THAT TIME I HAD A MUSICAL SHOWDOWN AGAINST A FANATICAL CHRISTIAN WHILE WE WERE IN REHAB.... 

“It sounds like death in here.”

Those words came out of the mouth of the man I was about to have to share a room with for the night, one bed over in a rehab center that I had just been ambulanced over to and wheeled in on a gurney at 11 o’clock on  a Friday night last July. This wasn’t a drug rehab facility, but actually an assisted-living center where old folks were sent to live one step ahead of an outright nursing home.

I was only 43, about half the age of most of the people whose snores, moans and untethered utterances I heard in the rooms around me as I was rolled down the hallway, slightly disoriented with the need to sleep yet adrenalized with fear about what was happening in my life. I wasn’t here because I was ready to die decades ahead of a normal life span, nor because of an addiction.

Rather, I had been battling a recurring infection in my right leg for over a decade, and the infections seemed to be getting worse instead of better. I used to pass in and out of hospital rooms in three to five days, but this was the first time I was being told I had to stay not just for the five days a hospital would allow, but another full week beyond in a halfway-house situation so I could continue to receive IV antibiotics.

My life was about to be put on hold for a full extra week, my world reduced to one of two beds in a room whose only view was the smoking patio outside and  one story below. It was the heart of summer, a time when I should be joining other people my age cruising with the top down on my car or catching rays on the beach.

Instead, I may as well have been placed in a federal witness relocation program. No one would think to come see me here unless I reached out and asked them, and even then only my closest friends could bear to make the trip to see their buddy reduced to these conditions. I was a living, literal harbinger of the future, of a time when they too would be helplessly dependent on the care of others – the Ghost of the Future to come.

Besides, they had been coming to see me in more than 30 hospital stays over the past decade, during which time I probably racked up enough medical bills to be classified as a real-life Six Million Dollar Man. Or at least a Million-Dollar Man.  

But before I could wallow too much in self-pity, I had to contend with the guy my nurses termed my “roommate.” I hadn’t had a roommate in years by choice, but here there were no choices. I had no say in where I was sent, nor any right to ask for a private room.  And so I found myself trapped in a rather small space with a raging Christian fundamentalist.

“This is what death is going to be like, bro! Get used to it! Prepare!”

All I could think was that the guy could tell me how the food was here, or who the hot nurses were so I could request specific persons in case I needed a sponge bath. But instead, I had Ricky – a tensely wired Latino man in his early 50s who had been receiving physical therapy there for three weeks after leg surgery – telling me how the place reminded him of Dante’s Inferno.

“OK, I hear ya, Ricky. I’m gonna go to sleep now. It’s been a long night,” I mumbled, dragging my words out into the slur of fading mental capacity as I felt my brain slipping softly into the warm cocoon of sleep.

Within moments, I unleashed my first snore of the evening. I was capable of making noises that would terrify bears and wake the neighbors. In fact, I was so bad at snoring that when I was in college, my RA called in an HVAC repair team to check whether a dog had somehow gotten trapped in the air conditioning ducts of my dorm building because my rumbling roars were passing through the duct system and terrifying everybody on my floor. 

And now I was pissing off Ricky.

“JESUS!”  

I sprang awake, thinking he was having cardiac arrest and was off to meet his maker.

“Are you OK, Ricky?” I asked.

“NO!”

“What’s the problem?”

“Your snoring! How is that POSSIBLE?! How are you not dead by now?!”

“It’s just snoring, Ricky.”

“I want to kill you already. You must be divorced.”

“No, never been married.”

“I’m not surprised! At all!”

By now, nurses were showing up to see what our argument was about. They decided to get me a CPAP machine – good for Ricky, not for me. When you have a hospital strap one on your head, it’d nearly impossible to come off, even after the rush of air dries your mouth out over hours until you can’t even speak or scream for help if needed.

