Eyes Open

By RW Pladek

Jon W. C. Flanagan is in his mid-sixties when a combination of auto accident, stroke, and seizure leaves him apparently comatose. Involuntary reflexes remain; he can breathe on his own, but is unable to move. Unbeknownst to the medical team, he can see and hear.

Expected to quickly pass away, he lingers reflecting on his life while observing the staff and infrequent family/friend visitors. He develops a relationship of sorts with Rachel, the primary treating nurse who is less sure of the diagnosis than the physicians.

Meanwhile, an ‘angel of death’ is working in the hospital. Flanagan identifies the killer and determines to somehow tell Rachel. His life now is a race against time and a quest to perform a final, perhaps his only heroic act.

Provided a rare gift of total self-reflection, he is provided a rarer opportunity for personal redemption.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: May 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9781685626082

RW Pladek

Robert William Pladek served many masters, sometimes to their satisfaction. After 17 years of “lawyering” he became a publisher, forcing weekly newspapers on increasingly disinterested audiences. He has run both legal service firms and a chemical engineering company. Pladek published reams of humor pieces in adult magazines under his non de plume “Bill Allen”, as well as many “funny business” type articles in more PG-13 rated rags. Working with a German artist, Pladek wrote and sold single panel comics about a corrupt lawyer. He’s a middling guitar player and songwriter, his material poorly played in coffee houses in New Jersey and any other state that will have him.

Book preview

Preface

I remember being told: Don’t write the Preface to a book before writing the book, though I don’t remember who gave me such sage advice or whether the advocate himself, herself, was sage. It certainly makes sense and you can take my word I, for once, probably took it.

There are simple, straightforward and uncomplicated things to do trying to get a book published. It’s a process. Everything is a process, including not following the recommended process. The publisher of my first book had their own; I had mine but we found a way to make it work. Example: they insisted I use one of their stable of editors. I’ve done a lot of editing, and never been in anybody’s stable. I wasn’t letting another wannabe author start giving me "Suggestions, Jon … they’re just suggestions." I gave my last manuscript to my best friend. His job was to tell me if it was shit or not. Now, he and I are a lot alike so the skeptic might believe I’d rigged the jury. Not knowing me, not knowing him, that skeptic wouldn’t know what they were talking about. They’d be right but I don’t care. If he didn’t like it, then I didn’t like it.

And whatever temporal problems it might have had, whether structurally or in dialogue, dumping extraneous crap outside the extraneous crap needed to support the non-extraneous crap was his job. The publisher’s editor: her job, as agreed after much civilized debate, was correcting dramatically grammatically bad stuff and doing a spell check, understanding I sometimes misspell stuff on purpose. I convinced them of that. I begin sentences with and and but. I’m not saying it wasn’t a tough job. And I confess I took out the fun, professionally rewarding part for her. Too bad: Let her write her own book, share it with her own friends, annoy her own editors, talk herself into believing it’s the best thing ever, revolutionary and her stalk-worthy, her stalker willing to kill to prove his love.

I cannot tell you why I wrote the first because I don’t know why, even now, working on these new thoughts. What I do know is I got an advance from the publisher, so I was legally obligated to write another or give the money back. It will be interesting to see what they do now. Let them try. Good luck. Giving back money is not in Flanagan DNA. Check my tax returns. Sometimes you must break the rules, sometimes the law, tenets I’ve worked to their own excess, especially in bars-to-cars late Friday nights in the ’80s.

I would have written one anyway though the publisher wouldn’t expect what they got despite the extreme fuzziness on what they could expect and now, of course, they can expect nothing, nothing save very disparate notes, nothing like this story. Reading those notes, they could claim, justifiably and fuzz notwithstanding, it met no possible definition of book. It could have been great; much more likely it’d be shit, some bohemian story of a life I couldn’t have led, lacking the art, the creativity; the words. I suggest they talk to their lawyers, their in-house ones. Outside counsel always tell you you’ve a case because it’s how they get paid. A legitimate shot, they’ll say.

The inside guys get paid anyway and paid more if they stop their client wasting money. Plus, they don’t really like the outside guys, jealous of their complete lack of scruples, i.e., being better pure lawyers. Internal lawyers are more like psychologists and legal actuaries. This I know. Idiot juries could be successfully persuaded my notes qualify as a novel. They won’t publish them, of course. To do so would be for spite or their own ruination.

Listen, pleads the outside guy. The only way to prove these notes don’t qualify as a real ‘book’ is to publish them to universal disclaim. When everybody hates them, calls them trash, you’ll be able to sue his estate or at least made a palatable claim back on the advance. A thousand copies oughta do it. Hell, just make it an eBook. This was not only thinking outside the box, this was building the box then, pointing with disdain at what they’d created, announcing: "Clearly, we are not getting inside that."

