by Susan Tepper
I gulp. I’ve been here before. There’s an IV tube taped to the back of her hand and another thin hose snaking up her nostrils. The room doesn’t have a blue water jug like all the others. I glance at the door. No evidence of tape residue. Behind the door. Nada. No pink sign. Worried for nothing.
I look back at the patient. Her eyes are bugging from her face. She rips the plastic tube from her nose, then grips my arm, and screams, “Give me that goddamned tray!”
“Code blue response team. Report to 815. Code blue response team.”
“Ma’am, let me go check on that announcement,” I say. I pry her fingers from my wrist. Pinch marks from her nails bloom along my skin.
Cardiac arrest. I feel energized by the urgency of the hospital announcement and jog toward the nursing station in search of help. No one is there. I hear a second all-call. I turn around and race back to 807, my feet beating fast against the floor.
I stand by the door of the room, place my thumbs in the waistband of my scrubs, and chew my bottom lip. The green tray is upside down on the floor beside the bed. The patient has tipped her IV pole over. Fluid puddles beside the nightstand. Miss Stilt Legs is curled up on the floor. Her tongue is licking the base of the cup of peaches. She looks up at me and smiles funny, syrup glistening from her chin.
11.53pm
Hasenheide Park, Berlin, Germany
Blood and Soil
by Desmond Fox
I slip out of the hole into the uneasy orange city night, but only as far as my nose. The same slaughter of smells hangs heavy over the sun-beaten grass; pink meat fat, burnt flesh, petrol fumes, beer urine: barbeque season in the park. If you are smart, if you want to live, then you must wait. Then you must learn to live with your own thoughts, and be played by your own memories, and doubt if the memories are your own.
Do you know how long the smell of blood stays in the earth? That is what we call ‘history’. There are rich fields of it here, mounds and streams and rivers of it.
That was a time of great movement, when the world was turned upside down. People moved out of their crumbled buildings and hid in the woods. Badgers were pushed out of the parks and moved into the collapsed cellars on Hermannstraße. A man lived in a hole under a tree, and he lived by foraging. His house was taken by the badger. There were bats under the half-a-roof, songbirds in the upper bedroom, a fox in the empty larder.
The zoo was hit. The hippo boiled in his tank. The elephant was cut by stray metal, and the neighbours kept cutting until she was bone. And the next in line took the bone.
The trees were burned, blasted, cut for firewood. The owls and bats moved onto what was left of the people’s houses. The people moved into what was left of their basements.
And while the people starved and tried to grow potatoes in the park the owls fattened on rats, the birds fattened on flies, and the rats and flies found plenty to eat. What the rats got fat on. That was when the rats and flies swarming had their own noise.
Will the taste ever leave? That’s what happens when you’ve had every meat the city has to offer.
6.00pm
Belmont, Massachusetts, USA
Dinner
by Gloria Garfunkel
I dread what will show up on my plate tonight. Something so gross I can’t look at it. Then my husband and two teen-aged sons appear with a bunch of white paper and plastic bags of real food. Croissants, scones and several dishes of my favorite Chinese food. My sweet family brought me all the foods I love. Little vegetable dumplings, vegetarian moo-shi, garlic watercress, and spicy string beans.
Mathew, my older son, puts my tray of disgusting hospital dinner on a back table.
“What is that food?” he asks.
“I have no idea,” I say.
I am in heaven. I eat a whole plate of Chinese food and save the pastries for breakfast.
Then they bring out the chocolate cupcakes.
“Happy birthday, Mom!”
“It’s my birthday?” I say. “I forgot.”
I start to cry.
“We love you, Mom,” both my children say.
“Don’t try to talk,” says Mathew, my older son.
“Don’t cry,” says Christopher, my younger one.
“You’ll be OK soon,” says my husband, though I know this is not true.
“Why don’t they just order take-out for the patients?” says Christopher. He is very practical. “I bet it would be even cheaper per patient than cooking this crap themselves.”
