10:50 creeps up silent and smooth, piggybacking on each sip
of the pungent black coffee pilfered from the abandoned family lounge. No one drinks dark roast after 9pm. Was that acrid aftertaste signaling stale, or
burnt?
Doesn’t matter.
It’s 10:53. In another
slithering 60 seconds a swift swipe of my badge will mark my begrudged arrival
on what appears, even from such distance, to be a unit in chaos. The shrill bells, the unrelenting beeps, the
urgent family member signaling various needs from this doorway or that. A repeating melody with occasional swells of
intensity, tonight unrelenting. Lonely
stretchers line the hallway. Abandoned wheelchairs
crowd the doorway of a poorly stocked supply room. When my lukewarm cup hits the counter
surface, it’s as if setting an elaborate line of dominoes into motion. First one falls, an assignment sheet is
tossed towards me. And just as a cascade
of tiles interconnected by simple physics, I’m unable to consider the lines
quickly enough to anticipate the forming picture.
But first, I read his name.
“Twenty two?” I mutter aloud, though unintentionally.
A set of black scrubs with a long brown ponytail rushes
past. “And a hot mess. Sad story.
I’ll meet you there to introduce you!”
I don’t recognize her.
I should’ve called out sick.
I should’ve offered the shift to this or that nutty
individual seeking to spend more time within these walls.
Instead I tap in a username and accompanying password. I’m about to click his name when it washes
over me. A whitecap on an ocean surface
telling of the storm to come. I ignore
the seashells and set my course head on into the unknown. I need to see him. Maybe it was disbelief at the dire condition
of someone only a few decades into his existence. Maybe it was the unease that twenty two
years of life could lead to this particular corridor of such a large, widely
specialized hospital.
My stride is lengthy.
Inadvertently?
Subconsciously.
The dominoes tumble on.
It’s when my hand hits the door to sound that first knock
that the alarm sounds. The one that
tells me he’s not alone. Thank you to
the stars aligning that night, that he wasn’t alone. This is probably what I would’ve sobbed aloud
to an empty space, had I found the time to.
But something in the manner of which that alarm hits your
eardrums, the quality of the sound waves on your very skin somehow latches onto
time itself. Dulls the sense of forward
motion through the universe. The second
hand lurches ahead with maximum effort under the weight. Peculiar.
Slate grey scrubs stand at the head of the bed. His eyes are wide as he scans the face of an
eerily still figure upon the bed. Twenty
two years etched into a face the same grey of the scrubs to his right. The grey of those soft clouds that blanket
April rainy skies. That grey. As a loud rattling and squeaky set of wheels
behind me signals the arrival of the crash cart, and plenty of backup, I don’t
notice shoving slate scrubs to the side.
How his foot tangles in the IV tubing.
How a spray of bright and angry blood splashed my front as if in
objection and disdain of such hassle.
My arms, my legs, they’re too short. I don’t notice the crowd that accumulates, an
octopus of frenzied urgency collapsing in on a lifeless twenty two years.
I’m busy.
I’m climbing into the bed.
My fingers entwine without a thought.
My arms extend and stiffen. I
find the landmark without measuring.
“Count!” A faceless shout reminds me, from the mist of the
evaporating room around me.
A crack splits the commotion of the room. A crack that echoes up the muscles, fibers,
hairs of my arms.
You’re still a boy.
How did you end up here?
“ONE!”
Push.
-------------------
She figured from a young age she’d never make it out
alive. The lights low, the door closing
her off from any help that might’ve existed in the world she imagined only
pretended to tolerate her. She was busy,
scrawling, etching, engraving her skin silently and without hesitation, fear of
pain. She found a sort of peace in the
act. A relief at the pain that promised
her she was still alive, despite a numbness that bathed her, an apathy she
dreaded waking to each morning.
The length of her arms bore angry, thin hash marks, roman
numerals marking a measure of time only she could feel ticking away in her
heart. Arms she hid. A secret she knew, as strongly as she was
certain…the time was running out, just as quickly as she ran out of unscarred
tissue from the elbow to the wrist.
--------------
I haven’t researched him.
I’m not prepared.
What am I fighting here?
Is that chinese lettering on his left flank?
“TWO!”
Push.
