Toilet Tom: A Short Story Page 2

  She made a mental note to mention the fleeting pain she’d felt to her doctor on her next physical.

  *

  Francis Blondain played hockey. He was no pro, but he played in a league every Tuesday and Thursday. Approximately five months ago, Francis Blondain, still hung-over from the previous night’s drinking, had not been paying attention when he was checked into the boards. His head first hit the board, then the ice. Though he wore a helmet, his vision was blurred for a full two hours after the incident and he was plagued with headaches for days afterward. He visited his doctor who ordered an MRI. It was determined that Blondain had suffered a mild concussion. This, however, was of very little concern when compared to the hypodense lesion visible on the parietal lobe of the left hemisphere of his brain.

  After a brain biopsy, it was determined that Francis Blondain had a brain tumour. The meningioma was attached to the dura of his periotal lobe and proved completely benign and entirely asymptomatic. It was relatively small but, given that Blondain was only twenty-three and that tumours in younger patients were more prone to growth, his neurologist, a man named Frederic Sample, decided to operate.

  As far as brain surgery went, it was a decidedly simple case. The tumour was superficial, perfectly uniform, and had not affected the bone. It could be removed in its entirety with very little difficulty. Sure, it would require open surgery but, hell, it wasn’t rocket science, after all.

  In fact, Blondain’s tumour could have been removed using sterotactic radiosurgery, which was a significantly less invasive form of surgery when compared to cutting a window into the young man’s skull. But Fred Sample was a man given to bouts of depression-inducing boredom. Stereostatic radiosurgery was easier, more effective and, as mentioned, less invasive, but it was also less fun. Brain surgery wasn’t about sending tiny probes into the brain through an equally tiny hole in the skull. It was about lopping the lid off the top of some poor schmuck’s head and digging the offending material out of the exposed brain with a shiny sharp scalpel.

  And so it was that Francis Blondain was scheduled for surgery on the twenty-third of November at Montreal’s General Hospital. And now, at nine seventeen in the morning, twenty-three minutes after Louise Hubert did not die, he sat with his head immobilized by a scaffolding of stainless steel, with a window cut into his skull, and with his eyes wide open. Though most would be terrified by the prospect of brain surgery, Francis Blondain was more than a little excited to experience such a rare adventure.

  Frederic Sample was much less excited. In fact, Sample was near catatonic, having been kept awake by the sonorous snores of the new intern with the nice ass. After weeks of effort, he’d finally managed to get her and her delicious rump into his bed, only to find that the woman and all of her hundred and ten pounds snored like a jackhammer. Now, as he approached Francis Blondain’s tumour—nestled snugly in Francis Blondain’s dura—with a shiny sharp scalpel, Frederic Sample fought to keep his eyes open.

  “Hey Doc,” Francis said. “You see it? You see the tumour?”

  “Hm?” Sample said, his eyes snapping open. He glanced over at the attending nurse. She hadn’t noticed that he’d been very close to falling asleep. “What was that, Frank?”

  “The tumour, you see it?”

  “Yes, Frank, I see it. We’ll have it out of you in just a sec.”

  “Cool. I can keep it, right?”

  “Hm?”

  “The tumour. I can keep it, right?”

  Sample took a deep breath and thought of cold water splashing his face. “Uh, yeah, sure,” he mumbled, having no idea what he’d just agreed to.

  “Cool!” Blondain said. “I’m gonna keep it in a jar. Hey, where can ya buy formaldehyde?”

  “Hm?” Frederic Sample said and killed Francis Blondain.

  Sample looked down at his shiny sharp scalpel’s blade. He looked down at the blood that rimmed its edge. He looked at the tiny little speck of brain tissue that clung to its tip. It had happened, quite literally, in the blink of an eye. For just a moment, Frederic Sample had closed both his eyes and, near sleep, had allowed his scalpel to dip into Francis Blondain’s brain. It had not touched the tumour. Instead, it had pierced the dura and plunged into the parietal lobe. In and out. The scalpel now hovered over the young man’s exposed brain and Fred Sample was amazed to note that his hand wasn’t even shaking. He looked around, sure that he would be met by at least one set of horrified eyes. Nothing. No one had noticed a thing.

