by Joe Meno
At the emergency room, tests are run, a doctor from Calcutta is called in, and after some four hours, a diagnosis is made. It turns out that although she is only thirty-three and otherwise generally healthy, Elizabeth has developed a terrible disease. A tiny city has begun to grow in the narrow confines of her precious bloodstream, the miniature buildings and citizens monopolizing the general vicinity surrounding her chest cavity. The doctor from Calcutta, a thin man with a beard and dirty glasses named Dr. Lahksman, orders many, many X-rays. Soon, Paul and Elizabeth discover the strange shape of the malignant formation perfectly matches the map of a modern city from the early part of the twentieth century.
“It doesn’t look good,” the doctor remarks. “I would say it’s maybe 1900, 1910. Listen and you can hear the streetcars.”
Paul places his head beside Elizabeth’s chest. “My God, there are streetcars,” he says. “And … there seems to be a church service … I hear an organ and people singing. No, they’re praying …”
The doctor nods. “Yes, she’s already 1910 or 1915. That’s bad.”
“What does it mean?” Paul asks.
“The city only has coal now, but soon it will have electricity. Those were the lights you saw. That strange feeling you described.” Dr. Lahksman wipes his forehead with a small white handkerchief. “Someone in there must have finally discovered electricity. Soon the lights will come on and not turn off.”
Elizabeth’s blue eyes close. “What are you saying?” she asks. “That this city …”
“Not a city. It’s a tumor with the properties of a city,” the doctor corrects.
“That this tumor, it can’t be operated on?”
“Oh, heavens no,” Dr. Lahksman says. “Very soon there will be skyscrapers.”
“What?”
“Do you see this?” the doctor asks, holding up an X-ray, his brown finger pointing at a tiny white speck.
Paul squints, Elizabeth leaning in beside him.
“What is that?” Paul asks.
“That, sir, is what I’m guessing will soon be a factory. Do you see the shape there? You can almost make out the smokestacks. At some point very soon, the tumor will certainly become industrialized, yes? Better roads, more poisonous factories, and the advent of skyscrapers, airports, tiny automobiles. When this industrialization happens, when the city becomes that busy, you will die, almost immediately. At this rate now, you have maybe two or three hours, I believe.”
Elizabeth lowers her head against Paul’s coat and begins to sob. She cries for what feels like a lifetime, and when she looks up, Paul is weeping silently beside her. The doctor has disappeared and the flickering white lights of the emergency room mimic the strange flashing which continues to pulse behind Elizabeth’s white blouse. Suddenly, she sits up and begins to whisper something: a song. Paul stares at her as she wipes her eyes and hums a quiet little tune. “I let a song go out of my heart,” she mumbles in a soft, melancholy voice.
“What are you singing?” Paul asks her.
“I don’t know. I just made it up,” she says. “It just came into my head.”
He places his ear against her chest again and listens. “No, no, it’s a song from in there. It’s … Duke Ellington maybe. I really can’t tell.”
“Oh,” is all Elizabeth says.
In the hospital room, Paul and Elizabeth hold hands. The flash of the TV, which hums without sound, gives their faces a soft glow. Elizabeth has pulled the blanket up to her throat, clouding the busy flickering of the tiny city lights. Outside it has begun to snow and both of them consider this will be the last either of them will watch the snow falling together. Everything stupid has become meaningful now. The last cupcake with white frosting she will eat. The last pair of socks she will put on. The last cup of hot chocolate she will drink. The last time she will burn her tongue drinking hot chocolate. The last time she will worry about burning her tongue. The last time she will sneeze. The last time she will have wet hair. The last time she will think about getting old. The last time she will go to sleep. The last time she will dream a dream.
While Elizabeth’s IV is being changed, Paul heads outside and returns with a handful of snow. Silently, they sit and stare outside, both of them quietly eating the snow, unable now to say or do anything without thinking of the same terrible, unfair thing.
