Bloody River Blues

it was harder to quit if your goal was to reach zero.
    Fifty-eight, fifty-seven, fifty-six . . .
    If you did quit before you got to your goal, that was the worst. Something terrible would happen.
    Like, for instance, the Terror would get you.
    Forty-seven, forty-six, forty-five . . .
    Sweating.
    Pull, pull, pull.
    On thirty-three Wendy Weiser strolled into the room.
    “Hey, Donnie.”
    “Yo, Doctor.”
    “How you feeling today?”
    “Nifty.” Buffett kept a nifty smile on his face.
    Phantom pain, phantom smile. Fair enough, huh?
    She pulled up the chair in that way of hers and dropped into it, like she was sitting on her boyfriend’s lap. He thought of it as charming. He was not quite sure if that word fit or how someone can sit charmingly but that’s what he thought. He had been here two or three days now and he’d had five dreams about her already. Sometimes, when he was awake, he fantasized about her, he thought about the way she sat down, the way she kept her legs spread slightly when she sat, the way she slouched, which hid the shape of her breasts, the way her panty hose would rustle, the lab coat would fall . . . He did not let the fantasies get beyond that point.
    Dr. Weiser was the only thing that troubled him about killing himself. He hoped she wouldn’t be the one to find his body.
    “You want something to drink?”
    “Scotch. Glenfiddich. Aged twelve years. Neat.”
    Snappy Donnie, snappy jokes.
    “OJ?”
    “I’ll pass.”
    She opened his chart. “I see we’ve got you lined up for more tests over the next couple days. There still isn’t much to report. Spinal shock is slowly subsiding.”
    Weiser then did some poking and probing of her own and went through the same neuro exams that Gould had done a few days before. When he touched his nose she said, “Good,” the same way Gould had, and though he wished her version meant something more than his, it clearly didn’t. She made a notation on his chart, sat back, then lit a cigarette.
    “You cut yourself,” she said.
    He nodded, avoiding her eyes. He pushed a dangling handle of the jump rope out of the way.
    “I . . .” His words stopped.
    “I know how anxious you are to find out about your recovery,” she said kindly. “But until the shock subsides, all you can do is hurt yourself doing something like that. You could get a bad infection. Hospitals are filthy. They’re full of bacteria.”
    “Sepsis,” Donnie whispered desperately.
    “Sepsis.” She studied him for a moment then said, “You want to know about sex.”
    “I want to . . .” He nodded, then confessed, “I wanted to see if I could feel anything. Down there.”
    She told him it was too early to know much. But she agreed to tell him a few things. Weiser added, “I don’t have much time now. I’m going away for a couple days.”
    His heart choked. She was leaving him.
    The Terror at least was pleased at this news and pawed Buffett mercilessly as he sweated and clung to the gingham jump rope.
    “Where you going?” he asked, to take his mind off the Terror’s maul.
    “I have a place at Lake of the Ozarks.”
    “You married?”
    “I’m divorced.”
    He remembered she had mentioned that.
    Weiser added, “I have a boyfriend.”
    “I go down there some. Horses. A lot of horses, I remember . . . And trees.” A vague memory came to him, then vanished.
    “Unfortunately, Donnie, there are no short answers to the sexual aspects of SCI.”
    “ ‘Aspect’ . . . You doctors use funny words.” For an instant his facade cracked. She paused as she noticed the blip of anger in his face. His smile returned.
    “You worry about it a lot?”
    “What the hell else is there to do?” He grinned. “I stare at Vanna White’s tits all day long.”
    Weiser laughed. “We know from the location and nature of the trauma that you won’t be able to walk again, Donnie. At least not with the state of the technology now. But sexual dysfunction is still an open question in this stage of your recovery.”
    Dis function, dat function . . .
    Buffett was hugely disappointed in her. She was bullshitting him. Partnership? A good team? Crap.
    “Even in the worst case there’s a lot we can do.”
    As she talked his thoughts wandered. Down at her summer place, how often would she fuck her boy-friend? Would she tell him about Buffett? Would she lie underneath him and whisper to him that she had spent the morning talking about pricks and come to a eunuch? Would