Luck just wasn't with Erwin late that Sunday evening as he walked his dog. He had felt like crap all day. He hadn't been able to breathe properly, his throat hurt, and he couldn't eat because he couldn't taste or smell anything. This was the last time he had to take his dog out for the night, and he was glad. He was planning to go to bed early.
Erwin stopped and tugged at his dog's lead. "Come on baby girl, let's head back."
Abruptly, a squirrel darted between the trees. Erwin never saw it but his dog did. She exploded like a racehorse out of the gate after it and, despite being a big man, Erwin twisted awkwardly and went down on the concrete sidewalk, hard.
He managed to make it home but something was far wrong with his shoulder. "Well, it looks like I'm going to the ER," he said wryly to his dog.
At the emergency room they took him back and he was waiting on a hospital bed in the hall when he coughed; a wet, phlegmy sound, and a passing nurse stopped in her tracks and looked at him.
"Are you OK, sir?"
"I'm having trouble breathing. Can you … What's the matter?"
"Sir, have you been tested for Covid?"
"No." Erwin wasn't in contact with the public and had no underlying conditions. He masked up and socially distanced. He couldn't have Covid.
He had Covid.
And his shoulder was dislocated. They popped his shoulder back, put his left arm in a sling, slapped an oxygen mask on him, and admitted him.
Chapter 1 - LeviYou don't realize how small the standard American private hospital room is until you try to shoehorn two beds in there. Because of the almost overwhelming numbers of Covid-19 cases, the hospital had had to double up in erstwhile private rooms. The staff had removed the 'guest sofa' from the room and Erwin's mobile bed was being slotted in side by side with the one already in the room. There was a space on the wall designed to provide hookups for everything a patient might need (oxygen, power, call button, etc.) and Erwin's bed was not in that space. That slot was given over to his roommate. Erwin looked at him curiously.
The man was asleep or unconscious and on a ventilator. The parts of his face that he could see were torn and raw and marred by dark purple bruises. Black stitches like spiders marched across one cheek and along the opposite jaw.
Before Erwin had a chance to ask, the transporter (the hospital had staff whose sole job it was to move patients around,) spoke. "This is a Covid-19 ward in case you're wondering."
"So he has Covid-19, too?" It didn't seem fair, considering his injuries. Erwin subconsciously adjusted his mask. It was going to be very strange when they beat this plague and folks didn't have to wear masks anymore.
She nodded.
"What happened to him?"
"Motorcycle accident. Drunk driver."
Erwin resumed staring at the man.
He was small and pale and his silky-looking black hair fell over his brow almost into his eyes. What color were his eyes?
He seemed to be physically whole: that is, he wasn't missing any limbs or anything. His left leg was a bristling monstrosity, though. He appeared to have actual metal rods sticking out of his bandaged leg and linked together with more metal rods. It looked gruesome and made Erwin shiver. The man's right arm was also in a cast.
Erwin suddenly felt sorry for the man. Where was his family? Were they not allowed in the hospital because of Covid-19?
As he wondered about his new roommate, Erwin started to doze off. He was tired, he couldn't breathe well. They had him on supplemental oxygen but he was just exhausted. He fell asleep watching the man next to him and listening to the ventilator's rhythmic hiss.
Erwin awoke on Monday to the nurses bustling about the small hospital room. With three of them in there, it was packed. Since it was originally a private room, there was no curtain between the two men whose beds were only feet apart. The nurses had wrangled up a freestanding barrier—a metal frame on wheels with fabric stretched over it—to provide a modicum of privacy. Erwin quickly discovered that he could see around it pretty easily. The nurses spoke kindly to him, brought him water, asked him what he wanted to eat for breakfast, took his vitals. They checked the unconscious man's IVs and went out.
Erwin was a bit obsessed with his silent roommate. Studying him beat anything else he could do in the room. He was profoundly bored. He hated watching TV usually except for shows about history or the natural world and found himself looking at his companion often. The guy was a very attractive man despite the cuts and bruises. He wondered if he was gay.
He looked drawn and small in the bed and Erwin guessed that he was a good deal shorter than him. Of course, being 6'2" meant that most people were shorter than him but this guy was small—probably under 5'5"—but appeared to be surprisingly muscular.
A doctor and two nurses came into the room at one point and immediately went behind the curtain. Erwin hunched down in his bed, purposely averting his gaze, trying to give the small man some privacy even if he didn't know he was getting it. Secretly, he hated it, hated the impersonal nature of hospitals now that Covid-19 was there, hated the way all the medical staff looked all gowned and gloved and masked. They didn't look like the sympathetic caregivers they were. They looked scary.
