I smoked a lot alone in the hospital garden. I noticed that the others went down separately whenever they could, while I was turning the sheets, giving shots, serving dinner. It was already winter, my fingers were chilled red and my feet were cold in my clogs because I only ever put on a coat, but I wouldn’t go back until I had smoked at least two cigarettes.
“We will catch a cold,” said Anna from behind me on one of the freezing afternoons.
I glanced back. She hadn’t even put on a coat, just a sweater. She didn’t seem to be cold; maybe she had spoken only to make me notice her. I made some space for her by the ashtray of the refuse bin. As she stepped closer, I grew dizzy for a moment. She was pregnant but she didn’t know it yet: I saw her going on maternity leave. I kept silent for a while then said:
“All those cigarettes will ruin you.”
She laughed hoarsely. “Look who’s talking! You have more nicotine in your blood than haemoglobin.”
I shrugged. I knew how I would die, and it wouldn’t be from smoking. “Not yet,” said my father from my memories as he pulled me across the street.
We were silently blowing out smoke.
“So what’s going on?” I asked for the sake of asking.
“I have a room full of living dead,” she said calmly. “I hope they hang on until Christmas.”
I nodded. Rooms like that embittered nurses. Smiles and comfort lasted only so long. For half a year by my reckoning.
“I can take over if you like.” It would mean hell for administration but it was all the same for me.
“No problem,” she said and smothered the butt. “Are you coming? I have a kilo of tangerines, would you like some?”
I went with her to her floor. Their nurses’ room was smaller but more snug. Someone had brought several pots of poinsettia, and I smelt the cinnamon bark hanging from a closet door. I closed my eyes. Iván’s perfume also had a hint of cinnamon, and I realised that I missed his scent the most. I will remember his smell longer than his face.
We ate tangerines while Anna talked about making Christmas presents. She didn’t ask me what I would give for Christmas and to whom, and this bothered me, although I had no inclination to tell her. When the time came to check the wards, I accompanied her because I felt that our conversation was incomplete.
Dead were lying in the room. They were still alive but as I looked at them, I saw how they would die.
“You were right,” I whispered to Anna.
“About what?”
I just nodded at them. I waited while she made her round. She stopped at every bed and asked how she could help. I was wondering whether I should tell her there were some who wouldn’t live to see Christmas, but in the end I kept silent. I knew my father, and he wouldn’t have given away information like that. There was a reason for that. When Anna came out to the hallway I just smiled.
“You are doing the same,” she said as we were walking back.
“What?”
“You know it is only a matter of a little comfort for a few days, and still you won’t give up.” She stopped at the door of the nurses’ room. “Well, bye.”
“Bye.” I didn’t budge. Then: “I think you are pregnant.”
The surprise in her face. The happiness. Who would have thought? I was amazed. Is that all? You tell a prophecy and you do good with it? Then the sudden prick: why hadn’t my father told me anything happy?
“How do you know?”
I shrugged. “A feeling.” I turned away and then I remembered what I had vowed. That I would never have a child. Ever. I was already sorry for saying anything at all.
“I have to go. My patients are waiting.”
She nodded. “You seem to be in need of a nurse yourself,” she said in her old, wry voice.
She had thrown me off my balance again. Her remark hurt, although I didn’t really understand why.
I went back to my own floor. As I was adjusting the pillows under the patients to make them comfortable, I was chewing on Anna’s words.
“May I have a glass of water?” The raspy voice jolted me out of my thoughts.
I looked down at the old woman, and a wizened prune of a face looked back at me. My vision blurred and in a memory—as if it were my own—I saw her recover from her operation and fall in love, then marry. I was shocked. Her skin was yellow, her eyes full of grit—not someone who has something waiting for her. And still.
I poured her a glass of water. My hand shook.
“Don’t worry, love,” I said as I handed her the water. My father kept prophecies to himself, good and bad alike, although the latter was more likely to be spoken. I could afford to tell the good news. A small thing but it is within my power. “Two weeks and you will be like new. You will even dance at your wedding.”
She laughed. “Me? Oh heavens, no! Perhaps at yours, Judit.”
Definitely not at mine, I wanted to say, but my throat constricted. The face of the woman looked younger from laughing, and I would be sorry to see her age again. Plus… My breath stopped. The stupidity and futility of prophecies was suddenly plain, and I was lost amongst the waves of my thoughts.
“Just believe.” I put down the glass on the table and fled to the hallway.
I pressed my hands to my face. I knew that my father had wanted to talk about the future before he died. Was it good news or bad? I realised his message didn’t matter. What I see in the future doesn’t matter—for we are not unlike each other, the old lady and I. I know only a little bit more, and still I asked her to believe me. And what about me? Do I believe myself and what I have seen?
Or do I decide not to believe, and only believe what I wish for myself?
I clenched my teeth and hoped I had a little of my heart left still, for it has to feel. If it breaks in the process, it still has to feel.
I know the future. But I resist it.
I turned away from my past smelling of cinnamon, and while my clogs rapped loudly and quickly on the floor as I fled towards my room, my future melted at last and, salty and streaming, it overflowed.
The Secret Origin of Spin-Man
Andrew Drilon
So you don’t know Spin-Man? Five-nine, lantern-jawed, starry-eyed Spin-Man? Spin-Man the Caped Cosmische, Spin-Man the Super-Cop, Spin-Man the Meta? Muscle-bound, brown-skinned, wrapped from beefy neck to toe in blue-and-gold spandex? Don’t worry about it. It’s okay. I don’t blame you. Spin-Man was one of those forgotten heroes of the Dark Age of Comics, just before the Image Era of big guns and chains and Spawn and bloodstained alleys. The champion of the Multiversal Continuum, balls-out science fantasy, following in the footsteps of Jim Starlin and Silver Surfer and Jack “The King” Kirby—Spin-Man was the last good Space Hero of the 90s and my number one favourite super-person. I’ll explain.
Okay, this may seem unrelated, but hear me out first because it’s important. When I was nine, my little brother and I went to the bargain bins of CATS as often as we could. After being picked up from school by our assiduous driver, Manong Eddie, who had been instructed to take no detours but had a soft spot for us boys; after an intermittent car ride, owing to the long stretch of traffic circling the vast perimeter of our private school; after a half-eaten merienda of adobo sandwich and Zesto Orange sent by our grandmother, God rest her soul; James and I would take it in turns (sometimes called out in unison) to remind our driver: “The main entrance of Virra Mall! We’ll only be thirty minutes! Mang Eddie, pleeeese!” Then the drive past Uni-Mart, around the corner facing McDonalds, as we busied ourselves counting the money in our pockets, at times almost two hundred pesos when pooled together, until finally my grandfather’s Altis slowed outside the mall’s main entrance, and we’d thrust the car doors open and hop out, promising Manong Edie that we’d be waiting there at exactly 4.45, no later, cross our excited little hearts.