“And they’d be happier and get well faster,” says Mathew.
The nurses all comment on the great smell of the Chinese food in my room long after the leftovers have been dumped in their trashcan. I think they are jealous.
6.30pm
East Village, New York City, NY, USA
A Cold Dinner
by Kyle Hemmings
The sky is star-studded and the night is breezy. Kit is in Czarina’s kitchen making a kletsky, which is a chicken broth with potato dumplings. It was one of the first dishes that Czarina ever showed her how to make. Kit thinks that this will be good for Czarina’s “cold”, because that’s what Czarina has been complaining of, off and on. Czarina is resting in the bedroom, dozing in and out of sleep.
“Czarina!” calls out Kit.
No reply.
“Mama,” she yells.
She hears a faint voice, as if from somewhere far.
“Yes,” Czarina says, “I’m coming.”
Kit knows that it will take her time to dress.
“Do you need help?”
“No.”
“You really must see a doctor. If I have to drag you.”
What she really wants to tell Czarina is that she will stop hustling and get a job at a local diner that her “friend” suggested. Dasha is good friends with one of the managers.
In the kitchen, Kit cooks the potatoes in salted water then mashes them with butter. She then adds eggs, pepper, and basil and some flour. She mixes the ingredients into the potato, sometimes adding more flour, until it is firm. She then divides the mixture into small dumplings.
“Mama, are you alright?”
“Yes.”
Czarina’s voice is still soft and faraway.
Kit adds chicken pieces, dumplings, veggies, and bouquet garni to the pot. She brings the ingredients to a boil. Then she adds the peppercorns and lets the soup simmer. Occasionally she skims the water with a large spoon. Then, she strains the soup through a cheesecloth, just the way Czarina had showed her, and into a large bowl. She seasons with salt. She is not sure if she did everything in the correct order but it tastes good to her.
“It’s ready,” calls out Kit. “Mama! Come.”
The woman must have fallen asleep again, she thinks. Kit pours some of the soup into a small bowl and brings it to Czarina.
In the bedroom, Czarina is half-dressed and is lying on the bed. Her limbs are flaccid; her face is ashen. There is no rise and fall of her chest.
The bowl of soup crashes to the floor, splashing on Kit’s new pumps, spreading under the bed.
Kit feels for a pulse. Nothing. She whips out a cell phone from her pocket and dials 911. In a frenzied voice, she gives the operator all the necessary information, although she must repeat certain things, like the address.
Kit jumps to the bed, gives mouth to mouth resuscitation, feels Czarina’s ribs crack below her palms.
7.00pm
Belmont, Massachusetts, USA
Weight Watching
by Gloria Garfunkel
At home, I usually have no appetite until dinner and just starve all day except for lots of coffee, tea, orange juice and water. Here I have no appetite at all. The Chinese food and cup cakes buoyed my mood and revived my appetite. I feel a little bit normal again.
The doctors show up on their daily rounds and ask me about my issues with food. I say I am overweight from blowing up from the poisoning though I wasn’t sure what my weight was at this time.
“I need t
o diet, but I eat … um … vegan foods, like salads. But I’m so fat now I look … um … pregnant.” They glance at each other like I am psychotic.
I have discovered that the less I eat, the flatter my stomach gets, and the less I want to eat. I never count calories like obsessive anorexics. I don’t purge like bulimics. I don’t take diet pills. I don’t over-exercise. In fact, I don’t exercise at all except for picking up dust bunnies in our house because we have lots of rugs and I never vacuum. I am definitely not eating-disordered.
My metabolism is screwed up from the poisoning. I gained a pound a day for a month.
So what is a normal weight for someone who is my height, which a nurse measures at 5’2”, a number I seem to remember. The nurse says 104 to 131 pounds. I think she weighs me at 140 but I’m not sure if that comes before or after 104. I think I want to be 100, a round easy number to remember, but I am also not sure if that falls in or out of the spectrum.