He strained his ears, trying to hear what they were saying to each other, what they were saying about the sick man. Apparently his case was quite serious.
The next person in the room, who was there to draw blood, was a chatty young woman. Erwin quickly took advantage of that fact.
"No visitors are allowed up here, are they?"
"No, Sir. Unfortunately not."
"I don't have anyone but co-workers to visit me but this guy's family" —he indicated his roommate— "must be really disappointed they can't see him."
It was a gently leading question and the phlebotomist fell for it immediately.
"Oh, as far as I know, only one person has asked to visit, a woman."
Erwin frowned. Girlfriend? Wife? Sister?
"His mom, I bet."
"No, it was a young woman. I heard her on the phone."
Hmm. Erwin took a different tack. "I don't even know his name," he said.
The phlebotomist smoothly inserted the needle into his arm and Erwin flinched. "It's Ackerman. Levi Ackerman."
Levi.
Erwin glanced over at the man—Levi—and felt closer to him, somehow. He had a name. That made him feel better. Now he wanted to know the man.
"He's … he's in a coma?"
"Yeah. We have high hopes of him waking up soon, though. Your brain will do that to you, you know, after a traumatic accident."
"It involved a motorcycle, didn't it?"
The nurse popped a red-topped vacutainer onto the needle in Erwin's arm. "Yeah! It was a mess. Mr. Ackerman was on his bike and some guy in a truck T-boned him on the left side."
Erwin shuddered at the image and glanced at Levi. His gaze flickered to the morphine drip that hung on the IV pole. He must be in tremendous pain.
The nurse switched the vacutainer for another and Erwin averted his eyes from his dark blood flowing into the sample tube. He was blindsided with the sudden thought that Levi might actually die of his injuries or of Covid-19. He didn't want anyone to die but he most particularly didn't want his new roommate to die.
After only a handful of hours he had grown a tiny bit fond of this handsome man.
Later that morning before lunch, Erwin played a game with himself; trying to guess what Levi did for a living. His personal items were on the built-in dresser between the beds and the bathroom and Erwin had to resist the urge to go through it for clues to the man's life. The bag was transparent and Erwin could see jeans, what appeared to be a t-shirt, a wallet. Another bag held a black leather jacket. A motorcycle helmet, deeply scarred on one side, rested nearby. Standard bike-riding attire.
He let his mind play over his little game. Doctor? Lawyer? Accountant? Maybe he was in the trades and was a plumber or an electrician or a clerk or a delivery guy. He glanced at the helmet. In a biker gang? Bank robber? Hoodlum?
He gave up. There was no way to tell. His only clue was the jeans (which he had surreptitiously inspected through the plastic bag and without touching it.) They were pretty well-worn.
Of course, it might just be what he threw on for a ride on his bike and not his normal attire. Erwin sighed. If only Levi was awake.
That evening Erwin was eating his dinner and watching a show about—ironically—the Spanish Flu, when Levi made a noise. It startled Erwin so badly that he dropped his fork with a clatter. He stared at Levi, mouth open. Levi's throat was working and he seemed to be struggling against the ventilator. His heart monitor beeped urgently—his heart was racing.
He was choking.
Erwin lunged for the call button. There was only one in the room and it sat on Levi's bed because Erwin just never used it. He snatched it up now, standing on the cold hard floor in his bare feet, ass showing through the gap in the back of his hospital gown.
The nurses came running.
Erwin was beside himself. He retreated to his bed.
"It's OK," one nurse, a slender, middle-aged woman with mahogany skin, said. "He's fighting the ventilator—the tube down this throat. That's a good thing."
Erwin waited on tenterhooks, trying not to look around the privacy screen. He listened attentively, though. There were various disgusting wet choking and gagging sounds, then:
"It's out."
Erwin could hear the heart monitor's beeps slowly slowing down.
"He's breathing on his own."
Erwin heaved a huge sigh of relief.
Now that Levi was off his ventilator Erwin spent even more time watching him. He had seen his whole face before they put an oxygen mask on him and had decided that he was even better looking than he had originally thought.
Levi's skin was very pale—naturally so, a creamy alabaster—and his bruises stood out in sharp contrast. His hair and brows and lashes were, conversely, midnight black. His face was sharp, with thin lips and a small nose. He might be the best looking man Erwin had ever seen.
The next evening, after Erwin had eaten what the hospital food service called 'chicken cordon bleu,' he grabbed the TV remote and clicked through the channels looking for a documentary. "What do you want to watch?" he asked out loud. It took him several seconds to realize that he'd just spoken to a man in a coma. He blinked and looked over at Levi. He rested, looking like he was just asleep.
Erwin began talking to him regularly after that.