Sympathy Between Humans

8

“This is a different look for you,” Cisco said.

I’d changed into my oldest jeans, faded almost to velvet, and Shiloh ’s blue-and-orange-striped pullover, and a pair of basketball shoes over thick socks. Cisco was inventorying me through the crack of the door that the chain allowed, and no sooner had he spoken than he seemed to realize that this was not a time for levity. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “Can I come in?”

The same drill: Cisco shut the door, undid the chain, and rolled back in his wheelchair to let me in. Then he said, “What’s wrong?”

“My ear is killing me,” I told him. “It started hurting a few days ago, like you said, and hasn’t stopped. The thing is, I’m not sure it was just the cold that did it. I was in a drainage canal last week, I mean over my head. The water was runoff water. It was probably dirty.”

I was rambling, so afraid he’d send me away without treating me that I was throwing every extraneous bit of information I could at him. “Can you look at it?” I finished.

“Go ahead and get on the examining table,” he said.

I did as he said, while he retrieved my notes from his filing cabinet, washed his hands, and took out his equipment. I don’t know why Cisco’s place didn’t scare me the way the clinic had, but here I felt, if not relaxed, at least in control of my fear.

Like before, Cisco took my blood pressure. “You’re a little elevated,” he said. He put a finger on my wrist, finding the radial pulse, and made a note on his yellow pad, then took an otoscope from his footlocker. “Which ear?” he asked.

“The left,” I said.

When he put the small, square end of the instrument into my ear, I jumped a little and flinched. “Easy,” he said.

I closed my eyes and tried to relax. His breathing fluttered the loose hairs on my shoulder.

Cisco withdrew the tube and rolled back a little way, and I could see the change that had come over his face. “I seem to remember telling you to go to a clinic if your ear started bothering you,” he said.

“I know.”

“Please tell me why you didn’t do that.”

“I hoped it would just go away on its own,” I said lamely.

“Well, it hasn’t,” Cisco said. “At this stage, your eardrum needs to be lanced.”

“You can do that here, right?” I was so far gone with the pain of the infection itself that the prospect of having my eardrum stabbed with a needle didn’t really sink in.

“I’m trained for it,” he said slowly, “but I’m not ideally equipped here.”

I leaned down and dug in my shoulder bag. “This is three hundred dollars,” I said. I’d stopped by the ATM on my way over. I laid the money on the shelf where I’d put the forty dollars the other night.

“Money’s not the issue,” Cisco said. “You need to go to an office for this.”

“I can’t,” I said.

Cisco tapped a fingertip impatiently on the handrim of his wheelchair. “Why on earth not?”

“I don’t like those kinds of places,” I said. “I get… I get scared.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” I said. Fear was making me inarticulate. “Please help me with this,” I finished. “I can’t go anywhere else.”

He would say no; he had his principles, just as he’d told me the other night. But there was something new in his eyes. Maybe compassion.

“This is going to hurt,” Cisco said. It was a concession.

“I’ve got that covered,” I said. Reaching back into the bag, I pulled out the bottle of whiskey I’d bought on the way over.

Cisco lowered his head slightly to rub the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “Jesus,” he said. Then he sighed. “Do you want a glass?”

“No,” I said.

“Then get some of that in you,” Cisco said. “Plenty of it. I’ll get ready.”

He rolled away from me; I drank. I closed my eyes and heard his movements as he readied for the procedure. From somewhere beyond the walls I thought I heard a dog bark. A big dog, from the timbre of the sound. That wasn’t right, was it? A dog, here? I drank again, deeply.

“So,” Cisco said, his back turned to me, “while we wait, why don’t you tell me how you decided to jump into a drainage canal.”

“I went in after a couple of kids who fell into the water.”

“I thought the hooker with the heart of gold was only in the movies.”

“I’m not a hooker,” I told him.

