Jex Blackwell Saves the World

by P. William Grimm

  Betsy stares for a moment more before stepping back from the door: “Come in.”

  Inside, Jex looks around the dark apartment, lights off with blinds closed shut. It is a small place with a tiny foyer that leads into a series of small rooms. The walls are dirty, but the apartment itself is relatively tidy. “Is it just you and the baby here?” Jex asks Betsy.

  “Naw, I have two roommates. They out right now.”

  Betsy leads Jex and Q into a small bedroom. There is not much more than a bed, a crib and a small closet stuffed with clothes. There is a table and a chair. Not much more than that. The window is covered with a blanket, which seems to Jinx to be pink, but maybe not. The room is dark, no lights other than a Minion nightlight. Jex squints her eyes and shifts her focus quickly to baby Ben. She walks over and peers into the crib. Q and Betsy follow and gather behind her. It is immediately obvious that something is not right.

  “Something is not right,” Jex mumbles under her breath as she furrows her brow in concentration. The baby is still but his eyes are open, though only narrowly, no more than thin slits.

  “Oh, dear lord,” Betsy murmurs, her eyes clouding over.

  “Don’t worry, Betsy. It will be OK.” Jex speaks her words with a calmness that is tangible. It eases the pain of the silence just a bit.

  “See,” Betsy explained. “He don’t cry or nothing when he’s lying there like that. But if I try to pick him up to feed him or something, he just wails. He just wails away, like the dead is rising up.”

  Still looking at the baby, Jex says, “I am sure that’s not how he normally acts, right?”

  “No way, honey. Up until last night, the only thing that would stop him from crying is hugging his mama.” Betsy’s next words come out with a choke. “Now it just makes him bawl away.”

  Jex nodded her head up and down. “How’s he eating? “

  “He doesn’t barely eat at all now. Yesterday, I couldn’t pull the food away from him… It’s a little unsettling. But the fact that he won’t let me pick him up without crying … I just can’t take that.”

  Jex nods. “The doctors call it paradoxical pain. Like something hurts when it shouldn’t; and doesn’t hurt when it does.”

  Betsy’s eyes open wide. “So what does that mean? Is he OK?”

  Jex returns her attention to Ben, and looks him carefully in the eye, once with her blind eyes and once with an otoscope. He squints and squirms, squeals at the light of the otoscope. She gingerly places his finger on the baby’s head. He is hot to the touch. Jex traces the round circumference of the baby’s small head, from the eyebrow all the way to the back of the head. The baby murmurs a bit but does not cry. Jex seems to notice something.

  Jex shrugs. “His fontanel seems to be swelled.”

  “His what?” question both Q and Betsy at the exact same time in unison.

  “His fontanel. It’s the soft spot on his head that newborns have. It seems a little swelled.” She inspects Ben’s head again, putting her finger near his skull but not touching it. “Maybe a lot swelled.”

  “Oh dear lord. But that soft spot is normal for a baby,” Betsy objects. “Even I know that. Right?” The last word is said with something resembling doubt, maybe hope.

  “Yeah, it’s completely normal. The plates in the skull don’t fully close until around two years so it’s not a big deal. But his seems a little … swelled.” There is a short pause. “And I suppose you have all the lights turned out because the light makes him cry?”

  Betsy’s eyes open wide. “Yeah,” she confirms in a disbelieving tone. “How’d you know that?”

  “And, uh, well, has anything weird happened to him? Like shaking or something in a weird way for a couple of minutes? You know, like a seizure?”

  “No,” Q answers. “there hasn’t been anything like that. She would have gone to the hospital for sure if something like that happened.”

  Jex and Q look at Betsy, who suddenly has an odd look on her face. She doesn’t say anything and the room suddenly fills with tension.

  “There hasn’t been nothing like that, right Betsy?” Q asks, the smallest bit of hesitation now in her voice.

  Jex takes her turn. “Betsy, it’s kind of super important to know if something like that happened.”

  Flustered and desperate, Betsy breaks down. “It was just once and it only lasted a minute or two. I wasn’t even sure it really happened. Still not sure.”

  “Shit, Boo, that shit happened and you didn’t tell me? What the hell?” Q bursts out in an anguished wail.

