Six

"What? What did you say?"

"Nothing," Tommy hurried to add. "I didn't say anything."

"You hear that?" Jimmy Blanks reached out and caught the bulky nurse by the hand to make her stop and pay attention to his uncled for a second.

"I didn't hear anything," she replied, pulling her hand free and moving along.

"I know what you said," the voice identifying as Margaret Garfield snapped. "Who said that, huh? Who said that about me?"

"Nobody," Tommy tried to backtrack again. "Um, I mean, I don't know. I don't remember. Nobody. It was nothing. I don't know why I said that," but he did know why he said it, because there were only a few things he remembered about Margaret Garfield. Her hair, mainly, and that she called him Tommy Turtle and was his lab partner in eighth grade science class, and that she'd gone out with the Captain (like every other girl in the class or so it was said), and that later he'd heard these rumors about her, that she'd gone on heroin, that she was selling her body to middle-aged men down beneath the railroad bridge, and that she'd had some abortions and that during one of them she died, and that was all he knew, the sum total of all the accumulated stories about her.

"I'm sorry," he said, "it's just the way I am. I say things I shouldn't say. It's probably why I never had a girlfriend that stuck around. Saying the wrong thing. Not thinking. Not using my head."

"I don't care about any of that," Margaret said, "I want to know who said those things about me, and yes, those other things too. Middle-aged men? Abortions? What's all that about?"

"I didn't say anything like that," Tommy protested, meaning he didn't say any of it out loud, but he had no idea what he was saying out loud and what was only thinking.

"Where do you think I am?" she snorted. "I'm inside your brain, genius. I don't know if you realize that."

"I've seen flashes," he said, guessing that maybe those peripheral lights were actually her.

"Of course they are," she answered. "I know everything you're thinking, everything you've ever thought, which isn't saying much, you know. I've been in some brains you wouldn't believe, full of formulas and heavy thoughts, meditations even. There was this buddhist priest they had dying in here one time, man that was deep. I could almost wish I'd been in some kind of coma like that myself. Talk about taking it to another level! And there were cops, you woudn't want to know the things they've seen, but I saw them too. Maybe you'll get your turn. Maybe your luck will run out and you will end up dying right here, and then you'll be like us, waiting around, just waiting for someone familiar, and then when you find them, maybe they'll say mean things about you like you just said about me. I hope you do. Then you'll know what it's like."

"I'm really sorry," he said again. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

"Feelings? Who's got feelings anymore? I'm just annoyed by the factual misrepresentation. Is that real phrase? I think I picked it up from some old lawyer's brain. You do get an education floating around in some of these heads that come in here."

"It was the Captain," Tommy tried to deflect the blame.

"No it wasn't," she sneered. "I just told you, I'm right here inside your head. I know when you're just making stuff up. You're a terrible liar, by the way. You ought to know that. You were right the first time. You don't remember where you heard it, any of it, about me being a junkie and a whore and all that. You don't even remember. Somebody said something mean one time and it just stuck in your head like a post-it attached to my name. Every time my name comes up, there it is, those other things, they come up too, and it's been that way for what now? Sixty years?"

She was quiet for a few moments, and Tommy began to worry that maybe she'd gone away, flown out of his nose like the rest of them had. He was racking his brain for the right thing to say, knowing that she'd know what he was trying to do and coming up with the words before he even knew what they were. When she did speak again, it was in a calmer and quieter voice, more like the tone she'd originally used to contact him.

"It's the same thing with me about you. Every time your name comes up it's Tommy Turtle all over again."

"My name comes up?" was his immediate thought, and he imagined he could hear her instant laughter.

"Not so much," she replied, "but when it did. I'm just saying."

"I don't want to die here," he sighed.

"I can't blame you, honey," said the bulky nurse on her way back from wherever it was she kept going to and coming from. "Do you know your name?" she asked again.

"Tommy," he said. "Tommy Turtle."

"Tommy Turtle?" That would be Jimmy guffawing. "Did you hear that?"

"I heard Tortelli," the nurse said. "That is his name, isn't it? He still knows it. I didn't think he did. I thought he was a lot farther gone than that."

"He's a tough old coot," Jimmy said. "He's been hanging in there a long time now. Beat cancer three times already. Had skin cancer, prostate and liver, and none of them could bring him down." He sounded proud of his mother's older brother. She hadn't even made it past a single one.

"You just rest easy," the nurse was saying to Tommy, patting him on the arm. "I'll bet they'll be sending you home before you know it."

"Wouldn't surprise me none," Jimmy said, somewhat dejected. The moodswings were wearing on him almost as bad as that rotten cup of coffee he'd snagged from the place they called a cafeteria downstairs. That was when he was sure the old man's time was almost up, and he was prepping for the transit home. If they did release the old guy now, he'd have to fork out for another taxi and go even farther out of his way. He might even be up all night. It was driving him crazy.

"Make up your mind," he muttered at the potential corpse lying beside him.

"I don't want to die here," Tommy was thinking again.