"Blackout: A Look Inside Wernickes" Sample Part Two

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III

August, 1997

I was promoted, and the promotion involved moving to one of the far suburbs of Chicago. It was a big change, and my wife and I were excited. The move went smoothly. We found a four-bedroom house in a subdivision about twenty miles from my office. Sarah found a job right away, teaching in a school district West of us—which meant she didn’t have to brave Chicago traffic on her way to and from school. I had an administrative assistant, and a staff of five professionals to supervise. The house in Michigan sold for what we paid for it and I my former boss back there closed on it for us with power of attorney.

It seemed like life was good. Looking back on it now, I can see I wasn’t very happy. I didn’t enjoy the job as much as I thought I would, but I didn’t admit that to myself. I was swathed in a couple of layers of denial: I didn’t want to admit my drinking was getting out of control, and I didn’t want to admit I was losing my love of my chosen profession. The timing of the move was good. A couple of days after I started the new job, the first national convention of all BSA professionals started. It was a good chance to get to know my old team while spending some time with my old friends.

….Those things were the farthest things from my mind when we boarded the plane at O’Hare to head to Nashville.

It was a convention of Boy Scout professionals, held at the Opryland Hotel. If you’ve never been there, you go see it. It’s a glorious hotel. It’s huge. It’s enclosed in a dome. There are plants and trees, and a river, and a boat, and stores, restaurants, bars, and more. We were going to be there for five days and had no plans to leave the hotel. It’s that big—you can have an entire vacation without knowing you never set foot outside.

I was impressed with the place, and we were having a great time. It had only been three weeks since we moved. I enjoyed my team, the team of professional Scouters I’d joined, and I missed the team I had just left. I was sharing a room with my former supervisor, but he was more than a supervisor. He was, and is, an excellent friend of mine.

He brought me a copy of a newspaper story that ran when I left Midland. Midland isn’t a big city—it has a population of under 40,000. Great town. I loved the time we spent there. It’s a Scouting town. One out of three boys of Boy Scout and Cub Scout age were members of the Boy Scouts of America, and I had the privilege of being their executive for seven great years. I read the article several times and looked at the picture—amazed that a newspaper would print a 1/4 page article about me.

The council I was serving had a suite for the night. It was on one of the highest floors of the hotel. Huge windows overlooked the miniature world that is the Opryland Hotel. I drank a lot that night. We all did. People came and went throughout the night and those of us hosting the party made sure they all had a good time. The party was showing signs of winding down at about one AM and the boss’s wife let me know she wanted me to clear the room out.

I cleared my throat and said, “It’s late and we all have a meeting tomorrow. I expect to see everyone at breakfast!” There were some good-natured boos and some ribbing back and forth. I remember that clearly. I meant what I said….

The next thing I knew, I opened my eyes in the hotel room. Someone was shaking me. It was Steve. He pulled back and shouted, “It’s two o’clock. I thought you were up.”

“Up?” I shook my head to clear it, but it didn’t work very well. I looked around.

The balcony doors were open on the interior of the dome. I could see bright light, sunlight from the skylights, and green plants out the balcony. I rolled over and looked at the alarm clock on the nightstand. It was two o’clock in the afternoon!

So much for beating them all to breakfast. So much for the opening session. So much for….

“You must’ve gone back to bed.”

“I wasn’t up.”

He grinned at me and tossed some stuff on his bed. I glanced at the stuff. It was a pile of the usual conference stuff: brochures, give-away pens, notebooks, etc. Stuff I should have been gathering between sessions. “You didn’t miss much. Your staff was looking for you.” He started to head back out. “Oh yeah…. You won a trip to Branson, air fare included. Weekend stay, or something like that. One of your team members claimed the prize.”

“Where the hell is Branson?”

“Missouri. Second country music capitol of the world.”

“Damn,” I muttered. “Punishing me already, aren’t they?” I’d rather have an unexplained rash than listen to country music. The joke was wasted. He was already gone.

I didn’t feel well. My head felt funny, and not just with a hangover. I felt like I could have rolled over and gone to sleep for a couple of days. I jumped out of bed and started to pull clothes on. Guilt and worry hit me when I was in the shower. I was sure I was in trouble, and thought I deserved it. My new boss wouldn’t be happy about me missing the first couple of sessions, and getting drunk and sleeping most of the day was far from the kind of example I wanted to set.

I had to live with the worry for a couple of hours. By the time I ran into my boss, I felt pretty normal. Guilty, but normal. He was on his way up a set of marble stairs leading to one of the big ballrooms used for a general session. He grinned when he saw me.

Before he could start yelling, I stopped him. “I overslept,” I said, “….by a lot. I’m sorry.”

He grinned, and waved to a couple of people standing at the top of the stairs, looking over the waterfall and river on the other side of the stairwell. “You’ve been through a lot in the last few days: moving, unpacking, getting used to the office.” He slapped me on the back as he went by. “See you at dinner.”

IV

January, 2001

In most fiction, there is a scene in which the protagonist could avoid the trouble that makes the story. This isn’t fiction, but it is that moment….

I had just come back from lunch and was hanging my coat up on the back of my office door when the boss’s administrative assistant stuck her head around the door.

“He’d like to see you when you get a chance.”

She vanished before I said anything. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I was in a pretty good mood. There was no reason I shouldn’t have been in a good mood. We were at the start of a new year after a successful year of membership gains, goal accomplishment, and fund raising. I felt good, too good, after a couple of beers and as many bites of a hamburger for lunch.

I walked around the corner to his office and was surprised to see him sitting at the table by the windows. He was a big guy: broad shoulders, round face—the kind of face that could make a grin contagious—and expressive eyes. He wasn’t smiling. There was a manila folder in front of him on the table. It was a thin folder without much in it.

“Take a seat,” he said with neither smile nor preamble. “Close the door first.”

I don’t remember the exact details of the conversation, but I remember it felt surreal.

