by JR King
To cool ourselves off, the medicinal choice was fantastic: a variety of cream-sickles and ice cream cones.
Down by the beach, a woman’s profile, lit by soft yellowish-orange lighting, looked familiar. I took in the quiescence of her poise while the tide lapped at her feet. In her long white dress, she stuck out just as perfectly in this place as I fitted in.
“I know her,” I mumbled to myself. To see which way the wind was blowing, I walked up to her. “Hello?”
She turned around. She was magnificent. She was my mother. Folding her arms across her middle, she appraisingly glanced at me, on to Alexander behind me, taking a light tone. “What’s this on about, El?”
“Mommy…,”
Before I could say anything else, Alexander came between us. “This isn’t right. You need to come back with me,” he said, his eyes a trifle wide as the high wattage of his smile diminished. I reckoned he was trying to flatten the worse of the fear that plagued him.
“Who do you think you are?” The constipated look my mother shot him was neat, I had to stifle a giggle that threatened to escape.
“You need to go, Ariel.” Alexander’s tone had a patronizing edge to it, like I was some wayward child he had to send off to the bedroom.
I didn’t know what to do with myself as my mother chewed him out. Head down, I trailed my right hand through my loose hair and gripped the back of my neck. With tempers frayed, irreproachable accusations between the two volleyed back and forth without any concern for me.
“STOP IT!”
“Her lips moved, I saw it happen,” I heard a man’s voice say, distant and the bellow echoing. It sounded familiar, too.
I took a deep breath, trying to figure out on which side of death’s door I had woken up. When I tried to open my heavy-lidded eyes, my eyelids wouldn’t allow it. It felt as if my eyelashes had been glued together. Against the grayness of gummed eyelashes, drops of blood floated around. Someone was carving with a blade, red beads swirled and splattered, making my eyes hurt. Needles jabbed at the backs of my eyeballs. Everything was grayish, with splotches of red here and there.
I heard murmured voices and a steady, high-pitched beep. EKG.
I’d been hit by a car.
What now? Where was Alexander?
I get to see him again, I thought, smiling inwardly. Slowly, my eyes opened in slits. I could feel a pull at my chest. Bleeding, I bet. I tried to check myself out, but my head didn’t want to cooperate. Dull pain bloomed inside me, though I couldn’t tell where it originated. My limbs felt heavy, my chest encased in lead. My brain was sluggish, spluttering to life.
“Kiddo, can you hear me?” grandpa asked. Footsteps receded. “If you can, say something, will you? Wiggle your thumb for me.”
I didn’t feel like moving. I blinked twice, which cleared my vision a little.
“Good. That’s good.”
In a beat, my eyelashes came unstuck all the way, fluttering like a trapped sparrow. “Alexander,” my voice croaked. I tried to say more, but then gave up the effort. Without saliva my tongue felt like bloated rubber. I closed my eyelids, and the piercing pain abated. But then I became aware of the real pain, boundless and throbbing, in my ribcage. It all pulsed in time to my heartbeat, rhythmically sending jagged waves of pain my head.
“Take little sips of air,” a woman said, her voice sweet and thickly accented.
The light was unbearably bright, painful even. Everything was gauzy and indistinct, like there was a white scrim over everything. I couldn’t concentrate on one thing, everything was strangely hazy.
“Where’s Alex?” I asked. My breath reeked, I could smell it.
Grandpa stared dumbly at me.
“He left me? He doesn’t want to marry me?” I was sobbing.
As voices whispered, I felt the cold tendrils of fear clawing at my stomach. I flailed upright and looked up. The IV bag that sagged on a pole started swaying. I glanced at the intravenous tube connected to the metal stand. Now there was more high-pitched electronic beeping, and it wasn’t regular anymore, but jumbled, more like a cacophony.
A hulking silhouette loomed, and came closer and closer. “Don’t agitate her, Frank. She’s in no condition to speak.”
“Lee, she’s trapped in a nightmare…a sick anomaly that…,”
On the heels of that, “You’re causing a ruckus, Frank. Get out of this room!” the white-coated man said sharply. He came into focus a little as he looked at me, his gaze sharp and flat. The black bristles of the cropped haircut that capped his skull worked well for his short forehead. He had a pointy nose, a long chin, and deep epicanthic folds. Where had I seen him before? Did it matter? Alexander left me, for good, or else he would have been by my side. Just like he’d dropped Claudia after all these years, he’d left me.
