The Bends Again!

Senior projects have begun in earnest! That means I've got to get cracking on finishing my story about this guy who gets the bends and writing two others, all in the month of May! So of course you want to see what I've got so far for this story -- right? Please please read and comment!

On a sparkling day in the Carribbean ten years ago, Ed Bradley, diving in an unfamiliar reef, rose to the surface too fast. Within an hour, the severe joint pain and mental discombobulation of the thirty-year-old told the diving instructor that Ed had decompression sickness, the bends. Ed was rushed to a hospital in the back of pick-up truck and sat in the ER waiting room in a stupor. The damage to his central nervous system was irreversible.
“See, nitrogen bubbles form in the blood, on account – on account of the pressure,” Ed says to his sister now, perched earnestly on the edge of the fine cream-colored sofa. Ed is slouched back in his massive armchair as if asleep. He likes this chair because it makes him look as if he is slouching on purpose. “The bubbles block blood flow to the brain.”
His sister sighs and leans back, gazing around at the dark study. “I know, Ed. You told me.” She straightens suddenly. “Ed? Are you listening to me?”
Ed’s eyes are wandering over the bookshelves. “They’re – dusty. Covered in dust. I should have a maid in, Suzy.” He concentrates on moving his heavy hand across the table toward his cup of tea, picking it up, and bringing it to his lips without spilling. All of himself has to be focused on this one task to make it work, and he has almost forgotten Suzy is there until she pulls the cup away from him and presses his hands in hers. “Ed? Please look at me, Ed. You’re getting worse.”
Suzy is his elder by four years, a slim matronly woman in a gray dress with her thick brown hair tied severely back in a bun. She belongs in a Victorian novel, a quaint little woman who purses her lips often. He suddenly has an image of her as a little girl with her hands on her hips, ordering him to play tea party with her. Ed smiles at the memory, but the now Suzy is shaking his shoulders. “Ed? What are you smiling at? Won’t you please listen to me?”
Ed slowly brings her face into focus. “Yes. Right.” He struggles to straighten in the chair.
“This is just the sort of thing I’m talking about,” she went on, shaking her head. “Those are the same clothes you were wearing when I saw you two days ago. Your whole den is coated in dust.”
“Can’t seem to read much anymore,” Ed says quietly, shaking his head as if he just can’t figure it out. “Can’t focus on more than a few lines before-“
“Before you start wandering, I know.” Suzy sits back and folds her arms over her chest. “That’s why I’ve decided to move in with you.”
That makes him jerk up his head. “What?”
“You can’t be expected to take care of this enormous house all alone, as well as take care of yourself.”
“I’m fine! I’m doing fine here – always have been. I don’t need your-“
“I know you want to be the macho man, Ed, but we both know that things have changed,” Suzy insists. “Your memory slips all the time, your mind wanders all the time. You need a cane to get around – it’s for the best and I won’t hear anymore about it. I’ve already got most of my things packed and I’m going to start moving in on Friday.” Now that the hurdle has been cleared, she sips at her tea.
Ed feels slow roiling anger churning in his stomach, but he has to wait until it rolls up to his lips. “You can’t come in here and expect me to be babied like some senile old codger! I’m a young man – a young man-“ He breaks off, his fists clenching and unclenching. “I’ve been managing these past ten years and I won’t let you start pitying me now!”
“I don’t pity you, Ed. Lord knows I know you just can’t stand pity. But the fact of the matter is that you need help.”
Ed sees Suzy suddenly at the beach on the Cape where they spent most of their childhood summers, standing while the thin wind whipped her dress around her legs. Her freckled face has the bright, open shininess of children who don’t know they are happy. “And what about Thomas, what does he think about this whole thing?”
Then the face falls, and lines snake out from the mouth and the corners of the eyes, and she is old again, the now Suzy. “God, Ed…Thomas died a year and a half ago. Don’t you even remember?”
“Of course I remember!” Ed scoffs, and thankfully it comes to him: a car accident – brief images of the funeral flick across his eyes. “Of course, I was just – just speaking metaphorically.”
Suzy lets her teacup clatter to the table. “Right, Ed. Right. So is this settled?”
“What?”
“That I’m moving in, Ed!”
“Right, right, of course.”
“Good.” Suzy stands abruptly, sidles around the coffee table and clasps Ed’s hands in her own. “This will be good for both of us, you’ll see. I’ll be back Friday – that’s three days from now, okay?”
“Right, right, of course.”
She pats him on the head as she leaves, and Ed feels his face burning. He takes up his teacup carefully, studying it, then hurls it to the floor so that it shatters on the rich Oriental rug. I am old before my time. What a bitter life this is.