“Have you ever heard of the E.A.P?” he asked.

I said I hadn’t, but he clarified for me. It was in the employee handbook—the one I just helped revise. I had no excuse for not remembering it.

“It stands for ‘Employee Assistance Program’. You have a drinking problem. I hear things….”

I didn’t say a word. My mouth was dry, and my heart was beating too fast. Excuses piled up behind my teeth, but I didn’t bother to utter them.

He pulled a card from the file and slid it over the table to me. “This is the number for the referral program. It’s an eight hundred number, and they answer it twenty-four hours a day. You’re going to call that number, and you’re going to do what they tell you to do. If you don’t call that number in twenty-four hours, I have to fire you.” He leaned forward, locking his eyes on mine. “I don’t want to fire you. You’re too valuable to this organization. If you weren’t valuable, I would have already fired you. Call that number, Dave.”

“I’ll call.”

I called that night. Hands shaking, ashamedly buzzed from a couple of beers to help me gather the nerve (a moronic move, an addict’s move), I dialed the phone hoping it wouldn’t be answered. It was answered. A very understanding person informed me they were expecting my call. She told me it was an employer referral. I asked what that meant. It meant, she explained, that my employer was sending me through the Employee Assistance Program and that in order to participate, I would be required to sign a waiver that would allow them to share information with my employer about my participation and progress in the program.

I stared at the phone for a long time after I hung it up. I drank a few more beers before my wife got home, knowing I would have to tell her about the phone call I just made. By the time she got home, I managed to convince myself it was all some sort of mistake. I wasn’t an alcoholic. I was just a guy who liked beer. Liked it a lot, to be sure….but I just liked it. She would laugh and tell me to go through the program.

She didn’t laugh. She thought it was a good idea. It was, of course. I know it now, you knew it when you started reading this, but I didn’t want to know it then.

I went through the program. Nine weeks of alcohol education, mostly attended by people who had DUI’s on their records and were required to attend the class before they could start the process to get their driver’s licenses back. I stayed mostly sober through the nine weeks. When it was over, I went back to drinking. I drank at a slower pace, but I kept drinking.

V

Thoughts before we get to the important stuff

I started drinking beer again after I got through the program. That doesn’t mean the program wasn’t good, and that I didn’t get any help from it. I didn’t use what I learned, not until after I got home from the hospital five years later. During the nine weeks, I learned I could handle sobriety. I could have learned to enjoy sobriety, but I didn’t. I also learned I didn’t have to rely on beer to get to sleep. I took melatonin then. You’ll hear more about that later.

In 2003, my wife and I moved to Racine, Wisconsin. It wasn’t a promotion. I took a job as the number two professional in the Boy Scout council there. We liked living in Wisconsin. A year and a half later, we had a budget shortfall that was only a little bigger than my annual salary. When you’re the number two guy in any company and the budget shortfall matches your salary, you know what you do? You pack your bags.

It might surprise you to know I had a very good performance record, in spite of my drinking. Several other middle managers in the organization were laid off, or otherwise displaced for budgetary reasons that year, and a lot of good professionals left the organization. I thought about leaving. I was vested in the retirement program, but I loved, and still love, the Boy Scouts of America and I wanted to hang on. The organization worked on my behalf. The day I was told my position had been eliminated, I called the Regional Personnel Director. We knew each other. Not well, but well enough that when I said….

“I didn’t think I’d be calling you like this on my birthday….”

He said, “Wait a minute! It’s your birthday?” He laughed. Hard. Very hard. It was such a surprised, happy sound that I laughed with him. Laughed with tears in my eyes, but I laughed. “They laid you off on your freakin’ birthday?”

“Well,” I said as I coughed through laughter and burning eyes, “I didn’t tell them it was my birthday.”

That brought another spate of laughter. I couldn’t help it. I laughed too, and felt better for it. I was sitting in my car in the parking lot on a beach on Lake Michigan on December 20th. Wind was whipping over the car. I watched light snow blow around the parking lot.

“We’ll find something for you, Dave.” He wasn’t laughing when he said that, thank God. “You have a great record, and we’ll find something for you. I have to warn you, it might not be a promotion. There are a lot of guys in your position. A lot of councils hit a financial hard place this year, and lots of positions have been eliminated. Don’t quit! We’ll find something for you.”

They did. I made phone calls. My boss made phone calls. The region made phone calls.

I got a job as a very senior district executive. It was in Cleveland, Ohio. The executive director there offered me the same salary and job classification I had in Wisconsin. It was a demotion in title, but the council there was looking to create management positions, and if all went well, one would be mine.

My wife took the news very well, in spite of never wanting to live in a big city. We always agreed that she wouldn’t move during a school year and until then we were able to time our moves so we moved in the summer, but not that time. That time she stayed in Wisconsin, and I got a furnished one-bedroom apartment on a six month lease in Cleveland.

Was I smart enough to be sober when I moved to Cleveland and waited for her? We know the answer, but I’ll say it anyway.

I wasn’t.

Section Two – The Storm

§

Intro to Green Goblin

Looking back on it, I see Wernickes coming on. I didn’t see the little warning signs then. Some medical professionals will say there aren’t any warning signs. Others will say the signs are often missed, and those are the ones I agree with. I’ve read some stuff that says Wernickes comes on suddenly. I don’t know which ones are right, and which ones are wrong. I think some of the things I’ve described so far are indicative of Wernickes.

I was also having problems with my memory, but I didn’t know or believe I was having problems with my memory. My wife, bless her, told me I was forgetting things, but I was able to cloak her assertions in denial.

Then I got sick. Really sick. I had breakfast the other day with an old friend from camp staff. He said he was surprised at my recovery. My father told him I was ill when I was in the hospital for Wernickes. This is what my friend said:

“Your Dad told us the hospital said you probably weren’t going to make it. When I saw him a couple of weeks later, I was almost afraid to ask. Your Dad said you were home and doing fine.”

