Bottom of a Pellet Gun, and Where it will take you. Part 3

We arrived to Dominican Hospital and I realized I have never done the whole waiting room experience, especially on a Friday night (or Saturday morning). It was almost 2:00 am and there was quite the crowd. I sat down and Evan went to the front desk telling the nurse what had happened; that he had been shot and was losing circulation. To my left were two guys, probably teenage material who had the “thug” look going for them. One of them was in a wheelchair with his left leg propped up with an icepack on his ankle. The other was next to him. The two were tuning in to what Evan had to say. They heard “gunshot” and they knew Evan was talking their language. Once the nurse took down the information and Evan gave her his insurance information, he headed towards the seat next to me. The two thugs asked Evan about his encounter.

“You got shot?” the supporting thug asked with amazement.

“Yeah.”

“What did they shoot you with? A .45?”

“I don’t know guns. Some kind of pellet gun.”

“A PELLET GUN???” both thugs said simultaneously with disappointment and amusement. Evan sat down not realizing he was being ridiculed. I sat in shame due to the fact that I was a part of this party. To change the topic, I engaged with the thugs about their evening doings.

“What happened to you?” I asked to the wheelchair thug.

“Oh man, we was running from the cops and we were in this house. For me to get away, I had to jump out the window!”

“It was two stories,” the supporting thug chimed in.

“Yeah, so I landed on my ankle,” the wheelchair thug pulled off his icepack and his ankle was completely deformed and had major swelling. It made my stomach turn.

“Put that icepack back on!” I replied in disgust. They laughed at that but followed through with my demanding request. Eventually some nurse pulled the thugs away. A few minutes after their departure another nurse called for Evan and away he went. I looked at my surroundings and I quietly judged everything. There was a television on the other side of the waiting room. It was left on the channel TNT and the late night movie was being played. Mortal Kombat was my viewing pleasure. I have never really been a fan of this movie. When I say “really” I mean when I was ten I liked this movie, so I do not totally dismiss this movie. In order to distract myself from the modern classic, I decided to pry into the various magazines on the table to my right. Women’s World, Good Housekeeping, In Style, and a Medicare newsletter that was dated from 2000 were my choices.

While finding ways to amuse myself, I started looking around and noticed the crowd I was in. At one point, more “thug” people walked in. One thug had a rag to his face and it was smeared with blood.

“My eye is shot out!” the thug announced. Now that is a wound, I thought. Evan had nothing on this guy. Some point later, this typical “white trash” couple strolled in. They sat down in the chairs on the farther side of my right and all I heard was them bickering.

“I hate you!” the wife (I assumed as much) claimed.

“I hate you more!” the supposed husband returned. These statements flowed back and forth between the two. I figured one of the two injured the other and was obligated to drive the other to the hospital, but I was not aware of what type of injury occurred. At another point, I found myself reading one of the award-winning magazines and this man decided to sit next to me, although there were many vacant chairs around me.

He had blood all over himself and whispered to me, “Can I lay on your shoulder?” I was not ready to hear this and I sure did not want him and his blood on any part of my body. My reply was merely a gasp and I noticed myself slowly sliding away to the other chair on the opposite side of the table with the breakthrough magazines. The bloody man did not say anything so I figured I hadn’t hurt his feelings.

Upon my change of location, I noticed that Mortal Kombat had finished and now it was The Crow. This fit in the same category as the previous film; I couldn’t totally hate this film, since this was one I admired when I was thirteen. When I looked at my current surroundings, I developed this strange feeling that maybe I died. It was possible that I had actually been shot and this is what the afterlife was: a waiting room. Then I thought: this sucks for being the afterlife. I gave it some thought and I decided it was purgatory because it could have been better but it could have been a whole lot worse. If the afterlife was a waiting room then Heaven was a spotless room with the latest issues of Rollingstone, Wired, and The New Yorker. The people around me would be the most distinguished of humankind and on the television would be The Godfather Part I and Part II. Of course, Hell would be a complete dump with issues of Klan Weekly, The Wall Street Journal, and random issues of TV Guide dated between 1979 and 1981. The television would be playing Bring it On and Scary Movie 2 and I do not want to even know whom I would be sharing the waiting room with.

After I was done imagining my postmortem lifestyles I saw that The Crow was near the end and then to my right I see Evan entering the waiting room. When I saw his arrival, I imagined him coming out in a wheelchair, or a sling, or maybe his arm completely amputated. He walked out all fine with this glowing strut as if he had just made love. I stood up with disappointment.

“Well…”

“You ready to go?” Evan asked in what seemed like slight amusement.

“Well…what happened?”

“Oh, they gave me a band-aid,” he pulled up his sleeve and there it was: this flesh colored band-aid. Based on how the evening went, I wanted to see some stitches or something dramatic.

“Let’s go,” I walked through the sliding doors with the experience of a huge let down. It was almost as if I wanted stitches, something to make up for the big amount of nothing that happened. We got back in my car and I roared out of the parking lot; my only thought at this point was to get Evan out of my sight and to get into bed. I glanced at my cell phone and noticed it was almost five in the morning. Fuck! Then Evan decided to speak; what nerve!

“You know, when I was waiting for the doctor there was this girl next to me. She was asking me what happened, so I explained my situation. She was telling me about the gangs here in Santa Cruz,” I knew this had to be good “she was saying there is this tiff between the eastsiders and the westsiders. And she also said that the eastsiders wear blue and the westsiders wear red. I noticed that my shirt is blue and maybe the people that shot us were westsiders and they were scoping out eastsiders that are on their turf.” My god, he was actually saying this. Plus, his shirt was more on the gray side and on Walnut Avenue there were not any lights to illuminate his shades of blue.

“We were victims of gang warfare!” he continued, “they were probably initiating a new member and that was his deed... to shoot at eastsiders on the Westside!” It was amusing to see how much sense this made to Evan.

“Yes, in their mom’s minivan and using a pellet gun to do superficial wounds to guys wearing gray shirts…” I decided to stop talking because I knew I would eventually do something I would regret.

“I don’t know, it makes sense to me. Plus the girl was saying that these gangs originated in Salinas and that their goal is to get to San Jose. So, we’re in a huge gang crossfire. This is dangerous territory. I don’t know if I feel safe walking outside anymore,” it was too late, Evan had convinced himself on this theory (now fact). I heard the audience laughter in my head again; this is coming from the guy whose mother was convinced that every Mexican in their small town carries a gun because they’re dangerous. Evan was the product of Bowling for Columbine.

I sat there in silence while Evan went on to continue about his gang related discussions and how he was going home and do more research on the Internet and figure out what he can do to stop all of this. I realized I had to give him credit for his motivation and eagerness to change things. But then that all left my head as it was polluted with the thoughts of what I had just experienced this evening. The night ended with a band-aid and the “fact” that Santa Cruz was a dangerous town. I went to bed thinking about if Mortal Kombat II was worth seeing.