7.35pm
Greenwich Village, New York City, NY, USA
Dinner and Call It a Night
by Walter Giersbach
The city looked like an Edward Hopper painting, rain sheeting on Sixth Avenue, a miasma of fog swirling up from the Con Edison steam tunnels under the street. Cars swooshed south toward the maw of the Lincoln Tunnel and an escape to Jersey. Manhattan was an impressionist landscape and death seemed to say, C’mon, you mortals, you’ll love it where you’re going!
With a perfectly straight face, Mike had told the chick at the maître d’s lectern, “A table for one, unless Mayor DeBlasio stops by and asks for me.”
Now he was dry under the awning of the West Village sidewalk cafe. And his glass of Brooklyn Beer, the last of its artisanal winter ale, was dry. Dry was good. Not so good was the fact that his brain also was dry of ideas. He had the characters of his novel clear, down to their toenails, hooves and claws; but they were inanimate, lifeless as clockwork toys that had come unwound. Lucy and the other characters were waiting in the wings, anticipating a story line that would bring them to life on the stage. Inspiration had taken off, leaving him bereft of any shred of creativity. Damn that woman! Damn her for distracting him with her irritating dramas.
He had to re-enter his characters’ lives. What would Lucy Dingo order at a sidewalk cafe? An angelic potion that frothed over the lip of the glass? He sipped his ale and scanned his phone for messages. Nothing there. No texts, no e-mails, no calls. Nada, nichts, rien. Then, looking up in shock, he saw Calliope shambling along Fourth Street with her head down. She was the Queen of Mean, but she was a living, breathing person to relieve his loneliness.
“Calliope Katsanakis,” he called, “as I live and breathe. You’re still alive.”
“You,” she said tonelessly.
“Buy you dinner?” he asked with false brightness. “We’ll go Dutch treat because we forgive each other. I’ll order the appetizers, you choose the entree, then I’ll select a tasty amuse bouche, and you get dessert. A simple meal.”
She walked over to the railing and stood with her arms wrapped around her waist. “You confuse me, Mike. Really, I’ve never known anyone like you. You turn my brain into some sort of smoothie coming out of my ears like my head was a blender.”
“C’mon in out of the rain. On your way, tell the lady at the lectern you’re Mayor Bill DeBlasio’s sister. He’s been delayed.”
Calliope yanked the black watch cap from her hair. She shrugged off the hip-length leather jacket and memories of the rain and plumped down in the chair he had pulled out for her. Mascara-rimmed eyes completed the picture of a Village biker chick.
“Love your outfit. Sort of Lauren Bacall channeling Marlon Brando.”
“Just get me a drink. Johnny Walker Black, one cube of ice, please. It’s been a bitch of a day.”
“Peace treaty, okay? Pax. Later we can smoke a peace pipe.” He reached out and touched her cold hand, letting it go as the waitress approached to take their order.
“Whatever.”
“What do you think the odds are, running into each other in New York three times in one day?” He punched the air dramatically, hoping to see some lights go on inside her face. “This must really screw up the cosmic odds. I bet Jesus and Buddha and Mohammed are scratching their heads over this one.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“You don’t believe in karma? Serendipity? Happen-stance?”
“Here comes my drink, and I bet you need a refill,” she said. “I noticed that when your mouth is full you don’t talk as much.”
“Kelly,” he said, using her nickname for the first time, “earlier today, at lunch, you called me an honorable man.” He chose his words as carefully as if he’d bitten into a forkful of steamed trout, watchful that there were no bones to choke him to death. “But you said it, like, wistfully. Like wishful thinking. Like you weren’t sure.” The words slipped out of his mouth and surprised him in their candor. Was his subconscious taking leave of his protective custody without even a goodbye note?
There was a long pause, he watching her while she watched traffic. “Because I’m not an honorable woman.”
“I know. You’re a call girl. Whores don’t really have a heart of gold. That’s just a cliché.”