I was lucky. I was blessed. I didn’t know how lucky, or how blessed, until much later.

The next part of this book is a book on its own entitled Green Goblin. It’s available as a Nook book, a Kindle book, and in hardcover and paperback from www.lulu.com/spotlight/Misticuf. You don’t need to buy it, but if you want to send it to someone else, it’s a good cautionary tale.

§

Green Goblin

Werknicke-Korsakoff Syndrome: A disorder of the central nervous system characterized by abnormal eye movements, incoordination, confusion, and impaired memory and learning functions.

It's not easy to write about Wernicke-Korsakoffs, but I feel like I have to do it.

I survived Wernickes, and although I have Korsakoffs, few know it unless I tell them. That makes me a rarity, unfortunately. I wish everyone recovered from that set of serious illnesses, I wish no one suffered from it, I wish no family member had to deal with a loved one who is lost to either illness. I wish more people knew about the disease, if the other wishes can't come true.
   I wish a lot of things. Wishing isn't enough. I wrote a little book called Green Goblin, and it's selling some copies. It's a good little book if I do say so myself, and I hope more people read it. Green Goblin is my account of the acute phase of the illness, the part that takes place in the hospital for the lucky ones. Undiagnosed and untreated, Wernickes can be fatal.
 Green Goblin is good as far as it goes. Few who have had Wernickes have ever, and I mean ever described what it was like. Most can't. And since I can, I felt I should. I felt I had to do it.
   I wrote that book a couple of years ago, and now I feel I have to take the next step. I have to face the disease again...this time from the comfort of my chair. This time from the discomfort of my chair. I'm sober, but have to look back on getting sober, if I have any hope of helping people get to and through what I had to go to and through.
   I intend to give it my best shot. I'm not sure when I'll be done with it, but look for an announcement here when I finish and publish it. I think the writing of it will go quickly. I think when I peel away the mental bandages and examine the wound, I'm going to want to rip away the gauze and look fast.

Odds against me? I'm fine with that, and here's why...

I got my proof copy of Sexton Sand (Sexton Chronicles IV) today. It wasn't the first copy sold, and I think it's cool that I know who bought the first copy because he told me when he bought it. Lulu gives me a way to make sure I get the first copy, but I don't play it that way. You see, I'm hopeful. I'm full of hope that one day, although the odds are against me, these self-published Sexton Chronicles books (genre: fantasy. BUY 'EM TODAY) will hit the big time.

   Odds are against that happening to self-published books. It's been done, so I know it's not impossible, but odds are against it for a variety of reasons. I won't enumerate those reasons because I really don't care what they are.

   This isn't the first time in my life the odds were against me, and it won't be the last.

   Odds were against me living much of a normal life when I had my first epileptic seizure when I was about six years old. Through no fault of my own, I beat the epilepsy.

   Odds were against me when I declared, at the age of 10, that I would be a 13-year-old Eagle Scout. I made it with days to spare.

   Odds were against me when I decided to go for a full-tuition scholarship to college when I had a 3.0 grade point average in high school and played no sports. I got one.

   Odds were against me meeting a sitting President of the United States in the White House. I did.

   Odds were against me in 2005 when, through a fault completely mine, I fell ill with Wernicke's Encephalopathy and Korsakoff's Disease. I beat it--with a lot of help from a lot of people and God.

   So when I look at the odds of going from self-published to big time, I know it's been done before.

And I intend to be another one. Have a great day. It's up to you.