  Betsy breaks down, tears and snot all over her, and drops flaccidly into Q’s small body. “No, no, it just happened. An hour ago. It was after you left. I swear. I didn’t know what to do. It was so scary. What am I supposed to do? Those doctors scare me to death.” Q holds her hard, and then turns to Jex in a panic.

  The room tilts and turns; swirling and spiraling. Betsy and Q hold onto one another for dear life, like they are passengers on a sinking ship. The baby wakes up and begins to cry. Outside, a dog begins to bark. The floor beneath them begins to wobble. Chaos is beginning to descend in the small apartment.

  “Jex!” Q cries out. “Please, take out your stethoscope and that other stuff from your bag and figure out what is wrong.”

  Jex stands up and holds her hands firmly on her hips. Her voice is calm and strong, no quivering or doubt to be found. “I don’t need any of that stuff to know what’s wrong with Ben. I know exactly what’s up.”

  [What’s the problem with Ben? Will he be OK? Turn to Free-styling Diagnosis to read Jex’s diagnosis and the conclusion of the story.]

  After Leviathan

  Jex Blackwell is dancing with herself. To paraphrase an ancient guitar hero, every single night of the week provides the opportunity for a different band to be the best in the world, depending on the stage and the crowd and the vibe between the two. Tonight, the best band in the world is a Macedonian anarchist punk collective, banging away in a sweaty, sultry basement somewhere in the middle of Echo Park. There is no stage and so the band is eye level with the crowd, which consists of maybe two dozen people. All four band members are consumed with their music, the guitarist particularly animated, dancing up and down with abandon. The female singer twists and turns with the music, wrapping the microphone cord around her body like a cocoon, yelping loudly in Macedonian over the chug of the rhythm section, bass and drums.

  Jex Blackwell pogos around the crowd, lost in the music, lost in her mind. Or maybe just lost. She does not understand any of the foreign language lyrics, but they resonate inside her anyways. Maybe it is the vibration of the floor. Maybe it is something else. She smiles to herself, her neck extended up as the music streams over her face. Despite the torrid heat, Jex is dressed as usual – gray long sleeve sweatshirt, a black v-neck t-shirt underneath, shapeless black pants and black Chucks on her feet. Sweat dripping down her forehead and down her short ponytail, the heat does not seem to bother her or slow her down at all. She has dealt with much worse. She moves back and forth to the hard Macedonian rhythm, somehow connected to the crowd beating around her while still managing to be completely separate from it.

  Flailing around is not unusual at punk shows, sweaty bodies coming in contact with one another. Crowd-surfing. Dancing. Small rooms. Low ceilings. If asked, Jex would say that people are mostly cool at shows, trying to avoiding hurting anyone and staying away from people much smaller than them when dancing hard. But every scene has its issues, and bro-punks can be a real issue in the punk scene, Jex knows. She keeps her eyes on her environment, a particularly important task for her, as she mostly goes to shows alone and so can’t rely on anyone to have her back. She knows all that stuff about safe spaces and a woman’s right to be free from violation and you shouldn’t be forced to be cautious. She can’t agree more, but she still keeps an eye open and an eye on the exit door, just in case. She knows most of the pain-in-the-ass bros – and some pains-in-the-asses that aren’t bros at all. Some people like t
o start fights; some like to grab an ass or more. Jex knows the usual characters and stays the hell away. She keeps her distance when she can. She fights back when needed.

  One of those bro-punks is Archer. A sophomore at USC, Archer is tall and lanky, a lacrosse ace in high school that found the scene in his freshman year. He listens to Against Me! like they are AC/DC. Jex has heard him described as a macktivist: he goes to anarchy fests and vegan bake-ins to meet scenesters to screw, not to get involved with the issues. Said differently, he is a frat boy who listens to Jeffrey Lewis just enough to occasionally seal the deal with some punk girl. Jex doesn’t really know if any of that is actually true or just a bad reputation, but she doesn’t care much, either.

  Regardless of whether he is actually a cad, Archer is on her list of people to watch, which is why she is watching him when he begins to move a little funny. The change is subtle at first, and she barely notices it out of the side of her eye. The music is booming and the room is hot, so everyone is a little exhausted in their exhilaration. A change in movement is not that unusual.