Later, wearing a sad gray tie, Dr. Lahksman comes to visit. It is well past midnight and Elizabeth has finally fallen asleep. Paul is sitting in an uncomfortable vinyl chair by the window, watching the snow fall, when the doctor steps inside. Paul blinks up at him and does not even bother to smile.
“She is asleep?” the doctor asks, standing at the foot of the hospital bed.
“I think so. She didn’t want to go to sleep.”
“Yes,” the doctor says. “That is understandable.”
Paul nods, staring down at his hands. He thinks he would like to murder this doctor, he would like to go out and kill somebody, but then he softens and thinks it is not this doctor’s fault. It is no one’s fault unless it is everyone’s fault and Paul is too tired and too heartsick to consider that.
“You love her, this girl, yes?” the doctor asks.
Paul nods. He is too full of something—grief, guilt, fear, pain, take your pick—to even answer such a silly question with words.
“You do not want to watch her go, do you?”
Paul shakes his head—oh God, he has begun crying. He notices the doctor’s eyes are rimmed with tears as well.
“You do not want to watch her go because you love her so much, isn’t that true?”
“Yes,” Paul mutters. “Please,” he gasps through a mouthful of tears, though he knows the answer already, “isn’t there anything?”
The doctor takes a step forward, moving into the drowsy light cast by the television. He slowly removes his glasses, folding them into the front pocket of his white smock.
“If you have decided that you cannot watch her go, if you know now you cannot do without her, then there is a way.”
Paul feels a start of terror strike the softness of his heart. “I can’t watch her go,” he says. “I can’t.”
The doctor nods. He regards Paul once more, measuring some unseen line, some unseen mark on the younger man’s face.
“Yes, well, then, there is this,” he whispers and, very slowly, lifts his dark hand, the palm placed upward, in which lays something white. Paul stares at it, his eyes worn and clouded with tears—is it a note? A pamphlet? Paul blinks and then steps forward to look at it closer, and sees it is a worn-looking paper ticket, a voucher of some kind. There are smudged letters and numbers, maybe the name of an airline, a departure time perhaps, but he is unable to make out anything specific.
“What is it?” Paul asks, his heart pounding.
“If you want to go with her, you can,” the doctor says. “Look,” he whispers, pointing at Elizabeth’s unsteady chest. “Look here.” The doctor gently moves the blue blanket aside and points. Paul leans in close to his girlfriend’s chest to see. There, just below her breastbone, faint beneath the thin white material of the hospital gown, are the lights, the many microscopic lights, a perfect pattern blinking on and off together in time. Paul is amazed—concerned and terrified but also amazed—as the doctor places a hand on his shoulder and declares, “Skyscrapers. All along her heart. It won’t be long now.”
Paul can feel the tears on his face before he recognizes that he is crying again.
The doctor gives Paul’s shoulder a supportive squeeze and says, “In a few hours, the first airport will be built in that tiny city. Then another. Then a third. There is a way for you to board an airplane and land there, in that tiny city, but you must hurry. If you wait, if you hesitate, she will be gone before the plane can land. You must not wait. The ticket is yours. It is in your hand.”
Paul glances down at the voucher and then up at the doctor’s resigned face.
“But what if she wakes up? What if she wakes up and asks where I am?�
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“I will tell her everything.”
“But what happens when I get on the plane? I mean, what’s going to happen?”
“Do not ask any other questions, young man,” the doctor warns. “Only go if you are to go.”
Paul nods, forgetting his coat, then turns, pulling it on as he dashes through the door and down the hall. Where is the closest airport? he wonders. What is the quickest way there? He climbs into the compact car and backs over a curb, sliding recklessly out into traffic.
But, of course, the traffic does not oblige him. Everywhere the lanes are full of other automobiles, the snow making the driving very difficult. Paul tries to swerve around a station wagon, but seeing the children inside singing along, clapping, he tries to be patient, waiting for the light to turn green. It does not look good. The highway, the on-ramp, the avenue, all are crammed with choking cars, the lines of their taillights flash, unmoving in the white haze of the snow.
