I need to tell you some things.
My mother wrote in cursive letters “Christopher McCall” and signed my birth certificate. Her hand was shaking, so my father squeezed her shoulder and my older brother wrapped his arm around her leg, barely able to keep his own legs steady in the presence of some odd, wiggling thing – this new baby. The first time I was in a hospital I was born and now I’m here with you. They tell me that you can hear me, just as babies hear their parents talking, but your eyes haven’t opened for three days now. I told you I wanted to start from the beginning. I had run here and frightened the nurse when I showed up at the door, barely breathing, just huffing away, and I caught the nurse in the middle of rolling your arm to the left and right. It was limp, flapping around and I marveled at how vulnerable you were, as if you were just born. The nurse and I spoke, mostly about who I was to you, which was hard to explain without a time table. Eventually, she let me sit with you, and I calmed down and kept watch. Sometimes, I tried to imagine your face aging backwards so I could remember when we were filled with happiness, but the oxygen mask strapped to your mouth is a constant reminder of your condition.
Besides the sounds of pivoting wheelchairs, trolleys staining skid marks on tiled floor, or nurses circulating IV poles from room to room, this hospital is disturbingly silent. Yesterday was different, of course, because a tall man filled the hallways with his heavy steps, hesitating at the entrance of your room. And as he came inside, his disarming eyes fell on my hand which was upon yours as I sat at your bedside. Now, I suppose his bad posture was caused by his tremendous height, but then I thought perhaps he was so weakened by your immobile state. He stuck his large hand towards me, a handshake that shook my backbone away. Full of gray, your father’s hair has receded since I last saw him. His widow’s peak had become his most striking feature. Hanging over like a bat, he stared through me towards his daughter. You were as still as heavy stone in mud.
“Mr. Weeks,” I said. I almost forced him to embrace me, but I awkwardly stepped back instead, “I’m so sorry, I—” Then I realized that I didn’t know what to say to him. I had nothing to offer him or you, my comatose ex-lover, so I ended my fumbling tongue by saying, “I’ve been waiting here,” I pointed to you, “since I got here.”
“That’s very considerate of you Chris. I’ll make–”
“– Christopher. It’s Christopher, sir.”
“Well then, I’ll make sure to tell her, but you should really go home. You look like you need some sleep,” he used his tremendous finger to underline his eyes, “You look terrible. Got bags under your eyes. You should save your energy for your running.” As I stood up, he shoved my hospital chair against the wall and sat on the bed to the right of you. “I’m here now, I can handle it.” he forced your limp hand into his. There you were, father and daughter with hands almost the same size. He grazed his fingertips along the tube piercing your thickest vein, and surveyed my movements from his extraordinarily blue eyes. When I think of the past, those eyes match your own. I can’t handle comparing your eyes with his, not with knowing how I haven’t seen them in so long.
“I’d like to be here when she wakes up.” I told him. I wanted to talk to you more and your father’s presence would be inconvenient. The chinks in my armor were beginning to show as I said, “If that’s alright with you Mr. Weeks.”
“Right now,” he squeezed your hand, “I want to be alone with my daughter. Respect that and come back tomorrow. You need a break, Chris.”
“Did you want to know more? I’ve read some about it,” I opened my arm towards a set of medical books scattered across the floor like pot holes. I started to recite to him what I had memorized, fumbling a few words, “The basis of her condition is a lack of oxygen so they’re pumping as much as they can to replace the carbon monoxide. The proof of her illness can be found in her apartment. They’ve closed up the chimney, you know.”
He was becoming irritable with me and showed me his impatience, which feels like an invisible hammer. He stood up, squeezed my shoulder, “I know, Chris. The doctor’s told me all about her condition. I just want to be alone with her.” He nearly shoved me out of your room and I, uncertain, left you with your unyielding father.
As I walked out the automatic exit doors that led to the parking lot filled with blinking ambulances, I thought about how hospitals vary. By healing the world’s most doomed creatures, they’ve yet to offer me a cure for guilt. That’s my problem—my sadness fuels guilt, former acts of senselessness are revealed, and a state of utter weakness taints my hopes for healthier tomorrows.
