University Medical Center, Diamond Building, Intensive Care Unit

Image courtesy of Norbert Kaiser, Wikimedia Commons

There is no place to look. Every time you avert your eyes, they fall on a crying stranger: a fat middle age man bawling into his cell phone, two willowy prepubescent girls weeping into each other’s arms as they tumble out of a conference room full of sobbing adults.

So, for decency’s sake, you look back at your own well of sorrow, but it’s hard to stay there. If anyone so much as murmurs, you whip your head toward them, grabbing at respite, or else your eyes drift from a long maze of tubes to the quiet monitors with their hypnotic waves and meaningless numbers. Something always beeps, pings, or clicks.

“Essentially,” the doctor explains, “his liver is shot. And his kidneys. And his lungs.” Perhaps these are not the words the doctor uses, but this is what she means.

Last week, they said that if he stabilized, if he found a nursing home able to care for a man with not insurance, and if he stopped drinking for six months, then he could go on the transplant list.

This week they’re talking about infections, calling his daughter in the Midwest. “Do you want us to intubate your father? Do you want us to let him go?”

She is young, twenty-two. She says, “intubate,” but when she gets to the ICU they tell her intubation is only prolonging his suffering. He has, perhaps two weeks, with the machines. She asks everyone she knows, and then she tells them, “extubate.” It’s Tuesday, and her tickets are to go home Friday.

His ex-wife, his ex-girlfriends, the people who were his friends and colleagues before this disease became lover, companion, reference, all file through to say goodbye. At first he can focus his eyes and choke out a few words, but after a while, he is no longer there. It is only the machines, and the solemn watchers.

It takes five hours, once they disconnect him, five hours of sinking lower, struggling to breathe, and sinking lower again, until at last the numbers run down to nothing.

The Beer Girl

The blister on Jessie’s left ankle had popped, so that the strap of her black leather Calvin Klein knockoff sandal with the four-inch-heel rubbed directly against the raw flesh. The blister on her right ankle had not popped, but it would, soon. She could not decide which one hurt more. Her brain reconsidered with every step—the right one, no, the left one, no, the right one—but, to her credit, she continued to smile and say her line. What choice did she have?

“Would you like to try a free sample of Mountain Light Cerveza y Limon, this summer’s new taste sensation for beer lovers? Would you like to try a free sample of Mountain Light Cerveza y Limon, this summer’s new taste sensation for beer lovers?”

She smiled until her cheeks hurt, her mind consumed not only with the pain in her ankles, but also the way her thighs chafed, and the sweat dripping down her legs, and the possibility that she was allergic to this new foundation, even though she couldn’t scratch her face for fear of dropping the tray of Dixie cups.

There also existed that vague nausea in her abdomen, a feeling she would not acknowledge for fear that her morning Saltines and diet Pepsi might consider it an invitation to make a return performance.

Very soon, she would have that problem licked. She just needed to figure out how to negotiate another nine and a half days in these shoes. Two weeks ‘til payday.

“I’d like a free sample,” a kid said.

She smiled a little harder. “Twenty-one and over. Please drink responsibly.” She lifted the tray up higher, walked on, turning sideways to edge through the crowd. Someone’s hand brushed her ass, a deliberate touch, ending in a gentle squeeze, but she knew she would never pick out the culprit in this mob. It just pleased her not to spill anything this time.

First day of her new summer job and she’d already seen everything. She passed the last two Dixie cups to a bald, middle-age guy and his young girlfriend, whose funky sneakers Jessie suddenly envied.

“This beer tastes like piss,” the girl laughed once Jessie turned her back.

“Lemon-flavored piss,” the guy said.

Jessie limped back to her station. “Do you have some Band-aids?” she whispered to Catalina, the other beer girl on this shift. “These shoes are killing me.”

“Oh, what you’re supposed to do is you take a panty liner and cut it up and stick it on the inside of the strap before you wear them,” Catalina whispered back.

“Is that a thing?” Jessie asked. “Is that something people do?”

Catalina shrugged. “I don’t have a Band-aid.”

They refilled their trays from bottles in the cooler and pressed back into the festival. “Would you like to try a free sample of Mountain Light Cerveza y Limon, this summer’s new taste sensation for beer lovers? Would you like to try a free sample of Mountain Light Cerveza y Limon, this summer’s new taste sensation for beer lovers?”

