Sugarcane

<html>\n<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/88/VanHalen_1984_fcover.jpg>\n</html> \n\nThat angel has more hair than he does.\n\n<<if $gotcigarette == "no">>[[back|A Hospital Room]]<<endif>><<if $gotcigarette == "yes">>What a weird thing to bring to someone with cancer. The cover was just a little cerub with a cigarette hanging from his fingers, glancing over his shoulder at something far away.\n\nThen he noticed it, sticking up like a gopher from the pocket. Another photo.\n\nHe grabbed it with his first finger and thumb, the few not yet amputated. It was just a picture of a smiling man, skinny with long blond hair, an acoustic guitar in his lap, trying to light his own cigarette. That man was [[him]].<<endif>>

<<if $nursevisit1 == "no">>On the other side of the curtains someone is whimpering sadly. He'd like to yell back in response, and he'd be well within his right as a man with a third of his fingers missing. But these days yelling is a luxury only available on good days and is not to be squandered, traded, or wasted.<<endif>><<if $nursevisit1 == "yes">>The other person seems to have gone to sleep.<<endif>>\n\n[[back|A Hospital Room]]

He thinks he saw himself on an anti-smoking ad the other day.\n\nHe'd been spinning through TV stations from his hospital bed, mashing remote buttons left and right with the stumps on his left hand, when quite suddenly he was assaulted by images of snaggly yellow teeth, decaying gums, and blackened cheeks. They all looked vaguely familiar.\n\nHis first thought was that someone had snuck into his room in the dead of night and taken pictures of him. His second thought was of suing. But then the camera pulled back to show that the teeth and mouth belonged to a woman, and a woman with all her own fingers, at that.\n\n"Some people have all the luck," was his third thought.\n\n<<display 'A Hospital Room'>>

<<if $nursevisit2 == "no">>"What do YOU want?" she demands. "What is it now?"\n\nHe gestures to his water glass down on the floor. She frowns.\n\n"You're so entitled," she says, not quite under her breath. Then a large, mildly terrifying smile plasters itself to her face and she places the case on his lap. It's his [[guitar case]]. "One of your daughters brought this. I'm not sure which one. The sweet little one with the bad haircut. And she brought this too. I warned her you wouldn't be able to play it."\n\nIt's a [[record album]]. She props it up on the bedside table and gives it a disgusted look. "Do you know much poetry?"\n\nDoes Journey count?\n\nShe smirks. "As many as are the leaves that fall in the forest at the first chill of autumn, as many as the birds that flock to land from deep ocean when the cold season of the year drives them over the sea to lands bathed in sun."\n\nThat's not poetry. That's Bob Ross's first novel.\n\nHe points again at the glass.\n\n"I'll get you a new one." She leaves the old one set and in a moment is gone.\n\nFine. No nurse's day card [[for her|A Hospital Room]].\n\n<<set $nursevisit1 = "yes">><<endif>><<if $nursevisit2 == "yes">>He looked from the picture to her, then around the room. He saw, besides the glass of water in her hand, no beverages of any kind.\n\n"Eh?" he asked.\n\n"You can't smoke that in here," she repeated, pointing at the cigarette. "This is a hospital. It's against the rules."\n\n"Don't tell me, lady," he wanted to tell her, "I'm a superstar!" But all that came out was a wheeze.\n\nUp in the corner of her temple he thought he spotted a vein popping out, but she looked perfectly calm. She held out her hand. Her eyes were on the cigarette; he held it out of reach.\n\n"Give me that," she told him. She leaned over him and grabbed at it, so close that his eyes began to sting from the plume of hairspray she left in her wake. He scooted as far over in the bed as possible. She made another grab. It was too far to lean. She tipped over on top of him, scrambled, pushed herself up by jamming an elbow into his throat, and swung backwards so fast she fell straight back out the door. The guitar slid off his lap and crashed into the floor. In the vast emptiness of the hospital room it made a sound like a string orchestra being dropped out a third-story window.\n\n"You!" she cried. She glared at him and looked at the IV and then the guitar and then glared some more. "You... Are you hurt? No?... You you you...!"\n\nAnd although his stomach was in agony and his eyes seemed to think they were crying, he smiled at her with his rotted mouth, put the cigarette between his teeth, and with the stubby middle finger of his left hand he cheerfully flipped her off.\n\n[[Fin]] <<endif>>

<<if $nursevisit1 == "no">>With the nubs of his fingers he stabs the tuner button. It hurts like heck, but at least it's not <<replace "a game show full of screaming housewives">>a soap opera with a ghost who looks like a dude with a flashlight stuffed down his shirt (in fact, it is a dude with a flashlight stuffed down his shirt)<<becomes>>a crafting program (those dowel-shaped twigs grow in nature, huh?)<<endreplace>> anymore.<<endif>><<if $nursevisit1 == "yes">>The show seems to have gone to commercial. That's, what? Twenty minutes of commercial since the hour started?\n\nHe hates television.<<endif>>\n\n[[back|A Hospital Room]]

Yup, it's definitely his. Probably reeks of tobacco. A sticker plastered across the lid reads "This machine kills fascists."\n\n[[back|An Angry Nurse]]

<<if $nursevisit1 == "no">>In a hospital room he sits with the [[remote]] on his lap. A [[glass of water]], partially full, rests on the nightstand. The [[curtains]] are drawn partially around his bed, and the [[call button remote]] rests uncomfortably under his back. He hums a [[favorite tune]].<<endif>><<if $nursevisit1 == "yes">>In a hospital room he sits with the [[remote]] on his lap. The [[curtains]] are drawn partially around his bed, and the [[call button remote]] rests beside him. In his lap is [[the guitar case]], and on the table sits his [[album]].<<endif>>\n\n<<silently>><<stopbgm bd0_b1lphQ0>><<endsilently>>\n<<if $wantslide == "yes">><<set $wantslide2 = "yes">><<endif>>\n<<if $gotcigarette == "yes">><<set $gotcigarette = "yes">><<endif>>