  “Doc?” Blondain said. “The formaldehyde?”

  Sample said nothing. How could he? Francis Blondain should have been dead. He should have been killed instantly, as soon as he’d been stabbed in the brain. But he was still alive. His vitals were strong. Frederic Sample knew this because there was a whole array of very expensive machinery hooked up to the young Blondain, and designed solely to monitor his vital signs.

  “Uh, Frank?” Sample said.

  “Yeah?”

  “You feel okay?”

  “Well, all things considered, sure.”

  “Okay.”

  The attending nurse was giving him a funny look. Sample smiled at her and returned his attention to Blondain’s apparently indestructible brain and its tumour.

  Though Frederic Sample did not know how Francis Blondain could possibly still be alive, he did know one thing without a doubt: he was now fully awake.

  At nine twenty-four, Frederic Sample resumed the procedure aimed at removing the tumour from Francis Blondain’s brain, three minutes after Francis Blondain did not die.

  *

  At nine fifty-six, on the morning of November the twenty-third, Edward Savois was running from his office building in the Ville Saint-Laurent area of Montreal. Edward Savois was forty-eight years old and, interestingly enough, exactly forty-eight pounds overweight, if that issue of Men’s Health he’d read at the barber’s was to be trusted. Edward ran because he was on break and had only fifteen minutes to get from his office to his favourite shwarma place across the street. Though his wife, Clair, had packed him a lunch, Edward had made the mistake of telling her all about the article in Men’s Health and, fearing for his health, she had resolved to pack him only low-fat, low-carb and decidedly low-pleasure lunches from then on. Edward Savois knew that, in that brown paper bag lying at the bottom of his briefcase was a sandwich made with whole-wheat bread, bean sprouts, lettuce, and tomato. It was like a spy in the house of BLTs. Same acronym, but meant only to deceive and demoralize. Along with the evil sandwich were a tiny orange and a bottle of water. These did not a good lunch make.

  To make matters worse, Edward had not had time to eat breakfast. Clair had agreed to leave one of his meals alone if he promised to stick to her meal plan at all other times. Though most would have chosen dinner, with its heaping plates of pasta or giant slabs of rare steak, not to mention the promise of dessert, Edward Savois had chosen to save his breakfast. He loved little else more than the smell of bacon, the sight of a couple eggs, side-by-side like a pair of cartoon yellow-nippled breasts. He swooned at the sound of bread popping golden brown and crispy from the toaster like a warm and tender stripper from a cake. He awoke every morning with a smile upon his chubby face, no matter how disappointing the previous day’s lunch and dinner had been, simply knowing that breakfast was his to enjoy. That morning, however, he had slept in. Ironically, he had been dreaming of waffles slathered with real butter and equally authentic maple syrup. The sound of his alarm had been no match for the imaginary flavours flooding his mind. As such, he had missed breakfast entirely. No waffles, no butter, no syrup, not even an English muffin and glass of OJ. Nothing.

  Consequently, Edward Savois was starving and knew that, if he did not eat now, he would be forced to slog through the day on nothing but water, an orange, and a treasonous BLT. And so he would forgo the waffles, but not the meal. He was still owed a breakfast. There was no statute of limitations on such things. He would have his breakfast a full two hours late, and it would be a shwarma, b
ut it counted as breakfast nonetheless.

  And this is how Edward Savois, aged forty-eight years and overweight by forty-eight pounds, came to be jaywalking—or jay-running—across the intersection of Crevier and Marcel-Laurin. It is also how Edward Savois, at ten-oh-one in the morning, came to be hit by a milk truck.