The beer smelled sort of unnatural to Jessie, and she held the tray up, away from her nose, as she minced through the crowd. If she slid her feet forward in the sandals, curled her toes, and lifted her arches…no, that didn’t help matters. The leather straps—or perhaps they were really plastic—were cutting her. A panty liner wouldn’t help in the least. Maybe a tampon, at this point. She wouldn’t be at all surprised to look back and see a trail of blood dripping from her ankle.

Of course, she didn’t have any reason to carry either of those items right now. She wouldn’t even be here right now. “Cerveza y Limon…Cerveza y Limon,” she heard herself parroting. There were boys, cute ones and hideous ones, smiling and gawking and grabbing. She was supposed to be on an unpaid internship this summer. She was supposed to be networking in broadcast journalism, looking perky and helpful, flirting with anchormen, or even cameramen, and maybe, just maybe, getting a few minutes on air before she started her senior year. Something to put on her resume.

Back at her station, she leaned against the table, relieving the pressure on her ankles for a moment as she refilled her tray.

“Hey, hey, beer girl” said the bartender, shaking a box of Band-Aids. “Do you want this?” He looked down, not at her ass, like every other guy had today, but at her ankles. He even helped her into the little tent behind the bar, lifted her up onto a keg, and slid her shoes off himself. “First time?” he asked, and she laughed.

“I’m not cut out for this.”

“You’ve gotta wear those shoes, huh?” he said.

“That’s the uniform.” Her brow creased. “Black heels, minimum height three and a half inches. Black skirt, minimum six inches above the knee, official black tank top or baby doll tee with Mountain Light logo, and if you’re not at least a C-cup, you’ve got to wear a Wonderbra.”

She regretted her words immediately, but he didn’t ask her whether she was a C-cup, or wore a push-up, or whether she had bought her uniform at a thrift store with the money she made selling back her textbooks because she was broke and desperate and didn’t have an outfit like that in her closet and was too ashamed to ask anyone for money. He just shook his head, sympathetic eyes rolling. The last thing she needed right now was another pair of sympathetic eyes. Sympathetic eyes, she had determined, were nothing but trouble. Sympathetic eyes did not necessarily indicate a sympathetic person.

“We both better get back out there,” he said, holding out his hand to ease her off the keg. “You don’t seem like the type, you know. Most beer girls are more in their element.”

She shrugged and tried to sound casual. “I need the money.” It came out as a whisper. Her stomach lurched. Her hand felt funny in his. She never asked for help. It surprised her to be offered.

“Don’t we all?” He grinned. “Don’t we all?”

Jervis Girls' Jail

Elation didn’t come easy when you had to sit with your ass sunk into a yellow, molded plastic chair under the hairy eyeballs of The Hag, but Nya mustered a smile as she took the receiver. Soon, she would be out of this place, away from The Hag, and Miss Grits, and Sweet Baboon and the rest of the bitchy staff at the Jervis Girls’ Jail, Home for Fucked Up Rejects, and she wasn’t coming back.

She heard it ringing on The Dog’s end. The Hag sort of oozed her saggy butt up onto the other desk like she meant to stick around, and her long tits deflated a little under the ratty sweater. The old lady stared down from beneath her monobrow. Creepy bitch, Nya thought. Anything—even Jailbait and The Dog—was better than this. You couldn’t even make a phone call without three weeks’ good behavior, a permission form signed by two administrators, and a fat old hag eavesdropping on your every word. They’d scared her straight all right. Six months in Jervis and she couldn’t wait to live by her father’s standards, under his roof and his rules.

“Hello?”

Nya choked a bit, but she would be nice to Jailbait if it killed her. She’d changed. What business of hers was it if her dad married a nineteen-year-old gold-digging slut when her mom hadn’t even been dead two years? She would just finish high school like a normal, non-incarcerated kid. Plug her ears up at night. Smile every morning at a step-mom who had been a senior when she was a freshman.

“Hi, Janice. Can I talk to my dad?”

“I thought they didn’t let you make phone calls.”

