'The Phoenicians,' Part 2: The sweatmare continues...
Conclusion of a satirical look at the hell that is Phoenix summer
Part 1 of “The Phoenicians” left off with the narrator checking into a hospital, looking for relief from the diabolical villain that is summer in Phoenix. And now, as the actual summer here lingers like a bad houseguest, the chilling (if not thrilling) conclusion:
It was crowded, and a man with two stumps for hands wrapped in bloody bandages came over and asked in a rather demanding sort of way if he could have my seat. He went into some horrible story about how his car had been out in the sun all afternoon, he’d been drinking and without thinking turned the car on and gripped the steering wheel to drive away, but his hands instantly fused to the steering wheel. I didn’t believe a word he said, and even if his story was true, what an idiot! But I didn’t feel like arguing with him, after all he had two bloody stumps and there was absolutely nothing wrong with me, and I could sense the whole room staring at me, so I reluctantly got to my feet. “OK,” I said, then lied in a whinging sort of tone, “but my doctor said I have pretty bad heat exhaustion . . .”
“Who doesn’t?” cackled a beautiful young woman with a hatchet sticking out of her skull a couple of seats down. “Do you think I tried to chop my head off for laughs?” I whispered an apology and, coming closer, asked if I could pull the axe out of her head for her. “Oh I bet you’d love that you perv,” she hissed, snapping her head away from me and spraying me with hot blood. A mixture of rage and disgust came over me, as I was wearing a white shirt and Little Miss Hatchet Head had completely ruined it! I shot her a severe look and hoped that she would stay like that for the rest of her life, and have to marry a lumberjack; and that her children would be born with little cleavers stuck in their heads, and that she would always regret that a sweaty knight had volunteered to service her, but that she rejected my Arthurian advance and therefore was doomed to having a sword forever plunged in her stonehead!
Almost instantly, I regretted my thoughts, and was on the verge of apologizing for them when I realized they were just that, thoughts, and that she hadn’t heard them. In any case, she was flirting with a striking male nurse, so I decided on a private prayer of penance. No sooner had I closed my eyes than my nostrils were filled with an exotic scent, soothing yet scintillating. “Sir, what are you doing?” I heard a buttery smooth voice whisper in my right ear.
I opened my eyes and saw it was the male nurse, who looked like a shorter, darker version of Errol Flynn. He even had the pencil-thin mustache, which looks ridiculous on most people, including me. “I’m sorry . . .,” I apologized, out of habit. “You weren’t praying, were you?” he said, with just a touch of a leer, if not an outright taunt. “Uhhhh, no,” I lied, again out of habit; and prayed a quick apology to God for denying Him (again). “Because we’re a secular hospital, we don’t allow prayer due to funding and so forth,” the nurse said, shooting me a wink that suggested he was making the whole thing up, possibly even the part about being a nurse. “So what brings you here, handsome?” he said, and I instantly recognized two things: 1) that my reluctant Guinevere was shooting me looks as sharp as her hatchet; and 2) that the nurse was a pathological liar and/or hustler, as I am far from handsome, especially in severe, unforgiving hospital lighting. Even so, I blushed.
“To be honest,” I started, but then felt a little weak in the knees and interrupted myself. “Can I ask you: What’s that amazing smell?” I asked, looking around and sniffing slightly. “Do you mean my cologne?” the swash-buckling nurse said, with a chuckle that put me at ease, somehow. “It’s called Jesus Scent. A little frankincense, a little myrrh . . .”
For some reason, this gave me the confidence to say in a normal tone and volume of voice that I wasn’t sick in the least, that I was free-loading in the ER for the AC. “Hmmm,” he said, looking around with feigned (I would later deduce) worry. “Is that bad?” I said, already leaning toward the door.
Suddenly, the worried look left his face, and he casually tossed his left arm around my shoulder and in a graceful movement, softly but firmly pulled my right ear to his lips. “Want an ice bath?” he whispered.
I shivered, I really did, partly at what he was suggesting, and partly at what he may have been suggesting.
“No,” I said firmly.
“Because I may or may not be ….?” he asked, in a way that suggested he would slap a defamation law suit — or hate crime accusation — on me, if one syllable of my answer landed wrong.
“No, because you’re a pathological liar,” I snapped, surprising myself at my cool, Sherlock Holmes delivery; it actually lowered my body temperature. “And, quite possibly, a serial killer.”
“You can’t prove that,” he said, matter-of-factly, which disappointed me, as I would have preferred a Moriatian response. “And since when does a series of accidental deaths make a dedicated health professional a ‘serial killer’?”
At just that moment six people engulfed in flames came screaming (literally) into the ER, and Nurse Flynn had to get to work. “Great, more spontaneous combustions - just what I need,” he said, rolling his eyes. Before dashing off, he leered at me, with a finger to his lips; what was I to keep quiet about?
I decided this hospital was no place for me, and with a last look at Little Miss Hatchet Head, who pretended not to give me a jealous look, I went through the still-smoking doors and plunged into the heat, gasping for breath at the first step. Somehow, I made it home, though a lot of good that did me . . .
Ironically enough, within two weeks I was back in that same hospital, this time in desperate need of medical attention. A kindly, older doctor with a raspy cough looked me over as I lay shirtless on my front. The doctor gave a sad, clucking of his tongue. “I haven’t seen this since the Great Heat Wave of Nineteen Seventy-Five,” he said, and I felt both doomed and flattered. “What is it?” I asked, before I could stop myself. “It’s . . . hmmm, the name’s on the tip of my tongue,” he said. “But anyway, whatever it’s called, it boils down to you’ve had too much moisture on your back.”
“I’ve been sweating!” I whined.
“Of course you have, of course you have – we all have,” the good doctor said, soothingly, even patting my back, in a symbolic fashion (not daring to actually pat my repulsive flesh). “But what’s happened is your back hasn’t dried off in who knows how long, so basically it has created its own environment, or culture, if you will. There’s all sorts of micro-organisms living in there, under the magnifier I’m seeing some really beautiful molds that look like sunflowers, I even see a school of tiny shrimp . . . Are you feverish, by the way?”
“No,” I answered. “I don’t think – I mean, I’m hot.” And I passed out.
I was in a sort of heat coma for several weeks. When I came to, I was almost recovered. The good doctor had died of natural causes, but he had diagnosed me well and left instructions on my treatment in his meticulous will. In my last days of healing, I dared to ask one of the nurses about the Errol Flynn type. She shook her head firmly, and definitively said, “We’re not allowed to talk about him.” I didn’t really care, one way or another, I was just passing the time.
The truth is, I was afraid to be released back into Dantetown; I faked a cough and a sniffle, swore I could feel my fever on the verge of returning, hinted that I felt things squirming around on my back. But they had seen and heard it all, these Phoenix medicos, and without sympathy or scorn they wrote up my release papers, stuffed the bill in my pocket and showed me the door.
I braced myself, hesitated as the motion-detector doors slid open, and finally stepped out into that feared outdoors . .. But you know what? It wasn’t so bad. The sun was bright as ever, but it was barely 95 degrees.
It was October. My fever had broken, and so had summer.