Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [114]
“Ow! OW! Jesus!”
Too distracted for further Shroud talk, I'm forced to bid a hasty good-bye to my guide and rush down the steps of the cathedral.
“Bleccccccccccccccccccchhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
Oh no.
Along with the belching comes a dose of real pain. Kitchen-knife-between-the-ribs pain. A slicing, hacking, being-sawn-in-half sensation that won't let up.
“Blecccchhhhhhhhhhh! Shit.”
I throw up in a doorway. BLEEEECCCCCHHH. And again in an alleyway two streets down. Oh God. This is it, I realize. My time bomb, the one primed by a battered booger in Newfoundland, has begun its detonation sequence, and at the worst moment imaginable. I'm on my own in a foreign country with nobody to help me and no place to go until I get home tomorrow night.
Thanks to a handful of Motrin and some deep breathing, the persistent stabbing unlocks its grip for just long enough for me to stumble back to the hotel, where I rush to my room, vomit three more times, then, bent double, sink onto the bed in fetal position, and settle in for an extremely grim and sleepless fourteen hours of pain, shivering, and hugging my ribs.
“BLEEEEEEEEECCCCCCCCHHHHH!!”
Oh, yes, and belching. Lots of belching.
“Does it hurt if I press here?”
OW!
“How about here?”
OWWW!
“And here?”
OWWWWWWWW! YESSSS!! EVERYWHERE! STOP THAT!
Having made it back to Los Angeles, with the help and sympathy of a couple of United Airlines flight attendants and lots more Motrin—thanks, drugs, I owe you one!—I'm rushed to Emergency. First time I've ever been inside an ER, and now I know why: it's so depressing. Everybody's ill.
“So?”
A chunky duty nurse walks in with a file. He has a fuzzy ginger beard that looks like he fished a handful of cat hairs out from down the back of his sofa and glued them on.
“According to the scan,” he says, though I can't see his lips move, “the doctor in Canada was right: it looks like you have gallstones. Your liver's congested too, so most likely one of the larger stones has become lodged in one of your tubes.” He draws a diagram with a ballpoint. “See? Everything's backed up.”
“Oh dear. And what's the solution?”
Blecccccccccchhhhhhhhh. Blecccccccccccchhhhhhhhh-hhhhhhhhh!
“We have to get you into an operating room this afternoon.”
Whoa, hang on! Let's not rush into this.
“Okay, here's the deal.”
And I launch into a nutshell explanation of why that's not possible; about the show I'm making; my anarchic schedule that would challenge the might of, not one, but five gladiators; the pressure I'm under to get all the loose ends tied up; and so on. As it is, I'm at the tail end of everything, I tell him. I have a single piece of voice-over narration left to record for the very last episode in the series, which is due to be broadcast in a week's time, and I must complete it. But then it's over. The narration is nothing. It'll take three hours, tops. I can do that first thing tomorrow morning and be back at the hospital by lunchtime, promise, at which point, “I'm yours. You can operate all you want. How does that sound?” In the circumstances, it's my best offer.
But Fuzzface is apparently in no mood for negotiation.
Wearily removing the glasses from his nose to the top of his head, he digs two sets of chubby knuckles deep into his eye sockets, lets loose a monster yawn that lasts ten seconds at least and ends with him making wet cham-cham-chamaaaaaaah noises with his lips. Then he slides the glasses back down again and fixes me with his now slightly red, puffy eyes.
“And here's my deal, Mr. Peters.” He sighs. “I can't stop you walking out of here, okay? This is America. Go if you want to. All I can tell you is, you're in bad shape. Real bad shape. Right now, your system is shutting down—and I'm talking literally. Your liver's not working.