Nya could picture her lying on the couch in a white satin pajama top and a pair of red panties. You couldn’t deny the smoking hotness of Jailbait Janice. She forced the cheer into her voice. “They don’t let you make phone calls without permission. I have permission. So, please, will you put my father on the line?”

“He’s sort of busy right now.”

“This is sort of important.” Her voice felt sickly sweet, sort of rotten, but The Hag favored her with a wrinkled smile, like she’d gotten it right.

She heard Jailbait fake whispering, “It’s the kid.” She made “the kid” sound like a creeping skin infection. She couldn’t tell what The Dog said back to her.

They both giggled before he got on the line. “What now?” he snapped.

“Dad, I had my court date today.”

“Well, you earned your punishment. Maybe this time you’ll learn your lesson.”

She gritted her teeth, then took a cleansing breath. The Hag gave her a thumbs up. “I did learn my lesson. I’ve had, like, group therapy, and I’ve addressed my anger issues so I can channel my emotions in appropriate ways. I know that I have to respect you and your decisions because you’re my father, and I understand that Janice is your decision, and I want you to know that I’m happy for you, I’m glad you’re happy. I got my feelings about Mom’s death mixed up with my feelings about your marriage. I know my behavior was totally inappropriate. I’m a different person, and the judge said I could come home.”

She took another deep breath. “Whenever you want to come and get me, I can go. I swear, there’s not going to be any problems. None.”

For a moment, she heard nothing but the distant babble of the TV on the other end. Canned laughter. An almost-familiar advertising jingle. She could count on one hand the number of times she’d watched TV in the shelter.

Finally, The Dog made a noise halfway between a grunt and a sigh. “What makes you think I want you here?”

“Dad?”

“After the way you acted, all the things you said. Lying to the cops! Trying to get Janice fired! Stealing from me! And now you want to come home? Six months isn’t nearly long enough. I’m still paying Grandma back for what you did to her car.”

Nya twisted the old-fashioned cord around her wrist, tight, until her hand almost turned white, but let it go. She didn’t have to do anything like that anymore. “I’m sorry. I said I was sorry. I’ll get a job. I’ll pay everyone back. I’ll make it all up to you.” The Hag started nodding like some stupid bobble head doll.

“It’s a little late for that, Nya. They got it right the first time. The shelter really is the best option.”

“But the judge said—”

“The judge can take your freeloading ass into his house, if that’s how he feels. He can let you eat his food and insult his wife and run up his credit card. You’re his business, not mine. Please don’t call here again.”

The next thing she knew, Nya had her face buried in the worn, soft knap of the Hag’s sweater, her cheek pressed into those low hanging boobs, while the old lady’s hand smoothed down her hair. “There, there,” The Hag crooned. “He’s a fool. You’re a good girl, Nya, and anyway Miss Gibbons will find you a better place,” and Nya clung to the old lady like it was her own mother and the old lady smelled good, like sugar.

1000 Paper Cranes

After the first dozen, her hands learned the way around the paper: mountain fold, valley fold, crease, pull, lift. Her fingers moved with the precision of a machine but the speed of a kid just learning to ride a bike. She refused to fall. The little pile of paper cranes grew like a stalagmite, one drop at a time.

She had no interest in origami, or China, no Asian influences in her life. She didn’t even believe in miracles. A miracle, however, was what she needed and, not knowing how to pray for one, she taught her hands the folding dance. Every folded crane, she would allow herself to believe, drew that miracle a little closer, even as the minute hand swept its way, again and again, around the face of the clock.

Once an Artist

The stunning oil and acrylic landscape leered down at him from the studio wall: the last canvas. He had distributed the rest long ago, but he couldn’t let go of this one. The way the towering spires of Atlantis shimmered under the crashing waves of the Maine coast, their fantastic majesty almost hidden beneath the prosaic view from the window of his boyhood home, remained to taunt him in middle age.

Looking out this window, now, revealed a trio of languid contractors scraping on the new masonry wall. He wondered what it might feel like to work outside, then returned to his desk.

The email on his screen waited patiently. “We love the new design! But we’d like it a little smoother around the edges, with straighter lines. Can you tweak the colors, too? Something brighter, maybe, but not too bright. Also, let’s keep it abstract. The bump on the top left almost suggests a strawberry, and we don’t want that association.”