Let me tell you again about yesterday. That morning before I saw your father, I revealed to you a piece of my past. I know it’s an old story, but I think it may be special. I explained how when I was twelve, I hid behind my brother’s door and left it open so that it partially touched my nose. My brother’s bed didn’t have any sheets, his mattress was bent in the center because there was no box mattress to support it, and on the computer desk were cans of Dr. Pepper piled upon themselves in a sort of pyramid along with his crumb-filled paper plates. Billy had four posters on his walls, one of which was a fuzzy glow-in-the-dark skeleton with a snake snarling out the mouth of the skeleton’s skull. The other four were pictures of his favorite band Phoenix in Flames. The marks on the carpet were dark soda stains and they gutted the floor like potholes in the street. I was waiting for my brother, hoping to jump out and scare him. That day, he had been spending time with his best friend who I would often overhear about women, mostly about their bodies. Behind the door, I began to hear heavy steps. Billy rushed into his bedroom and swung the door shut, but it didn’t close all the way and left me visibly open to my brother’s back. His long dark hair hung past his ears, he wore a baggy shirt, and his shoes were covered in freshly cut grass and mud. He knelt in front of his bed, lifted the sheet, and stuffed his hand into a hole that was horizontally sliced into the side of the mattress. He was shuffling his feet, his back was still facing me and all I could do was eye his searching arm movements. He pulled out a pistol, black and steady in his fingertips. My body stiffened as he cocked the slider and lifted the gun right up to his brow. As he aimed the gun at his temple, he touched his shoulder to his jaw, and brokenly whispered, “Is he worth it?”
I gasped and bolted out of his bedroom with my hand shielding the whimpers escaping my throat. I didn’t turn around to see if he’d noticed or followed because I was certain that he heard me and had heard just enough to kill me. I busted out from the porch door, my knees were feeling weak, but still I sprinted alongside the outside of my house, slamming my hand against the plaster on the walls to keep my balance and using the shrubs rooted in orange mulch as protection. I stopped once I reached the dead-end – a wooden fence about two feet taller than myself. I finally turned around, looked behind me, then through the small space between the fence to search for Billy’s eye. I was sure that he was chasing me, chasing me with that gun just to shoot me. He never showed up and the next time I saw him was at the dinner table when he sat across from me, and kept saying, “Chrissy, Chrissy, what a wussy,” underneath his breath.
You’re the girl I knew one year ago, your hair is still as black as motor oil, but in this closeness, in this unreserved closeness, I see your blonde roots beginning to show. I prefer you as a blonde, sorry. It takes some time for me to remember your eyes, translucent as if I was looking through a glass of water. When we first started dating six years ago, I was 16 and told you I had nine loves before you. I handed you a list of imaginary lovers written in pencil on a folded piece of notebook paper. I told you my first love cheated on me with a boy I hardly knew and in my own bed no less. I’m telling you this was a lie because I want you to know, I want you to know everything and I can’t help wishing my words were made of oxygen.
Your face looks more pale today. Your lips are chapped, so I remove your face mask and dip my fingertips in water to wipe them across your mouth. Your freckles have disappeared, is that because your body temperature is constantly dropping? When I sit with you, I lose all sense of time and sometimes feel like I’m in a desert, just you and I. I think that’s how the doctors and nurses feel too. They look at you and I, and can only see our loneliness.
**
It’s interesting to think of you as a nineteen year old girl, sitting on the train with your knees against the chair in front of you. You tremble in your sleep. Sometimes you twitch, tossing your arms up a little. We were on the train, my brother, you, and me. I wish I could tell you that when I first noticed you, I loved you, but you were very annoying. I was trying to read my book even though I couldn’t get passed the first few pages. It was too complicated. There were too many characters and I had only been reading it because there was nothing else to do and it was left on my chair, abandoned most likely because it was an awful book. There was even a map in the beginning of the book and I don’t like books like that, where there has to be an outline before you even get started. How do you capture readers if you fling people at them. I felt like a player at bat, slamming the characters away at every mention. Then there was you, hitting the back of my chair every time I finished a few sentences. At first, I didn’t mind much. When children misbehave (I assumed you were three or four years old), I expect their parents to scold them. With every hit, my chair would move forward a bit so I turned to my brother to show my annoyance, as if that would help, but he was fast asleep with his hands under his arms. Finally, after a few more times, I was fully annoyed, stood up, turned around at you and said, “Do you mind!?”
Then I saw you, this dark-haired girl with her face against the window’s curtain, cuddled up with your knees against the chair. Your eyes were still closed and you hadn’t heard me. So I suppose the first time we met, you were resting as you are now. I watched you for a little while, amazed at how a person could sleep like that. I wasn’t attached to you yet, just contemplating how to get you to stop hitting my chair. Then I slid across my brother and sat in the chair next to yours, which was empty. I took my book out again and tried to concentrate, but again the characters kept popping up and exiting through my eyes. Irritated, I turned to you comfortably and said, “This book has too many characters. I wish I had a children’s book.” You twitched, which made me jump a little. I thought that I was seeming a little creepy, so I put my polaroid picture of a brown dachshund in between the pages to mark it. It had been left in the book when I found it and I assumed the last borrower had forgotten about the short-legged dog as well. I tried to shut my eyes. I fell asleep and when I awoke, I looked around, lost for a moment in the train, then I caught you reading my book.