No, says the general counsel. "We’re not flushing more money down the toilet to get a claim against a friggin’ vegetable. That’s just stupid, bad PR. It’s clever lawyering, but … no. Besides, you read some of the shit published? Go read Kerouac’s ‘poem’ end of Big Sur. Incomprehensible. Considered genius. Who knows what the hell the public wants? This could go really bad. Christ, the advance wasn’t that big anyway."

They are sure right there. I know this conversation happened, though I didn’t hear it. I’m the vegetable. More on that in a moment. As to why this, I needed thinking it through if I wanted any record of it all, even in my own mind which is where it will stay barring a miracle. I’m forgetting more and more and it’s not early dementia, I don’t think. (Rimshot.) The condition runs in the family, but my extended, non-genetic one, the ex-wife’s. I don’t believe it contagious or sexually transmitted, especially with marital frequencies.

This is not my picture album, just an equivalency of scribblings on yellow legal pads, napkins, the backs of important correspondence, whatever was lying around, most of them beginning with the words despite or of course or regardless. Maybe even an irregardless, all providing context of life between pretty pictures. Photo albums show the good times. Wouldn’t it be nice, real, for albums capturing the other ones? If aliens come to earth an eon or two after we’ve neutron bombed or starved or poisoned or virus’d or in a hundred other ways offed ourselves, and all they have are our picture albums, don’t you think they’ll say:

bsslbik *&ythegnmugga bwwwemntipit zizzllkumpBleep.

("What the hell could have gotten them so pissed off? Everybody looks so damn happy, eh?")

I’d prefer aliens with Canadian accents, a heavy use of the eh invariant tag. This is the other kind of album, the written equivalent of black and white photo ones revealing the gritty parts of life, the ones you see in hushed high-end Manhattan galleries, everybody nodding their heads like they ‘get it.’ Except most everything here is funny or meant to be. Ironic at worst. Pictures in happy ones could have been taken immediately before events in this one. Somebody in Hiroshima said スマイル five seconds prior. You know it.

Second to last word of these pre-words: Whoever advised I not write the Preface first meant well. I take full responsibility for the consequences. This is one instance where Amazon rankings won’t prove who’s wrong.

So, the last: Vonnegut said if you want to sell books, don’t write about the poor or sick. He was a smart, insightful man, a great writer. You may want to save yourself the double whammy and stop right now. But you are throwing away the rare chance to prove a great man wrong.

One

You need to know something about the Flanagan family or what follows will make even less sense.

The first something is this: My name is Jonathan W.C. Flanagan and I married a woman named Barbara M. Flanagan. She was a Flanagan before I made her one. Talk about convenience. Raised knowing the inevitability of marriage (such was the nature of our upbringing) and well before we began dating, we’d independently determined when inevitability caught up we’d hyphenate our married name. Being fair, she thought about it more, likely much more, but I was onboard so long as my fiancée wasn’t, say, a Finnegan. Women ponder marriage for years, what it means or what it should, men often proposing 24 hours after the first serious think they’ve ever had on the subject. Quite a few wake forgetting they proposed the night before and most don’t reflect on marriage until at it awhile. Some never regret it. Regardless how it all came out, I certainly don’t.

When our relationship started getting serious we speculated on the rhythmic possibilities being Flanagan-Flanagans.

"Flanagan-Flanagan went to the store

Needing to purchase particular doors

One for friends entering, one just to leave

One celebratory, another to grieve

Flanagan-Flanagan knew not their fate

But doors were on sale. So they took the bait."

There were others, including "F … L … A N A G … AN (twice!) that’s FLANAGAN." George M. Cohan. If you’re of the age, you know.

Believing marriage serious business, we opted keeping our single pre-marital surnames. Divorced, wouldn’t matter; an unusually perfect binary fission of etymological property.

Note my two middle initials, another telling lesson of children as sacrificial pawns in interests of marital harmony, many entering the world for this very reason, last-ditch Can we/should we save it? efforts. If male, Dad wanted a name with a W in homage to his grandfather, William; Mom, C for Carter. I forget why. Things got hot, if you can believe it. They considered no middle name.

Look, said Mom. If we don’t give him a middle one there’ll be situations where he’s asked for one and won’t have it. Every job application, bank account, his Sears card. His pension.

Pensions, right. It won’t be long before companies stop giving those. Dad was prescient.

Fine. Maybe we could just give him a middle initial.

We could give him W.

Why not C? Mom is suspicious.

