He laughed. “Modest! I like that. Give me a call, Charlie.”
I said I would, hung up, and went downstairs to watch some TV with my dad before studying. I wondered how Radar was doing. Okay, I hoped. Getting used to a different routine. I thought of that saying of the Buddha’s again. That was a good one to hold onto.
CHAPTER FOUR Visiting Mr. Bowditch. Andy Chen. The Cellar. In Other News. A Hospital Meeting.
1
When I showed up the next morning at Number 1 Sycamore Street, Radar’s greeting was exuberant but not as frenzied. That made me think she was getting used to the new order. She did the morning necessary, gobbled her breakfast （Dad had brought home a twenty-five-pound sack of her chow）， then wanted to play with the monkey. I still had some time when she tired of that, so I went into the living room to see if the vintage television worked. I wasted some time looking for the zapper, but of course Mr. Bowditch’s idiot box was from the pre-zapper era of home entertainment. There were two big dials below the screen. The one on the right had numbers on it—channels, I presumed—so I turned the one on the left.
The hum from the TV wasn’t as disturbing as the noises from the shed, but it was still a bit worrisome. I stepped back, hoping it wouldn’t explode. After awhile, the Today show swam into view—Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie chatting it up with a couple of politicians. The picture wasn’t 4K; it wasn’t even 1K. But it was something, at least. I tried moving the antenna that Mrs. Silvius had called rabbit ears. I turned it one way and the picture got better （marginally better）。 I turned it the other way and Today disappeared into a snowstorm. I looked behind the unit. The backing was full of small holes to let out the heat—which was considerable—and through them I saw the orange glow of tubes. I was pretty sure they were producing the humming sound.
I snapped it off, wondering how annoying it must have been to get up every time you wanted to change the channel. I told Radar I had to go to school, but I needed another picture first. I handed her the monkey.
“Do you mind holding that in your mouth? It’s pretty cute.”
Radar was happy to oblige.
2
With no baseball practice I got to the hospital by mid-afternoon. At the desk I asked if Howard Bowditch was allowed to have visitors—a nurse had told me he was going to need another operation. The desk lady checked something on her monitor and told me I could go up and see. As I turned toward the elevators, she told me to wait up, she had a form for me to fill out. It was for my contact information “in case of emergency.” The requesting patient was Howard Adrian Bowditch. My name had been filled in as Charles Reed.
“You are him, aren’t you?” the desk lady said.
“Yes, but the last name is spelled wrong.” I scratched it out and printed Reade. “He said for you to contact me? Doesn’t he have anyone else? Like a brother or sister? Because I don’t think I’m old enough to make any big decisions, like if…” I didn’t want to finish, and she didn’t need me to.
“He signed a DNR before he went up for surgery. A form like this is just if he needs you to bring him something.”
“What’s a DNR?”
She told me. It was nothing I really wanted to hear. She never answered my question about relatives, because she probably didn’t know—why would she? I filled out the form with my home address, email address, and cell number. Then I went upstairs, thinking there was a double shitload of things I didn’t know about Howard Adrian Bowditch.
3
He was awake, and his leg was no longer suspended, but judging by his slow speech and the glassy look in his eyes, he was pretty stoned.
“You again,” he said, which wasn’t exactly mighty glad to see you, Charlie.
“Me again,” I agreed.
Then he smiled. If I’d known him better, I would have told him he should use it more often. “Drag up a chair and tell me how you like the look of this.”
There was a blanket up to his waist. He tossed it back, revealing a complex steel gadget that encased his leg from the shin to upper thigh. There were thin rods going into his flesh, the points of entry sealed off with little rubber gasket thingies that were dark with dried blood. His knee was bandaged and looked as big as a breadloaf. A fan of those thin rods went through the wrappings.
He saw the expression on my face and gave a chuckle. “Looks like an implement of torture from the Inquisition, doesn’t it? It’s called an external fixator.”
“Does it hurt?” Thinking that was the stupidest question of the year. Those stainless steel rods had to go right into his legbones.