I was ready for death to claim me.
“We have to operate now! If the internal bleeding spreads…,”
Alexander Turner
The ICU Situation
“A travesty.” I could hear the deep sigh of worry when Robert placed his hand on my shoulder. His lips moved as if he was talking to me, but I couldn’t hear a word he was saying.
In the mirrored elevator, I shared endless, recursive reflections with a Latino couple of indeterminate age who held hands like lovers, and a Goth couple that reeked of camphor. One look at the latter clinched it for me: no bullet piercings ever. Just like their backpacks were resplendent with pagan trinkets, metal and other crap was littered across their heads, a busy spattering of freckles sweeping across their cheeks cinching the looks. It sounds awful to say they looked hideously ugly, but they did. Like Christmas trees worth of cheap, nasty stuff dangling from the ears, jammed through the lips, and twisted up the eyebrows. They’d probably gotten everything pierced, even parts of the body you don’t want to think about getting mutilated. Bleeding. Infecting. I wondered if the guy loved the girl. His hair was crew cut all around, except in the front, where it hung down in a Caesar line above his eyes. A soul patch—an ugly smear of reddish growth—sat on his chin, like a burrowing insect. All in all, he looked like a member of a boy band gone to serious seed.
I resolved not to acknowledge the young couple’s presence because I didn’t want to think about shit. The warm smile the Latino couple and I exchanged was telling; looking at the kids felt like sifting through the contents of an auto part shop.
I straightened my coat collar with a brisk tug on the lapels, and exited the elevator. I prayed hard for a miracle. Life had been intensely strange to me lately. I wasn’t so sure if I had done anything deserving of a miracle. Walking down the long hallway, I listened to my footfalls pacing the slick floor. Numbered doors flashed by in my peripheral vision, and behind each, I imagined a possible death blooming while a doctor bloviated at length. I hated hospitals. The cloying smell of anti-bacterials and get-well flowers, the sterility, the shiny floors.
This outdated edifice—its walls painted a bright white semigloss, its linoleum floors polished to a subtle sheen—hardly beggared description. Hand sanitation stations were parked in every hallway. Curses perched on the edge of my lips as I watched nurses walk by with cheery smiles that seemed entirely wrong against the backdrop of human suffering. Even worse, the frantic, heavy expressions of loved ones were haunting and inescapable.
My aversion to waiting behind the scenes made things worse. Adroitly threading a fine line between rage at the world and appreciation at the doctors treating Elena, I let Robert do the talking to the doctor near the nurses’ station. His findings helped us keep abreast of the latest developments. She’s in surgery. Eyeing orderlies, each glance at my watch made the voice clamor louder about medical complications. The tardiness wasn’t debatable, I needed to see Elena and have her medevaced to Tony’s private clinic. The flu season had begun, departments were short-staffed, and the influx of high-deductible patients was greater than ever.
Suddenly, someone was beside me, silently placing a hand on my shoulder. Prussian blue eyes
seemed sunken and underlain by baggy pouches of dark, wrinkled skin. I expected Frank to yell at me, to blame me as if I were the one who’d let him down. Who’d let Elena down. Instead, he nodded toward the hallway and I followed.
“She’s going to be okay.” He exhaled and looked at me with a smile.
It took me a minute to realize what he’d said. Thank you. Thank you! THANK YOU! Everything tingled. Between the truth and the smile on his face, my heart didn’t know whether to go into cardiac arrest or to sprout wings.
“She’s gonna wake up, her prognosis is positive. She suffered a cardiac arrest right before surgery because of blood loss. They managed to bring her back, but she was too agitated, as if her mind refused to cooperate, so they placed her in an induced coma. She’s going to wake up. Just a precaution.” He fidgeted. “Stuff happens, you know, it’ll take some time to heal. But she’s okay. Alive—she’s alive, made it by the skin of her teeth. They’ll move her out of the ICU as soon as she wakes up.”
I just stood there, parched, my lips moving. “That’s good to hear. I want to airlift—,”
“No, she’s my responsibility.” His voice became louder, clarion-clear. “MGH has top-notch care. Every man has to skin his own skunk. I know you’re out of sorts, take some time to align, son.”
