To Make a Long Story Short
6
Twenty Years Is Better
Copyright ©2021 Elder Road Books
Original draft, 1969
Revised October 2021
No previous publication
JAMES. JAMES. That wasn’t his name, but it will do. I don’t remember his name now. That’s unusual for me. I remember names so well. James. I’ll call him James for now.
Before the war, we were classmates in school. I always looked up to him. He was brave and popular and smart. I wasn’t really any of those things. What war? It doesn’t make a difference. They’re all the same. We both joined the army after school. He went to the infantry. I trained an additional sixteen weeks to become a medic.
The little bag they give a medic seems inadequate to the mission of “Go save lives.” Saline, tourniquets, bandages, tubing, alcohol, needles. Of course, I had gloves and masks. Morphine, antibiotics, Narcan, and aspirin. I hadn’t even been sent to the front and I was already in despair. How could I save lives with this paltry kit?
And then I was there. I no longer thought about what I had in the kit. I applied pressure, bandaged wounds, replaced blood, killed pain. Mostly, I saved lives. Ninety percent of battlefield deaths occur before any medical help arrives. If I wanted to save more lives, I needed to be closer to where they were wounded. So, I volunteered for missions at the front where I could save lives.
As I was treating the wounded in the midst of a fight, I was joined by another medic who worked beside me. I’d arrived at a wounded soldier just too late to do anything for him but give him my blessing as his soul took flight.
“It hurts, doesn’t it? Not being there in time to save one. Not being able to save the one you are there for,” the other medic said. He had strange markings tattooed on his face. “Here. Take this. I don’t have much. I made it.” He handed me a vial of clear liquid. It was unmarked. “Inject this in a man’s heart and it will continue to beat for twenty years. Use it wisely. He may not forgive you.”
Then the medic… a witchdoctor of some sort… left to tend to someone far away. I lost track of him as I was called to yet another wounded soldier. I forgot about the vial. It was stupid. How could it keep a heart beating for twenty years? It rested in the bottom of my kit, forgotten.
James had been out with his squadron on a mission. They were hit by surprise. Those who weren’t dead looked like they were by the time we got to them. He was that way. I could tell he was in pain, but he never said anything. I searched in my kit for another vial of morphine. James was dying. Only his name wasn’t James. That will have to do for now. I came across the vial of clear liquid deep in my kit. Use it wisely. He was dying in front of me and I couldn’t let that happen. I filled my syringe and injected it straight into his heart.
He gasped and closed his eyes. I was sure I’d killed him. But he continued to breathe. His heart continued to beat.
“This will give you twenty years,” I whispered. “Twenty years is better than five minutes.”
He looked at me and frowned, then lost consciousness altogether.
I wish I could remember his name. It wasn’t James but I’ll have to call him James for now. They loaded him right into the transport with the rest of the dead men. It’s lucky they found he was alive before they shipped them home to be buried. James.
The post-war years were hard and he traveled from town to town looking for work. He ended up in a small midwestern town and got a job at the foundry. He met his wife while he was there. She was a young divorcee. She had two little daughters. I shouldn’t have told him he had twenty years. He might have been happy.
I found him lying there. I knew the effects of what I had in my hand. But I liked him. Isn’t twenty years better than five minutes? It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have told him. It gave him nightmares.
James. That wasn’t his name. It gave him nightmares—knowing did. I shouldn’t have told him. I wish I could remember his name. He could have had such a happy marriage.
Not that it was a bad marriage. They loved each other. They were compatible. It should have been ideal. Except for the nightmares. He told his wife and she cried. I don’t know why he told her how much time he had, but he did. I didn’t even know what I gave him. I liked him, so I gave him the magic potion. After all, twenty years is better than five minutes. He told her and she cried, but she was strong and learned to live with it.
Sometimes they were so happy that she even forgot about it. Sometimes. But then came the nightmares again. A big machine ate him. It was probably just an image manufactured from his fever. He woke up in the night with sweat running down his forehead and into his eyes. Stiff and cold. Wanting to relax, but afraid. He felt dead. Wanting to cry, to talk, to scream, but unable to do anything. He couldn’t move or breathe or speak. Then it passed and he realized it was only a nightmare.
They had a son. Eventually, two sons. Then came the daughters. One was fair with black hair; one was heavy with blonde hair; one was just like his wife, slight and frail. Then came the nightmares again. The machine ate him. The long cold sleepless nights.
I wish I could remember his name. It’s not like me to forget names. I guess that James will do.
