The Hospital

A long time ago, when Xavier was running the games, he used these things he called ‘power cards’. He cut out pieces of paper – 2 1/2 inches by 3 1/2 inches – that had a detailed description of each one of our skills and placed them inside hard, plastic, card protectors used by baseball card collectors. It was pretty smart. Instead of sifting through one of the three reference sheets we used for our characters to find what skill or talent or ability we needed for a given encounter, we used the power cards. Cut the time in half. The games were fast and furious! Kings by the end of the 12 hour session!

Now, I was running the games. Long still played. So did Oliver and Jack. We got a couple of casuals to come into the session, but mainly they were fodder for Long’s bullying. My games were kind of slow, though. Couldn’t quite get a handle on the pacing. The balancing of the game mechanics and the improvisational, collective, story-telling. It was hard!

I needed help. Or else Long would take over.

I hated his laugh so much…

“Hey Xavier!” I said through the phone. I needed help from the best GM in the world! “What you up to?”

“Nothing much, Corn.” He said. Seemed preoccupied. Then again, he always seemed preoccupied. “Just got back from a tour. Now I plan on jerking it.”

“Oh! Oh…” I fumbled.

“Yeah. You caught me mid-stroke.” He said. “Just kidding. I haven’t even opened up the magazine yet.”

This was uncomfortable.

“So what’s up, bro?” He asked.

“Uh…well…uh…” I stammered. “Uh…you know those power cards you used to use?”

“Yeah. I still got them. You need them?”

“Yeah, kinda. I’m GMing now and I want to pace the game better. Those power cards seemed to help a lot, from what I remember.”

“Sure did. I’ll pick you up right now. Laters…” And then he hung up. Just like that.

Just like that, he picked me up from my house. Just like that, he drove me to his apartment in Silver Lake. Just like that, we were talking about the game.

“Remember the time Jack killed you because you couldn’t get on your horse?” He asked, bringing out old, dusty boxes from his closet. “He had you roll a Riding check. And because you failed, you got a thousand arrows in your ass.”

“Yeah. That was fucked up.” I said, remembering. “I think he was just mad because you were able to get in and out of the king’s castle without getting caught.”

“Yeah. He’s a vindictive dude.” Xavier said, getting on his knees, opening one of the boxes, fingering through the thousands of papers inside. “I remember when that genie granted me three wishes, and I wished to have permanent omniscience, he blew my head up. Said that no half-elf would be able to contain that much power in his brain.”

“No save?”

“Nope. No nothing. no warning. Just blew my head up…” He got quiet. He stopped fussing with the box. He just stared and blinked a lot.

Then the phone rang.

“Let it ring. Probably a bill collector.” He said, snapping out of it. “Remember the time he…”

The answering machine beeped. And then a woman’s voice was heard. It was Xavier’s sister, Edna. “Xavier. Whatever if you’re not coming to the hospital. I think it’s selfish of you. That’s just my opinion. But whatever. You’ll always do what you want to do anyway. I’m just calling you to let you know what happened.”

Xavier stood up. His hands were kind of hovering around him. It was weird. Like they were floating.

“His brain is swollen. The doctor said they don’t know what happened. They’re guessing that he had the aneurysm, then he had a stroke immediately after. So they took out his skull cap, put in under his stomach skin – they said that was a regular thing. Kind of weird if you ask me. – and now he has three tubes in his brain. It’s to drain the fluid.”

Xavier was wobbling. His knees were shaking. His face turned into a scowl. His fists balled up. He was weak and strong at the same time. It was really weird.

“They won’t know if anything is wrong with him. They have to wait for the swelling to go down before they can check out his brain. He might’ve lost his memories, he might not have some of his higher-functions. They won’t know until the swelling goes down. And that’ll probably take two months. He’ll be in there for two months, Xavier.”

Xavier took a deep breath. He regained a bit of composure.

“Well, you should see him. You never know what’ll happen. This might be your last chance to see our father. Whatever, though. You’ll do what you’ll do. Bye.” Click. The answering machine beeped and buzzed.

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do. I never was good with this kind of stuff. I stood up, thinking to myself, ‘maybe I should hug him?’ So I slowly walked up to him and raised my arms.

“Dude.” He said, with authority. Looked me dead in my eyes. I gulped. Because he looked scary. “I swear to God. If you hug me, I’m going to have to kill you.”

He looked serious.

“Just kidding.” He said. And then he smiled a big smile. turned back into that amicable guy everyone liked. “Hey, you hungry?”

This was all so very weird. I knew he was hurting. Especially since he just heard the news. He wasn’t made of stone. But he was trying not to hurt. Not to not to show it, more not to be hurt. If that made any sense.

“The power cards are in that box.” He pointed to the un-opened box. “Or at least they should be. Ignore the nudy magazines. ” He walked over to his kitchen, opened one of the drawers and pulled out two shot glasses. Opened another drawer and grabbed a tall Jack Daniels.

“Sorry man.” He said, walking back to me. “You’re gonna be here a while.”

He handed me one of the shot glasses and poured me a shot.

“Cheers.” He said. “To my father…”

Cheers…