The Last Time I Died

by Joe Nelms

  35

  An ambulance siren.

  I’m strapped down.

  I’m bursting through hospital doors.

  My clothes are ripping.

  Someone yells Clear!

  A PHOOMP of defibrillator paddles.

  A heart monitor beeps once and my soul smiles.

  I did it.

  Black.

  I wake up. Tired in my bones.

  I move my eyes enough to look around the room. This must be a community or teaching or whatever kind of hospital is the dirtiest. Very different from my last stay. Isn’t there a code hospitals have to adhere to? I feel like SoHo should have something nicer to service its ill and deranged. At least something hip. But this place is a dump. Someone should be fired.

  There’s an old guy in the bed next to me. Coma. Gotta be.

  An orderly changes coma guy’s sheets like he’s fixing a flat. Not what you would call rough, although not overly concerned with his patient’s comfort. But what’s the old guy going to say? He’s probably never going to wake up. I wonder if he’s wallowing in his own memories? Living in The White. Did he figure it out? Is he leisurely traipsing through his own childhood? Or is he sleeping off a tough life in The Black? Either way, I’m a bit envious.

  The real question is how many times can I pull this off? It’s draining like nothing I’ve ever felt, but I already know I’ll do it again. I can still smell the fabric softener. I can see every wrinkle in my mother’s face. I can feel the grit on the floor. How long until it fades? The edges are already crumbling. How much of the story have I lost?

  Two doctors look over my file. Their backs are to me. I don’t say anything.

  —He’s lucky he didn’t break his neck.

  —I.D.?

  —John Doe. No wallet. I think someone’s checking with the building manager to get a positive I.D. At least we know where to send the bill.

  What are the chances they’ll let me borrow a pencil and a sketch pad? I’d settle for a hypodermic and a clean sheet and draw in my own blood if I could start right now. Every second counts. Man, are they taking their time.

  —Bellevue?

  —Any family to admit him?

  —Nah. He’s a loner. This’ll have to be involuntary.

  —You gonna sign for it?

  —Go ahead.

  —I’ll shoot you for it.

  Then they actually shoot for it, the fucks. The Indian doctor loses and I can tell he’s pissed about it. I don’t want him changing my sheets.

  They look back at me but my eyes are closed. Saw that coming.

  —Fucking broken people. I’ll make the call.

  —Let’s get him out today. We need the bed.

  They leave to go make some other important medical decisions and perhaps roshambo in the event of a disagreement on a diagnosis.

  So this is it. Fuck Bellevue.

  I force myself to sit up. Don’t see my clothes anywhere. I pull the needles and tubes out of my arms and hop out of bed as fast as a guy who was dead for forty minutes can move. Which is not very fast.

  Coma guy has some clothes hanging in his cubby. Cheap fucking place can’t even put doors on the closets. He’s a little shorter than me, and his shirt smells like old man sweat but they’re close enough. There are no shoes. I don’t care. I just need to get home without being arrested.

  I have work to do.

  36

  (Hmm.)

  Say what you will about the careless manner in which the old boy conducts his life, but there can be little doubt that our man is nothing less than dedicated to his newfound artistic vision. A conservative estimate would put the number of drawings he has output since his last death at sixty-five. Granted, not all of them are Louvre-worthy. I remind you these are the product of a man whose most recent previous work consisted of a compilation of marginalia featuring respected business colleagues fellating one another amidst innumerable scatological references dashed off in the sidelines of what should have been professional, detailed notes. Hardly a collection to set off a bidding war among the Rothschilds.

  But this.

  This assemblage of captured memories our man has generated is nothing short of impressive. The perspective is memorable. The style is distinct. The passion is undeniable. This is the work of a man driven by a vision that is positively insistent.

  Or it is vain lunacy. Who’s to say?

  37

  I keep going.

  More drawings.

  The door.

  The laundry room.

  The yelling.

  I’m sitting at my kitchen counter aware that my lower back is aching but unwilling to stretch until I get these last details right.

  The pounding.

  The hinges.

  The pleading.

  The tears.

  The anger in my father’s voice.

  The heat.

  How do I draw heat?

  I don’t draw myself because I don’t know what I looked like. I am the missing puzzle piece, but I’m also the least important one. I have no idea what I was at this time in my life. Or anytime before it. There are no pictures of me that young. Or there were but they’re gone now. Probably at some point someone loved me enough to take my picture, but, to my knowledge, no proof exists to support this theory. My father’s personal effects from jail were minimal and did not include photos of either of his children. Seemingly, a result of his overwhelming guilt.

  If pictures of us were kept around the house, I wouldn’t know. I never went back after my mother died. Never took anything personal from the place. Not a picture. Not a toy. Not a teddy bear. Someone must have taken my clothes for me or maybe they bought me new ones.

  I assume my family’s apartment was left to rot with no one to pay the mortgage. How long did the place sit empty before it was cleared out, pictures and all, and auctioned off to a stranger? Who would buy it after all that? Somebody. It’s New York.

  My mother’s eyes. Her posture. The cower. The fear. The desolation. She was scared for her life.