Sounds weird. They’ll call him ‘Jon C.’ Like ‘Jonsee’ or ‘Joansee.’ Joansee Flanagan.’ Sounds like a girl. Kids are gonna beat him up. Girls are gonna beat him up.

As a kid my dad fought a lot: Ozgood Jeremiah Flanagan. Was teasable, though I didn’t, even knowing he wasn’t gonna smack the hell out of me. Maybe he fought about other stuff. But one thing was clear: He won a lot of his and had a premonition I would not.

Well, I don’t like W. Mom was stubborn.

What the hell’s wrong with W?

It reminds me of Wilbur.

Oh Jesus, not this again. Just ’cuz your goddamn grandfather was a goddamn drunk.

Unable to agree on a single useless middle name for a barely conceived child, this little miracle, nor wanting their precious constantly explaining why his parents thought so little of him to not give him one, they gave me two: William Carter.

I played with it end of high school and early in college. Certainly capable of a lot of permutations.

(Little known fact, very little: one Bill Carter penned Oddservations, a humor column in Curvaceous, the late 90’s print publication focused on prurient interests of younger men for older women, an early version of Cougars. Other material appeared under a William Allen byline but involving as it does additional persons with their own ancestral parental compromises the formula might make your head explode. Maybe later when you’re looking for such an excuse.)

Relating family history bits of two Flanagans being confusing, I’ve adopted this approach: Talking my ancestry I’ll use the full surname; I’ll call Barbara’s the Eff’s. As in Barbara Eff. Barbara M. Eff, the child of James Eff and Renee Eff. The effin’ Effs. I could have reversed it but it’s my story. In hers I can be the Eff, likely the Mother-effin Eff.

One final suggestion as you scratch for a single illuminating moment somewhere in your read is remembering bad as things can get, short as life finally seems, because it is, most of it is pretty damn good.

Two

"I was married thirty years."

Impressive sounding, but not unlike For the last thirty years I had this same lamp … lousy job … weird dark spot under my arm which has been getting bigger and bumpier of late. Talking to someone with no idea who your spouse was or is now, never start such sentences with I. While you were being married what the hell were they doing? The most honest answer: Having to put up with you.

If you find thirty years a good while, remember today I could have been saying forty years and in ten more—were that possible—fifty. I’m not a fan of participation trophies: You’re supposed to drop dead, not say I had a good run.

It would be fairer and more accurate to say We were married thirty years. I effed up a good Effin thing.

I didn’t make a mistake in the strict definition of the word nor thirty mistakes, one for every year of marriage. I made many more, inconsequential as it turns out. Not so the many poor decisions, all mine. Plenty, plenty and no mistake about it. I’m done with people forever doing and when caught employing the rubric:

"I made a mistake: nobody’s perfect. Bet you’ve made mistakes too."

Hell, yeah I made mistakes, having nothing to do with any of perfectly awful ways I deconstructed myself and marriage over the years. Those latter were intentional, ignore-but-eventually-face-the-consequences fuckups. And they were only that because at the end things got fucked up. Otherwise, they’d be potholes she expertly avoided until finally blowing out a tire. Genuine mistakes are easily forgiven; we’re a forgiving lot, sweeping in non-mistakes and hiding behind the intentionally inaccurate definition. If we can forgive and somehow believe it when granted others’ we can self-forgive all the shit in our own lives we know isn’t a mistake either.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls … children of all ages, as the Ringmaster used to say … stop calling full-knowing acts mistakes. If you insist on using the damn word, use it correctly: I made a mistake believing I wouldn’t get caught. I have empathy with that one. At least it’s honest. If you’re famous, you lose some sponsors. For us, neither famous nor infamous, fewer people invite you to their son’s eighth birthday party.

If lucky, you’ve made just enough mistakes to escape those.

Three

My side, my Flanagans, aren’t even the most dominating half of the people making me. My father’s legacy is surname, height, gender, ears, a heavy brow and receding hairline; my mother most everything else including body shape, nose, mouth, long fingers, lousy eyes and big feet. (Sorry Mom.) Both did contribute crappy teeth. Most non-genetic influences came courtesy of my mom’s mom. Her side, the only one I know well, is matriarchal, Mom being one of four daughters to a woman we, the grandchildren, held in awe. Short, squat with a big voice, opinionated and prejudiced against anyone not white, Protestant, French or English, heterosexual, non-vegan, Republican with a greater area NYC-accent and birthplace, she didn’t truck much with tolerance until later in life. At thirteen I overheard her and my mom talking in the kitchen, where Mom-Mom spent most of her time.

"Those Cubans. They’re actually not bad."