Shortly after their third daughter was born, his wife fell. She hadn’t recovered fully from childbirth—lost her balance and fell on her way down the stairs to the basement. She hit her head on the concrete floor and was unconscious. He took her to the hospital. It was his turn to cry and he did. While he waited in the waiting room, the tears ran freely. No one ever saw him cry before like he did when the doctor told him that his wife would be well with a few days’ rest. His children never saw him cry.
I wish I could remember his name. It wasn’t James exactly. I wish I could remember it.
I kept imagining the pain he must have gone through. He raised a family of eight children denying to himself the love of children for a father—denying himself the joy of loving his family. He couldn’t do that. It would hurt his children more when he died if they loved him. He loved them so much and wouldn’t let them know because he couldn’t have them hurt. His name wasn’t James. It was… I can’t remember his name exactly. It wasn’t James, but that will do for now.
The nightmares were terrible. They came at least once a week. He never told his wife anymore. He stopped telling her so she could recover from her fall. Even after she had recovered, he didn’t mention them anymore. He loved her too much to see her suffer again.
They had another child shortly after that, quite like their second daughter at birth. But the other children were old enough to start asking questions. Questions like: What happens when you die? Always the direct reply was snapped back: Nothing. I think he really believed that there was nothing after death. That’s why it never scared him. Not until it was almost there. Always the nightmares. Always the inability to move or breathe. Always the machine.
His youngest child was eight years old when his twenty years ran out. He knew it. He knew if not this night, then the next. He could feel the poison working in his body. Poison that had once saved his life.
His wife was worried when he didn’t come to bed that night. She went to him in the living room shortly after midnight. Their new home was not quite complete, but it was livable. There were two cows in the barn and forty acres was paid for. He didn’t know I was there and could feel the pain in his voice when he asked her if she remembered what he had told her. When she didn’t remember, he knew that the accident had relieved her of a burden that he would wrestle with for the rest of the night. He sent her to bed and said that he would come later.
I wish I could remember his name. I’d tracked him down. I met him that night—on another battlefield. He knew it was the night. When I found him, he was nearly dead, like all the rest we loaded onto the transport. There was something about him. I liked him. I could tell he was in pain but he didn’t say anything. I reached in my pocket for the vial and filled my syringe.
He stopped me. He didn’t want the life in that syringe. He was refusing it. Isn’t twenty years better than five minutes? No, he said. No. But I had to. I liked him. What about death? It’s nothing, he said, and afterward there is nothing. But I forced it on him. He had eight children—two boys and six girls. He had to live! But he fought it. I broke the needle in his arm before I’d gotten half the solution out of the syringe. He hit me and I ran. I left him lying there on the floor of his living room. I liked him, but I can’t remember his name. James. James is not it. But it will do.
His wife found him in the morning asleep on the floor in the living room. She woke him and sent him to work. I don’t know why I didn’t let him die. If there was really nothing like he said there was, then it might have been a blessing to him—to die. I swore I would never visit him again, not so long as he was alive. Still, I found I had a vial in my pocket and a syringe. I didn’t know what I’d do with it now.
It was only a year before I heard of him again. His name was in the paper. I wish I could remember that name. It was a headline: JAMES KILLED IN TRAGIC FACTORY ACCIDENT. Only it wasn’t James. That wasn’t his name. I don’t remember it. But James will do.
He wasn’t well. He was working nights at the factory. His wife got him up and he wasn’t well. She was afraid that he would be late and urged him to hurry. He didn’t want to go. He mumbled something about finding the machine. He wasn’t well and didn’t want to go in. But I made him. His wife told him to go—that he would feel better after he was up and around a while. He went.
I was in the factory that night. Well, I worked there, too, but I’d avoided him since that night. I noticed that the fumes in the processing plant were getting strong. Big new ventilators had been installed about three weeks earlier. Work was completed only days before. For some reason, no one had turned them on that night. I reached to the wall and threw the switch that started the enormous fans and would clear the air of the odors.
Things went too fast then. I heard a scream from above. I looked up as the lights dimmed from the pull of the current into the new ventilator. As the lights regained their power, something hit me in the forehead—red and wet. I heard another scream. It was from my own lips as I jerked the switch and took to the wall-ladder leading upward.
It didn’t take long for them to get there. They came to remove the bodies. I was sitting on the edge of the gigantic ventilator with tears in my eyes and an empty syringe in my hand. I was too late for this wounded soldier.
They took me away, and I’ve been here in this room, this hospital ever since. Three years, I think. He told me up there—his body mangled by the ventilator—that this time I was too late. But he said he knew now: There’s more than nothing. I don’t know what.
Three years ago. I liked him. I liked that man a lot. I wish I could remember his name. James. James. That’s not it.
James. That’s my name.
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