  There must have been at least one picture of me, but I’ll never see it. What I looked like doesn’t make a bit of difference. A fraidy cat little shit probably. That’s not important for what I’m doing here. What I need is every detail of what I actually saw. An analogue download.

  One day, maybe this loft will sit rotting and waiting for someone to clean it out and sell it to the highest bidder. I have pictures of me and Lisa all over this place. Any broker walking in here might convince themselves that at one time we were a happy couple. Look at us. There we were in Paris. There we were skiing. There we were on our honeymoon. We will mean nothing to them. Former owners long gone. Our images will be tossed out to depersonalize the space for prospective buyers. Eighteen hundred square feet of sanitized, tragedy-free potential happiness for a new owner who has no idea what happened in here.

  I finish the sketch of my mother and caption it: Why won’t he leave me alone?

  It goes on the floor with the others. I step away from the vast landscape of work to get a wider view. Does that do anything for me?

  No.

  There’s a broader sense of the scope to my vision, but the holes are immense. At best it tells me how much I don’t know. A lot.

  38

  *It’s two years ago.

  I’m standing in the bathroom watching Lisa cry in the shower.

  The room is filled with steam. The water is too hot for her to stay like that for as long as she is. It’s got to burn but she’s not reacting. She wants it to hurt.

  She doesn’t know I’m watching her. I can see her ribs through her skin like they were shrink-wrapped for sale in a butcher shop.

  She spoke to her dad on the phone every night until she was twenty-five. She told me once that even when she was living with that moron hockey player she was so crazy about she still called her father every night. Just to touch base.

  Her mother had preferred her younger brother. It’s an open secret
in the family. He’s the favorite child. She spoiled him, really. In the most literal sense, she spoiled him. He started out the fresh, smart, handsome, young man with athletic ability boiling over. But couple that with an obsessive mother who loved to yell, but not really discipline, and nineteen short years later there he was in a rehab talking about his feelings and trying to blame everyone else for the mess that he was born to be. Consciously or not, she set him up to fail and spent his childhood making sure it would happen. Which left Lisa to bond with her dad.

  He watched every soccer practice she ever went to. Helped with her homework nightly without fail. Drove her to sleep-away camp in Maine nine hours each way. Took her to Italy for her high school graduation. She used his credit card until she got her second job. He paid her rent until she made vice president. They still have lunch twice a month. He takes the train up to meet her.

  I’m supposed to live up to that?

  We spoke on the phone less than an hour ago and she sounded a little off but no more than usual since she got the news. It’s been three weeks of roller coaster emotions. I’ve been wrong about everything. Anything that’s not perfect is my fault. I’m a bottomless pit of responsibility. But that’s my part to play. I’m replacing her father who took care of everything. Her shield. Only I’m terrible at it. I have no role models to reflect on. My moral compass is homemade and clunky. Not even sure it’s magnetized. Asking me for emotional direction is like asking a couch for fashion advice.

  She’s so helpless, angry, spinning. There’s nothing I can do. Or there’s everything, but I won’t do it.

  I could ask how she’s holding up.

  I could tell her I’m coming home early.

  I could listen.

  I’m only good to a point and then I’m nothing. I don’t know why.

  If I had to bet, I’d say she’s lost eleven pounds. She would say she’s the same as she’s always been and she eats plenty. And then she would smile and I would let that convince me to leave it alone. I’m pretty good at that.

  He missed the diagnosis.

  The brilliant doctor. The old family friend. The trusted oncologist. Thirty years in the business and he missed the diagnosis.

  Missed it.

  And I know Lisa. She’s rehashing the scene she wasn’t even there for over and over again in her head. Examining every possible angle in a futile effort to understand what happened. Asking questions no one can answer. Picking apart angles that no longer matter. Dealing with anything but the hardcore reality of the situation at hand. On some level, I know she finds the distraction comforting.

  Were they too busy catching up? Trading stories about the old neighborhood? Planning their next vacation together? How do you miss something that obvious? It’s your fucking job.

  Of all people, a golfing buddy, the radiologist, called it. He stopped everything, right there on the green of the eighth and wanted to hear it all again but with more details. Then he called an oncologist he knew and asked for a favor.

  Stage four. Metastasized to the brain and lymph nodes. Game over.

  They say her dad has six months to live. I give him three.

  39

  I got my first boner in jail.

  Foster Mother drove me upstate to visit my father. He had been convicted six weeks earlier. He pled guilty, by the way. Guilty, guilty, guilty. Sentenced to life in prison instead of the death penalty for whatever lefty, liberal reason. I didn’t go to the trial. Wasn’t allowed to. I was told it would have been too traumatic. As opposed to what I saw at home? Doubtful, but the choice wasn’t mine. So I hadn’t seen him since he was taken away in a cruiser months earlier.

  He had lost weight. And hair. Really, he looked terrible. Not that it was any of her business, but on the way home Foster Mother said that guilt can be a powerful thing. Ah ha. She never mentioned whom she had murdered so I’m not sure how she became such an expert on the subject.