  Jex moves on in her thoughts as the band switches from one song to another. The basement is dripping with humidity and the room stinks of perspiration and homemade kombucha. Jex’s dance is more jumping up and down then anything else, like a character from a 1973 era New York Dolls audience. She used to feel funny about people watching her dance. Now she just doesn’t care. Thoughts of past and present and future flow through her head. She is a thousand miles away.

  “Naw, he’s not drunk,” Jex hears a voice say to her left. “He’s not. He went straight-edge like six months ago.”

  “Damn, he’s heavy. And his skin is fucking cold. Shit.”

  The voices distract Jex from the vibe that is lifting her up and out of the room. Suddenly she is aware of her existence again, sucked straight into reality and plopped back on the bouncing dance floor, surrounded by hot, pulsing bodies, the room sweltering. She looks over to the voices and sees Archer. He is hanging on to one of his bro’s shoulder and the bro does not seem pleased about it, his face scrunched into an angry snarl. There is a sorority chick with cut off jeans and a white tank top holding on to his other arm with both hands. He seems about to go down.

  Jex does not hesitate. She pushes in front of the sorority chick and grabs Archer under the armpit. He is at least a foot taller than Jex, at least it seems that way to her. “We’ve got to get him to the back of the room and lay him down,” she yells over the music. She has no time for delay. “He’s going to fall over otherwise.”

  “He’s fine,” the bro protests. “He’s just drunk as fuck.”

  “No, he’s not drunk, Jason,” pleads the sorority chick. “He’s straight-edge like me. We didn’t drink at all tonight.”

  “None of that matters,” Jex yelps, slapping her head with one of her hands, while struggling to keep Archer on his wobbly legs with the other. “He is going to fall face first if we don’t get him lying down like right now.” Archer is murmuring now and his eyes are just slits in his head. He seems to be trying to focus on Jex, and at one point his hand is on her head, but he doesn’t seem to be focusing much on anything at all. Jason the bro punk, could be right, maybe he is drunk, Jex calculates. But the sorority chick said he hasn’t been drinking and, to Jex’s eyes, he doesn’t quite seem drunk. She begins to drag him to the back of the room. Jason the bro punk lets out a sigh of frustration but holds on to Archer’s other arm and leads him along with Jex. He is so reliant on Jex and Jason that his feet are barely touching the ground.

  Somehow, they manage to get Archer to the back of the room before he goes entirely limp. Jex looks up at the stairs and they seem treacherously steep. People seem to be going up and down non-stop, even though the band is still playing. There is a dude sitting at the top of the stairs, holding his head in his hands and blocking a portion of it. Now that guy looks drunk, Jex thinks to herself. She shakes her head back and forth. “There is no way we are going to get him upstairs,” she shouts to Jason the bro punk. “We need to put him down right here.” she continues. “I’ll use my bag as a pillow,” she declares and begins to lower Archer down, not waiting for a response from the bro dude.

  Archer is non-resistant and, indeed, seems quite ready to completely drop. In a moment, he is lying down completely on the cold floor. Jex pulls her backpack off and uses it as a pillow to prop Archer’s feet up. She opens the bag and pulls out a bottle of water, a small towel, a blood pressure monitor and a Snickers bar. She wastes no time and is by Archer’s side in a quick moment, kneeling down low. She leans over and speaks quietly but firmly into his ear.

  “Archer. Don’t worry. You’re OK. I think you just got yourself a little overheated. Chill out and relax for a minute. I’ve raised your feet over your head so there should be blood moving up. Relax. You’re going to be OK. Just give it a minute.”

  Jex drenches the towel in the water and lays it across Archer’s forehead. He lets out a relieved groan and lays his head back. He says something that sounds like, “guh.” She pulls the blood pressure monitor from her side and wraps the cuff around Archer’s upper arm. He looks up at Jex, still not quite focusing. “I think I pissed myself,” he whispers, his voice shaky.

  Jex locks her eyes into Archer, touching his face gently. It is sweaty and cold. “Don’t sweat it, Archer. You had an episode of vasovagal syncope. When that happens, that is totally in line with what to expect.”

  Archer lifts his head up and scrunches his face, and after a moment, as Jex seems to come slightly into focus for him, just says, “huh?”