It was important for me to make that distinction, I guess, because I’d already shown him my real self. I didn’t like the idea of being caught between identities, half-and-half. “I’m not,” I said again, when he didn’t answer.

“Duly noted,” he said lightly. I didn’t know whether he believed me.

When I felt I’d drank enough, I lay down carefully on the massage table. I closed my eyes and the room spun a little. I opened them again. Again I found myself looking at his med-school diploma. C. Agustin Ruiz. Not F, for Francisco, as I would have expected. That was odd.

Cisco rolled close to me. He’d tied a dark-blue bandanna around most of his hair, and gathered the rest up in a small ponytail on his neck, like a surgeon might put his hair under a cap. He held a towel in his hands. “How are you feeling?” he asked me.

“Preoperative,” I said.

Cisco laughed, a low, pleasant sound. “You don’t sound as slurry as I’d like. Have a little more.”

Obedient as a child, I drank, both hands on the bottle.

“What happened to the kids you pulled out of the drainage canal?” Cisco asked.

“You don’t really believe I did that,” I said. It was getting easier to say what was on my mind; there was no two-second delay between thought and words. “It’s okay, I don’t care that you’re humoring me. The answer is, the older brother lived. The younger one didn’t.”

Cisco turned sober. “I heard something about that on the radio,” he said. He believed me.

“Is your full name Cisco?” I asked, speaking on the random thought.

“No.”

“What is it, then?”

“ Cicero,” he said. “A simple-enough name, but some people find the extra syllable unmanageable.”

“I like it,” I said.

“My father loved the classics. My brother’s name is Ulises.” He paused. “I think you might be ready to do this. No, relax. I need to clean your ear first.”

The cleaning wasn’t painful, but I flinched at the wet pressure in an unaccustomed place. To distract me, Cicero made one-sided conversation, the way doctors do.

“You’re lucky, in a way,” he said. “Ten years ago, only an otolaryngologist would know how to do this. They started teaching it again when viruses and bacteria became so antibiotic-resistant, in the nineties. We started seeing more and more kids with infections that wouldn’t respond to antimicrobial treatment.”

There was something in his voice that I hadn’t heard in a while, a quiet deliberateness that reminded me of the grandparents of the Indian kids I’d known in New Mexico.

He withdrew. My ear felt damp and cool.

“Go ahead and lie down,” he instructed. I did, exposing the left ear to him.

“Close your eyes. I’m going to turn on another light.” He pulled the angled neck of a lamp down close to my head. It must have had a high-wattage bulb, maybe halogen, because I could feel the heat on the side of my cheek and neck. He took my face in his long fingers.

“Lift your head up,” Cicero told me. I obeyed, and he spread the towel underneath my head. I lay back down. In the corner of my eye I saw him pick something up. A needle. It seemed quite long, sinister in the lamplight.

“Two things,” Cicero said. “I don’t have an aspirator, so after I do this, turn your head to the side so it can drain onto the towel. Second: this is going to hurt.”

“You said that already,” I said, sounding drunk to myself at last. “You don’t have to dwell on it.”

“But I need you to keep quiet when I do this,” he explained. “I don’t want any cops coming here.”

Too late, I thought, and the laughter I tried to suppress made a high, giddy sound. Cicero looked at me quizzically, and I tried to get myself under control and failed. “No,” I said, still laughing. “I don’t think I can promise that at all.”

“If you’re having second thoughts, we can still get you to an ER.”

My laughter dried up at the prospect.

“All right, then,” Cicero said. “Turn your head a little.”

I did what he said, closed my eyes.

He laid his free hand over my mouth. “Be very still,” he said.

When the needle struck I was glad I hadn’t promised not to scream. The pain sliced right through the alcohol haze. I felt Cicero ’s hands turning my head, because I’d forgotten his instructions to do so, and then hot liquid splashed down my ear, onto the towel.

“Oh, God,” I whispered. My eyes were still closed. “Oh, God.” Now that I was on my side, my knees were trying to inch toward my chest, toward the fetal position.