Ed ordered a coffee in the sunny cabbana bar of the hotel, but when it arrived, the steaming cup deterred him; he pushed it away with one hand and asked for a whiskey and soda. He thought the unsmiling, mocha-skinned bartender shook his head at him; it was eleven in the morning, after all, and the couples in the boothes around Ed were all eating breakfast. But the drink arrived in silence. Ed leaned back on his stool so he could see the door; no sign of Jake or his girl yet. He had heard them giggling in the next room at two A.M. Her name was Helen and she had fantastic, luscious thighs. Jake said she was a receptionist on the twentieth floor of their building, and they weren't really dating per say, just "enjoying the ride" (he had said this with a sheepish laugh, his thin lips pressed against his small pearly teeth in a self-conscious attempt to seem casual and accustomed to this sort of thing.)
Ed slicked back his shining sable hair with one hand and downed the whiskey with the other. He liked the burning feeling all the way down his throat, countering the sweaty sluggishness of his body in this heat. "I thought it wasn't supposed to be so humid in this place," he said loudly to the bartender.
The man turned slowly and passed his beetle-black eyes up and down Ed blankly before answering with a heavy Spanish accent. "Storm coming soon. That's why air so heavy."
Ed leaned back in his chair again; Jake and Helen were coming into the dining room. He noted the distance between them as they walked; perhaps there was some room for maneuvering, after all. Helen was wearing a green, open-collar polo shirt that offset her strawberry blond hair piled about her shoulders.
"Sleep well?" he asked brightly, and pushed the whiskey glass behind him.
They exchanged a look and both nodded. "What are you doing today, Ed?" Jake asked, and ordered two black coffees. Helen sat down and contemplated her mug of coffee as if reading tea leaves. She had one of those serious, thoughtful faces, as if she knew the meaning of the universe but wasn't talking.
"I'd love to see the island a little more," said Helen, and looked up into Ed's face. Her long-lashed eyes were brimming with secrets. Ed could feel the tendons in his arms and legs tingling. "I was thinking we could go diving," he said. "I've been before. It's magnificent." He spread his arms grandly as he spoke.
"I don't know, Ed-" Jake's face was pale and blotchy with the oppressive heat. "Neither of us has done it before, and I hear it's pretty technical-"
Ed waved his hand impatiently. "It only took me twenty minutes to learn last time. The hotel has a service, so it's right here. Besides-" and he winked at Helen -- "You look like a drowned rat in this heat. We'll all be nice and cool."
Helen snorted behind her hand. Rouge bloomed in Jake's cheeks for a moment, then he ducked his head and muttered, "All right."
Ed swung his arms around the two. "Wonderful! You'll love it." He sighed luxuriously and squeezed their shoulders like comrades, his meaty palm engulfing Helen's thin frame. "Just wait -- I'm going to make sure you never forget this vacation."


On Friday, Ed shuffles into the den after his coffee and finds Suzy vacuuming. She is singing some forceful show tune, shoving the vaccuum back and forth against the nap of the carpet. "I can't move my things in until this place has a basic level of cleanliness," she explains over the roar.
Ed is going to stumble back out, but she turns the vaccuum off and puts it in the corner. "Finished in this room, I won't bother you," she says, and retrieves a duster instead. That's fine with Ed; he sags into his chair and takes the first of a pile of magazines off the coffee table. He likes magazines because their articles are short and exaggerated, easy to hold his attention on, filling up the dismal space with bright pictures and sound bytes. This one is a Forbes and he is snuggling down comfortably into a financial fog that will have him until lunch when Suzy makes a sudden surprised sound: "Oh!"
Ed raises his head. Suzy, a dust rag in one hand, is holding a strange knick-knack she has found between books on the shelf. It is a crude elephant, made of paper mache in lavish rainbow color. "Why do you still have this?" she says, and her voice is thin, softer than he has heard it in years.
Ed closes the magazine on his thumb and looks up at her. That little elephant -- what was it? With his memory fogged he has to rely on cues from other people's reactions to things, and she is staring so fixedly at it that he knows it is something important.
Her face changes, then, and she puts the thing back on the shelf. "You never throw anything away, Ed -- you can't remember what's important and what's not."
"Now that's not fair," Ed protests, feeling the hurt in her voice, but she is already bustling on to the next bookshelf, her hips waggling. "How about this?" she asks suddenly, and tosses a book to the floor with a dull thud.
Ed picks it up. THE NEW DEAL OF MARKETING: HOW TO GET TOUGH, GET HEARD, AND GET RESULTS, he read in imposing yellow. He turned it over and stared at a full page photograph of himself. He was reclinging easily in a deep leather chair, his broad shoulders and tree-trunk arms filling the tight business suit. His large, smooth face shone with an exuberance that always made pictures of himself seem three-dimensional.
He tossed it to the coffee table with a snort. "Of course I -- remember this. It's what -- supports -- me," he said finally.
Suzy turned to him, and it seemed to Ed that bitterness was etched into the steely lines coursing through her face.
Of course you remember it. You never forget your accomplishments, Ed."