-----------------
The bright lights cast a glow upon her wide smile. A flush of excitement colors her cheeks. Happy birthday, she sings to herself,
accompanying the background whirring melody of other tattoo guns. The artist motions to a bare patch of freshly
washed and dried skin just above her right elbow. She nods eagerly and gasps with such sincere
delight at the image transferred to the soft flesh. Such perfect, solid lines, as bold and
determined as her resolve, as the firm and sure as the chair she occupies.
She’s too busy for second guesses.
Her smile endures.
Even at the sting of the gun as it imprints the outline onto
her anticipating bicep.
----------------
Was he alone on the ride here?
Did he drive?
Did someone ride in the back of an ambulance at his side?
Did someone hold his hand?
“THREE!”
Push.
-------------------
The sun shines unhindered by the clouds that gently drift
across the bluest sphere hanging above them.
They honestly wouldn’t have noticed a tornado wandering directly down
their path. Not at that moment. Shy smiles distract. Soft laughs and subtly sweet glances into
each others eyes. The world outside of
their magnetic pull ceased to exist for minutes that seemed as hours to
her. She wanted to remember every single
line and curve of his cheek. Each hair
that adorned his crown. The glare from
his glasses. The salt and pepper flecks
in his beard. Just his face. But she didn’t.
What she did was…
The warmth radiating from that all too brief embrace. Wrapping, engulfing, the universe pulsating
outwards from her heart, supernovas imploding one by one behind eyelids that
fluttered shut as she instinctively honed every sense in on that one singular
and extraordinary snippet of time.
As if destiny insisted upon declaring its pesky
presence.
But she’s too busy to consider it right then.
He wrapped his arms around her, and she would always fondly
(although bitter sweetly) recall how her reach didn’t quite envelop him in the
same way.
----------------
The doctor shouts a familiar chorus of instructions.
We engage in a sort of waltz, a foxtrot, a scripted
choreography meant to spark a life.
“FOUR!”
Push.
----------------
Pulsating, loud and fervent bass rings above her head from a
heavy suspended speaker. She melts into
the middle of a sea sprinkled with the thrashing enthusiasts of the band
onstage. Bodies that undulate with
grace. Or, as hers did, jerk about with
an awkward and unsure rhythm. But she
barely notices.
She’s busy.
She’s lost in his voice.
She’s moved from within as she throws her arms high above
her swaying torso.
-----------------
Twenty-two.
I imagine he’s too young to be leaving behind anyone who
might spend the rest of their little lives mourning the space he’ll leave
behind. Empty space they’ll forever seek
to fill as they push onward through life.
Or at least…
I hope.
“FIVE!”
Push.
----------
“PUSH!”
But the nurse between her knees doesn’t look up to confirm
her orders are heard and heeded. She
doesn’t need to.
The already pink and protesting ball of brand new flesh
greets the room in an uproar. Laughs
from the doctor who quickly draws fluid and debris to allow sweet, unencumbered
first breaths of life. She’s waited nine
long and uncomfortable months for this singularly spectacular moment that would
forever alter the landscape of her existence.
As the doctor lifts this tiny blanket wrapped creature upwards, she
simultaneously reaches down.
Too busy to notice his chuckle resounded between the rest of
the team.
Into her outstretched arms and against her soft chest, the
little girl fits just perfectly, as if two pieces at the center of a puzzle.
--------------
He’s fit. In
shape. But the pronounced muscles of his
chest are offering me no resistence. Why
aren’t they fighting?
Surely his heart is just as strong.
Had to be.
Please push back, I beg his much too still countenance.
“SIX!”
Push.
---------------
Clattering weights in controlled machines surround her on a
a seat of a lightly stacked chest press.
She tries her best to feign confidence and pride at the forty pounds her
aching deltoids, biceps, triceps launch upwards. Her peripherals catch sight of drooping skin
and loose stretch marked tissue welcoming gravity. She ignores it.
She’s busy.
She’s chasing change.
Hungry for progress. Yearning for
a sleek physique which cost the hefty price of refusing to succumb to self
pity.
Even if taut and glistening skin that rippled as she, maybe
one day, followed through with one fluid pull up, wasn’t a realistic
expectation.
Well, she pushes on.