“Sorry, I saw it on the floor,” you said, “and I thought it was going to waste down there.”
I didn’t say anything, a little embarrassed for having taken the seat next to yours for no reason.
“I thought I was sitting alone,” you said. “Weren’t you in front of me?”
“Yeah, I was,” I finally said after thinking for a moment, “The guy next to me…”
“Snoring?” You suggested.
“Yeah, snoring. Very annoying.”
You smiled, as if you had an inside joke to yourself and I found myself smiling too. You turned your head out to the window, looking at the scenery as if placing where you had last remembered your eyes. And I turned my head forward, only to see my brother looking back at me, shaking his head, pointing to the girl and mouthing, No way! He sneered, pointed to me and squished his face together. You’re too ugly, he whispered. He pretended to snore and pointed back at me.
“Is that your dog?” You pointed to my bookmark, smiling, “They’re cute. Hotdog dogs.”
And you talked for the rest of the train ride, mostly me agreeing with you with a nod and I thought it pointless to try to let you get to know me, so I told you some things that weren’t true. If I told you there was excitement in lying, I’d be lying. I wonder if comatose patients twitch. I haven’t seen it yet.
**
Sometimes in replacement for my guilt, I told myself that I could never trust you. Funny I said that, how ironic. I wish some omniscient being would’ve made some tally of my lies to you, some cumulative number that I can put in front of you and say, “This is what I said, but this is what I should’ve said.” Then maybe you will count some lies you may have told me and place them in my hands to reply, “Subtract these, Christopher. I owe you.” You still won’t move.
The nurse just came in and turned you over so she could rub your legs, your long legs like my long lies, as to make your blood flow easier. No one wants you to get a rash. The medical book that the doctor has lent to me states that the longest recorded coma lasted for over thirty years. The doctor trusts me. It must be because I sit here day and night, trying to avoid acknowledging the visiting hours. He must know what it’s like to lose someone who’s still alive. I almost forgot to tell you, but since I’m on the subject, you’ve missed your birthday, you’ve just turned twenty-one. Maybe you want some liquor in the IV? No, just a joke, I don’t want to poison you anymore.
As the nurse was shutting the door, I said, “No, don’t close the door. I was just leaving,” I lied.
She smiled, somehow knowing it wasn’t true, and began to shut the door while whispering in an assuring manner, “Stay. She wants you to stay and so do you. Just talk to her, I’m sure she can hear you.” I shook my head, pretended to pack my things by laying medical books on top of each other and cleaning up some scraps of paper I left strewn on the floor and your hospital bed. I filled a vase with sink water and returned a dead flower. That was wishful thinking. Now I’ll sit down and water you with more stories.
I want to tell you about my city and how I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t know, honestly, that his funeral was going to have such an effect on me. I know what you’re asking me now, where did you really go Christopher? My hometown has brick buildings no higher than two-stories. Most are tagged with graffiti though the letters are no longer clear, the statements aged and illegible. The sky is filled with the type of dust that makes everything fuzzy, like the air could use a vacuum. The sidewalks are cracked and in desperate need of repair, like the buildings that match them. Laundry is typically being air-dried by twines of ropes and pins, showing off the most vulgar lingerie—panties and bras, all stained with “maturity”.
I find that the funeral car is the strangest form of travel. Even though we were a small group, we traveled like ants towards the mound. In a total of four, my family was in the third car. He was in the first car, my brother’s best friend, Peter. I remember feeling embarrassed by the small number of people, but tried to comfort myself by thinking the boy was too young to have known all the people we could come to meet. As the two families stood before the stone, I could see the anguish in my brother’s eyes, the depth of his tears as if he were drowning in them. When Billy started breathing cripplingly, almost heaving his body, my father gave me a stern look as if I should do something. My brother dug his fingers into his hair and I noticed the ring. On his wedding finger, a silver circle, something he had always worn but no one had really minded. This was a ring which had a twin in the coffin. And that’s when I looked at Billy and remembered.