When my grandfather retired in 1965, they’d moved from Rutherford, New Jersey to Boynton Beach, Florida, settling in one of the first planned retirement communities of its kind, Leisureville. Brand-new to building old people towns developers toyed with alternatives: Scooterville, Quietville, Oldsville. ComeHereToDieVille

"Leisureville. Yeah, OK. Good enough."

In Leisureville, homeowners were responsible for their own lawn maintenance and Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop hired young men for the job, mostly Cubans, who worked hard keeping the property looking great, better than when ol’ Pop-Pop did the Rutherford yardwork himself and he was no slouch. Cubans got off Mom-Mom’s shitlist. Always learning, always learning.

My grandfather was a ghost of a presence, forever in the garage or basement or running out [away] to buy something, anything creating distance from his cackling hen, female brood, and twister clouds of questions and complaints stirred up by innumerable brood offspring.

My mom’s call to her parents went like this, always like this:

Ring. Hello?

Hi Dad, how are you?

Fine. Let me get your mother.

And he was gone.

Pop-Pop’s grandchildren were his honeys. He never called me Jon or Jonny or ‘J.C.’ or thankfully J.W.C.F. Sounds like a community college. I stayed a honey until my teens, after which he didn’t call me anything. He seldom spoke to his grandkids by name, partly because he wasn’t around, partly because there were so many of us, he risked mistaking me for Jack, Mark for Matt, Pam for Paula and a Sam for Sally. Yeah, we had all those, the most common middle-class Caucasian names of the times. His wife, his daughters would have been ashamed, aghast. He loved us, I never thought different, but as a group, how you love a football team. Pop-Pop didn’t play favorites, though I’m sure he had them and equally sure I landed mid-list.

A couple of my cousins were huge pains in the ass, far more painful than me but I was also a bit of a wuss and Pop-Pop disliked wusses. We loved our grandfather back, unashamedly and unequivocally, but mostly we were in one world; he was in another. I’ve become the Pop-Pop with my own small grandchildren. Now my little guys but fewer in number I remember their names in their so-seldom visits while enjoying the spectacle of their parents’ struggles in training, disciplining, controlling and battling them. That goes-around comes-around bit can be fun.

Not much to say about my uncles, all very different from one another, far more than the daughters reared by tiny Ms. Napoleon. Hyper-religious to the agnostic; highly intelligent to never so mistaken; good looking to desert island/will-the-species-continue variety, they shared profound love of their respective spouses, were damn good people, damn good citizens, true Americans. They saw flaws in the country and how it was run, the mistakes it was making—although disagreeing on what those mistakes were by who was in charge—but they’d all served, some more willingly than others. I respected them all and more importantly so did everyone else.

With the possible exception of Mom-Mom: She managed to find faults in all the men marrying her daughters, especially with Ozgood. Of the four uncles, Oz was the most flamboyant, the funniest, the biggest risk taker, the most charismatic and talented, and least afraid to let you know. But Mom-Mom came around on him as well, realizing while he’d overpowered my mom with his charms against what Mom-Mom insisted Jeannie’s better judgement, he wasn’t goin’ anywhere without her. And Jeannie was going nowhere without Oz.

Until thirteen (goodbye honey), our families all lived within station wagon distance of my grandparents’ home on the Passaic River in Rutherford New Jersey, so every month the clan gathered. Rutherford was, is, a picturesque-less town, the river so filthy certain chemicals in it put out fires caused by others. This never stopped me and Matt, the oldest of the cousins, me being second, from spending a lot of Rutherford time down on the riverbank, picking up the flotsam and jetsam pooped out by factories and mills lining the big, slow-moving cesspool. The origin of most of this crap not easily ascertained and considering environmental regulations of the time I figure it was mostly jetsam. Look it up yourself.

Matt deserves a couple hundred OED size testimonials on his own. He’s the family miracle child, having survived cancer and diverticulitis becoming the funniest, best looking, most well-spoken male descendent yet produced. We were all jealous of him without hating his guts, his often totally screwed up guts, admiring him and making even the atheists among us rethink god’s existence. Matt believes in god in a way I never did, never could, but considering his survival, it’s a plus for the believers. A big plus.

I said he’s funniest but I probably am or was. I guess I’m not anymore. Thing is, Matt’s funnier with more limited material, never swearing. Doesn’t swear, ever. You have any idea how hard it is being amusing without four-letter words? Try it. You’ll lose your audience twenty uncursed words in.

I can’t do him justice in the brain cells I got left, the time I got left. Just take my word: He ought to get four sainthoods, two for the inspirational life he’s led and two for not dying, twice.

Matt and I knew enough not to get trapped against the river wall at high tide but I cannot imagine Barbara and I letting our own children do what we were not only allowed but encouraged. Pop-Pop got