Korsakoff's Disease, my long road to diagnosis

I promised some friends in a Facebook group I would post this. In 2005, I was hospitalized for Wernicke Encephalopathy. I was in dire straits. I recovered. That's the simple, short version. For the longer version, and a really good story if I do say so myself, please purchase a copy of Green Goblin, the little book I wrote about the experience. It's the only book of it's kind about the disease. Click the title in the picture on this blog and it'll take you to the book.
   What I want to talk about now is what came after the Wernickes. I have Korsakoffs.Don't worry. It won't kill me.
   My doctor in Cleveland wasn't thrilled when I told him I was moving to Michigan. He was quite impressed with the care I received at Hillcrest Hospital in Cleveland, and the quality of recuperative care I got at Willow Park, also in Cleveland.
   But there I was, in his office, weeks later, very much alive thanks to the good people at the aforementioned places, and I was telling him I was going to move to Northeast Michigan. He reacted like I told him I was moving to Siberia. He said, "Within three months there, I want you to see a neurologist. You're probably not done with this yet and you're going to need help."
   I agreed. I forgot I agreed, but I agreed.
   A couple of months went by. My wife and I were living with her mother until our house in Cleveland sold. I was trying to write books and didn't want to admit I couldn't do it. I couldn't string words together. I've mentioned this in previous posts, so I won't dwell on it here. I had to teach myself how to write again, so I typed other people's books.
   What I didn't do was look for a neurologist. My wife asked me about it once or twice, and neither one of us could think of what I would tell a neurologist if I did see one. I wasn't exhibiting symptoms of anything that I could think of. I had my balance back, my weight was coming back, and I was sober. What more could there be, and what could a neurologist do for me?
   Six months after we moved to Michigan, I took a part time job. I worked at one of the 10 biggest restaurants in the U.S. Still work there, in fact. My job was cleaning things like the kitchen floor and the bathrooms. I wanted a job that didn't require a lot of thought so I could focus on writing the books I wanted to write.
    I did that for six months before the neuropathy set in. Some days were worse than others. Pain, sometimes wracking pain, filled my legs. Sometimes the pain was in my groin. I went to the MedExpress a few times for the pain and they would prescribe drugs. The drugs helped, but I knew how I let alcohol drive me and I worried I might get addicted to the drugs. So... I usually threw away at least some of the prescription. Other pills I cut in half.
   One of the doctors thought I might have testicular cancer. He sent me to have an ultrasound. You know, as much fun as it might sound to have a female smear gelatin over your...um...stuff, and rub it with a wand, it really isn't. Trust me on that one. No cancer, by the way.
   Then I went to a family physician. He's my regular doctor now and he's a good one. We still didn't know what I was suffering was neuropathy. Wernickes is rare in the United States (thank God), and he admitted to me later that he didn't know much about it.
   He sent me to have an EMG test. That's a fun little test where put needles in your arms, legs, neck, and shoulder--wherever there might be neuropathy--and run electricity through it. It's not fun. Hurts. The guy who administered the test left me alone--with the juice on!--for about five minutes while he took a cellular call from his daughter. He's lucky I didn't strap his happy ass to the machine when he came back in. It was a close thing.
   Went back to my physician. He said the tests didn't show any conclusive results. He was quite happy to file a complaint about the guy who walked out of the room on me while electricity set my nerves on fire. Then he sent me to a neurologist.
   That neurologist wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. He sure thought he was, but at least when it came to knowing about Wernickes and Korsakoffs, he didn't know much at all. He banged my knees with  a tuning fork, and my toes, etc. The big toe on my right foot tingles and goes numb sometimes. He said that was neuropathy. The leg pain, he said, is not. He was wrong about that, by the way. Quite wrong.
   I brought up Wernickes. He said, "You're over it. Forget about that. It isn't your problem...unless you're drinking again." I assured him I was not.
   A few months went by. Months of sometimes bad leg pain, sometimes not so bad. I started to research Wernickes online and found a group online. One of the people who participated in those discussions was with a treatment center in the United Kingdom. (Hi, Karen!) She told me about treatments with vitamins. I had been taking thiamin because it seemed like a good idea to take supplements of the vitamin that I was missing when I fell ill in the first place. She told me that some patients respond well to very high doses of thiamin (which is Vitamin B1). I started taking it and it helped. Now I take about 2,000 MGs of it a day and am almost pain free.
   By then I was working in a different department in the restaurant, one that required some thinking. I was working in the accounting department. Memory problems revealed themselves. Not only would I forget things--which everyone does. I would forget I ever knew them. There were holes in my memory. Big ones, little ones. Holes.
   I got a bad performance review because of those holes in my memory. That bad review was what I needed. Not to shape me up, because I'm a good worker. It was what I needed to take to my physician. It's kind of a strange things, but American doctors typically don't address memory problems until they're documented by an employer, educator, etc.
   My doctor grew quite concerned. My memory problems were not normal, especially for a man my age. I was 42-43 at the time. He ordered an E.E.G. I was epileptic as a kid, and we thought my problems might be related to that. They weren't. My E.E.G. results were fine. Then he sent me to a different neurologist.
   That guy was good. He tested my memory briefly in his office. That bit you might see on detective shows...where the doctor tells someone to remember 3 things and then talks and talks and asks what the 3 things are... He did that with me. I couldn't remember one of the three.
   He looked over my medical history and said, "You have Korsakoffs."
   I said, "What's next?"
   He was quick to point out that there is no cure. He said it wouldn't kill me, but there was no cure. I don't know what kind of reaction he thought he was going to get. I looked at him and smiled. He started to say something else and I stopped him. "We'll see about that," I said.
   I was scared, but I was smiling. He didn't know I was the guy who kept untying himself and trying to escape from neural intensive care precisely because I don't give up. I wasn't going to let forgetting three words make me believe there wasn't hope.
  He sent me to a neuropsychologist. A neuropsychologist isn't a shrink. They study behavior and do testing of the brain and thinking processes  to try to figure out what's going on without having to cut open the skull and peer at the gray matter.
   The neuropsychologist was in a town I lived in for ten years. The streets in that town are not laid out well. If you don't know the town, it's quite easy to get lost there. I was able to negotiate the streets as if I never left...and it had been ten years since my wife and I moved away. That was a confidence builder for me. I was convinced that he would find nothing wrong with me or my memory.
   The testing took 6 hours. He started with several hours worth of IQ tests. They try to determine pre-illness IQ and post-illness IQ. I really don't know which test was for what. He determined I had suffered no loss of IQ.
   He also determined that I have Korsakoff's. There are several tests they do to check your memory. Word lists, drawings, stories they have you repeat. Lots of little tests. It was frightening. The ones I failed, I failed completely. I have a visual memory. I can "see" things I want to remember. At some points during that day, the interior screen--the little film screen I can see when I try to remember things--went blank. Nothing. Zip and zero and nada.
   It was scary. It could have been depressing. I wouldn't let it be either of those things for long. I couldn't let it be either of those things for long.
  I remember taking my first swim test as a Boy Scout. I had to swim 100 yards. I was paddling along, struggling, but determined to make it, while a lifeguard walked alongside me on the dock. I heard him say, "He's not going to make it," to someone. I gave up when I heard him say that. I think, looking back on it, that he did me a real dis-service that day. Ever since, I promised myself I would never give up just because someone said something can't be done. Hmm... Maybe that kid on the dock did me a bigger favor than I thought.
  The neuropsychologist said, "You have Korsakoffs. Your memory will never get any better. As long as you don't start drinking again, it probably won't get any worse...but it will never get better." He recommended I carry a digital voice recorder and make notes for myself on it.
   I did that. It helps. But he was wrong about my memory not getting better. It's still not great, by the way. I do have Korsakoffs. He was wrong, though, when he said it wouldn't get better. Practice makes it better. I don't know how, from a neurology standpoint, my memory is better, but I do know that it is better. I still carry the recorder but I don't need it as much. I eat well, and I take my thiamin, and I don't drink.
   I guess if there's a moral to this entry it's this: don't give up.