Her arms will tire long before her resolve.
--------------
College aged.
Did you drink too much?
Experiment a little too recklessly? Which classes did you miss when you
were rushed here?
I’m just guessing. Is
that your university sweater hanging in the corner?
“SEVEN!”
Push.
---------------
A locker.
She remembers with a wistful nostalgia fighting with a
combination lock only a year back. What
she wouldn’t give on these Tuesdays with a back-to-back schedule. Busy Tuesdays. She typically trudges from one end of the miles-wide
campus to the other, one way hurried, the other a saunter, sometimes a meander.
Today with more pep and vigor. Beside a classmate with an arm slung in a
cast who graciously accepts her offer to tow the double load of chemistry and
algebra. With spirited conversation and
a light breeze propelling them forward, she cradles the textbooks in her steady
arms.
-------------------
I wonder where he’ll go.
What’s waiting for him on the other side? Is there an other side?
The steady pulse of the room around us refuses to ponder the
possibility. Frantic.
And assured.
All at once.
Don’t advance. Don’t
go any further. My hands are begging you
with each and every…
“EIGHT!”
Push.
-----------------
Just a door.
She breathes deep.
Exhales slow. Disbelief tugged at
the outermost corner of her racing thoughts.
A surprise at her hesitation.
Just move ahead, she urges her cement shoes. Wills them silently to forge on.
How could she possibly fear in the face of potentially
wonderful change? She’s waited and
longed tirelessly years for some kind of good fortune to come of the combined
effort of hard work and perseverance.
Of busy days and endless nights and sore arms writing just
one more sentence.
She straightens up.
In a leather bound portfolio is tucked a freshly printed resume.
Without even one further thought she reaches out in blind
faith, to push open the door.
-------------------
Who waits for you at home?
Is someone staring at your empty bed tonight? Who lays cold and alone past midnight
awaiting your safe return? Who is
eagerly awaiting sunrise to hear your voice mutter a groggy, sleep drenched
“hello”?
“NINE!”
Push.
--------------------
In her arms she rocks and sways the straggly haired, freshly
bathed toddler. She offers an exhausted
and exasperated sort of smile when the big eyes on the fragile and gentle face
lock with her own. She pulls the girl
close to her chest. Hoping the sound of
her voice and the reverberating vibrations of love and whole hearted, earnest
adoration will settle the babe into sweet rest.
Her lips form some lyric, this or that, from a familiar
song. One that surfaces a ghostly memory
of black framed glasses glittering in the sun, of a strong hug on a busy
street, of a vibrant dance, of the exuberance of a life lived. She smiles in sweet gratitude for the
physical strength of her arms that can so assuredly nurture this peace within
the sweet soul she cradles close to her beating heart.
She pulls her in tighter still.
“I’m, thinkin’ it’s a sign…”
With a heavy sigh, the girl rests her head on the soft
inside of her mother’s arm and finally surrenders to slumber.
---------------
Hours? Minutes? What's passed?
“I have a pulse!”
I back out quickly, as the crowd descends upon him with
determined furor to stoke this flame of life.
Brown ponytail is waiting for me, nearly as ashen as Mr. Twenty-Two had been.
“He was fine! I had
no idea, I swear! He was fine!”
I can’t focus. The
colors and shapes and hustle around me blurs into nothing, and I stumble past
her.
Is that blood on my shirt? “I need to go change.”
---------------
It isn’t but seconds after switching her phone out of silent
mode that it rings shrilly from the pocket of a too small scrub top- the only
one she had left in her locker stash.
The voice at the other end mumbles, “Breakfast?”
She hesitates, eyeing the hem of her tank top that stretches
across the front of her thighs. It’s
warm enough outside. But in disdain she
considers her the saggy underside of her arms, her rounded and ill defined
shoulders. All the way down to her
forearms, wrists and hands. The very
same ones that hours earlier were far too busy beating a steady throb of life into
a man unable to sustain his own rhythm to worry about how they looked in a
sleeveless shirt.
Every single atom of muscle memory, of a lifetime’s worth of
strength, tenderness, vivacity etched clear down to their bones, imparted unto
him with each compression.
The top slips off over the her head and hits the backseat
soundlessly.
“I’ll see you soon.”
