“Got to clean the lesions first.”
Sutures does someone say? Scalpel? I see the scalpel. I saw the movie. See how they run.
Thermometer, and they all laughed. Their heads off.
“That’s no rattle. Let’s get the machines on him.”
“Wheel them in?”
“Wheel him too.”
“Double e-ing. Calling a clear.”
Bells. Bings. Blood transfusion. That’s the sting going into my arm.
I jumped. Hey, copper, still around to hear? Nah, I fell. Gad’s honest treut.
I was pushed, the dirty rat. There’s your plate of beans. And when I get out of this joint. For I’m going to beat this rap. As you see, I’m hopelessly attitudinistic. Hopelostly antivivisectionistic.
No, I was so thin. So light. Johnny L. L. Light. That’s what I was thinking of before. That when I got on the scale the needle didn’t move. My father. That’s how you can get a weigh. My brother. My sister saying Wag drags with your raggity gags and my mother a bony-beaked comedian of ninety, brown bear burned to white. I don’t want to go and so I’m not going, she said, no matter what my age. Here the shiny sonshine her only survivor. Vitamin E. Dose of those once a day what’ll save me, she said. Vitamin C. There’s what I should do about my falling hair other than stepping out of the way. Vitamin D. Holding my short-lived hand. I was fibbing before, she said. Trying to catch how you react. You don’t. Or I didn’t. But I know nothing about palmistry except this line and it means long life. And here’s where your lines of affection would be and your wrist as asthenic rascettes.
Actually, I was blown on the tracks. Like that newspaper. Single sheet. Carving our way through corridors now, blood stringing along. Yesterday’s headlines making waves. Wind wound down the subway entrance from two flights above. Same steps I was later carried up on one of those rolling ambulance carts. Steered along sidewalk and street. Doors slammed. Siren turned on. Ambulance driven away. Hey, wait for me, I screamed. There’s something you forgot. Pigeons settled on my chest. Invalid-eating dogs licked my paws. What are you doing lying on a stretcher in the street? a woman said. Ambulance rode off without me, I said. Oh, I saw that funny movie too. Harry? Cary? Darnit, sir, who were those two stars again?
Another pillorying room. Semiprivate. Patient beside me with a football helmet clamped to his head. Dots and dashes. Blots of flashes. Lights, camera, action. I’m strapped on my back to an analyzer. Scanner. Transponder. Spectrometer. Tape recorders. Television sets. Doctor, Doctor, I want to confess. I jumped. Lost the faith. Depression. Born out of rejection. Objection. Sustained. Next witness. Take the stand. No thanks, I’ll take it when I leave. Order in the court. My dentist. Dentist will be identified. There’s the chiseler. Took me to the cleaners. So I took him to small claims. Said Malfeasance and practice. That when I walked downstairs from his office my new fillings popped out. That’s what the dentist my poppa said his patients never said. Later my mother said they did. Pass me the V.E. Good prosthodontics your dentist but couldn’t diagnose or heal. So it was my father who uprooted me from the plat. Said Join us, you ole rumbum. Order in the snort. No. My sis said Join me, come, come. That was my lover. Sunday palmist. Once a week divining my hand. No life, short feeling, she found. No, it was I. Wild pram on the loose. Baby cawing and kicking inside when it was saved. Crowd gathered. Camera men came. They’re shooting pictures of me below. First thing out of my groin’s my foot. A transsexual breakthrough. Balls, the king said, if I had them I’d be queen. No. She said. We did. As kids. You’re still a kid. That’s what Vitamin D said. Had a bellyful of my changes. But this isn’t her flat. No sunlight. No yellowing fern or smell of mint tea. I’m where? They’re scissoring. Shearing. Shaving. Sweating. Swearing. Hemming. Mending. Hacking. Yakking. Everything. All the ings. The bings. The dings. The drops. I was dropped to the tracks. Train coming. Conductor screaming. His first fall? I was called to the tracks, I said to him as I fell. He said No or Oh but Stop. Boy and girl at front-car window standing watch. No, I flew onto the tracks. My fly flew. That was it. I had a strange calling. I wanted to unzip. Your fly can be better zippered when you stand than sit, my father used to say. When you sit and try and zip you are just about sitting on your zipper, he said. Yes, Dad, I said, when the zipper tag flew off and I lost my footing and fell on the tracks.
Ether, ether, I yell from the hospital bed. This table. Wherever I’m being worked over on. The pain.
“He spoke,” the doctor, doctoress, sorceress says.
“More anesthetic,” someone says. Milligrams. Microgams. Look at those gams. Some pair. “Mm’s,” the anesthesiologist says.
“More ether,” I say. “The pain.”
But I’ve seen the movie too.
In the end the patient dies.
We couldn’t save him, the doctor says.
His heart, someone else says.
A sheet is thrown over my face.
Not thrown. Laid.
Not laid. Lain on my face.
Not lain. Placed. A sheet is placed on my face. I’m covered. A sheet was placed on my face and now covers my face.
Though I’ve never seen the movie from here.
Next.
Stories in this collection appeared in slightly different form in the following periodicals, to which the author and the publisher extend their thanks: “The Student” in Mundus Artium; “All Gone” in Kansas Quarterly; “On the Beach” in Threepenny Review; “The True Story” in Confrontation; “Capital Labor” in Pendragon; “Jackie” in Periodical Lunch; “The Batterer” in Cream City Review and Ohio Journal; “A Lack of Space” in Ohio Journal; “The Former World’s Greatest Raw Green Pea Eater” in Cake; “Wrong Words” in Appearances and Asylum; “The Doctor” in Confrontation; “Heads” in Florida Review; “The Onlooker” in City Paper and South Carolina Review; “Try Again” in Ambit and Chouteau Review; “Bo” in Asylum; “Joe” in Denver Quarterly; and “Next” in Remington Review.