha looks about as healed as he’s ever going to get, and that afternoon Task Force Ka-Pow boards a flight bound for the capital. They land shortly before dark, Manila stretching all around like a high, dry reef. Immediately upon deplaning Reynato is swallowed by a modest bevy of reporters and Ocampo enthusiasts, but once they discover that Charlie Fuentes isn’t with him their excitement flags, and they disperse. Apparently the real Ocampo interests them far less than the false one. Efrem, for his life, can’t imagine why. Neither, it seems, can Reynato, who looks hurt as the cameramen pack their gear and grumble about an evening wasted.
Though Efrem doesn’t remember anyone having suitcases when they left Davao, they each grab one from the baggage carousel before squeezing into a taxicab—Reynato up front and the four bruhos crammed impossibly into the back. Thankfully the ride to Reynato’s home is brief. He lives in