Something snapped in my chest, like a tightly wound rubber band. I lost the will to argue him blue in the face. A tentative smile crossed my face.
I continued following Frank through a series of doors and hallways. Finally, we were in the ICU. As if its name wasn’t worrisome enough, the lack of soothing whispering voices and excessive bleeping machinery was frightening. Here, the prim, faux pine scent of industrial strength disinfectant warred with the sour stench of sickness, and death.
Frank cleared his throat and I looked back at him. “Go see her.”
I made a step toward the enclosed area in front of me but he put his hand on my arm. “I need to warn you. She doesn’t look great. With all due respect, don’t let the pallor scare you off. She’s still the same girl.”
“Thanks for the warning.” Impulsively, I hugged him. I was just so thrilled that Elena would smile at me again. Letting go, I rubbed at my tears and chuckled at Frank’s uncomfortable expression.
Every atom I possessed was alert when I slipped through the curtain. And there was Elena, looking pale and nearly lifeless against the white sheets—not much whiter than her skin. Her long hair fanned one side of the pillow. I studied her pale cheeks and swollen eyelids. Thank God Frank had warned me.
Julie was in a chair beside her, toying with the fingers of Elena’s right hand. She looked up when I approached, her eyes puffy and bloodshot from the crying. She greeted me with a woebegone smile then burst into tears. Right now, I had absolutely no idea how to pour oil on troubled water. I patted her shoulder awkwardly until she reached out to hug me. Eventually, Frank came in with a doctor in tow. The latter talked my arm off. He wasn’t much taller than me, in tiptop physical shape, perhaps forty years old, with a tanned head of hair and dark sloe eyes. He would greatly benefit from some sunning. Beyond the licensed assurance, I didn’t care about any of the medical jargon and technical terms.
Julie brought me some coffee in a revamped Styrofoam cup, and everyone left. Not a paper cup, but fine. Warm, caffeinic steam infiltrated the coolness of the space. Taking a sip, I itched to spout a daring retort. If people were supposed to drink empirical shit like this, well, no wonder they were ill.
I set the cup of disgustingly brewed coffee on the side table. My forehead fell to Elena’s chest, practiced sweeps of my hands patting it with sedulous care. “Baby, open your eyes. Jesus fuck, I’m begging you. I’ll do anything for you, I swear.”
Taking her hand in mine, I sat in the chair and praised myself for my patience, all the while feeling cold as the heat of my skin was dissipating. I was dying to feel Elena’s sense memory pulse through her small fingers.
Minute after minute passed, and the impotence wore on me. My gaze fluttered to the corner of the room to look at the monitors for the millionth time. A rather consistent pain shot from my buttocks up my spine and to my neck. My arms had grown numb, and my neck was sore from the rolling, side-to-side motion of my head along the back of the chair. Feeling helpless, I told Elena the truth. That the first time I’d seen her wasn’t at the masquerade ball, it was from the roadside. Her face inclined to my touch as I spoke, and her stomach rose and fell like the angry sea after a midnight tempest. I didn’t know where the words were coming from, just that they were clawing and scratching at my throat, demanding to be let out. I pressed my mouth to her cheek, warming it. Warming her body.
“Alex,” a voice broke my concentration. I looked up. Sophia was staring at me, white-faced, shaking her head. “She doesn’t need to know.”
One moment I was beside Elena, the next Sophia and I were rounding up a corner. “Says the person who thinks I’m sleeping with the enemy. Your ill-defined focus is blindsiding you from acknowledging the real culprit. Tragedy. Fish or cut bait, Sophia.”
She rubbed at her eyes, accidentally smearing mascara everywhere. “She makes you…tick. That’s all that matters.”
I fell to my knees on the cold floor. Tears welled in my eyes. “Don’t say it if you don’t mean it. You’ve been playing us against each other. Playing with a full deck.”
Mirroring my kneeling pose, Sophia lifted my chin. “I was in the wrong. You have my blessing.” Lips puckered in a scowl, she added, “And spare me the sentimental gobbledygook.”
I reached out to hug her. “I luvvv you, auntie. Ad infinitum.”