Was it a coincidence that when I tried to surprise you, your apartment was bordered up? I climbed up the staircase leading to your apartment. My hand was on the metal rail and I had a loaded duffel bag wrapped around my left shoulder. My legs were shaking, I was so worried that you would be there, so worried that you’d open the door and slap me with those large hands of yours. Then as I turned the corner, I saw the tree standing outside of your apartment missing all of its leaves like a man without his flesh. Your door was bordered up, the swinging door leading to your balcony was wrapped in caution tape, and pieces of glass laid on your porch from a broken window. A sheet of laminated paper was taped to your door which read,
QUARANTINED
NO ONE SHALL ENTER OR LEAVE THIS PROPERTY WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE LOCAL HEALTH AUTHORITY. (Art. 3220 – V.A.C.S)
NO PERSON EXCEPT AN AUTHORIZED EMPLOYEE OF THE HEALTH DISTRICT SHALL ALTER, DESTROY OR REMOVE THIS CARD. (Art. 349 – V.A.C.S)
ANYONE VIOLATING THIS REGULATION WILL BE FINED NOT LESS THAN $1000 NOR MORE THAN $1,000.00 FOR EACH VIOLATION (Art. 770 Penal Code)
I don’t know if you remember the night that a ghost spoke to me in that apartment. I was sitting in a royal purple chair with a thick cushion and matching ottoman. My feet were propped up and I was falling into a deep haze of absolute nothingness. I felt disconnected from the room, lost in my own world of fuzzy pictures that my eyes were presenting my brain. The fireplace was snapping at my feet; the suffering cinders performed for me alone, what a show, what a lack of oxygen. Unaware of my detachment from reality, I suddenly heard a deep man’s voice behind my head in the corner of the room. It was a raspy voice, breaking down each harsh word into a more demanding tone. What this man said, I couldn’t comprehend then, but it was four syllables. At first, my thought process was slow. I realized that I heard something from the rear of me, but I knew that you were on the other side of the room sitting at the dining table. Slowly I began to feel this sense of fear in my chest, an atmosphere of complete and utter terror of what was behind me. I believed the supernatural creature at my back was wise of my consciousness of his presence. Then I felt a rush of warm wind flow out from my chest, blowing my hair towards the television in front of me as if something quickly floated—no escaped—through a portal in my body. I sat up, unaware of whether or not the supernatural was gone or if he was listening to my thoughts. I said to you, “I think I’ve just had a supernatural experience.”
You just looked at me.
I continued, “I heard something behind my head, right behind my head, then I felt it rush through me and it made my hair blow forwards. Jesus Christ.” My hands and legs began to irrepressibly shake.
Your curious eyes asked me, “What kind of voice was it? What did it say?”
I answered, “It was very deep, definitely a man’s voice. It was grumbling at me. I don’t know what he said. I can’t point it out, but it was four syllables and I hope he wasn’t telling me to get out or else,” I counted the words on my fingers, “He might have said my name. My heart is beating so fast.” I could feel my heart beating as if it was trying to escape through my ribcage. I put my hand over my frightened chest to calm it down. You were concerned, but said nothing more.
You told me about your paranormal experiences as well. You were in the shower, washing away the tires of the day when suddenly, you heard a loud bang against the bathroom mirror. You pulled the shower curtain aside, glancing curiously, and saw a dark figure in the mirror staring into the medicine cabinet. He took his hand and tried to pick up a bottle of amphetamines or maybe just a razor. We didn’t know the shadow was caused by the effects of extreme exposure to carbon monoxide. I am telling you now that our ghost said, “You are dying.”
Your father told me awhile ago that I had just an hour with you. Only an hour to tell you everything, but here goes. I told you that I’ve never been hurt, actually hurt, but at the funeral, when I saw my brother’s ring which matched with Peter’s I remembered what pain was. I was five years old, my brother eight, and my parents old. We were needed in Mexico, New York. My grandmother’s fourth husband of one year had drowned somehow. It was winter and halfway to New York (we had come from Georgia), my father was tired and my mother refused to drive at night. We stopped at a hotel. My father parked underneath an overpass adjacent to the entrance of the hotel reception, and I watched him jog inside, jerking suddenly to a stop when the automatic doors didn’t open so automatically. My brother, Billy, and I giggled at him as my mother turned around and whispered, “Your father’s such a control freak, look at ‘em! He just had to pick up all the trash in the van before getting us a room. It’s freezing, I’m tired, so he’s just got to take his time cleaning up. I swear, he’s driving me up the wall.”
