Jacked Around Again

If you've read my last few installments, you might recall that life really hasn't been working out for me, lately. What could I have possibly done to deserve such a bizarre fate? I met Jack--a hot Indian returned missionary--fell in love, accepted his faith, readied myself for Temple marriage, only to have my heart savagely torn from my aching breast and drop-kicked into the slag-heap. Beaten and left for dead. "Yeeouch." Some people have queer reactions to say, seafood, for example--they swell-up and spit like a wiener on a grill--I think I must have the same sort of allergy to Mormonism. Or Indians.

Having endured what I thought was a sufficient grace period (during which time I'd mistaken my fiance's brother's wife for the spawn of satan), I'd embarked upon a rather ill-fated reconnaissance mission to Pahrump Nevada. Rather than catching the wicked sucubus engaged in unspeakable acts with my fiance, I was caught in the act of window-peeping by Jack's brother Alex and was to learn in the most humiliating of circumstances, that not only was Diane not the Devil's daughter at all, but rather Alex' wife and my soon-to-be sister-in-in-law. Which was all likely a moot point, because, as it turns out Jack, my beloved Jack was dying--how about that. Might happen any day. Consolation prize: a brutal tequila hangover and a ride to Las Vegas in a convertible Jeep.

As I fought to keep the 115 degree wind from hair-whipping my eyeballs to shreds, I had time to reflect upon my life "post-Jack." Quite a ride. Quite a violent, sadistic rollercoaster ride straight off a cliff. What sort of Karmic trap-door does your life have to fall through to land a soul on this melting stretch of volcanic asphalt? But here I am, "la-dee-da" heading straight down the Dante expressway on my way to Satanville--toward Lord knows what kind of unbearable trauma. Between the dread, the hangover, the unGodly heat, and my poor battered heart, I was all but unable to draw a decent breath--I was suffocating to death in an inferno of self pity. Which sucks--in case you were wondering.

I had no idea what sort of lines I should be rehearsing for the unimaginable confrontation I was speeding toward. I would have been well within my rights to tear Jack a new one--the bastard had gone off to die, without so much as mentioning it to his fiance. But I couldn't muster up the fury--I hadn't a decent night's sleep in recent memory and I looked like hell. I would be too self-conscious about my appearance to pull-off the "righteous indignation" approach. My eyes were so dark and bagged that I looked like I'd been participating in some sort of month-long cigarette-smokathon. In fact I remember fantasizing that once I got to the hospital that they'd quickly diagnose me as the one who needed to be resting in an adjustable bed with a demerol drip.

When I finally laid eyes on Jack, he looked more like Michael Stipe than the robust Brandoesque stallion that I'd followed blindly into Mormonism. If the tears hadn't rendered me sightless, I would have ran my ass out of there, I can't deal with this kind of crap--I'm a damn teenager. Luckily, before I could even react to what I was seeing, a bustling herd of smock-wearing doctors-in-training came barging in on their rounds. Their guide was a nervous little monkey of a doctor who avoided all eye contact and stared at his clip board for dear life. They all huddled around taking notes as the timid tutor droned on about this kind of tumor and that.

Jack's brother and I were sitting in a couple of chairs by the window and I caught his drift after he tapped on my toe a few times. Alex was casually catching the suns reflection off the face of his watch and training the beam into the eyes of the attending physician. After repeated attempts to escape from the reflected laser, he began stammering, sputtered to a halt and stormed out of the room.

Reader's Digest is right--powerful medicine is laughter--before long, everyone from the interns to Jack and Diane were laughing out loud; and before the fledgling doctors had filed out, Jack was filling us in on the plan that was certain to deliver us all from this nightmare. Any minute he was expecting the arrival of his former missionary companion. A fellow Native American who had flown in from Hawaii and was supposedly bringing with him some sort of faith healer--a Hopi Indian that Jack explained was a noted medicine man who was doing very well for himself on the islands.

Everything was going to be just fine--as far as Jack was concerned. I had my doubts that a true medicine man would even make it past security in a hospital, but then I realized that hospitals have no security--even in Vegas. I could've came down the hallway doing back handsprings, wrapped head to toe in dynamite and no one would have batted an eye. This observation was going to be my first utterance since we'd arrived, but as I went to speak there was a knock at the door. It cracked open and in came a short bespectacled fellow followed by a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt--who I at first thought might be Don Ho. It wouldn't have fazed me if he'd broke into "Tiny Bubbles," but then again in my condition I wouldn't have been surprised by a visit from the Twelve Apostles--or even the Osmond Brothers.

I was soon to learn that the plan was to have Keuna, the missionary, administer a blessing while Don Hopi, the shaman, called upon whatever Native gods, he'd hooked-up with. And as for the rest of us, we were expected to fast. No problem, I couldn't have eaten a sunflower seed and besides fasting is probably the surest way to make it out of a hospital alive.

As the rituals commenced I did my best to try to feel the spirit, but the tiny skeptical man who lives in the back of my head was acting up. He wasn't sure that you could even reach God from Vegas and it was probably a better idea to pick one god and go with it. But the concept had no sooner formed in my brain, when a blast of lightning took out the power. What should have been the waning light of dusk was replaced by some sort of eerie glow. In those few seconds before the emergency generator kicked in--there was some sort of strange illumination that had no business being there--even in Vegas. I felt it like the crackling of electricity that arced from my left nipple to my right.

When I regained my bearings I saw Jack sitting upright in his bed with flushed cheeks--and as I glanced from face to face, I knew that something had happened. I tried to speak but no words came--I didn't know whether to cry or beat on a bedpan--my only other experience with this sort of sensation was at a Grateful Dead show.

After Keuna's amen and Don Ho's parting hand-gestures, everyone erupted into normal conversation like we were at a barbeque. There was no mention of the lightning or the thunder, and I sat there listening to them chatter like I was watching a sitcom. Jack was giving me the eye (I mean the eye) as he and Keuna did their catching up. He delighted in referring to his diminutive former companion as the "Big Kee-oo-na." and Alex was telling Don Ho about what he'd done to the poor doctor with the reflection off his watch. Diane came and led me out of the room and we went and got a coke at the snack bar. Suddenly I felt like I could eat twenty five corndogs. I was confident that there was no reason to be fasting any more.

Some time later, I woke up on a roll-away bed in Jack's room, and I couldn't have told you what time of what day it was. There were several medical personnel excitedly coming and going and before long I managed to gather that recent X-rays had revealed that Jack's inoperable brain tumor had shrunken to the size of a filbert. Before I could even imagine such a subdural mixed-nut they'd wheeled Jack away to surgery.

When they brought him back he was blissfully unconscious and tears spilled from my throbbing eyes like holy water. When he awoke, he responded to the pathetic pleading in my eyes by quietly explaining to me that the reason he'd left me in the dark for so long was because he knew from the beginning that he wasn't going to die and he didn't want me to worry. He just didn't think that "not dying" was going to take so long. He even claimed to know that I was going to be present at his miracle. I was putty--a silly little limp piece of putty.

Days later when they removed Jack's bandages, he was sporting a scar around his scalp that looked like a halo. Miraculously the diagnosis was that I most likely had my fiance back. Naturally I was elated, but the little man in the back of my head had a new nickname for for angel boy--Jack-O-Lantern.