Reckless Choice

Reckless Choice

by

William von Reese

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2009 by William von Reese

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

CHAPTER 1

The elevator stopped at the twelfth floor of the hospital. Sam got out and walked toward the counter, over which leaned a muscular male attendant listening to a nurse.

I have to wait on him hand and foot, the nurse complained of her patient. She was gathering purse and sweater, going off shift, as she kidded with her replacement.

Dat's sick, Ruthie, the man said. His deep-throated, Germanic R made the name sound like Hootie. The poor guy does not have a hand or a foot.

A quadruple amputee, the nurse went on, will go to any extremities. Where's your sense of humor, Bruno?

Sam suspected that the friend, Siegfried, he had come to visit was the subject of this unfeeling wit. Irritation tingled the back of his neck. Siegfried, already the target of too much media attention, did not deserve that. Sam turned to confront the nurse.

A little empathy, please.

The nurse managed a smile that was professionally polite, but her eyes stayed steely, hardened by years of intolerable sights.

If I empathized with everybody around here I'd be in Lala Land.

It sounds like you blame him for the Amtrak accident. That wasn't his fault.

Bruno stood looming over them like a referee, a puzzled look on his meaty face.

Yah, he is a goot patient, poor man.

Ruth turned thoughtful. Why didn't he fly, or drive? No one takes the train any more.

Sam happened to know that his friend was afraid of flying. He would not go up even with Sam, who flew his own plane. He rarely drove, either. Lacking mechanical affinity, Siegfried was a menace on the road, and he knew it.

Sam spoke with careful patience, looking for a graceful out from a dialogue he already regretted starting.

Whether Siegfried had flown or not, that same coked-up switchman would still have hit the wrong button.

We're all responsible for what happens to us. Accidents are a natural part of life. We should accept them. You ought to see the motorcycle vegetables around here. People actually choose to ride those things.

She stepped toward the elevator, punching the down button, then turned back to flash Sam a thin grin. The gesture held a hint of apology.

But I'm sorry you heard. The PT ward is so empty now, we forget there are visitors around.

Rage tugged at the edges of Sam's sanity. He could have slid with perverse ease into a torrent of cathartic anger. Typically, he clung to control. He merely mouthed a fecal word and turned for room 1210 down the corridor.

ooo

Despite his tragedy, Siegfried still played jester. This role dated back to their high school group, which he himself had titled the Gangreen Club, the members of which wore identical green shirts from J C Penney's. Since the Amtrak accident, however, his humor had taken on a bitter edge. He was no longer just the cheerful clown, teasing easy risibility with quips and puns. He now used humor like a blowtorch fueled with his rage.

This hospital, any hospital for that matter, Siegfried said after his hello to Sam, is the worst value in consumer economics. They charge ten times more, and for fewer amenities, than Club Med.

No matter, old friend. Amtrak's picking up the tab. Even better, they'll be paying you well into the next century.

Because I was truncated on their trunk line. That'll cost them an arm and a leg.

Only six months since the accident, Siegfried's rage had become reflexive, and with good reason. Nobody deserved a fate like his. Still, he was starting to sound petulant.

Maybe I'll move to Maui, Sam. Take up surfing. Quadruple amputee, strapped to a five-foot board, tackles one-foot breakers. Ought to make the Upbeat Segment on CNN, right?

Sam was looking at a tangle of prosthetic devices on a corner table. He saw straps, braces, mechanical digits and microcontrol panels. Siegfried noticed Sam's fascination.

I'm to start on those tomorrow. Get a leg up, so to speak. Can you imagine learning four artificial systems at once? You push the buttons with your nose.

Looking at his friend, Sam remembered that they used to call him Needlenose. Long, thin and pointy, it should be ideal for pushing switches. Siegfried's whole body was long, thin and pointy. He had that fair, freckled skin that goes along with red hair. Eyes were the green of shallow water. Propped up in his oversized wheelchair now, he looked like a stuffed toy, wound tight.

They want me to join the Quadramps Society. It's a self-help group, Siegfried said morosely. Sam braced himself for the inevitable punch line. It came.

Frankly, I don't want to belong to any club that would have me dismembered.

Lay off.

Siegfried went on. I've got only two members left, one of which is my head. But I won't be like you, Samuel, losing the former because of the latter, like the dog that lost his head over a piece of tail.

Old friends know all your weaknesses, Sam thought.

