The operation didn't go well at all. At least, not for me.

There were huge stitches pinched around my forehead, starting at the top of my ears and crisscrossing over my eyes and below my hairline. The skin was mottled and swollen, purple welts rising amidst a greenish-red sea of pus and dried blood. I could see it all in the giant mirrors above my head. It didn't hurt, though. I felt detached from it.

The doctors shook their heads in unison. Sad expressions painted on their faces.

They collectively looked me over and then walked out of the room to find another patient.

"We're sorry," they might have said.

But they didn't.

Two large men with trenchcoats half-carried me from the bed to a wheelchair. It was old and rickety, and smelled of fresh grease in the joints. I wished they had squirted some of that in my brain, because right then, I felt as if I couldn't quite figure out what two and two were. My thoughts were cloudy, bordering on the extinct. Almost at the tip of my left hemisphere, but fading off to the right just when I had them tracked down. I wasn't even sure what my name was.

The wheelchair creaked its way down the corridor.

Bright white lights and blinding neon bulbs shot painful needles into my retinas. I tried to close my eyes, but the stitches seemed to peel the lids back each time I shut them. My eyeballs were dry and nervous, jumping around anxiously. I wanted to panic, but there was no emotion to carry me over the edge. Just when I thought I couldn't bear it, I found that it wasn't really bothering me.

Nothing seemed to bother me anymore.

The ride to the car lasted a long time. The person who oiled the wheelchair should have spent some time fixing the rest of it. We had to stop twice while the men switched positions. There were two wide double doors with plastic windows that we stopped at while other men muttered and exchanged signatures.

We got out the back door of the hospital just as the wheelchair collapsed on the sidewalk. The two large men in trenchcoats had to reach down and pull me up off the cement. I had banged my head against the pavement, and a trickle of fresh blood dripped onto my lips. It tasted salty. Thin and transparent blood. Wetting my tongue. Seeping into my taste buds like briny fish.

"Get on in there," one of the men said.

The other helped push.

I collapsed in the back seat of the large Lincoln. I thought it was a taxi, but the driver wore a black cap and had a mustache. He looked at me for a moment. Was there pity in his eyes? I couldn't tell, for my head began to roll forward as soon as the door slammed shut. One of the two men came in next to me on the other side. He wrapped the seatbelt around me and clicked it shut. It was too tight.

"Take him home."

"Yes, sir."

Taxi drivers in Washington D.C. do not say, "Yes, sir."

The Lincoln purred down the streets, turning occasionally as it wound its way around the empty streets. There was fog at this time of night. Thick, pallid chunks of fog. Floating in between the buildings, down the roads, like giant spumes of wet wood smoke too heavy with rain to rise. The windows of the Lincoln grew damp and thick with droplets.

"You'll be glad to be home."

I didn't respond.

"Sally is waiting for you."

Sally.

"She was worried about the operation, of course, but we assured her that you would not make any more problems. In the future."

Problems.

"She will be pleased, you can be sure."

Pleased.

The house was not far from the hospital, and we arrived in ten minutes or so. The Lincoln pulled up to the sagging front gate and stopped. There was no one in sight. The only lights on the block came from the second story of the house. Two more popped instantly in the downstairs. Then the outside porch light came on.

"You're home, Richard."

"Let's get you out of the car."

The large man cursed as he dragged me from the back seat. The driver was already out and opening the trunk. He lugged out the rickety wheelchair with the broken wheels. They dumped me in it and forced it up the sidewalk to the gate. Screeching metal jarred my head.

The front door opened slowly.

A woman stood there, watching the progression up her lawn.

She didn't move as they lifted the wheelchair up the three tiny steps to the porch. She averted her eyes when they brought me into the foyer.

"There he is, Sally," the large man said. "Now he won't cause you any more problems."

She made no answer.

"He's a better person for it." Whether the large man was trying to convince the woman or himself, I don't know. I wasn't paying much attention. I was trying to figure out where I was, but my head felt as if it were bursting open, and my thoughts were so convoluted that I gave up the effort.

"Trust us."

"Yes," the woman finally said. "Good night."

"Good night, Sally."

When they had gone, the woman turned to me and smiled half-heartedly.

"How are you doing?" she asked.

I said nothing, staring blankly.

"Don't you recognize me?"

Her lips started to quiver as she bit back tears.

"Don't you know who I am?" she asked.

Who are you.

"Don't you know?"

My head rolled forward involuntarily.

She fell at my feet and started weeping. She beat the floor with her tiny hands, burying her head in my legs and trying to shake me at the same time.