  As he stood on the one side of Cote Vertu blvd, staring at the shwarma shack on the other side, he glanced up long enough to note that the light was green for the traffic running along the street. He also saw that the little white man who would promise safe passage across the busy street was currently lending its spot to the big orange hand that warned “Hang on, wait right there. The little white dude will be with you shortly.” But, just as people can hear without listening, Edward Savois saw these things without truly seeing. And so he ran. He ran as only a middle-aged office administrator with a spare tire can: badly. If Edward had been in better shape, if, for example, he had been carrying four, or even eight, extra pounds rather than forty-eight, he might have made it. If he had eaten breakfast and was not both enfeebled and blinded by hunger, he might have made it. As it was, he did not make it.

  He hadn’t even made it half-way when the milk truck plowed into him.

  The truck, going seventy-five kilometres an hour, hit him on the left. Its steel bumper caught him on the side of the left knee, and its massive grill slammed into his left arm and shoulder. Though the driver jammed his foot on the break, he’d been far too late in doing so, and the truck ran straight through Edward Savois. Edward was not knocked down, but rather launched forward. His lower body took the brunt of the assault and his legs were shattered. The foot bone disconnected from the leg bone. The leg bone disconnected from the hip bone. The hip bone disconnected from the back bone. As he flew through the air, Edward Savois’s legs dangled and jumped like those of a horizontal River Dancer.

  Edward Savois landed directly on his head, which was promptly run over by a teenager on a Vespa. The scooter and its young rider were catapulted over Edward’s mangled noggin and came to rest on the shoulder, in relative safety. At that point, just seconds before ten-oh-two in the morning, all traffic stopped. The driver of the milk truck, joined by a mother of three and a retired police man who’d both witnessed the accident, ran to Edward Savois’s side, and, after a moment, the kid—now sans Vespa—came to stand with them as well.

  Edward’s neck was bent at an odd angle. His legs were a tangle of bloody tissue, bone, and ravaged pants. His left side was caved in and he was bleeding profusely. In fact, as it had been disconnected from his hip bone, Edward Savois’s right femur—or leg bone—had been thrust through the muscle and fat that made up his right thigh and sliced open his femoral artery. The femoral artery is a particularly busy section of the circulatory system and, by the time the ambulance had arrived, Edward Savois had lost three of his original five litres of blood.

  Oddly, beyond all reason, Edward Savois did not die. Edward Savois should have died. Edward Savois should have died at ten-oh-one. Instead, at ten past ten in the morning, lying in an ambulance and looking up at the equal parts shocked and baffled faces of the ambulance attendants, Edward Savois said, “Think I’ll be able to get a bite to eat once we get to the hospital? I’m thinking waffles.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Moments before Louise Hubert did not die, Roan Alten narrowly avoided tripping over the cat. The cat pale grey sat just outside the front doors of the Dolce Tower, where Roan worked. It was ten-to-nine and Roan started work at nine sharp, and so he had plenty of time to make it to the fourth floor and log onto his computer, but he’d been running nonetheless. For some reason Roan could neither explain nor understand, he felt that he had better be at his desk and online a few minutes before nine. Roan Alten had been moving quickly as he approached the front doors and did not see the cat until he was inches from kicking a foot into its cute and furry little face. At the last possible moment, Roan saw the cat and leapt into the air, undertaking an evasive manoeuvre not unlike a triple-axel as performed by a drunkard.

  Roan Alten slammed into the glass double doors of the Dolce Tower, causing them to shake in their frame. He watched the doors for a moment, half expecting them to explode in a shower of glass. Once convinced that his early-morning acrobatics had not resulted in the destruction of private property, Roan Alten turned his attention to the cat.

  It occupied the exact same spot, only it had turned to face him. “Maow,” said the cat.

  “What the hell?” Roan accused.

  The cat was visibly unapologetic, and so, frowning, Roan pushed through the doors and into the tiny lobby of Dolce Tower.

  Dolce Tower was not a tower at all. It was a four-story building located in the midst of Old Montreal. The Dolce Tower housed three separate insurance companies, one on each floor above the first. Each of the companies’ employees had a different name for the building. True Care Insurance, on the first floor, referred to the building as the Who Cares; Frankenstill Insurers, occupying the second floor, called it The Castle; while those who worked for La Dolce Vita Insurance, like Roan, had named the building Dolce Tower.