Siegfried was jiving him for his vulnerability to, and bad luck with, women. There were all kinds of bad luck, and Sam was glad to see him get off the subject of his accident.

Sam was staring at Siegfried's namesake, an ungainly, maple-clad instrument hanging by its strap from a wall hook. To change the subject, he asked, Will you ever?

Siegfried took the question in stride. Play the bassoon again? Not likely.

Siegfried's musical talent had surfaced at an early age. He had chosen what seemed to his parents and friends the most improbable of instruments. Maybe the choice sprang from his delicious sense of humor, but he mastered the instrument. Later on, after high school, he earned a fair living with it, along with some prominence among teachers, performers and historians of the bassoon.

Back in high school everything got a name. The bassoon became Siegfried, as did its master, whose real name was Edward William Sablonski.

How can I finger the valves with that robotic arm? Siegfried nodded toward the pile of prostheses. He wheeled up close to Sam, now seated in the visitor's chair, bumping into his knees. He leaned forward, his green eyes fixed on Sam's. If he had retained an arm, Sam thought, Siegfried would be tugging now at Sam's sleeve, so urgent was his need.

Help me, Sam.

Such an appeal from a friend cannot be answered in the negative, no matter what it is. Sam said, Of course, but felt immediate unease, realizing that Siegfried's would be no casual request. More warily, he added, What is it?

I want out. Help me.

Sam knew what he meant. Maybe it was the stack of prosthetics, the prospect of learning to operate those buttons and levers with his nose, that firmed his choice. Decided he had, and Sam knew there was no talking him out of it.

How?

Defenestration. More accurately: autodefenestration, a do-it-yourself project.

Sam looked up at the high window in the room. Even from a distance, he could tell that it did not open. Sealed windows are commonplace in an air-conditioned world.

Not that one. The one at the end of the hall. It's low enough, and I can get up to speed in the corridor.

Sam's hesitation made an awkward silence. Siegfried at once picked up Sam's reluctance.

You don't want to be an accessory, right, Sam? Well, no problem. You can open a window without leaving fingerprints, can't you?

Sam stood up, turned wrenchingly aside and walked to the high, sealed window, looking down twelve floors, one hundred and twenty feet. Distance enough to reach terminal speed when he hit the solid, concrete apron below.

The images made Sam queasy. He made himself look up to the horizon. He could see Mount Baldy today, poking through its corona of smog.

Sam respected his friend's choice. Hell, he would probably make the same one for himself. The act of raising the hall window would make him an accessory to murder. Was that not cinching the bond of friendship a bit tight?

Sam knew that Siegfried, sensitive as a fasting guru, was tracking his thoughts, picking up his unspoken objections. He returned to his visitor's chair.

Think of it as a window of opportunity. That's what you would be opening for me.

Jesus, Ed!

A fleeting smile washed over Siegfried's face. You haven't called me 'Ed' in twenty years.

This is serious.

It's my considered choice, and not an easy one. You know how I feel about flying. This is the ultimate flight, the one of nightmares.

Sam nodded, avoiding his eyes.

Do it on your way out. Just use the curtain for moving the handle and the two sliding bolts. Chat with the nurse for a moment, then get on the elevator. I'll let you beat me down.

Sam was silent, staring at the floor, his mind as blank as the sterile tiles. His temples throbbed and he felt too warm.

Siegfried's voice was soft and reasonable.

Everyone has a right to go to hell in his own way. We always agreed that we're all responsible for our choices. Right, Sam?

Sam nodded. Ever since high school debating class, Is life governed by choice or chance? had been a favored topic of the Gangreen Club during many a bull session. Sam and Siegfried had spoken for free will. The third member, Francis Egbert Woodward, had backed the fickle finger theory. Funny, Sam thought, after all these years their positions were essentially the same.

Pure chance, Sam said. Your accident was blind fate.

Could be. Look at me, Sam. I still can choose how I react. That is what's important. What you do about fate, not what fate does to you.

Sam stared at his friend, wondering whether, or how, to say goodbye. However casual the phrase, it would ring with brazen finality. Sam decided to try to talk him out of it first.

Aren't we being a bit negative? How about the positive approach to life? The glass is part full. Think not of what you have lost, but what you still have left. Besides, I might miss you.

Sam's upbeat approach seemed to anger Siegfried. Just what do I have left? Tell me, Sam.

Your mind, for one. The best sense of humor I've even known. That's got an edge now, but it's still going strong.