While the others changed into their bathing suits, Ed headed out to the beach. The day pormised a sticky, clinging heat, and young men and women, greasy with sunburn cream, already layered the white sands.
Ed suddenly swelled his chest with air and ran for the water like a child let out of school on summer vacation. He splashed out until he was out deep enough to swim and then leaped into a strong crawl, his arms swinging like windmills, legs pummeling the water. A girl in a bikini was swimming alongside him and he slowed slightly so that he would stay beside her, waggling his eyebrows playfully at her. She snorted in disgust and turned back. Ed chased her, doing his best butterfly, knowing he was showing off and not caring. The girl's retreating back in front of him only made him leap higher and swim faster, splashing and churning the crystaline water ferociously. He felt like a ten-year-old again, chasing his sister at the beach so he could splash her. There was some deep, inherent satisfaction he found in the game of chase and retreat, perhaps because it was a game he had always been able to win.
The shallows abruptly scraped at his knees; he stood up and watched the girl hurry away among the dunes. Then he focused on the person standing before him: it was Helen. {insert description of Anne from notebook}.
Ed slicked his wet hair back and smiled ingratiatingly. "Where's Jake?"
Helen looked over her shoulder at the retreating girl, then at Ed again; her eyes were weary, like a knowing mother's. "He decided not to come. There was no need to taunt him the way you did."
"Not coming? Oh well, we can manage!" Ed made as if to throw his arm around Helen again, but she sidestepped just out of reach. "He can handle a little ribbing," Ed said easily. "Men aren't nearly as sensitive as women, Helen."
She sighed. "Maybe that's what men want to think, Ed." She shaded her eyes with one hand and scanned the beach. "So where do we go?"
"The pier, right there." Ed pointed at the dock at the far end of the beach, where a few speedboats were docked. "Come on, let's swim there!"
"I'm wearing shorts, I can't just leave them here on the beach," Helen replied.
Ed splashed the water with his ankles. "Come on, it'll be fun!" Ed never thought he looked more impressive than when he was swimming, his whole body rolling sinuously with the waves, powerful arms and legs kicking, his ruddy roman face up and forward in the sun...
Helen smiled, but shook her head. "Swim if you like. I'll meet you there." And she began walking along the tide line, placing her small brown feet precisely on the line between the dark and light sand, her head up in the wind as if she were the figurehead for a ship.
Ed turned and jumped back into the water, but he did not swim out far; instead he tread water in the shallows barely deep enough to swim in, staying alongside. He tried his backstroke, then his butterfly, sneaking glances at her all the while, but she never once looked at him. Ed could feel a trembling excitement growing and filling the space in his chest. She was different, she was a challenge -- with Jake gone, the sun high and bright on his face, the water rolling over his body, he felt as though everything in the world was inviting him to have her.


