Rus Like Everyone Else by Bette Adriaanse

around the bed he was lying on, also in white. The mattress, white; the dresser, white. His hands, which he held up in the light now, were white too, but they had blue in them as well, from the veins visible under his skin.
    Bit by bit Rus started to remember things, how he had been lifted onto a bed by people who circled around him, how they lifted the bed up and twirled it and twirled it, smiling as they circled him around. They’d shoved the bed into a circling ambulance, which they rode in circles too. The last thing he remembered was blackness, until just now, when everything became white.
    Nothing was circling in this room. There was a steady white tray standing in front of him, holding a white saucer with a white pudding on top.
    â€œI must be in the hospital,” Rus said pensively. And then, more contently,slowly contemplating each word: “I must be in the hospital.”
    Immediately, Rus felt a calmness come over him. He laid his head down on the pillow and looked about him. The whiteness of the room reminded him of a story his mother once told him about heaven, “where everything’s whiter than white.”
    He sank a bit farther under the sheets and called his mother’s voice to mind. Her sweet, pale face came close to his and she started telling him the story of heaven again and all the snow that fell there. His mother and Modu loved snow, which was why Modu’s nickname was Snow. He remembered Modu getting him out of bed one night when he came home from work because it had snowed, and they built snowmen in the street, so no cars could get in or out in the morning. They worked for hours in the bluish light, smiling soundlessly at each other. When they went in his mother made hot chocolate, and Rus remembered how she rubbed their hair dry with a towel while they sat by the window, and Rus smiled when he remembered how Mrs. Wong had shouted curse words in the empty morning air.
    But then an envelope landed in the middle of Rus’s memory and spoiled everything.
    â€œBleh,” Rus moaned as everything that had happened came back to him: the letter, the post office, Francisco’s friendship and his disappearance, the money, the house keys—like dominoes the memories set one another in motion. Suddenly, Rus hoped he had some very serious disease. Not a painful one, just one that would keep him in this white room with its white puddings forever. He pulled the sheets over his eyes. If he could not go to his house, the hospital was his second choice.
    A knock on the door.
    â€œAre you awake?” a male voice said.
    Rus heard the door opening. He kept his head under the sheets and he made sure not to move. He tried hard to sink into a coma. If only he could dive inside his subconscious and stay there, comfortable on the bed while eating through tubes.
    â€œMr. Ordelman? Can you hear me?” the voice said.
    Rus did not move. Was there someone else in the room whom he had not noticed? Some little man called Ordel Man, which he thought was a terrible name to give somebody.
    He heard the door opening again, another male voice: “Rus Ordelman? I have his belongings here: a brown suit, a fur coat, an envelope.”
    Rus Ordelman? What were they talking about? What was an Ordel Man? And why were they calling him that?
    Rus had read a story once in one of the gray books that were always lying around in the Starbucks, about a person who was found in the street and did not speak. In the hospital they called him Piano Man, because all they knew of him was that he played the piano. But what was an ordel? Did they mean “ordeal,” Ordeal Man, because of the letter? Rus shook his head under the covers. The whole situation was confusing and probably not very healthy for a patient who could slide into a coma any moment now, Rus decided. It was probably best if they, the hospital people, would just sort it out for themselves. He also decided he should eat the pudding before