<<silently>><<playbgm bd0_b1lphQ0 5>><<endsilently>>\nMaybe if he were to sing it in Swedish, the nurse wouldn't recognize it. Hey, he's not hurting anyone.\n\n[[back|A Hospital Room]]

Van Halen. 1984. Dented on the corner where an overweight backup singer once sat on it. He didn't even know he still had this copy.\n\n[[back|An Angry Nurse]]

<<if $wantslide == "no">><<if $wantslide2 == "no">>He flips the lid back and there's the guitar, cherry red if a little scuffed. When he strums it a little with his thumb it's just enough off to suggest his daughter had tried to tune it.\n\nI'll never be able to hold a pick again, he thins, touching the strings with his stumpy fingers, and images of Jimi Hendrix playing "Purple Haze" with his teeth come to mind. It seems as reasonable to him as amputating the fingers of a musician. (<<display 'musician'>>)\n\nPulling the guitar up against him, he puts his fingers to the frets and tried to recall the opening chords to Hotel California. Instead, the uncalloused and unbandaged stumps that had once been his pinky and ring fingers catch fire.\n\nIt wasn't fair. Whatever happened to phantom pains?\n\nMaybe I've still got a slide, he thinks.\n\n[[back|A Hospital Room]]<<set $wantslide = "yes">><<endif>><<endif>><<if $wantslide2 == "yes">><<if $gotcigarette == "no">>Maybe I've still got a slide, he thinks, flipping open the accessory compartment.\n\nAnd it was there, inside, buried under slides and spare strings and one questionable photo of his ex-wife, that he found a single cigarette. A cherry flavored one, at that. It must have been there for ten years, since he'd quit smoking, but when he holds it up under the tubes in his nose he could almost smell the deceptive tarry aroma. That is a joke. He hasn't smelled a thing since his twenties.\n\n[[back|A Hospital Room]]<<set $gotcigarette = "yes">><<endif>><<if $gotcigarette2 == "yes">>He takes just one little peek at the picture of his ex-wife. She's not here, right? What's she going to care?\n\n[[back|A Hospital Room]]<<endif>><<endif>>

A More Important Matter\n\nby Megan Stevens\n\n[[begin]]\n\n<<set $isfloorwet = "no">>\n<<set $nursevisit1 = "no">>\n<<set $gotcigarette = "no">>\n<<set $nursevisit2 = "no">>\n<<set $wantslide = "no">>\n<<set $wantslide2 = "no">>\n<<set $gotcigarette2 = "no">>\n<html>\n<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/88/VanHalen_1984_fcover.jpg" style="display:none;">\n</html>

<<replace>>Att spela rock'n'roll är inte en fråga \nom liv och död. Det är betydligt viktigare än så!<<becomes>>Playing rock and roll is not an issue of life and death. It's far more important than that!<<becomes>>Att spela rock'n'roll är inte en fråga \nom liv och död. Det är betydligt viktigare än så!<<becomes>>Playing rock and roll is not an issue of life and death. It's far more important than that!<<endreplace>>\n\n--[[Björn Afzelius|http://www.bjornafzelius.com/]]\n\n<<silently>><<playbgm mKrS01ECnSs 4>><<endsilently>>

A More Important Matter

He has to have a glass of water, on account of his salivary glands have been radiated to death. It is vitally important, then, for his throat, for his digestive system, for what remains of his dental health, that he take a sip every so often and not, as is happening right now, lose his grip on a perspiring tumbler and have it slip through his mostly amputated fingers and bounce under the bed sending water onto his stack of Rolling Stone back issues.\n\n[[Well, f|A Hospital Room]] \n\n<<set $isfloorwet = "yes">>

Yes, musician. Factory work was a good enough job, but it wasn't a career.

Megan Stevens

<<if $nursevisit1 == "no">><<if $isfloorwet == "no">>He struggles around, trying to get a hand behind his back to reach it, and manages to get his fingernail caught on the bedsheet and nearly tear it off. He considers a shriek of agony but decides against it. It isn't as if he wanted the nurse anyway.\n\n[[back|A Hospital Room]]<<endif>><<if $isfloorwet == "yes">>That's it. You can push a man only so far. You can chop off his fingers. You can tell him he can't play his radio because it will cause insanity among the elder patients who still think Buddy Holly is the anti-Christ. You can even, time allowing, forcibly sponge bathe him. But you do not deny him the pleasure of pretending his water is vodka.\n\nHe all but dislocates his shoulder and forces his arm behind his back and grabs the call button. He pounds it.\n\nNo nurse responds.\n\nHe pounds it again. When that doesn't work, he starts tapping it in rhythm with the drum solo from Wipe Out.\n\nFinally, it works. The [[nurse|An Angry Nurse]] stalks in with a black case at her side.<<endif>><<endif>><<if $nursevisit1 == "yes">>He pretends he's Keith Moon banging away on the call button. It would serve her right if he did.\n\n[[back|A Hospital Room]]<<endif>>

He shifted around a bit until he could get the cigarette back up to his mouth. One hand he put around it to protect the flame, and the other held an imaginary match to the tobacco. He smiled.\n\nPerfect.\n\n"Beer," said [[the angry nurse|An Angry Nurse]], suddenly materializing at his side.\n\n<<set $nursevisit2 = "yes">>