“Don’t cock this up. Truth is the promise of all things, but this truth is dangerous. Take me at my word, if she finds out, you’ll be a letdown and she’ll leave you. I can’t lose you, too, darling. I just can’t.”
A secret smile tugged at the corners of my lips. “First-rate thinking. It’s not like she can hear me.”
We stood up together. Further down the hallway, everyone was present. Our friends, our families. I half-laughed, half-cried, and forced myself to calm down.
“How’s our girl?” asked Tony.
Smiling through my tears, I swiped at my eyes with the back of my wrist. “Hanging in there. Tough. Tough girl.”
He grinned at my silly articulation, stepped on my toes. “You look awful.”
“Nothing a night’s sleep can’t cure.”
“Don’t you trouble your pretty ‘lil head about any of it, man. Look, if you’re tired, I can take her off your hands. Forever.”
A thick roar of laughter ensued, breaking the tense atmosphere.
Elena Anderson
The Little Girl
“Ariel?” I heard that soft, sinning purr, lingering around the letters of my makeshift name as if they were precious minerals, or stones, or who knows what latest source of richness. He pulled me firmly to him. His lips were warm, his kiss on my neck soft like a stack of curlicued feathers. The heavy rising and falling of his chest belied his calm composure. “Wake up, Ariel.” His voice was grave as he brushed his lips tenderly against mine. It wasn’t an elaborate plea, yet it sounded all the same to me. “Your state of unconsciousness is killing me, baby. Throw me a lifeline, be it a short one, Elena.”
My name on his lips felt like a caress on my skin. The heat of his voice traveled through his touch, sending pleasant shivers racing up and down my body.
“You have to wake up, baby. Open your eyes. There’s a ton of shit I haven’t told you about me. I mean, where do I start?”
There was a significant pause.
“Life turns on a dime, doesn’t it? I was the ultimate rich kid, little one. I went to rich kid schools, I hung out with the rich kids, I dressed like a rich kid. Hyperbolic statements, but all true. It’s safe to say I lived in a glass bubble, with the assumption that all people had access to the same things I did. Growing older, I started understanding that the way of things was different. I accepted my life as it was. Then my mother
…because of you…and that day when I had a lapse of judgment…Jesus Christ, you were beautiful. I saw you wearing a little white dress. It was so simple. It didn’t have lace or silk or sequins or any kind of glittery enhancement, nor did it have a good shape, sadly. On top of the potato sack attire, you had no jewelry, no fancy shoes, and no ribbons in your hair. Just a shapeless cotton dress and gunny shoe slippers and braided hair, but you looked happy the way you were, eating chocolate ice cream. My main model for women was my mother. She was outrageously ostentatious, diamonds dripping from her neck and wrists and hanging from her ears. All the other girls around me were just as high maintenance as she was, wearing the trashiest outfits current popstars promoted.”
He touched my nose tip. “But you, kitten, you were a mystery. You didn’t even have a proper hair bobble in your hair, and I’m sure your dress cost less than twenty bucks. You weren’t drenched in diamonds. You just looked like a nice girl. I remember thinking aloud, “I want to talk to her one day, see what she’ll grow up to be,” and somehow I persuaded myself not to go through with the wickedness I had in mind. I watched you talking with that boisterously annoying girl, Sara. When you two laughed—I guess right about then—you became so animated and open and wild. You had a laugh like thick gravy. Covering the creamy mashed potatoes and coloring the steamy mass of starch, coating everything with wonderfulness. The crush I had was almost paralyzing, debilitating even. I really wanted to kiss you that day. No, worse, actually I wanted to sink my teeth into you, mark you and taste you and show you what men did to women. I wanted to do a lot of strange and beautiful things with you, things that were illegal. For heaven’s sake, you were a minor and yet I still wanted to do these things to you.
You, little Elena, totally made me feel sorry for myself because clearly my childhood was nothing like yours. I’d only dated girls who’d had the same kind of upbringing as me. I realized then that money could buy me little else than luxury. I was, and would always be, a poor man, unless you were mine. Unless you belonged to me: your mouth and your laughs and your eyes and your tears and your voice and every fucking breath you took had to be mine. I was envious of you, really jealous when I saw your grandfather pick you up in that rusty dinosaur of a car, and weirdly enough, you ran toward it like it were the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen. I think it made me like you even more.”