  Jex smiles slightly. “Don’t sweat it,” she repeats. “Just relax.” She reads the monitor. “Your blood pressure is ninety over sixty. That’s pretty low. Just relax and chill out. You’ll be fine in a minute.” She releases the valve and the cuff loosens around Archer’s arm.

  He lowers his head to the ground and murmurs something again, but it isn’t audible to Jex. He brings his hand to his crotch to feel it. He groans a bit when he confirms the wetness, and then lifts his head up again to look at Jex. “And I have a hard-on,” he squeaks.

  “Lovely,” Jex retorts. “Again, completely normal for this kind of episode. So congratulations on that.” A moment passes and Jex begins the process again. Thirty seconds pass. “You’re 110 over 70. Getting better. Relax for a minute. Take some water.”

  He nods his head slowly, filled with shame. Jex hands him the water bottle. He drinks some. Jex pours a bit into her hand and rubs it on his face. After a minute, he rises up to his elbows and looks around. Jex notices for the first time that a crowd has gathered. The set seems to be over. Jex looks Archer in the eye again. “You’re feeling better, aren’t you,” she asks. “The color is coming back into your face.”

  “What happened to him? Did he have like a spaz attack or something?” bro dude Jason demands over Jex’s shoulder. She looks up at him menacingly.

  “No, jackass. He didn’t have a spaz attack. I think he had a vasovagal syncope episode. It’s because this room is so hot, I bet. It’s a trigger. And he hasn’t had enough water.” Jex turns to the sorority chick, who has been shocked into silence the entire time.

  “Have you had much water to drink?” The girl just shakes her head slightly from side to side, not seeming to know quite what to say.

  “Yeah, it’s no big deal, really.” She looks back at Archer. “Different people get triggered by different stuff you know … differently. Sometimes it’s heat, standing up too long, flashing lights, dehydration, all that stuff. Loud music even. When that happens, and you get triggered – your parasympathetic nervous system, which is in charge of your body when it’s relaxed, get enhanced; and your sympathetic nervous system, which tells your body when to fight or flee – you know your flight or fight instinct – that gets reduced. So your body is telling itself to relax and lay still so it can correct itself and get the blood flowing again. As soon as you laid down, your body started to fix itself immediately.”

 
“Parasympathetic nervous system?”, says Archer. “You mean like in the Andrew Jackson Jihad song?”

  Jex smiles. “Yeah, kind of like in the AJJ song.”

  Jason the bro punk chimes in. “Sounds to me like the bitch had a spaz attack,” and he chuckles.

  Jex stands up and glares at the bro punk. “Sounds to me, bro,” Jex says, “like you’re a big friggin’ jackass and don’t know your ass from your elbow.”

  Jason the bro punk is instantly defensive. “What the hell do you know anyways? What are you, sixteen years old? Dumb-ass punk girl.”

  “You can say what you want, motherfucker,” Jex counters quickly. “But I know you’re a jackass who didn’t hesitate to leave his bro behind.”

  Archer is sitting up now and looks up at Jex and Jason. Jason’s face is turning red. “Yeah, whatever. Everyone knows you’re a bitch wannabe poseur. And besides, I didn’t leave anybody behind. I dragged his faggot ass over her.” His voice is getting louder.

  “Nice, dude. Well, here’s the thing,” Jex begins.

  “No,” Jason interrupts. “I’ll tell you what the thing is…”

  “Stop,” Archer says, now up on his feet and fairly steady. “She helped me out, dude. Leave her alone.”

  Jason looks Archer up and down. “Did you piss on yourself?” Jason demands in an incredulous tone. The two are suddenly in one another’s face.

  At this point, a guy in a Mastodon shirt steps in. He seems older than most of the rest of the crowd, maybe in his late twenties, and has one of those presences that would be described as commanding. “Ok, enough. He seems OK now. Let it go.”

  Jason is not backing down. “I’ll say when I will let it go.”

  Archer immediately shoots back. “No, I will say when it gets let go.”

  “Uchh,” Jex exclaims in exasperation. She pushes a Snickers bar into Archer’s hands. “Here, eat this. You shouldn’t have gotten up so quickly, but now that you did, go ahead and eat this. And finish up that bottle of water. On the house. I have to pee now, so have a nice night all. I’m going upstairs.”