Before long, Paul realizes he has lost too much time, he cannot possible make it. He is too far from the airport and still not very far from the hospital. He begins to drive on the wrong side of the street, hurtling past the traffic. He pulls the battered ticket from his pocket and stares at it. Has it gotten smaller? Has it begun to fade? Paul is not sure of anything now.
Eventually, he bolts around a stalled taxicab and into the airport entrance, then leaves the car running in the lanes designated for arrivals. He runs, stopping himself once, looking over his shoulder to see the headlights of his car still glowing. Past the ticket counter and security, he hustles through a long line and down past the blue carpeted gates, matching the number 8A on his ticket to the numbers which disappear as he moves by them. There are no other passengers, of course, waiting at gate 8A. There is a pretty young lady in a blue uniform, who Paul runs up to, offering his ticket as he struggles to breathe. She smiles, types something, then hands the ticket back to Paul and says, “You just made it, sir. We’ve already begun boarding.”
Paul nods and stares at the open doorway, the gate which leads outside to an enormous white jetliner, and seeing it, seeing the airplane, he stops in his tracks. None of this makes any sense. How will this work? How can this possibly work? What’s going to happen if I get on that plane? What’s going to happen to me? Paul turns and looks at the young lady who is urging him on with her eyebrows, frowning.
“Sir, we’re ready to take off. If you’re going to board, you need to board now, sir.”
Paul keeps staring at her. What does he see? He does not know. He does not see a young lady. He sees something else, something like the shape of a person, but right now he is too panicked to see anyone but Elizabeth, her hands, the shape of her face. Desperate now to be with her, to hold her, to watch her mouth as she laughs, desperate to be anywhere but here, he doubles back. He finds the car still waiting there, the motor running. When he turns to look, the airport begins to fade. The lights along the terminal, along the landing strips, have all gone dark. Paul hurries into the car, pulls off, and finds the traffic more cooperative this time. He rushes back to the hospital, leaving the car in the wrong parking lot, ignoring the parking attendant. By the time the elevator carries him to Elizabeth’s floor, she is awake, sitting up in her bed and smiling. She is drinking orange juice through a straw and she winks when Paul bursts in.
“I thought you made a break for it,” she says, smiling. Paul forgets for a moment that she is sick. Her smile is so warm, so convincing.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I … I didn’t make it.”
“I know. Dr. Lahksman told me.”
“No. I missed it. I missed the plane.”
“I know,” she says. “It’s all right. Don’t worry, it’s okay.” She sets down the plastic cup of juice and smiles wider now, blinking her eyes at him.
“No, it’s not okay. It’s not okay.”
“Paul, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay. You’ll see.”
“No,” he says. “No, it’s not.”
She looks at him as if she is going to kiss him but does not. Instead, she takes his hand and places it over her chest, right above her heart. Paul momentarily shudders as he feels something hard, something sharp, the point of something poking beneath his palm. He glances up questioningly, his eyebrows rounded. She smiles again. “It’s a skyscraper,” she says, almost proud. “A tall one. It must be like the size of the Empire State Building.”
Paul does not remove his hand. He leaves it there, peering at her, nodding.
She closes her eyes, smiling, and says, “It’s going to be okay, Paul. You’ll see. You have to trust me. It’s going to be okay.” He nods as she holds his hand against her chest and quietly starts to sing: It’s the same song from earlier, the Duke Ellington one. “I let a song go out of my heart,” she whispers, placing her head against his shoulder. Together, staring out the window, they watch as the snow begins to fall once again. Paul looks Elizabeth in the eyes and suddenly begins to whisper along.