  The prison was minimum security. No fences or gates and I couldn’t help overhearing another family remark repeatedly that it was a lovely (not their word) facility (not their word). This was in comparison to other prisons and/or jails in which they had visited loved ones. I couldn’t help overhearing these comments because the lobby is all painted cinderblock and slick tile and nothing is quiet in there including their enthusiastic review of the place and the matriarch’s amazement that she could wear a bra with an underwire past security. Metal detectors elsewhere usually caused her no small degree of aggravation but she had big tits so what are you going to do?

  This I remember. Nothing from the night my mom died, but this stuff, this bullshit I overheard, is crystal clear.

  My father was kept in a special section since he used to be a cop. That made him a target in prison. I don’t think he was corrupt or anything but when you put a former policeman behind bars there are always plenty of inmates who want to kill him for whatever reason. Revenge. Initiation. Credibility. Thrills. The special section also usually houses pedophiles since they’re not too popular either.

  That’s the crew you’ve got to spend the rest of your life with.

  It would make me want to kill myself too. I never asked him if there were other cops in there or if it was just him and the kiddie rapers.

  The wait to see him was about four hours. That’s how they do you up there. Like you share some of the blame for the crime so you have to suffer. The inmates don’t suffer. Not from the waiting. They’re in jail. All they do is wait.

  Visitors sit around and wait for hours with a bunch of other families they’d never otherwise spend time with. This on top of the fact that I didn’t want to be there anyway no matter how lovely the facility was. I would have been happy to walk out at any time but Foster Mother thought it best for us to stay. I suspect there might have been a Child Care Services bonus awarded for a certain number of miles traveled or maybe she could see that Foster Father was beginning an angry, all-day binge that she didn’t want to be around for. He got like that sometimes.

  Oh, some days Foster Father was a real piece of work. Weeks would go by without a word from the guy and then something would set him off and we all had to listen to lectures on how to live our lives and what was wrong with America (me) and how things should have worked out differently for him. It was a tiresome drill but if you shut your yap and waited it usually ended soon enough. Or it would escalate into some good old-fashioned wife beating. But at least you knew that couldn’t last forever. God, he was a bore. I suppose Foster Mother had lived with him long enough to see when the wind was changing for the worse before the storm actually hit. I think she borrowed the car from a neighbor.

  What do you say to your father in jail?

  How are you?

  I hate you?

  I love you?

  Now what?

  My friends had stopped talking to me after my mom died so I had no one to ask for advice. I became a ghost in the classrooms and invisible in the hallways. No one was particularly mean, per se. It was a matter of being ignored. I walked home alone. I studied alone. I stopped raising my hand. I stopped playing sports. Maybe it was me. Maybe I shut down. If I still knew any of those guys I would ask them. I wonder if they would remember me.

  No one I knew had a relative in jail. Not a close relative, anyway. I had never heard about anyone’s visits to their parent in prison. So I hadn’t the slightest idea what to say and the stress was getting to me as I sat there and played with the ragged edges of the cheap plastic chairs in the lobby.

  At this particular facility, they only fill the vending machines on Saturday. We were there on a Sunday, which meant the machines were empty because Saturday is a big day for visiting. Again, they don’t make it easy on you. I was starving.

  Would I be able to hug him? Would I if I could? Would he want me to? What if I tried and he backed off? He did put himself here away from all of us, after all. This was his decision alone. I hoped there was Plexiglas between us. I didn’t want to make the choice. My heart raced like
I had never experienced. I could feel the blood pumping through my chest. Sweating bullets.

  And then I got an erection. A little-boy weenus erection, yes. But enough to make standing up uncomfortable at best and embarrassing at worst. I guess the racing blood had to go somewhere. I tried to think about baseball and math and anything to distract me from the stress that was engorging the stiff Vienna sausage in my pants. Nothing helped. I sat patiently and tried to wait it out, but a marble-mouthed jackhole in a green uniform walked out and called Foster Mother’s name. She grabbed my arm and dragged me along behind, boner and all.

  There was no Plexiglas.

  My father hugged me and asked how I was before I had time to do anything. He was so glad to see me I got a little scared. He had always been such a powerful man and when I walked through that door, he melted. When I didn’t answer him he started crying. He kept telling me how sorry he was and that he wanted me to understand it had to be this way. It was better for me. Better for everyone. And what could I say to that? Foster Mother sat in the background like a load and let me flounder around as I did not say things like How is it better for Mom? and Well, thanks for executing this well-thought-out plan for my future, Dad and Why can’t we go back to the way things were?

  —It’s okay, Dad.

  That’s all I could muster. A watery pronouncement that everyone in the room knew was a blatant lie. What a coward. My father made himself calm down and smile and tell me he was doing ‘great.’ We spent the next hour talking about things that did not involve shootings or moms or police. At one point I noticed Foster Mother had nodded off. I told my father about the baseball team I was playing left field for and the girl I had a crush on and the book I was reading about robots that take over the world. All of which I made up.

  Seeing him made everything worse. I didn’t go back for years.

  40

  *It’s a year and nine months ago.

  I’m not hungry.

  I already ate.

  I’ll eat later.