I HAVE NOTHING
Chapter Two
A Body Without a Name
The St. Patrick’s hospital was not
a very pleasant edifice, but Dr. Myles was already accustomed to seeing those
yellowish walls, like somebody who saw their living room. It wasn’t perfect,
but it was quite cozy. He had spent twenty years working here, and St.
Patrick’s was now like his home.
This morning, his office seemed
cozier than ever, and not even the mountains of medical forms on his table
could take away from his good mood.
But between all those expedients,
there was one that had him quite intrigued—the one of Tom Collins. Who had
chosen that silly name? It had to be Ms. Taylor, the boss nurse. She was in
love with cowboy stories, and she surely had chosen that gunman’s name for that
poor boy.
When he had arrived at the
hospital, he had no identification with him. The only thing they knew was that
he was a survivor from the Titanic, and that he had almost frozen to death.
Actually, Dr. Myles was sure that
the boy had been dead for at least some seconds before being taken out of the
water. That was a revolutionary theory, but he was sure that his vital
constants had stopped for a very short time, and that that was the reason for
his coma.
It was a miracle that he was
alive. As he had been told, one of the boats had come to rescue some passengers
that were in the water, and one sailor had hit his body and thought that he was
still alive.
Some other passengers in the boat
had yelled that they had to throw him back into the water, that carrying a dead
man in the boat was unnecessary. But the sailor had insisted, saying that he
was still breathing...luckily, he had made them shut up.
The boy was alive, but
unconscious. They had finally decided to carry him to St. Patrick‘s when they
had no hope of him waking up. That was what they always did with the patients
with no hope. The hospital of Dr. Myles had become like death’s waiting room.
But he didn’t mind having that reputation.
He was proud of the work and
efforts of all his team, of the sweetness of the nurses changing the sheets of
the old people, of how his young medical students tried to save those poor
individuals that nobody else wanted to take care of. Maybe that was the reason
for his caring about the hospital, because inside of it, there were lots of
good people. People like him, who loved their profession.
That was what he had tried to
explain to the young survivor of the Titanic who had come to visit him, asking
for a job a few days after the tragedy. And he would have accepted her on his
team, but there was the lack of money. It was hard to convince her that she
couldn’t work for nothing, even when her words seemed truthful.
"What did you say was your
name, miss?"
"Rose. Rose Dawson."
"All right, Rose. Listen to
me. Sooner or later, you’ll need money. New York is a very tough city, and
unfortunately, I can’t pay you."
It was a pity, losing her. She
would have found her place perfectly in that familiar environment, but he was
sure that she would find a better job somewhere else.
He couldn’t help but think about
her when they had brought in that other survivor. Nobody knew his name. He
wasn’t on any list of passengers. He was a completely wreck. And he was
completely alone.
In the eight months that he had
been in the hospital, nobody, absolutely nobody, had asked for him. The nurses
had already invented a particular legend about the boy. Some of them said that
he was an European prince, others said that he was an American heir.
But the doctor only saw a young man,
fighting between life and death. A very strong man. Not everybody would have
survived in the same circumstances. He didn’t know anything about him, but he
was sure that Tom Collins, or whoever he was, had a very powerful reason to
stay alive.
It was midday. As always, the
doctor went upstairs to the top floor of the building. It was a routine visit.
"Anything new?"
"No, doctor. Everything is
the same. We just bathed him. Poor boy...do you think he will ever be up
again?"
"I don’t know. He may be in
a coma for years. He may never wake up, or he may wish to die if he ever
does."
"What do you mean by that,
doctor?"
"A coma like his can have
incredibly serious consequences, from amnesia to paralysis. You should already
know that."
The nurse looked at the face of
the boy. His blond hair was falling over his forehead. And when his lips
opened, she could hear a desperate breath, almost imperceptible.
"He has blue eyes. Did you
know that?"
But the doctor was not listening
to her anymore. He was leaving the room with his hands in his pockets. The girl
looked at the patient once again while she was closing the curtains of the big window,
trying to keep the sun from his face.
It was absurd, because he
couldn’t feel anything, not even the light or the heat. But they treated him
like he was just asleep. They talked to him, they asked him forgiveness when
they accidentally hit him, and they wished him good night before they went
home.
Even Miss Taylor, always so
quick-tempered, often sang him some song quietly. The boy, whoever he was, had
something special.
The nurse took the medicines from
the table, quietly said good night, and closed the old wooden door.
In the room, lying in the bed
completely unmoving, Jack Dawson kept swimming in those quiet waters of a dream
that could last forever.