"Green Goblin" long sample. A true story (my story) of overcoming Wernicke-Korsakoff Disease

It's a terrible illness, harder on the patient's family and friends than it is on the patient, and it's no picnic for the patient.
   This story is available as a paperback, hardcover, epub, or pdf download from www.lulu.com/spotlight/Misticuf, or as a Kindle book from amazon.
   Here is the sample, about the first 1/3 of the short book:

Green Goblin

A Survivor’s Tale

of

Wernicke’s Encephalopathy

This book is dedicated to anyone who has suffered or suffers from Wernicke-Korsakoff disease, the people who care for them, and those who love them.

Let there be hope.

Werknicke-Korsakoff Syndrome: A disorder of the central nervous system characterized by abnormal eye movements, incoordination, confusion, and impaired memory and learning functions.

Wernicke’s Aphasia: A type of aphasia caused by a lesion in the Wernicke’s Area of the brain and characterized by grammatical but more or less meaningless speech and an apparent inability to comprehend speech.

Part I

Bed Sheets and Brimstone

1

The journey I was about to take was both long in coming and a surprise. Recently I read description after description of the illness I suffered. I’ll tell you what it is at the end of this story. If I remember. If there is an end to this story.

It began with a dream.

The Klingons were blowing up the Enterprise and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. No one responded to my orders to fire the phasers and I have no idea how to run a starship. The deck shook. I turned to Worf and ordered him, again, to fire. He wasn’t there—no one was.

My pulse hammered in my neck. I was scared but determined to go out fighting. Then I saw her: my wife Sarah, dressed in Deanna Troi’s uniform. She was crying and giving me a strange look. I wanted to hug her and tell her it would be okay. We’d beat the bastards but I needed her to fire the photon torpedoes and do it now.

“Don’t stand there and cry! We’re going to die if you don’t fire the torpedoes!” I hated myself for shouting at her. I don’t shout. It’s not my style. Of course, getting killed by Klingons isn’t my style either.

Then I woke up. I was lying on the floor on her side of the bed, pulling myself up with the quilt. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m awake now.”

She looked scared. Sarah doesn’t looked scared any more often than I shout. She told me to get dressed. We were going to the hospital.

Blackout…

2

I stood on the driveway on her side of the garage. Sarah was behind the wheel and we were waiting for the light to turn green. I was in the passenger seat looking at First Baptist Church through the window. I was an executive with the Boy Scouts of America at the time and we had several meetings a month at that church.

“I don’t think I can go to a meeting tonight,” I said. “I’m not in uniform.”

Sarah sounded calm. “We’re going to the hospital.”

She had been fighting colitis for more than two years and her symptoms led her to the hospital only a couple of weeks before.

“Why are you driving?” It didn’t make sense for her to drive herself to the hospital.

“You’re drunk.”

She had me there. I was drunk. I drank too much anyway, but for the couple of weeks prior to the Klingon invasion, drinking large amounts of beer was the only way I could find to get rid of the double vision.

I saw double for at least two weeks before I went nuts. I should have gone to the doctor in early June, but it was a busy time of year for us. I felt fine physically so I didn’t see double vision as a high priority symptom. Instead of going to the doctor like I knew I should, I got new glasses. I still saw double, but I saw double clearly. I kept an empty foam cup in my car for the random bits of puking I experienced. There was a lot of random puking, but it was okay. There wasn’t much to throw up. It’s hard to eat when you see double and puke every now and again.

But I didn’t need to go to a hospital. I was fine. She was the sick one.

Blackout…

3

I was in a hospital trauma center waiting room very late at night. I didn’t know how I got there. Sarah was filling out paperwork at the counter. I wanted a cigarette. I reached in the left pocket of my jeans, but for some reason I didn’t have my cigarettes.

I started to walk to the car. It was the first of July and a nice night—warm but not hot. The parking lot was almost empty. They usually are at 2:00 in the morning. I turned around and went back thorough the emergency room entrance. I thought Sarah would be admitted soon and didn’t want to bother her for her keys. My plan was to walk home, get my cigarettes and drive our other car back.

On my way back from the lobby I saw three or four wheelchairs and decided to take one home instead of walking. I heard Sarah shout and try to catch up with me, and thought, she doesn’t have to worry about me. They’ll help her soon.

“Wait!” she shouted.

I waved over my shoulder. “See you at home dear!”

So there I was, rolling my wheelchair toward Mayfield Road at two o’clock in the morning, going home to get my cigarettes and my car. I stopped before I turned left on Mayfield. Even at that hour, there were cars on the road. Safety first!

I’m a good driver and try to be polite. I intended to use my turn signal, but couldn’t find it on the wheelchair. It seemed like a bad idea to get killed in the center lane while driving a wheelchair. It didn’t take long to figure out wheelchairs don’t have turn signals. I started to roll out in the road anyway when I heard someone running behind me.

I turned. Two men were gaining on me. One was bearded and big. He was in front of a short, stocky guy. They grabbed the wheelchair just as I threw caution to the winds and went for the road. I struggled, but one held the wheelchair while the other grabbed me.

I told myself not to hurt them. They weren’t hurting me; they were restraining me. It sounds funny, I know. I’m a little guy—five foot six and a hundred twenty pounds—but size doesn’t make any difference in some situations. What matters is who walks away and who doesn’t.

I stopped struggling when I realized I couldn’t get away without hurting them. Better to wait and see what happens.

They rolled me back through the doors. Sarah hugged me just before they took me into the patient storage area—you know, where they put patients until they get around to fixing them. She was crying, I was confused.

So ended July 1, or so I thought. It was actually the wee hours of July 4th—I’d been unconscious at home for at least thirty-six hours since leaving work for vacation on the first.

Blackout…

4

I opened my eyes and found myself looking at a woman’s face. She was a blond gal, neither ugly nor pretty. She was talking to me, but I didn’t understand what she was trying to say. It’s funny, but I was more curious about why I was sleeping sitting up in bed than why I was there.

“You have to sign this.” She put a clipboard on my lap.