So I can get a job as court jester. Or circus freak.

"Lighten up. You can write. Do a humorous book on the bassoon. Do a novel on an adulterous brass player, titled A Man and His Strumpet. Okay, so you can't play any more. You can still listen. And teach."

Cut the Pollyana, Sam. That kind of a Peale is unworthy of you.

Sam's sweet reasonableness was roiling him. His eyes watered in frustration, or sorrow. He spun around in his wheelchair, drying his eyes on the shoulders of his T-shirt.

That gesture was so bathetic that Sam's eyes, too, burned and moistened. He was able to dry them with the back of his hand. He decided to open up. This was clearly his last chance to keep his friend alive.

Sam turned Siegfried's chair back, facing him. Here's the real reason, the selfish one. I don't want to lose a life-long friend. How many of those do we have? Not enough to throw out of windows.

Siegfried's chuckle was bitter.

Nice try, Sam. But it is, after all, my life, and I have decided. You going to help me or not?

Okay. I'll try.

Siegfried smiled.

This is the kindest thing you'll ever do, Sam. Thanks.

Good bye, Sam said, his voice breaking, as he rose to leave. He ran his fingers through his friend's curly red hair as he passed the wheelchair.

Sam went out into the corridor and over to the window. He glanced behind him. The hall was fatefully empty.

Sam used the drape to glove his hand while sliding open the bolts. An unguarded glance down to the parking lot brought brief nausea. A distant, tiny part of him wanted to jump, to know himself the brief horror of free flight.

He turned and walked back through the corridor toward the nurses' station opposite the elevators. The doors opened, discharging an orderly with a clattering steel cart. Sam merely nodded to Bruno, who sat reading, as he stepped inside and punched the L button.

His descent was rapid and uninterrupted, as would be Siegfried's. He could picture Siegfried in his wheelchair racing toward the open window at the end of the hall. Then, when the wheels struck the sill, he would will enough inertia to catapult himself into space.

His mind perversely traced his friend's shallow parabola, as he tumbled, a human cannonball, head over heels, no, head over hips, as Siegfried would be the first to point out, toward concrete.

Sam stepped into the bright summer warmth outside the hospital. He was rushing to reach his car, parked in a side street, before the impact. He unlocked the driver's door and dropped into the seat. As he slammed the door, a woman's shriek followed him inside.

He started the engine and turned on the radio. The dial was frozen onto his easy listening station. He turned the sound up to heavy metal levels. He wanted to blast the scream of that unlucky witness from his head. The tune, distorted by excessive volume, was barely recognizable as Up, Up and Away! Siegfried would have appreciated the irony.

Sam lowered his head onto his crossed arms over the wheel, unable yet to drive away. He thought of the many events in the life of Ed Siegfried Sablonski that had all converged in this fatal choice. When he turned down the volume of his radio, he heard the keening of approaching sirens.

ooo

Sam pulled away from the curb, thinking he might as well head for home, though there would be little comfort there. Lydia was in her angry mood again, one that often lasted for weeks, bubbling like a pot of chili on a back burner.

Something at work had set her off. Lydia rarely shared her thoughts with Sam, but this time she had told him. She had found out her nickname at the medical office where she worked. Her coworkers called her The Viper.

Sam sympathized with her outrage, but he could sense the reason for the tag. Lydia was not an easy person to know. She lived inside a hard, defensive shell. She could not be coaxed out easily. Even with six years of marriage, Sam sometimes wondered how little he knew his wife.

On the twisty drive up the mountain, Sam's mind kept replaying Siegfried's parabolic fall, the diver's slow rotation, grotesquely armless and legless. A gray tincture of guilt invaded his mind. The words accessory to murder chilled him like a breath from a freezer.

Of course his complicity could never be proven. There were no witnesses, no prints left behind, no indiscreet recorded words. But he would still live with guilt, as with an unloved bed mate, for the rest of his life.

After the highway topped out at mile high Rusty Springs, the punishing climb was over. He arrived at last at Brown Bear dam, where the lake was a determined blue, like a forced smile.

Sam slowed through the village, then continued east, past the airport, to Brown Bear City. It was home. As he turned into his driveway he found that he had beat Lydia home. Inside, he poured a glass of wine, grateful for the moment alone.

Then he heard the clunk of her car door. Lydia appeared in the kitchen before he could empty his glass.

Already?