“Keep your head down, that’s it.” Cicero whispered encouragement to me, taking my hand.

“I’m going to be sick,” I told him.

“Breathe,” he instructed.

I tried to obey. One deep breath, and then another. “I want to sit up,” I said, thinking it would alleviate the nausea.

He let me, and as soon as I was upright, the nausea did begin to subside. A few more deep breaths dispelled it to the point that I knew I could keep it under control.

“Better?” Cicero asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“You want the bathroom?”

I was expecting a small, closetlike space, and so was surprised by the dimensions of the bathroom. Of course: it had to accommodate Cicero ’s wheelchair. There was a tubular railing along the wall and inside the shower, where a benchlike seat extended out from the tiled wall. I didn’t turn on the bathroom light, imagining it would seem blinding. Instead I washed up by the minimal light that came in from the hallway.

A single towel hung by the sink, no washcloth. I opened the tap and ran a thin stream of water into the basin. I dampened the side of my face with water from my fingers, rubbed them against the bar of soap and then against my neck, raising a thin foam on the wet skin. I put my fingers under the stream of water again and rinsed as well as I could, but couldn’t keep a trickle of water from escaping down the neckline of my sweater. I pressed the thick material of my shirt against my skin, blotting away the water.

When I came out, Cicero was cleaning up his exam table. I watched him, not sure what to say.

“I feel pretty good,” I lied.

But he was looking at me speculatively, in a way that sharpened my attention.

“What?” I said.

“You’re in no shape to be driving anywhere,” he said.

“I know,” I said quickly. The pain had felt sobering, but that was a misperception; I was drunk.

“You need to sleep awhile,” Cicero said.

“What, on your exam table?” I said.

Cicero sighed, reaching up to pull off the bandanna and release the little ponytail. “No,” he said slowly.

“What, then?”

“Look,” he said, “this is not an offer I’d usually make, but I think I’m going to have you sleep in my bedroom.”

“Really?” I sensed he wasn’t terribly comfortable with the idea; I wasn’t, either. But I knew he was right. I couldn’t drive until I’d fully sobered.

He was already rolling toward the bedroom, and I turned to follow. He opened the bedroom door and flicked on the light.

A narrow single bed was covered with a cinnamon-brown counterpane, a black-and-white Ansel Adams print of Yosemite on the wall. A set of hand weights, probably twenty pounds each, were half hidden under the bed. Along the wall ran a low and narrow table, almost a shelf, covered with family photos. Some of the pictures were quite old, in black-and-white.

“This is nice,” I said.

“Out there is my office,” Cicero said. “In here is my home.”

I walked in behind him. To our immediate right was a sliding closet door. It was mirrored, showing us the reflections of a drunk, lost cop and an altruistic criminal. Quickly I looked away.

“Why don’t you turn on the desk lamp,” Cicero suggested. “It doesn’t throw a lot of light, so you can sleep with it on if you like. And if you want to shut it off later, you can reach it from the bed, unlike the wall switch.”

I walked over to the desk and did as he’d recommended. Cicero turned off the brighter overhead fixture, and we were immersed in a low, golden light.

“You can close the blinds on the window, too, if you like. But we’re twenty-six stories up. No one’s going to peek in. I sleep with them open,” he said.

When he began to back out of the room, I turned and said, “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You’re not going to try to sleep on the exam table, are you?”

Cicero laughed. “No, don’t worry,” he said. “I keep late hours.”

“But-”

“If it gets that late, and I need to go to bed, I’ll wake you and kick you out. I’m not Mother Teresa.”

When he was gone, I stripped down to the sweater and my underwear and wondered: Was it right to get in the bed? That seemed so personal, but I didn’t want to wake up in an hour, on top of the covers, because I was cold.

I slipped experimentally between the comforter and the blanket, a compromise that made sense to my alcohol-and-exhaustion-clouded mind, and turned off the lamp.