I looked at the piece of paper on the clipboard. It was broken in block paragraphs. There were a couple of lines at the bottom for signatures. I tried to read the document. I don’t sign anything without knowing what it is I’m signing.

I tried to read it. I couldn’t.

“Don’t you have one of these in English?” I laughed but I wasn’t kidding. Not one word made sense.

“It’s in English.” She looked worried.

I looked at it again. I’m pretty good with languages. I can read some French and Spanish. I recognize German, Russian, and Hebrew when I hear them. I didn’t recognize the language on the paper in my lap.

She didn’t know what was holding me back. She sounded desperate when she said, “You have to sign it! Your wife has been calling me every day! She’s very worried about you. She loves you very, very much.”

I looked at the form, then at the nurse. I wanted to sign the document…but I didn’t know how.

“We can’t tell her you’re here if you don’t sign it. It breaks my heart to hear her cry. Please sign it so we can tell her you’re here.”

I looked at the document again. It was hard to think, but I found the words I was looking for. “How do I sign it?”

She looked surprised, then more worried. For the first time I noticed a man standing behind her. I didn’t see his face. I remembered Sarah took me to a hospital. If these people couldn’t or wouldn’t tell her where I was, that meant I’d been taken from the hospital. That meant I was a hostage.

Kidnapped? Me? If they wanted a big ransom for little old me, they could forget it. We didn’t have money to pay a ransom. I decided to get out of there, but first I had to sign the form. Play along and watch for an opportunity to escape. “I don’t know how to sign it.”

She talked me through it. I formed the letters as she said them. By the time I wrote “Robert Townsend” in childish cursive letters, I remembered how to write. I tried to hand the clipboard back to her, but she pushed it toward me. “Please date it.”

I nodded and stared at the blank. “What’s the date?” What she said didn’t make sense to me, but I wrote it anyway.

“Seventh floor,” she said.

“It’s a four-story building.”

She looked at me an enunciated every syllable. “Sev…en. …Four.”

That made less sense than seventh floor. So I wrote seventh floor hoping she would accept it and let me go back to sleep. I had an escape to plot and needed to rest before I executed whatever I came up with.

I heard her say to the man behind her, “I think that’s as good as we’re going to get.”

Blackout…

5

I felt a sharp pain in my arm and opened my eyes. There were two men holding my left arm. The shorter one, the one at my shoulder said, “He’s awake!”

I yanked my arm free by pulling it toward my chest. They let go. I bent my elbow and thrust for the throat of the man closest to my wrist. His face changed as my hand got closer to his neck. He looked happy, then surprised. I pushed my hand closer. My first thought was to crush his windpipe. Push the hand; push it toward his neck. Squeeze—crush, don’t choke—crumple his esophagus like a beer can.

That scared him. He tried to force my hand back, but I wouldn’t let him. We struggled. He couldn’t push my hand away and I wouldn’t stop reaching for his neck.

I didn’t want to kill him. I only wanted to injure him, severely if I had to, and hoped his partner would care more about saving a coworker than the little prisoner in the bed. I intended to pluck his adams apple from his neck and hold it up for the other guy to see.

It doesn’t take long to recognize a bad plan. I couldn’t get to the man’s neck. I gave up on the idea of ripping his throat apart and switched to escape mode. I lashed out with my right arm to grab the rail on the other side of the bed. Grab the rail, pull hard, and vault out of bed. Then run for the door and get the hell out of Dodge.

My hand slammed on a woman’s wrist resting on the rail. I heard a choked cry and looked up. She was wearing a white coat. I didn’t look at her face; I looked at her hand.

Think! I needed time to think, but didn’t have it. Stalemate. The men had me and I had the woman. I didn’t want to take a woman hostage, and I didn’t want to hurt her, but I hated the idea of getting killed more. Since when did the bastards in the Protectors Guild use women? There were no female guildsmen the last time I was in this world.

I had to do something. It went against the grain for me—hurting a woman. I didn’t want to do it, but I knew she would slide a dagger between my ribs with none of the hesitation I felt toward hurting her. I wanted to tell the men I would let go of her if they let go of me. The words wouldn’t come. I couldn’t say anything…I didn’t know how.

I squeezed her wrist. In my mind’s eye I could see her bones just above my curled fingers, the twin, not quite parallel bones in her forearm. My fingers were clenched. Squeeze. Tighter. Pop the hand off her wrist like the flower from a dandelion! I locked eyes with the man holding my left wrist. I wanted him to look in my eyes and see I would rather kill him ten times than lie in that bed as their prisoner. As I did that, I squeezed the woman’s arm hander. She would tell them to let me go any second. I smiled at the Guildsman to intimidate him.

“Robert! Stop it!” the woman shouted. “Robert! You’re hurting me! Please…stop!”

…That was the last thing I expected her to say. She sounds like my Mom! No one but my mother calls me Robert. Guild bastards. How was I supposed to hurt someone who sounds like my mom?

I couldn’t.

I let go of her arm and waited for them to kill me. The last thing I heard was a man’s voice. “The little fucker smiled at me! Did you see that? He tried to kill me and he fucking smiled!”

Blackout…

6

I woke up when I heard someone walk in the room. I opened my eyes to a woman standing between the bed I was in and an empty bed next to it.

“You’re awake!” she said. “How do you feel?”

I felt fine and said so. I didn’t know where I was or why I was there, but the bed was comfortable and I just woke up.

“You look terrible,” I said. “You should sit down.
She sat on the other bed and gave me a warm smile. I was looking at a woman in her mid-fifties. Slender, attractive. She had dark hair with a few strands of gray. I liked it when she smiled; it was a nice smile. She looked me over from her perch on the other bed. Her expression held curiosity and surprise. She seemed very relieved about something, but I couldn’t tell what. “You are a nice man. You’re a very nice man.” She smiled again. “I told them you were, but they said you were dangerous. They said you tried to kill them.”