She did not like his drinking, Sam knew. She saw something compulsive in his liking for beer and wine. That one word, Already?, was his cue to a familiar skirmish. He would not accept it tonight, not after Siegfried.

He knew Lydia would ease off after he told her the news. Though she despised Siegfried as a buffoon, she sympathized with his ex-wife, Melanie.

Lydia perched on a barstool and lit a cigarette. She was quick to sense his moods. Sam suspected that she knew him far better than he understood her.

Well? What's new with Captain Hornblower?

Sam had told her that morning that he was driving down to visit his friend. She would expect a humdrum account of his day, but not the jolt he was about to give her.

He's dead. He jumped out the window.

Jumped? How could he jump without legs?

Sam explained.

You stood by and watched him do it?

He waited till I left.

Lydia drew deeply on her cigarette, as though inhaling her thoughts.

Probably for the best. Couldn't play that horn any more.

You mean, since he didn't run a lathe or pound nails...

Lydia cut him off. She had heard that defense of his friends before.

I wonder if Melanie knows yet.

She jumped from her barstool and ran to the TV. Sure enough, the Los Angeles news had a helicopter on the scene, circling above the parking lot palm trees, cameras trained upon a cluster of official vehicles, strobes flashing, crowding the emergency dock of the hospital. The newscaster withheld the name of the victim, pending notification of the next of kin.

Lydia muted the TV sound, reached for the wall phone and tapped out Melanie's number. Lydia always awoke from her habitual lethargy at the news of disaster. Fires, car accidents, plane crashes brought her alive. She became decisive and quick thinking. She would have made a good paramedic, Sam thought.

Lydia waited impatiently through a dozen rings. She's still at work, she concluded in disappointment.

Lydia liked passing on important news. She forgot to turn on her answering machine. Typical.

She'll find out soon enough.

Lydia lit another cigarette, clouding the room with smoke and speculation.

How do you think she'll take it?

Sam knew.

She won't like it. Not at all.

Why? Lydia countered. She's been a lot happier since the divorce.

She won't like it because her alimony stops.

Lydia expelled an angry puff.

The bastard.

She agreed to it. It was in the premarital agreement.

He's still a bastard.

Lydia turned her eyes, brown and hard as coffee beans, on Sam.

You're all bastards.

CHAPTER 2

Sylvan Slumbers, like many upscale Los Angeles institutions, offered valet parking to those attending their funeral services. Sam was looking for a self-park section. Gesticulating attendants and yellow tapes strung along both sides of the driveway cut off any avenues of escape. Several cars followed closely behind him, precluding a U-turn.

Lydia was amused at his exasperation.

Just go with the flow, Sam. It's easier for everyone.

Hate those cowboys driving my car.

Sam and Lydia had taken his sporty car today, the Bertone, which Sam cherished almost as much as his motorcycle. He considered Italian machinery far too delicate for the heavy footed American.

Admit it, Lydia chided, you just hate tipping.

That's true, too.

No sense swimming upstream today, he conceded inwardly. This was no time for screwing down scruples. Today was Siegfried's funeral, an event that had never seemed inevitable until after it happened.

Driving the Bertone had enlivened that otherwise tiresome stretch between Brown Bear and Santa Monica. The roadster was hardly an appropriate funeral vehicle. Still, their other car was a pickup, even less acceptable. So Lydia and Sam had compromised by leaving the top on, thus minimizing the fun and games image. At the same time, this saved Lydia's hairdo.

Sam pretended gracefully to surrender the driver's seat to an adolescent decked out in chauffeur's uniform. The kid gave the Bertone an approving glance.

Easy on the clutch, Sam said.

What's a clutch? the kid replied, with only a trace of insolence. He took off with a rubber squeak just audible enough to irk Sam.

Everybody's a comedian, groused Sam, pocketing his claim tab.

Especially your friend, Siegfried.

True, Sam acknowledged to himself, but always in a high spirited, good natured way. Never malicious, Siegfried had been a natural wit, inveterate punster, and keen observer. Already Sam felt the loss. If Siegfried came alive at his own funeral, he would make it enjoyable.

He never took anything serious, Lydia went on, as they entered the chapel, dark and dank with floral smells and humming with ominous music. How can you respect a clown?

Sam did not answer. He had long since abandoned any defense of the Gangreen Club, that high school inspiration of which only he and Woody were now the surviving members.

Sam was already scanning the mourners for Woody, whose last remembered image included a stodgy