“That wouldn’t make me dishonorable. Just stupid or money-hungry or venal.” She seemed to shrink, her shoulders folding inward. “No, I lied. I’m just a girl who was let go from her job in the magazine business. I was an editorial assistant, but now I’m not. I’m broke. But it’s no lie that I owe $26,000 in student loans.” She ran her finger around the top of her glass. “When you found me, I was a little bit drunk and a lot of depressed, just wondering what life was worth.”
“And the mob’s going to find you because you know about …”
“No, I lied about that too. To get some sympathy. To make you want to feel sorry for me.”
“Kelly,” he said, “I don’t feel sorry. I thought about you today. How you face up to a hostile world. I feel respect because you show chutzpah, cojones, sangfroid.”
“Jesus, you can talk meaninglessly in three languages!” She snorted. A smile teased the corner of her mouth.
“I’m the one who needs the understanding. It was my mom who died this week. Her loft I’m living in. She wasn’t a warm and loving mother, but she was the only family I had left except for a brother imitating a missing person. Taking care of her gave me some purpose because my books aren’t selling. And writing and drawing are the only talents I have.”
This time she lifted the glass, examined the golden whiskey, swirled it and sipped. “New York is a place for lonely people, like some eddy in a stream where all the floating stuff collects and goes around in a circle.”
“Well, maybe the floating objects can meet up and get to know each other.”
“What,” she asked, “what if your next story was about a whole young generation that’s been flimflammed by the promise of unachievable hopes, shattered by fabricated wars that turned soldiers into psychotic monsters, suffered under political cynicism unknown since that Roman guy Caligula? And now every moment of their lives is monitored by the same engines of progress that promised improvements.”
“A story torn from the headlines!”
She hunched forward. “But there’s this sympathetic super-woman able to call up miracles and there’s a righteous heroic writer who’s lost his way in the dark underbelly of the city’s economic collapse, our dystopian future and the crushed spirits of the people. Together, they team up and save the forlorn and deserving people.”
A cartoonish light bulb went off over his head. “She’s looking for an opportunity to prove her hyper-normal talents …”
“… And he’s seeking redemption from his grief and feeling betrayed by a great loss,” she finished.
“I think it might work. I can visualize the story line.”
“You think I’m ballsy, so I’m going to say something. Ready? Creative pairing.” She leaned back in triumph.
“Li
ke those arty carved vegetables sushi chefs do, with their paring …”
“No, jerk. Pairing, like Lennon and McCartney, Romeo and Juliet, Laurel and Hardy.” She hunched forward and grabbed Mike’s wrists. “I think and you draw. Being an editorial assistant was just getting my foot in the door to …”
“You know, I think my publisher, Saltzman, needs someone to get him organized. He’s looking for an assistant. Someone articulate and organized, and with keyboard skills. And it doesn’t hurt to be good-looking.”
“You think we could carry this off, this creative togetherness thing? I mean, unless it got too heavy. Then we’d have to go our separate ways or kill each other.”
Mike couldn’t remember the last time a woman had looked at him intently, shooting rays of concentration at his brain. Sincerity was such a rare commodity in New York.
“I’ll choose the appetizers,” he said decisively. “You look at the menu and make up our mind what we’re going to have for the main course.”
She laughed. “Then a little something to tickle our palate, whatever it was you called it.”
“Amuse bouche. French for a little tidbit before the courses.”
“You’re speaking of an intercourse? That sounds very interesting.”
Mike reached over to enfold Kelly’s hand. “Did you know Lucy Dingo is a New Yorker? In its own way, this tough city is an island for heroes like her. Like us. Some of them are defeated and fall to the curbside. Others are made of stronger stuff, and it helps if they’ve wandered these streets. The magic is when two heroes find each other among eight million people.”
She nodded. “Peter Pan said it best. All it takes is faith and trust, and a little bit of pixie dust.”