I almost figured out what was going on. Almost. It slipped my mind’s grasp before I could stop it. The person she was talking to, the patient in the bed, was somewhere between Rob Townsend and Tom Benton.

Tom Benton is the protagonist in a novel. I’m the author. Benton is an American who went to a world called Sexton. He was trained to be a killer/cop in a world of swords and sorcery. Rather than serve in a force he grew to recognize as evil—the protectors guild—he became an outlaw. He took the name ‘Viper’ and is merciless in his defense of freedom.

She locked eyes with me. “You are a nice man,” she said again. I’m not sure if she was trying to convince herself or me. “Every time you started to hurt me, all I had to do was tell you to let me go and you let go right away.”

Hurt her? Kill? I was shocked. “I can’t hurt anybody. I’m a little guy.”

She shook her head, lips pressed together. “You’re a strong little guy. Very strong! Don’t play weak little man with me. You’re strong!”

I knew that—I just didn’t want anyone else to know it. Then I saw the brace on her left arm and almost remembered. I didn’t remember what happened, but there was no doubt in my mind I was the one who hurt her arm. I was devastated.

I think I was crying. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

She tried to calm me. “Of course you didn’t, you’re a nice man. You were scared, that’s all. Absolutely terrified.” She stood up and moved closer. “You are forgetting things. You must remember this, even if you remember nothing else. You can never drink again.”

“I don’t drink.” It’s true—Viper doesn’t. Not much. It would get him killed. She didn’t know who she was talking to. She was talking to Tom Benton, AKA Viper. I was gone. Rob? There’s no Rob here, man.

“Yes you do!” Her anger was genuine. “You were drunk when they brought you in here! You were almost dead. We saved you this time, but you’re not safe yet. We can’t do it again. If you drink again, you will die. Remember this…you can never drink again.”

I didn’t remember that. Not for a long time.

Blackout…

7

“Time to go!”

I thought someone shouted that very close to my ear, but when I opened my eyes I was alone. Alone in a bed in a hospital room. I remembered being tired, but I couldn’t remember picking a bed and going to sleep. I had to get out of there before someone found me.

I tried to get out of bed, but my left arm was strapped to the rail. Idiot! Fell asleep in the open and let the guild tie me down. There wasn’t time to wonder why they didn’t kill me. The voice I heard in my head might have been imaginary but it wasn’t wrong. It was time to go.

There must have been a little of myself left. I looked at the table next to the bed to see if there was a note from someone, maybe Sarah, telling me to stay put or run like hell. When I found no note, I almost called for help.

Viper answered that one. If you call for help, who do you think will come? Those friendly people who strapped you to this bed, that’s who!

That was all the answer I needed. I stared at the binding. I rubbed my forehead…and laughed. “Stupid guild bastards! You forgot I have two hands.”

Now that I had an assessment of the problem, all I had to do was untie myself… I lost a few minutes while I tried to decide what to do after I freed myself. Should I wait there and kill my captors, or leave and recruit an army to come back and kill them?

I decided to leave and let the chips fall as they may.

Untying myself proved more difficult than I thought. The restraint didn’t buckle or lace. There were two straps holding it to the bed. I reached over my body and the lower rail with my right hand and followed them down as far as I could reach. The end of the straps was beyond me. I tried another way: tight over my chest, reaching down between the top of the mattress and the bottom rail. I rolled to my left as far as I could.

My hand hit the end of the straps. They were wrapped around the bed frame and looped through a double d-ring. I could picture it—two straps going under both rings, then around and between the curved part of the ‘D’.

I’m left-handed. It was more difficult to untie the straps with my right hand than it would have been with my left, but I could do it. In a strange way it was almost refreshing. I found no ambiguity: I was a prisoner against my will; I had no higher priority than freedom. It didn’t take long to untie the thing, even right-handed. That’s when I noticed the needles in my left arm. They led to IV bags on a stand above my shoulder.

The needles worried me. I hate them. I was afraid I would pass out when I pulled them out, but then I chuckled. I was already in bed. If I was going to pass out, what better place to do it?

I was pleasantly surprised to find it doesn’t hurt to pull the needles out. It only hurts when they stick you. When the first needle dangled over the floor, I thought about the mess it would make when the fluid dripped out. I laughed at myself again—what kind of prisoner cleans up after himself when he escapes? The empty restraint would tell them I was gone whether there was a mess on the floor or not. I pulled the other needles out one at a time, jumped over the bed rail, and headed out the door.

No one seemed to notice me in the hall. It was daylight and there were staff and patients around. As I approached the door to the stairs I realized I was wearing only a hospital gown. That was fine in the hospital, but would look mighty strange on the streets.

Our buddy Tom Benton is a resourceful guy. The plan was to go down the stairs and find someone of similar build, knock him out, drag him to a closet, and steal his clothes. Then walk home taking back streets.

I was foiled at the door to the stairs. It was locked. The lock was old, a combination lock with small buttons and Roman numerals engraved in the brass above them. I stared at it and tried to remember what little I knew about the type. I didn’t think the combinations on them were changed easily, and therefore weren’t changed often. That meant the buttons involved in the combination would be more worn than the buttons not involved. Of the seven buttons on the lock, I could narrow the possibilities to three or four. Good idea, right? It would have been if they gave me time.

I heard a shout from behind. I turned to look over my shoulder at the door I left only a few minutes before. A big redheaded guy came out. He saw me and shouted “You! What are you doing out of bed?”

I wasn’t going to stand there and take his pop quiz. I turned to run in the other direction, but couldn’t. There were patients in wheelchairs by the window. They blocked my way. I thought about jumping over them, but ruled it out as an option. Good guys don’t risk hurting the injured and infirm trying to escape. I had to go through the guy I’ve come to call “Big Red.”

