Sparring Partners(41)
Jack leaves and a door clangs somewhere down the hall. Cody sits on the edge of his bed, deep in thought. The buzzer sounds again and Marvin is back. Cody returns to the bars and says, “What now?”
“Say, look, Cody, the warden is here to go over the last-minute stuff.”
“I thought we did that yesterday.”
“Well, he wants to do it again.” Marvin leans in closer to the bars. “You see, Cody, he’s pretty nervous because this is his first execution.”
“Mine too.”
“Right, well he needs to go over some things, rules and procedures, stuff like that. Be nice to him because he’s my boss.”
“Why should I worry about being nice to the warden? I’ll be dead in three hours.”
“Come on, Cody. He’s got a doctor with him so don’t make trouble.”
“A doctor?”
“Right. One of the rules. They need to make sure you’re healthy enough to take the needle.”
Cody laughs and says, “You’re kidding, right?”
“Dead serious, Cody. Nobody’s kidding around tonight.”
Cody backs away and laughs hysterically. As he does, the warden and a doctor in a white coat appear at the door as Marvin eases into the background. The warden holds a legal pad with his checklist and is visibly nervous. Cody eventually steps back to the bars. The doctor cautiously keeps his distance.
The warden says, “Okay, Wallace, as I said yesterday, we have procedures to follow. If you don’t like them, don’t blame me. They were on the books before I got here. This is Dr. Paxton, the head physician here at the prison.”
“A real pleasure,” Cody says.
Paxton nods but only because he has to.
The warden says, “A physical exam is required before an execution, so that’s why Dr. Paxton is here.”
“Makes perfect sense to me, Warden. Same as all your other rules.”
“I didn’t make them, as I said.”
“This is your first execution, right. You seem a little nervous.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“Just relax, Warden. We’ll get through this together.”
“Would you please step over here and cooperate?”
Cody steps to the bars and thrusts his right arm through them. Paxton quickly pulls on a pair of plastic gloves and wraps the blood pressure cuff around Cody’s right bicep. Using his stethoscope, he checks here and there, a cursory exam.
The warden holds his legal pad and says, “You still have no approved witnesses, right? No one?”
“Warden, I’ve been here for fourteen years, two months, twenty-four days, and I’ve not had a single visitor, other than my lawyer. I have no mother, father, siblings, cousins, no family whatsoever. No friends, neither here nor out there. So who in hell would I invite to my execution?”
“Okay, moving right along. What about your arrangements?”
“Arrangements? You mean my dead body? Burn it. Cremate it. Flush the ashes down the toilet because I don’t want a trace of me left on this earth. Got that?”
“Clear enough.”
Paxton lowers his stethoscope and removes the cuff. “Blood pressure is one-fifty over one hundred, a little elevated.”
Cody pulls back his arm and says, “Elevated? Gee I wonder why.”
“Pulse is ninety-five, above normal.”
“Normal? What’s normal when you’re three hours away from getting killed? Don’t I get a sedative or something to knock off the edge?”
Paxton says officially, “You’re entitled to two Valium.”
“Valium? That’s nothing. Hell, I’m about to be murdered. Why can’t I have some crack or at least a beer?”
The warden is quick to say, “Sorry, we have rules.”
“Yeah, yeah, and one of your rules is that I gotta be healthy enough to execute.”
“It’s right here in black and white.”
Cody laughs again and shakes his head in disbelief and disgust. They might be in a hurry but he is not. “Ten years ago, long before you guys got here, there was a bad dude named Hacksaw Henderson. Everybody called him Hack, for short. He killed a bunch of people and let’s just say a hacksaw was involved. Anyway, Hack finally got his date with the needle, and the day before the big event he overdosed on a bunch of painkillers and Valium he’d been stockpiling. They found him on the floor of his cell, out of it. I’m sure there’s a rule, probably right there in black and white, says you can’t kill yourself on death row, and certainly not right before all the fun and excitement of a big execution, so they freaked out, rushed Hack to the hospital, pumped his stomach, barely saved his life, then raced him back over here in the nick of time for his execution.”
The warden says, “That’s nice. Are you finished?”
“Frankly, I couldn’t stand the son of a bitch and I was happy when he was gone.”
“Are you finished?”
“Almost, got about two hours and forty minutes.”
Dr. Paxton clears his throat and says, “If we could wrap things up here.”
Cody glares at him and asks, “Are you the same doctor who’ll pronounce me dead?”
“I am. It’s part of my job.”