It is lunchtime; he knows because he has finished two Forbes, and it is always time for lunch once he has finished two Forbes. Ed stands up and shuffles down the lofty, dark hall to the kitchen, opening the aquamarine refridgerator. There are a few beer bottles, a carton of orange juice from a few weeks ago, and some salami. Does he have any bread for a salami sandwich? He can't remember, of course.
Suzy suddenly bustles into the kitchen with a mop. "What are you doing here?" she asks, as if it is her house and he only a neighbor dropping in for an unexpected visit.
"Getting my lunch. Is that all right with you?" Ed grumbles.
She looks at her watch. "It's eleven-thirty. No one in their right mind eats lunch before noon. Go back to the den and read another magazine; I'll have something ready for you in a bit."
"Now I'm not allowed to eat when I want to?" Ed slams the refridgerator shut. He wants to be angry at her, but some part of his mind he no longer can control is still thinking of the paper mache elephant, trying to place it. What is the significance of the darn thing? Obviously it means a lot to her --
Suzy glares at him, then leans the mop against the counter with exaggerated care. "Fine. I brought lunch; I knew you wouldn't think to actually have any food here." She stalks to the pantry and brings out a paper bag. Ed watches in silence as she pulls out ham sandwiches, tea bags, and three rolls of toilet paper. "There wasn't any the last time I was here," she says defiantly. "Do you wonder why I moved in now, Ed?"
He takes a sandwich, puts it on a plate, and shuffles for the door. "Don't -- expect -- me -- to eat -- with you."
He eats in his chair in the den, and Suzy does not bother him. He can feel a slow growing ache in his stomach; for a long silent while he thinks it is just one of the many aches and pains he has these days, but gradually he realizes the pain is not physical. It is the same way he had felt when he discovered the permanence of his condition, the rending despair that had torn at him for the first year. Then, gradually, his days' routine became adamentine, and the pain lessened. There was safety in repetition. If he read exactly two Forbes in the morning, he would remember when lunchtime was. If he kept his clothes in the same order in his closet and wore them in the same circulation, he would remember what to wear. Except for that darn paper mache thing -- Suzy has succeeded in challenging the routine. If he becomes desperate, he could look in his box. There might be something in the box to help him.
Alarm slowly seeps into his body. Suzy has been cleaning all morning -- perhaps she has found it! She can poke and prod all over the house if she likes, but not in the box. He tilts his head back and shouts, "Have -- you -- cleaned -- my bedroom?"
"Not yet," Suzy cries from the kitchen. "I'll get to it before you have to sleep in that filthy place one more night."
He breathes out slowly -- it's all right then. He has to move the box somewhere safe, someplace she won't look...
But his attention is distracted; his wandering gaze has suddenly encountered his own eyes, leering confidently up at him from the back of his book. Ed reaches across the coffee table and picks it up, fascinated. He looks almost -- yes, almost godlike, he thinks. Untouchable.

There was a lean young man hunched over the motorboat, smoking a cigarette. His smooth, uninterested face was as dark as a night without stars, and the palms of his hands pale in comparison. Ed nodded to him and slapped the side of the boat. "We'd like to go scuba-diving today."
The man flicked his cigarette into the murky water surrouding the dock, then moved unhurriedly toward a clipboard on the roof over the steering wheel. "You with the hotel?"
They nodded.
"Room number and name?"
"You can charge it to my room, 306," Ed said gallantly. He expected Helen to protest and wanted her to so that he could refuse her; but she just smiled, folding her arms on her chest. "Thank you, Ed, that's generous of you."
He just shrugged; the gesture was lost. "I've already been scuba diving several times, but the lady is a-" he almost said virgin --"newcomer to the sport."
"Fine." The man handed Ed a clipboard. "All divers must sign that they are aware of the risks."
"Of course, of course." Ed signed his name with a flourish, handed the clipboard to Helen. "What exactly are the risks?" she asked.
The driver ticked them off on his fingers, the cigarette jerking up and down in his mouth as he spoke. "Burst capillaries, decompression sickness, poisonous stings from sting rays or jellyfish, death." He shrugged.
"Right. Just the usual, then." Helen smiled and signed. The man took the clipboard and slithered in to the tiny room below deck; when he emerged again, he was carrying two scuba diving suits. "Put dese on. When we get to de reef I will give you a lesson." He went into the little bridge area and gunned the motor by turning a key. There was a great sputtering, and the water churned white all around them, then the man pushed a button and the sputtering deepened into a growling roar. The aimless drifting of the boat suddenly gained purpose and they roared smoothly forward, chopping their way through the gentle waves. The salty air tore at Ed and Helen's faces, still warm as bathwater but powerful as a wave, as they struggled into the taut rubbery suits. The smooth, creamy white shore of the beach was retreating rapidly behind them; Ed turned forward and watched the water whipping underneath the bow, the crystalline blue expanse widenening all around him until it filled the entire sphere of his vision. "Feels great, doesn't it?" he shouted to Helen. "Wait'll we get to the reef, it'll knock your eye out."
Helen had her head down, running one hand through the water. "Look!" she gasped suddenly, and pointed out into the glassy blue expanse: there were small darting shapes leaping out of the water and gliding on air before dropping down again. "Flying fish!" They were silver arrows, leaping above each wave the motorboat made.
"They're beautiful!" Ed exclaimed, and sidled next to Helen on the bench. But their taciturn driver spat over the side. "They are running away from dolphins. The dolphins eat them." He let go of the wheel with one hand, scratching his head up underneath the baseball cap. "They jump up onto boats all the time. Every morning I have to throw the bodies out of this boat."
Helen shuddered. Ed rubbed his hands together briskly. "What happens, happens," he said lamely. "Just look at that sky! Not a cloud in it. You can't see a sky like that back in New York."
"Storm coming," the driver muttered.
Ed glared at him. "Wait till you see the reef, Helen."

© Blair Hurley. All rights reserved.

Comments

[Jay]

I think it was great. A real good read. I hope i get the chance to read the whole book