I gave myself up. Before I knew what was going on, there were several people around Big Red. He stood behind a wheelchair, waiting for me. I sat in the chair and wondered if they were going to kill me. The other people gathered around us. The thought of springing from the wheelchair and doing as much damage as I could crossed my mind. I discarded the idea. Live to fight again, I thought. Can’t win if you’re dead.

Much later it occurred to me that the people surrounding the wheelchair—the people who formed a wall between the patients in the hall and the lunatic in the wheelchair—were all women.

They knew I wouldn’t hurt the women.

Blackout…

8

I woke up in artificial light, not torchlight or candlelight. It was America, not Sexton. Something went wrong with the crossing this time. I was in a straitjacket in a hospital bed. My arms were crossed over my chest under the jacket. A shake of my shoulders told me I wasn’t going to fight my way out. The restraint was tied to the bed at the shoulders. I couldn’t reach anything with my arms bound like that.

I closed my eyes and tried to remember everything I knew about straitjackets. It didn’t take long to figure out I wasn’t in one—not a straitjacket, but something else. There was no buckle or strap under my back. I had seen a straitjacket at some point in my life and hadn’t forgotten the fear I felt when I saw it. I studied it for that reason—I tend to study things that scare me in case I ever need to play to win.

I concentrated on my legs, particularly around the groin. Straitjackets strap between the legs so the patient can’t worm out the bottom. That thing had no such strap. And the guild bastards actually did me a favor by lashing the thing to the bed at the shoulders. If the restraint wasn’t strapped to the bed at the top, there would be nothing holding it in place. Holding in place prevents the prisoner from getting out of bed, but that was a two-edged sword. Holding it to the bed gave me something to pull against on my way out the bottom.

I anchored my feet to he bottom of the mattress and pulled myself out with my legs. When I messed up my air dragging it over the canvas, I wished I had a comb. Not because I worried about what I looked like, but because it would be easy to spot the escapee by his messed-up hair. I shouldn’t have worried. Have you seen the typical haircut in Cleveland?

I made it out of the room and found myself lost in a sea of blue-green curtains. It was a house of mirrors with no mirrors, only curtains.

Blackout…

9

I was in a wheelchair looking down a set of metal stairs at a machine with a tube-shaped entrance. A woman stood next to me and was explaining something, but I didn’t understand her. My attention was on the tube. It looked like a tight fit even for a little guy like me.

“I’m claustrophobic,” I said. I’m not, really. I just didn’t want to go in the tube.

“It’s okay.” She was trying to reassure me and it worked. I sensed no lie in her face or voice. “If you get scared, just bang on the side. Or say you’re scared. We’ll let you out.”

Sure they would let me out. She was one of those friendly people who strapped my ass to the bed. “You can hear me in there?”

“Yes. We’ll be able to see you and hear you.”

Blackout…

10

I don’t know what went wrong in the MRI chamber. Something did. It wasn’t the test, I’m sure of that. Magnetic resonance imaging is a great tool. Expensive as hell—I saw the bill later—but a great tool.

Speaking of Hell…that’s where I went next.

I was on my back in the tube. It made me think I was in a Dreamsicle. There were bands of orange and white light, like the vanilla ice cream in those frozen orange treats.

That’s what I remember. They tell me I’m wrong, but that’s what I remember. Orange bands with beams of white light.

Blackout…

11

I opened my eyes and saw a white ceiling. I was myself at that point and thought I finally got to be the guy in the bed in the bed races. My dad took me to see them when I was a kid and I thought it would be fun to be the guy in the bed, riding right down the middle of the street as we raced to the cheers of the crowd.

The lights in the ceiling were the only clue I had that we were moving. They passed quickly overhead, one every few seconds. Flash, slide-slide, flash, slide-slide, flash, slide. I tried to sit up but a hand pushed me back.

“Lie down,” someone said. “Don’t move.”

The bed race that wasn’t a bed race was a lot more fun than the ride on the train that wasn’t a train.

Blackout…

12

My pulse speeds up when I think about what happened next. It still scares me. I was on a bed in a big room and there were other beds around mine with no curtains separating them. There were three or four men lying on similar beds. The room was big and had a curved white ceiling like an airplane hangar where the roof and walls are one, stretching from the floor in an arc from side to side.

I heard the men talking to each other in low tones. It seemed like we were waiting for something, but I didn’t know what or who. I asked them what we were waiting for. They didn’t know. It felt like a scene in Waiting for Godot.

“Why don’t we get up and look?” I pointed at the curtain separating us from the rest of the room.

“You can get out of bed?” one of them asked. “If you can, you should.”

The next thing I knew, I was standing in front of a row of vending machines. I was hungry so I thought I’d grab a bag of chips while we waited for whatever train we were waiting for. The place looked like a gleaming white version of a subway station.

I reached in my pocket for change and discovered I didn’t have pockets. Hell, I didn’t even have pants! I was wearing a hospital gown and it was chilly in that place. I like pants—they’re one of man’s greatest inventions. Never underestimate the importance of pants.

Not long after that, I found myself underground on a walkway between two sets of railroad tracks. There were two trains and they looked ready to leave the station. The train on my right was white. It was no cleaner than a normal passenger train. Lines of people of all ages waited to get on. They were quiet and didn’t seem to be in a hurry. I didn’t think much of it, but because I had no destination in mind and don’t like to wait in line if I don’t have to, I looked at the train on my left.

It looked older, like something out of the 1950’s. Its sides were orange and beat up. The windows were tinted. I couldn’t see much through them, only vague shapes of people moving around. I heard laughter and the sound of music—good rock ‘n’ roll music—pump through the walls. Party train.

I didn’t get on one train or the other. My Spidey-sense was tingling.

The next thing I knew, I was outside the station between the two trains. Orange-white halogen lights burned the darkness. It was cold. Frigid, wicked, bite-ass cold.

Blackout…

AUTHOR'S NOTE: There's more, of course. We haven't gotten to the good parts yet, the recovery part...

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