But three hours later, I did need to do just that. I sprang awake with my mouth completely dried out, hit the call button for a nurse but no one came.  I finally managed to wrestle the mask off my face and unleashed a horrendous gagging sound that was even worse than the snore that had pissed off Ricky before.

“JESUS!” he shrieked again.

“Fuck you!” I snapped back.

“Why are you swearing at me?” Ricky asked, sounding genuinely stricken.

“Why are you screaming out ‘Jesus’?!”

“I’m PRAYING! Praying that the noises will stop!”

With all the commotion between us, the nurse suddenly couldn’t make it in fast enough.

“Do you want to be sent home?”

“Yes!” I said.

“You can’t,” the nurse replied.

“Then don’t ask me!”

“I was talking to Ricky.”

“How come he gets the option?”

“His treatment ended last night.”

“Then why are you here?!” I asked him.

“The breakfasts are good!”

“Are you insane?!” I asked him. “You’re sticking around because you WANT to have hospital food?!”

“This ain’t no normal hospital food. You’ll see. You’ll never wanna leave either. But fine. Just let me stay til breakfast and I’ll go home right after,” he pleaded.

And so I had a drink of water, had my mask adjusted, and we all drifted back to sleep. Or at least until I was awakened at 6 a.m. by Ricky talking to Jesus again. This time, he was singing “Amazing Grace.” At 6 a.m.

Now it was my turn to call upon the Lord.

“Jesus! Do you have to do that now?”

“I can worship anytime I want.”

“Can you do that in another room?”

“Sure, I can do that.”  So Ricky got up, and went in another room: our bathroom. Which was on my side of the room. As he shut the door, I could hear him look up to heaven – or at least the fluorescent lamp I the ceiling – with a beatific smile on his face and his hands held up with the “Raise the roof, I’m touching Jesus!”  hand gesture.  And now I could hear him singing again, his voice made even louder by the echo of the bathroom tiles.

I decided there was only one thing to do, since I obviously wasn’t going to be allowed to sleep in peace until he left in a couple hours, after devouring his Miracle Breakfast. So I reached for my IPad, found a CD by the Flying Burrito Brothers and turned it up all the way. As its twanging roots-rock guitars started to play, Ricky burst out of the bathroom, sputtering with outrage.

“What iS that?!”

“The Flying Burrito Brothers. They’re like country rock.”

“Country AND rock?! You’ve got both kinds of the devil’s music!”

“Bingo!” I thought, realizing I’d gotten under his skin even more than I realized. I started to sing along to the CD as Ricky disappeared behind his curtain.

I thought he had given up, but 30 seconds later, he leaped out from behind the curtain into a wrestling crouch on my side of the room. He was shirtless and wielding a harmonica. Just as I was about to ask him what he was going to do with that, he grinned maniacally and started to play “Amazing Grace” on it.

It was enough for me to wish he’d just start singing again. Apparently, the rest of our neighbors in the hall felt the same way, as a series of 80 and 90 year olds started crying out, “What’s that noise?!” “Make it stop!” and “Not again!”

As he saw me wince under the strain of his musical torture, he stopped, grinned and asked, “Have you found Jesus?!”

At that moment, I realized I had.  I had actually packed a Bible in my bag when I went to the hospital the week before, figuring I needed all the spiritual ammo possible as I faced another my third hospital stay that year. I hadn’t actually read it, because I’m Catholic and we’re notorious for not actually reading the Bible. But all Ricky needed to know was that I had it.

“HA! Where’s yours?” I cackled, taking a wild gamble that he might not have one with him.

Ricky was horrified.

“It’s at home!”

“What kind of Christian ARE you, Ricky?! No Bible in a hospital?!”

“I was in a hurry! Don’t judge me!”

“Really, Ricky?”

“I’m sorry, Ricky. I’m trying to read my Bible now. Could I have some peace? “

Ricky gathered his things as quickly as possible and fled.

“Fine , I’ll eat in the hall!”

“Thank you, JESUS!” I replied. And I actually meant it.