And he opened the client’s file, smoothed the edges, straightened the lines, tweaked the colors, and erased the bump that almost suggested a strawberry.

The next email explained that five thousand dollars had been deposited into his PayPal account, and that they appreciated his excellent work. He double checked. Yes, five thousand dollars had been deposited in his PayPal account. He could not recall his excellent work. The next email was another logo request.

Interruptions usually set his teeth to grinding, but he didn’t mind the doorbell’s two-toned chime just now. It took a few minutes to descend from the attic to the front door, where the contractor, cap in hand, asked him to come inspect his new wall, and then asked for four thousand dollars.

“Let me go get the checkbook.”

Then, nothing disturbed him, except for the fabled, half-seen impression of Atlantis peeking out from the big landscape on the wall. But he drew logos for a living. Expressive, eye-catching logos. Once you started, you couldn’t stop. You had to pay for equipment, upgrades to your home, things starving artists didn’t care about, like nice shoes and flattering haircuts. So he couldn’t be an artist anymore. He had to work.

When the sun set, he did not adjust the lights in the studio, but sat quietly in the dark, his eyes trying to pick out the secret elements of the landscape. Much later, he felt his way to the closet, and things crashed to the floor, bounced off his middle-age knees. With the gait of a somnambulist, he dragged things down the stairs, through the pain, and out the door.

Many hours later, the sun rose on the man who used to be an artist, paint-spattered and curled up in the dirt. The new masonry wall had disappeared. In its place stood a fresh, slightly-shiny representation of the heavens as seen by a medieval philosopher, depicting the planets in their vast spheres, the paths of fiery comets, and the careful hand of a divine creator hiding amongst the multitudes of numinous stars.

The Awful Woman Next Door

There’s an awful woman next door. She doesn’t live there; I think she’s visiting her grandmother, a kindly but slightly demented old lady who insists on feeding a herd of feral cats, which we have neutered, one by one, when we can get charity funding to do so. But this awful woman, she has the voice of a fishwife. She’s always shrieking at someone to do something.

There’s a man she shouts at, and a little girl, and a dog. You can always tell when she’s leaving her grandmother’s. Her voice, piercing, harsh, and loud, jars you out of whatever peace your evening might have had to offer. Usually she’s screeching for someone or something to get in the car.

If she yells at the man, he responds in a voice too low to hear. If she yells at the girl, the girl cries, but she can’t match her mother’s volume. If she yells at the dog, it goes on and on. The dog, gifted with a simple intelligence that tells him to run from that deadening noise, sets off all the other dogs in the neighborhood, but never gives away his position by barking himself.

I feel sorriest for the girl. The man committed to his path by choice, and the dog, at least, gets a nice run out of it, and a moment of the freedom. The girl lacks the agency to choose or to run, but must suffer her mother’s shrill imperatives with nothing but a tiny version of that voice with which to retaliate. Still, it’s disconcerting. There’s a clear view of their driveway from our front door. The woman isn’t physically abusing the girl, at least not in our sight. It just sounds like she is.

Eventually, she stuffs the man, the girl, and the dog into the car and drives off, leaving echoes of angry and canine wails in her wake.

Red Flags

Despite—or perhaps due to—my education and experience, I did not want to believe. On the days you asked, “Do you think I’m mentally ill?” I tempered my answer, ignored the flags, stroked your ego.

Flag: all the times you laughed wildly at nothing at all, then denied laughing when I wondered what was so funny.

Flag: all the times you gave me the silent treatment, eventually admitting that you were mad about something that happened six months ago and wasn’t really a big deal.

Flag: all the times you sexually harassed my roommate after being repeatedly asked to leave him alone, then told him to toughen up, plus, all the other men you sexually harassed.

Flag: all the times you reported that everyone hated you, even though everyone said they liked you, and all the people you couldn’t get along with, even though they were your friends.

Maybe I’m not a subtle person. Because it took a banner: your forty-five minute audio file explaining why I was a racist, classist, evil, oppressive bitch who never said I was proud of you, and why you never wanted me to talk to you again, because our seventeen-year friendship had run its course.

For the record: I’ve always been proud of you. I know I said it many times. And for the record: yes, I’m sorry to say, I think you’re mentally ill. I wish I could have said it before.