An indeterminate time later I awoke in darkness. Where the hell was I? I heard masculine, adult voices from behind a door and the sound filled me with a dread I didn’t understand. My heart jumped up from its slow sleeping rhythm.

Then two words became distinguishable: pecho and fiebre. I recognized the voice of Cicero Ruiz, and heard a baby’s hoarse cough. I closed my eyes and slept again.

When I raised my head again from sleep, I sensed that hours had passed. Something had wakened me, though, and I looked around and saw the low form of Cicero in very dim, flickering light. He was placing a lighted candle on the table of family photos; there was another candle already on the table, flame still and steady.

“What-” I said.

“The storm came in,” he said. “The power’s out. I was afraid you’d wake up in a strange place in the dark and not be able to find your way around.”

I sat up, facing him and the end of the bed. “Oh,” I said, and rubbed at my face. “What time is it?”

“Nearly two,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You should have got me up.”

“Well, you’re awake now. Have you slept enough?”

“Yes,” I said. “I feel a lot better. Can I use your bathroom again?”

Cicero held out the candle. I threw back the comforter and slid down the bed, climbing over the low footboard at the end. Too late it occurred to me to be self-conscious about being half dressed. But Cicero had seen it all before. He was a doctor. I took the candle from him.

In the bathroom, I found toothpaste in Cicero ’s medicine chest. I rubbed some on my tongue and spread it across my teeth and gums, then spit and rinsed my mouth out. I splashed water on my face afterward. The makeshift ritual made me feel like a normal human being again. It helped that my left ear felt better. It was sore, but sore in a way that was far preferable to the pulsing, sharp pain of this afternoon. I chanced looking in the mirror. I’d expected to be bloodshot, but my eyes were surprisingly clear.

I took the candle back into the bedroom. The way Cicero watched me walk was familiar.

“You’re giving me your field sobriety test, aren’t you?” I said.

“I want to be sure you’re okay to drive,” he said. “Sit down and talk to me for a moment. I’m going to tell you two important things.”

I sat on the edge of the bed, and he rolled closer.

“First, I want to see you again in forty-eight hours, to check that your ear is healing properly.”

I nodded assent.

He picked up a slip of paper. “The second thing: this is a prescription for an antibiotic. It’s likely your body can lick this without penicillin, but it’ll do so faster with help.”

“I thought you didn’t prescribe,” I said.

“The pad was brought to me by a patient,” Cicero said. “I didn’t even want to know where she got it. I don’t use it. But I’m making an exception.” He paused, underscoring that this was serious business. “This prescription comes with conditions. First: you tell no one I have a prescription pad here. I never tell people, myself.”

“I won’t,” I said.

“Second, a prescription for antibiotics shouldn’t raise a red flag for the pharmacist. Antibiotics aren’t commonly sought in prescription fraud.”

“You’re saying there’s a chance that, if I go fill this, I could get busted?”

“A very small chance. Usually people who try to fake prescriptions get caught because they don’t know how to write scrips. Doctors and pharmacists communicate with each other in a language all their own. It’s not easy to fake. Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with the way this one is written, except that the license number I wrote is completely invalid,” he said. “If they do bust you, they’ll probably go in the back, call the police, and then stall you until the cops arrive.”

What a sordid little story it would make: Hennepin County detective caught scamming prescription drugs.

“So if it takes more than ten minutes for them to find your prescription, if they say they can’t track it down, just leave,” Cicero told me. “But this is the second condition: if you do get caught, this doesn’t come back on me.” He held out the prescription, but just a little, bargaining. “I have enough problems. I do not need to get arrested. If you give me your word you won’t give me up, that’s good enough for me.”

“I give you my word,” I said.

He gave me the slip of paper.

“Why, though?” I asked him. “Why do you trust me?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I just do.”

