While lying on the operating table, Alex had a dream. He was floating on his back down a dark and bottomless river. A swarm of mosquitoes circled his head. He could hear nothing but the thin whistling sound of their diaphanous wings, and pictured their needle-shaped mouths salivating, searching for a place to land so they could drain him dry. He knew they could smell his blood; after all, he was swimming in it, drowning in it. He made an effort to brush his fingers against the side of his head to shoo the cloud of phantom insects away, but his arms were too heavy to lift. Eventually, the frequency took on a more electronic shape, and faded into total silence.

Some time later, he opened his eyes and let them focus on the ceiling. There was a rectangle of light just above him, surrounded by dimpled square tiles reminiscent of giant soda crackers. He contemplated this sight for a moment, then lowered his vision to the opposite wall, where he saw a beige countertop and cupboards, jars of cotton swabs and boxes of latex gloves, and a shiny stainless steel faucet.

His nostrils were blocked by plastic tubes, and a strange, painless pressure leaned hard into the left side of his chest. He looked down at his body, lying still on the narrow bed, and became vaguely aware of a distant, throbbing pain in both ears. The ringing was still present on one side, but it sounded so far away it may as well have been in the next room.

He tried to make sense of where he was, but his mind was so thickened with the aftertaste of anesthesia, just turning his head brought on a brief moment of dizziness. To his left there was another bed, and a man lying there, watching the television that was suspended from the ceiling. Alex followed his gaze and stared up at the screen. A baseball game was on; the Cardinals were playing the Mets. He wondered why the sound was muted.

"Hey," he said. His tongue felt like a dry piece of cracked rubber stuck to his palate. He ran it across the mossy surface of his teeth, and noticed that one of his molars had been replaced by an empty socket. Its taste was metallic and sour, and his cheek was swollen around the missing tooth.

The man turned to Alex, and his thin lips began to move. He was middle-aged and overweight, with a nasty purple bruise on his forehead and a plaster cast on one leg. He finished speaking and waited for a reply. But Alex had not heard a single word.

"Whah?"

The man said something else, but again, there was no voice.

"What the fuck," Alex said, looking at the door. "I can't hear anything." He could just barely hear himself.

His roommate shrugged, made an apologetic face, and turned his attention back to the TV.

Alex lifted his hand and brought it to his head. On the right side, the ear was heavily bandaged, but the one on the left was bare, and felt normal.

"What is going on?" he shouted, and then coughed. It was like being hit in the chest by a baseball bat. Another sharp cough, and he tasted blood in his mouth again.

The door opened and the nurse entered. Her expression was calm, and it made Alex less inclined to panic. She came directly to his side.

"What happened?" he asked her. A few hot tears had surfaced as soon as the coughing started, and drawn crooked paths down his temples.

She spoke, soundlessly, and pulled on a lever that raised the top half of the bed to a sitting position. In the same motion, she produced a square of Kleenex from some hidden pocket and tenderly wiped at the corners of his eyes.

"I don't know what you're saying," Alex said.

The nurse thought for a moment, then found a pad of paper in a drawer next to the sink.

I'm going to change your dressings, she wrote, and handed the note to him.

"I'm thirsty," he said. She nodded and poured him a cup of water. As he swallowed it, he watched her pulling bandages out of the cupboard. His roommate was still watching the game. Alex wondered for a moment why the Cardinals game was on, rather than the Mariners, then remembered that he was in St. Louis.

"Where are my friends?" he asked. The nurse shrugged, and began to carefully peel the old bandage from his right ear. She cleaned the wound with alcohol swabs, and coated it in Neosporin. Alex stared up at the television again while she taped another layer of gauze to his head. Something felt very wrong about his ear, but he was afraid to find out what had happened to it, and tried to think instead about the ballgame. It was a home game for the Cardinals. The sun was shining. It was summer, August, but he wasn't sure of the precise date. He was twenty-nine years old, almost thirty. He wanted to call his girlfriend, to hear her voice.

The nurse moved around to the other side of the bed and folded the sheets back. Then she drew the privacy curtain around until he couldn't see the TV screen anymore. Alex lay still and looked at her smooth and plain face, trying to avoid seeing what she was doing, but even out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of what was under the bandage that covered the left side of his chest. He squeezed his eyes shut while she finished.

"Can I have some more water?" he whispered. His tongue still felt thick and slow when he talked.

The nurse complied. She looked about the same age as his mother, perhaps a little younger, but she was taller and not as thin. Her hair was wavy and a bit too black to be natural.

She deposited his old dressings into a large red container, and washed her hands. In spite of everything he had told her, she continued to speak to him. Alex gave her a blank look. She smiled sheepishly, and then her lips formed the phrase, "I'm sorry."

He was surprised that he already recognized the shape of those words. He would read them on the lips of nearly everyone he met for the rest of his life.

© 2007