  Running up the stairs two at a time, Roan glanced at his watch. Eight fifty-two. Though Roan did not know it, Louise Hubert, sitting on her couch in another part of the city, was about to become the first person not to die. Roan reached the first floor and fast-walked past the reception desk, tossing a quick wave at Sally the receptionist. She ignored him completely. He checked his watch again. He wanted to be at his desk, headset on, by three-to-nine. He wasn’t sure why, in fact he hadn’t even considered why, he just did.

  Roan was one of ten customer service operators tasked with answering the incoming calls of current and prospective clients. They shared their space on the call floor with four salespeople responsible for outgoing sales calls. There were more service operators than salespeople because there were more complaints than sales.

  The call floor was a labyrinth of cubicles awash in the sickly glare of gently humming fluorescent lights. Given that, before nine, most operators were still on route or sipping horrid office coffee in the tiny staff cafeteria, Roan was alone as he sat at his desk and typed in his password, logging into the company’s database. He slipped on his headset and glanced at his phone. The LCD display listed the time and his status. It read eight fifty-six and Make Busy. He pressed the On Line button and the Make Busy signal disappeared. He awaited his first call of the day.

  It came at exactly eight fifty-seven, three minutes to nine.

  Roan heard the tone through his headset and the Line One indicator blinked to life. He pressed Line One and said, as per company protocol, “La Dolce Vita Insurance, Roan speaking, how can I make your vita dolce?”

  “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard, Roan,” said a high voice at the other end of the line.

  “How can I help you today?” Roan asked. He could not tell if the caller was a man or a woman, and so automatically omitted the word “sir” or “ma’am”.

  “Well Roan, actually, I think we can help each other.”

  Something was off. This person didn’t sound angry at all. In fact, he or she sounded like a kid. Roan rolled his eyes and stifled a sigh. He received at least two prank calls a week. He really didn’t need this first thing in the morning.

  Switching from a professional tone to a mildly sarcastic one, Roan said, “Oh really? And how can we help each other?”

  “I’d like to offer you a job, Roan. Take it and you’ll help us both out.”

  “I have a job, thank you. Do you have any questions or concerns regarding one of our policies?”

  “Sure, you have a job, but you hate it, don’t you, Roan? You sit there with your little headset and listen to people whine, bitch and moan. And why do they whine, why do they bitch, why do they moan? Because they’re going to die. They’re going to die, and the best they can do about it is buy a little insurance from you. That’s it. That’s the best they can do, and they’re pissed about it. That’s wh
at you want to do? Listen to people whine about their mortality? You have a job, Roan, but it sucks. I’m offering you something much more . . . rewarding.”

  For a moment, Roan was speechless. The kid’s monologue had been disturbingly insightful. The kid was right, Roan did hate his job, but the kid was also dead on as to why he hated his job.

  Roan had been working at La Dolce Vita as a customer service rep for just under a year. All day he sat at his computer answering calls from irate policy holders. He never received calls from happy people anxious to discuss the high points of their life insurance policy. There were no high points to a life insurance policy. With a life insurance policy, you paid into it while you remained alive and, once you finally died, someone else reaped all the benefits. As such, if someone called Roan, it was to complain. They complained about premiums, they complained about coverage and they complained about needing life insurance in the first place, as though Roan himself were responsible for their very mortality. In a way, Roan understood. In buying life insurance, these people were admitting that they would someday die. Everyone knew it, but very few people acknowledged it. Like the kid said, signing on for life insurance was, in a very real sense, tantamount to signing a document declaring that “I, the signatory, agree and accept that I will die.”

  Such a document could not be an easy thing to sign.

  But still, really, did they all have to be so bitter about it?

  Finally, Roan said, “Look kid, your tying up my line. Someone with a serious question might be trying to get through.”

  “A serious question?” The kid chuckled, the sound oddly unsettling. “A serious question about what? How can any question concerning an investment that only pays off once you die ever be taken seriously?”