A silence settled between us. The candlelight flickering on the family photos made the table look like an altar to the spirits of Cicero ’s ancestors, although at least one of the prints was recent: it was Cicero at what must have been his med-school graduation. His smile looked genuine, not the tense rictus some people produce when faced with a camera and a demand to smile. He was easily half a head taller than the people surrounding him.

Half a head taller. He was standing. He was able-bodied.

“How tall were you?” I asked without thinking.

“Were?” he repeated.

Heat immediately rose to my face. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I meant-”

“Six feet,” Cicero said. “The tallest man in my family, ever.”

“I didn’t mean-”

“It’s all right,” he said.

My embarrassment began to recede slightly, but still I looked down at my bare feet. “I should go.”

“Sarah,” he said, “are you afraid to touch me?”

It was true, we were sitting close together, and I had been careful not to let our limbs touch.

“Of course not,” I said. “You examined me, for God’s sake.”

“That was me touching you,” he said. “That’s not the same thing. Does it disturb you that I’m paralyzed?”

“I’m married,” I said.

“I see,” Cicero said quietly. “You wear no wedding ring and are free to stay out until two in the morning, but when I make an overture to you, suddenly you’re married.”

“My husband is in prison,” I said.

He didn’t believe me; I could see that.

“He got sent up for auto theft,” I said. “He’s in prison in Wisconsin.”

Cicero ’s expression didn’t change, but at last he said, “Then I suppose you should go.”

“It’s not because you’re paralyzed,” I said. I don’t know why it was important to me to establish that. I leaned forward and laid a hand on his thigh. It was stupid, a chickenshit half measure.

“I can’t feel that, Sarah,” Cicero said. “You don’t have to do anything to prove to me that you’re open-minded. But if you’re going to touch me, do it somewhere I can feel it.” He reached over and took my hand. “Let me show you something,” he said.

With his other hand, he pulled up his shirt. “A lot of people think a paraplegic’s body has one sharp line between sensation and no sensation, like the line that divides light and dark on the moon,” he said. “But it’s more like the way twilight falls on the earth.”

He placed my hand high on his rib cage. “Here, I can feel everything.” He slid his hand and mine, underneath it, a little lower. “Down here, only temperature, but not pressure. Down here,” a little lower still, “full dark.”

Keeping eye contact, I laid my left hand on the other side of his rib cage, and Cicero put his hands on my hips, pulling me toward him. There was nowhere to go but onto the wheelchair, and cautiously I put my knees on each side of his thighs, on the edges of the seat, so I was kneeling in front of him.

He had no insecurity about having to tip his face upward to kiss a woman, and when he did it, he went deep almost immediately, probing with his tongue. It shocked me; that kind of deep, invasive kiss from a virtual stranger was disturbing and exciting and I felt something roll over deep in my stomach, like nerves, except warmer.

Our dim reflection in the mirrored closet doors showed man, woman, and chair; a sexual tableau I’d never expected to be a part of. Men had taken me into their homes before, and into their beds. But in climbing onto Cicero ’s wheelchair, I was being taken into the very center of his life, almost his body. It made me wonder if Cicero Ruiz had a special insight into how it felt to be penetrated.

The third time I woke up, the flames of the candles were almost completely recessed in deep pits of wax. It no longer mattered; the sky was lightening to predawn blue beyond the window, just starting to illuminate the bedroom. Cicero slept so close to me that I could feel the warmth of his skin. It was reassuring until I saw Shiloh’s old shirt hanging off the back of Cicero ’s wheelchair, and I felt something cold in my stomach, like I was looking at a map and nothing was familiar.

I slipped out of bed and put my clothes on as quietly as possible, picked up the prescription, and turned the knob of the bedroom door in that time-honored, half-speed way people do when they are sneaking into, or out of, bedrooms.

Cicero didn’t even open his eyes when he spoke, and his voice was rusty with sleep.

“It’s just a little sympathy between humans, Sarah,” he said. “Don’t let it ruin your week.”