Although Blest liked her, he didn´t really know what she actually thought of him. Occassionaly, while he was in bed getting treated, she would approach and delicately feel his ankles with her fingers. The contact sent a sort of electric wave across his body to his mind. He realised then with some apprehension that the gentle pressure she applied to his ankles was the only touch he had received in years from a woman´s hand. He wondered, in a state of vague confusion, if she felt anything beyond clinical curiosity when she touched him. Was she aware of the emotions he went through, as an ill person prostrated on a hospital bed, as she smoothly checked the lower part of his extremities for possible edemas?. He knew he was strong enough to be able to make love to her, but she probably wasn´t aware of that. She probably assumed he was useless. Her interest in him was of a humiliating sort: she didn´t have the time to regard him as an equal, as a person like herself, but only as a suffering victim whom it was her job to help.
"Your ankles aren´t swollen" she always said" but your skin is really dry. You should rub some Nivea cream on it occassionally"
Her main concern was to psychologically prepare him for an eventual transplant but she understood that, secretely, he wasn´t keen on the idea of getting a new organ. He was afraid of a possible mistake during the operation, of his body rejecting the graft and having to return to dialysis, twice as sick as before, and terrified of having to take drugs to supress his immune system for the rest of his life. In a very profound way, he felt that his immune system had always been excellent. He never really caught colds or other infections. And if he cut himself, he would stop bleeding fairly quickly. That they should annul his defenses in order to force his body to accept a new kidney, that that twisted form of quid pro quo, was at all neccesary if he wanted a chance at survival, seemed to reveal a sadistic streak in the fibre of life itself. It was maddening. And he wasn´t sure that it wasn´t better to accept death than to go through what he saw as a sad and bloody pantomime just to get a chance at a few extra lousy years in a world that had greatly lost its charm for him.
But then there was his child, his little boy whom he saw in dreams every night, and in reveries by day. The hope of being with him again eventually, unlikely as that seemed, prevented him from totally giving up on himself.
" I want to make sure you go into the operating room and free yourself from the machine" said Eve Lawe, looking at his head resting on the pillow as if she were a powerful, beautiful alien speaking to him from above, from a spaceship. And he thought,"I am not a poor sick child, you know? I could make love to you right here and now. It´s probably what I really need."
But she just felt sorry for him. And he said nothing.
Ifram Blest, spectrally thin, wrapped in his long dark coat, walked along the street toward the Red Cross building. Some of the patients recognized him and languidly waved at him. The snow fell in light flakes and it was cold. When Eve Lawe saw him, she went to meet him. She had a look between worried and perplexed.
"It´s not your turn, Ifram" she said "why are you here?"
"I couldn´t sleep, doctor. Just going for a walk"
"They have been calling about you. They want to talk to you." she told him "
" I thought so. Well, they know where to find me. I can´t very well get too far from the machine, can I?"
" We are putting a lot of effort and money to keep people like you alive. You owe it to the state to respect the protocol" She said.
" I haven´t broken the protocol. I just typed a meaningless question on my computer"
"There are names which we are trying to eradicate from memory. They simply inspire discord. Jack Kerouac is one."
"I don´t really give a shit about Jack Kerouac, doctor."
"You tell them that. When you see them. Which you will"
"I don´t care if they unplug me, doctor. It´s all a lie and I´m tired. Even that I am alive is a lie. Not really. I am only half here"
Her eyes were brown, with perhaps the vaguest tinge of green.
"Ifram, your typing that question on your PC is one thing. But they have other reasons for wanting to see you. They have been looking at your case for a while. They know about your visions"
" Why were they told about that?"
"It´s all in the medical records. Of course everything is specified there. And they have found similarities between the descriptions you gave us of what you saw, or dreamed, during dialysis, and the crimes..."
Every one had disappeared into the bulding and the ambulances were
leaving. The street was empty. Eve Lawe began to walk toward the entrance. It was the beginning of the night shift.
Ifram Blest would walk around all night long and go back to sleep at daybreak. The sky at times seemed filled with spiraling simbols of fire, but it was only the Flyers. There were no messages from any god.