"What did they do to you!"

They.

"Oh, God! What did they do? What did they do to you? Oh, God! Help me! Help me!"

I watched her as she tried to calm down.

Finally, she looked up at my face. When she saw the stitches, she cringed. She reached out a hand, but then jerked it back. A look of horror passed over her eyes.

"You're not Ricky anymore," she said.

Ricky.

"You're... you're..."

I was hungry, but I didn't know it until my stomach started to rumble.

The woman heard the sound and leaped to her feet.

"I'll get you something to eat," she said. "Just wait a moment."

Wait. A vague feeling told me that waiting was something that I could do a lot of now.

The house was not large, but not small either. There were three bedrooms that I could see upstairs. My wheelchair was situated at the bottom of the stairs, facing the dining room, where I could see a walnut table with several matching chairs around it. There were some dishes left on the table, as if someone has finished a meal long ago that had never been cleaned away. The walls in the dining room were blank, except for two windows that looked out onto the street on one side and the neighbor's house on the other.

Behind me was the living room. By turning my head slowly, I could see the television and coffee table perched on the floor like short, squat animals laid to rest. The wallpaper in the living room was a damp, flowery sort of thing, dripping down the walls until it ran into the pine floor molding. The far side held a gas fireplace, with fake brown logs lying idle, awaiting the coming winter months off.

There were many pictures on the walls. I could see several family portraits and a few single shots of children in various stages of development. Some of the photos looked familiar, but I could not put my finger on it. I thought I recognized one particular man, but I could not tell who he was.

The woman came back into the dining room. She pushed the dirty dishes aside and lay two plates of steaming rice and vegetables on a mat taken from the pantry drawer.

"Are you hungry?"

Hungry.

"You must be starving. What did they feed you at the hospital?"

Feed.

She bustled about, finding forks and things. "You know," she said. "I tried and tried to come visit you, but they told me that you were not available. I made several complaints. They said that it was impossible to see you. Classified stuff, they said." She found a glass and filled it with water. "I never even found out which hospital you were in. Was it far away?"

I could smell food.

"I felt like you were a thousand miles away."

I looked at her.

"I still feel that way."

I looked at her.

She stared back at me. Then she noticed the wet spot developing in my wheelchair.

"Oh, my!" she cried. She ran into the kitchen and came back with some hand towels. "Why didn't you tell me?"

She dropped one of the towels on the floor at my feet. She used another to dab at my pants. I felt embarrassed when she pushed the towel against my legs.

"If you have to go to the bathroom, just tell me!"

Bathroom.

"Just nod your head, or something. You can do that, can't you?"

Can't I.

"Oh, this is not what I expected at all. This is going to be difficult. You're just like a baby."

Somehow, she managed to get most of the food down my throat. I coughed and gagged, but she held my jaws shut long enough for me to swallow. My forehead hurt and I almost screamed when she accidentally bumped my head. She apologized profusely.

When we were finished, the floor looked like a dog had finished ripping through the garbage. There were sticky blobs of rice and pieces of broccoli and carrot on the carpet. The woman shook her head in despair.

"I can get that later," she said. "You need to get up to bed."

Getting up to bed proved impossible. Finally, the woman realized that we weren't going up the stairs, and pulled some sheets and a blanket out of the closet. She made the sofa up nice and rolled me out of the wheelchair into my new bed. It was a lot more comfortable than the hospital mattress.

She folded the blanket over my chest and kissed me goodnight.

"I never thought this would happen," she said, choking back a sob. "You coming home like this. I never thought..."

She went upstairs, forgetting to turn off the lights.

I lay in my new bed for an hour, waiting to go to sleep. It took a long time. I kept trying to figure out where I was, but it kept eluding me. I wanted to know who I was, and what happened to me, but that, too, slipped away like water running over rocks in a river.

My eyes wandered back to the portraits on the wall. I could see the young man that looked familiar. He was wearing a black gown with a strange, square black hat and shaking hands with another man, much older than he. Another picture showed the same man standing next to a long, cylindrical machine that towered over him. At the top was a cone-shaped device that seemed to catch the attention of the photographer. The man was smiling. A strange smile. Like he was happy and sad at the same time.

I turned and studied the ceiling for a while, watching a spider build its web in the corner above the front window. It worked interminably, not stopping for wind or noise. It would work all night, or the rest of its life, to finish what it had started. If the web strands broke, it would go back patiently and start again. The only way it would stop is if someone came along and destroyed its web and killed it.

I fell asleep watching the spider.

The next morning, the woman was gone.