By the time I removed my makeup and stopped by Sean’s door he was already all alone, and already in excruciating pain. “My leg’s all swollen up,” he said, “and I can’t even move my ankle. Plus one side of my ass is already twice as big as the other.”

“I think you should go to the hospital.”

“Royce said he’d take me but he couldn’t stay.”

“What about everyone else?”

“They say they can’t be bothered.”

“Would yòu like me to go with you?”

Sean looked genuinely relieved. “And sit with me all night…? That would be great, bro’.”

It was just after ten o’clock on Monday night when I drove the world’s largest cannon into the parking lot of Staten Island University Hospital, a boxy beige institutional building tucked away behind a mental facility and a shelter for unwed pregnant women on Father Cappodano Boulevard. We had come a long way from picture-preppy Winchester, Virginia. Inside, dozens of bedraggled bodies littered the vinyl waiting-room couches, with a wide variety of bandages, ice packs, and open sores on their appendages and a generic, seemingly hospital-issued dazed look on their faces. I stepped up to a waist-high counter and was handed a clipboard with a registration sheet attached. I entered the name “Sean Thomas” in the empty space and briefly described his injury. Then we went to wait.

And wait.

“Sean Thomas. Sean Thomas. Please come to the triage room.” The announcement came over an hour later. By this time Sean needed a wheelchair.

“No problem,” the nurse informed me. “Wait right here.”

And wait some more.

Twenty minutes later, Sean was summoned for a preliminary examination. That was followed fifteen minutes later by a supplemental evaluation. Thirty minutes after that we were beckoned again.

“Good evening, my name is Elizabeth and I’m going to ask you a few questions.” Elizabeth was wearing a bright green dress. “First of all, would you like to pay with cash, check, credit card, or bill?” Our initial registration, our subsequent evaluation, even our supplemental examination were just warm-ups to our most important test: the financial investigation. After Sean asked her to send him a bill, Elizabeth proceeded down the list of queries. Who is your employer? The circus. What is your job? The Human Cannonball. Where do you live? The world’s largest big top. With each response Elizabeth grew increasingly concerned.

“Where should we send the bill if you can’t pay?” she asked.

Sean thought for a second, then said, “My parents.”

“And their names?” she asked.

“Tim and Joyce.”

“Thomas?”

“No, Clougherty.”

“Clougherty?”

“That’s right, Clougherty.”

“But I thought your name is Thomas.”

“It is.”

“Then why are your parents named Clougherty.”

“Because that’s my name, too.”

“Your middle name?”

“No, my last name.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Look, I’m in the circus. Sean Thomas is my stage name. Clougherty is too hard to pronounce for television shows and all. Did you see me on TV last week?”

“No.”

“I’ve been on four shows, you know: Street Stories, I Witness Video, Regis & Kathie Lee, Peter Jennings—”

“Excuse me.” A lady stuck her head around the corner. “My grandmother is very sick out here. Would you stop wasting time.”

“Sorry, lady,” Sean shot back. “First come, first served.” Turning back to Elizabeth, he added, “Anyway, Clougherty has ten letters, so I don’t use it.”

“This is too much to handle,” Elizabeth said. “I think I’ll just call you Thomas.”

She printed out a four-page form, had Sean Thomas (Clougherty) sign it five times, then motioned us down the hall. It was already nearing midnight.

“Hell, this wheelchair is no good,” Sean complained as I began rolling him toward the X-ray department. “I can’t even do a spin in it, like Elvin’s.” As we rolled past various open doorways asking for directions, we met several women. One was doing CAT scans, another sonograms, two were visiting patients. With each one we met Sean tried out his routine: “Hi, I’m the Human Cannonball. Did you see me on TV?” Each one was underwhelmed. “Hell, I can’t pick up anybody in this wheelchair,” he griped. “I can’t even get any sympathy pussy.”

Finally we met a woman coming out of an elevator who volunteered to give Sean his X rays. She led us to the radiology lab and together we lifted Sean underneath the machine. “Do you think you could radiate Sean’s ego while you’re at it?” I said. “Won’t that make it smaller?”

“Honey, that won’t make it smaller,” she replied. “Only brighter.”

With the X rays taken, I rolled Sean to the doors of the emergency room, where he waited to get his leg evaluated and where I was kicked out and told to wait in the lobby. An hour and a half later Sean emerged again, this time on crutches with a brace on his knee, and we were allowed to leave. As we were going, I asked Elizabeth for a place to eat and she directed me to two diners on the “Boulevard,” just around the corner. One had stairs, she warned, the other did not. Unfortunately, I turned left at the light (the steering was a little loose on the cannon, but the pickup was quite impressive) and ended up with the one that had stairs. COLONNADE RESTAURANT, the lighted sign said. OPEN 24 HOURS.

I parked the cannon behind the restaurant and, rather than climb the one flight of stairs with a crippled cannonball, we headed up the wheelchair ramp in back that led to a glass door marked HANDICAPPED. I pushed on the handle, but it was locked. I knocked. Four waiters looked up from their pads and quickly looked down at their feet. I knocked louder. The cashier looked up from her register and waved me away from the door. This was not encouraging. Neither of us had eaten since lunchtime, and since then Sean had been shot from the cannon, bashed by the bag, bandied around by the hospital, rebuffed by the nurses, and, even worse, totally humiliated to discover that not one person in all of Staten Island had seen him on TV. I knocked a little louder the third time and even waved one of Sean’s crutches in the window to indicate that we were, indeed, handicapped.

No sooner had I lifted the crutch overhead than the owner of the diner, a tall, thin man with a turban around his head, came storming out of the kitchen, running across the floor, and started berating the two of us directly through his still locked door.

“What the hell are you boys doing!?!” he shouted. “Are you trying to break down this door?”

Fed up at this point, I started down the ramp. Sean, however, was hardly so mild-mannered. He was the Human Cannonball. The Daredevil of the Decade. The Great DD. He had a reputation to uphold. His response was to take one of his two wooden crutches and begin beating the door, aiming the rubber-cushioned part directly at the owner’s face. Now quite animated himself, the owner reached into his pocket and began fumbling for his keys, while I grabbed Sean by the shoulder and pulled him away.

We hurried down the ramp, hopped into the cannon, and drove around the corner. As soon as I reached the light at the corner, however, I began to reconsider what had happened. Even though we had lost the battle, maybe we could get retaliation, I thought, by filing a complaint against the restaurant with the city of New York. It would be the ultimate revenge of the nerds. I pulled the cannon to a stop, left Sean in the front seat, and walked up the stairs.

“Excuse me,” I said to the lady at the register. “I would like to know the name of the man who refused to open that door.” No sooner had I spoken than the man himself appeared in the foyer and started berating me again. “I’m not going to tell you a damn thing!” he shouted. “In fact, I’m going to call the police.”

I laughed. “You’ve got to be joking,” I said. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”

The man picked up the telephone and dialed 911. “These two punks are trying to break into my restaurant,” he shouted. He told the dispatcher his name, his address, and his telephone number. As he did, I discreetly wrote each of them down.