illustration by
The Little Friends of Printmaking
Art school is where I’d meet my sister each Wednesday, and then the two of us would travel, by cab, to couples counseling. Although Jane and I were twins, by the age of nineteen she was already two years ahead of me in school, and because both of our parents were psychiatrists, and because I had been diagnosed with a rare social disorder, a disorder of my parents’ own invention, Jane and I were forced to undergo couples therapy every Wednesday afternoon. The counseling sessions were ninety minutes long and held in a dentist’s office. As both of my parents were well-known in their field, they had a difficult time finding a colleague to analyze their children, and so they were forced to settle on a dentist named Dr. Dank, a former psychiatrist who had turned his talents to dentistry. He was an incredibly hairy man who smoked while my sister and I reclined in twin gray dental chairs. Dr. Dank did all he could to convince me that I was angry at my twin sister for being smarter and also that I was gay.
Once I had made the mistake of mentioning to my sister that the doorman of our building was “handsome”—to me, he looked like a comic book hero with a slim mustache. She frequently brought this remark up in our sessions as evidence of my latent homosexual desires. She would leave various kinds of gay pornography for me on my bed. I would come home from school and find a magazine or videotape lying there and stare at it—at the faces of the oiled, suntanned men and their arching, shaven genitals—then return the magazine to my pillow and back out of my room like a thief. Jane was nineteen and a sculpture major in art school. She was also taking a minor in psychology through correspondence courses. Technically, I was still a senior in high school. My sister’s sophistication, her worldliness and intelligence, were absolutely terrifying to me.
In the taxi on the way to our counseling appointments, I would stare across the backseat at her, studying her profile. Jane had short black hair; she was skinny and there was a field of freckles on her nose which made her look a lot younger than she actually was. When she wasn’t looking, that’s where I’d always stare, at the freckles on the bridge of her nose.
“Jack, what’s happening with your gym class?” she asked me in the taxi one day.
The main reason my sister was two years ahead of me in school was because I failed gym, year after year. As part of my social disorder, I was paralyzed by a fear of strangers’ bodily fluids, their blood, sweat, spit, urine, even their tears. If someone sneezed near me, I would begin to convulse violently. I was unable to participate in any gym activity where bodily fluids were involved. Because of this, and because my disorder was unrecognized anywhere outside our household, I had failed high school gym every semester for the last three years.
“Dad told me you have a new gym teacher this year,” Jane said. “Is he nice?”
“His name is Mr. Trask. He asked me why I don’t participate and I told him I have a medical condition and then he told me to go sit in the bleachers. I’m supposed to meet with him tomorrow to talk abou
t it.”
“Did you give any more thought to what we discussed in therapy last week?”
“What? That the reason I’m failing gym is because I won’t admit I’m gay?”
“Dr. Dank completely agreed with me, Jack. You’re queer. You’re living a lie. The sooner you admit it, the happier we’ll all be.”
I decided then, watching the Chicago Avenue traffic drizzling past, not to argue with her. For all I knew I was queer. I had never kissed a girl. Their bodily fluids seemed incredibly dangerous to me. Also, I had a poster from the musical Miss Saigon hanging in my room, a gift from Mr. Brice, my marching band instructor, the only teacher at my school who had made accommodations for my fictional disorder. Jane might be right. It was entirely possible I was gay.
A day later I met with Mr. Trask, a tousled-haired, thoroughly bearded man. He sat across from me in a swivel chair, his running shorts riding up his broad hairy thighs. If I glanced long enough, I could see the dark cavity of his crotch. As disgusting as it was, it was hard not to stare.
“Why do you keep failing gym?” he asked.
“I’m afraid of bodily fluids.”
“Well, they’re not going to let you graduate unless you pass gym class.”
“I know. I’ve already accepted that I won’t graduate from high school. It doesn’t bother me.”
“Hold on,” he said, leaning back in the chair, the running shorts inching even higher. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Your parents are shrinks, right?”
“Yes.”
“You get me some Valium and I’ll make sure you graduate.”
After class I called my father. A day or so later I gave Mr. Trask what he had asked for. From then on I spent gym class watching the other boys my age sword-fighting with upturned tennis rackets and knew I was missing nothing.