My father – a military man – came back then, combing his mustache and tending his eyes with his fingers as he crossed to the car. He slid inside, ducking so he didn’t hit his head and said in a drill sergeant voice, “Number 23! Let’s go, let’s go! Kids get your stuff together, get ready to get out.” I began to panic, stuffing inside of my backpack all of my coloring books, crayons, and a GI Joe action figure I had stolen from a cousin of mine.
Inside number 23, my brother and I had to share a queen-sized bed in a room that was directly connected to our parent’s. These two rooms were separated by a small doorway with a broad flower-patterned curtain drawn as to divide us. My brother and I were distracted by cartoons while on the other side, my father watched the local news channel and my mother was fiddling with the air conditioning, hitting the machine from time to time and saying, “Bill, this isn’t working. It’s freezing in here, I’ll catch a cold. Oh, you don’t care, are you just going to sit there and let me freeze to death?”
“It’s fine in here, Robin. Stop messing with it. You’re just gonna break it and I’m not paying for it.”
“What about your children? Ask them if they’re cold, you’ll listen to them even though I’m the one who has to be married to you. Go ahead, then!”
“Kids! Kids come here. Billy? Christopher? Kids, come on in here for a second. Mom wants to ask you something.”
My brother remained still while I got up from the carpeted floor in front of our television. My brother said, “Go on Chrissy, go listen to your daddy like a good girl.”
“Stop it, Billy. You’re not funny. My name is Christopher.”
Poking my head from behind the curtain, I saw my father laid out on his hotel bed with his legs bent at the knees, a remote control in one hand and his head propped by four marshmallow-like pillows against the headboard. He said, “Are you cold?” I looked at my mother who lifted her eyes at me pleadingly. I shrugged. She narrowed her eyes at me, stuck her palm against the machine, and could only give a submissive sigh.
It was getting late, so Billy and I climbed into the same bed, the red sheets tightly strapping us to the mattress, the white comforter pulled past our faces as if we were in the same cocoon. I was lying on my back and my brother was on his side, his body facing me. I listened to my mother endlessly hit the air conditioning unit, except harder, more forceful and maybe with her foot instead of her palm. My father was flipping through the channels, disappointed with the selection of television shows in the cheap hotel. Every now and then he’d ask my mother, “Will you calm down, Robin?” He paused the television on a channel in which blasts of gunfire and screeching cars broke from their part of the room. I turned to my brother and saw him staring at me, a stare I had never seen before. His eyes seemed different, a darker shade than usual and his face had this blankness to it, some expression of curiosity as if he had never noticed me before. Billy inched closer and placed his hand on my pant leg, not saying anything, then suddenly raising his hand until my eyes grew bigger and I turned my face to the ceiling, so confused and shaking. I could still hear my mother banging on the air conditioner and saying from time to time, “You’re just going to sit there and let me freeze to death, aren’t you Bill?”
You might not believe me, but I wouldn’t expect you to. You met my brother last Thanksgiving and he never looked at you directly. He did say to you, “I don’t snore.” And you giggled and said you knew that.
You’re so still, how can you ignore me when all my stories are being cast upon you? You should be walking out now, angry at me, stamping your feet at my words and telling me, “Why didn’t you ever tell me these things to me before? Why did it take you so long Christopher? Did he ever do it again?”
I’d like you to remember the last thing you said to me. This was before you happened to lose your mind and see ghosts every day. We were talking about cheating and lying. You said to me,
“I think those who give people second chances are weak. Love requires trust, trust requires honesty.”
“Definitely,” I said
My face was red and you said, “What’s wrong Christopher?”
I told you nothing, what a lie, and kept my plane ticket home in my back pocket. I was ready to leave with or without saying anything. It was either lie, tell the truth, or leave. I’m saying this to you because you want me to, right?
The medical examiners found that the intense amount of carbon monoxide circling inside your apartment was astonishing. This is how the mystery of your condition was realized. How were we to know, when the chemical is odorless and impossible to see. I pretend now that when we lit up your fireplace that we would’ve discovered the invisible fume invading our lungs rather than exiting through the vent of the damaged chimney. You would lay against me, your body falling into mine like a corpse and we would sit together and not say a word.
I could hear your father’s long legs travel through the hospital hallways, but I kept my eyes on you. I could feel his stare on my back as he pounded on the door while saying, “Chris, I said you had one hour with Gigi. You can’t be spending all your time here.”
“Christopher.”
“I need you to leave.”
“Just a few more minutes.”
“Did you want me to make you leave? Is that what you need? More persuasion? Gigi doesn’t need you here all the time Chris. Not some old boyfriend who decided to leave her without even saying anything, not even goodbye. Oh yeah, she told me about it. She told me all about you abandoning her, aren’t you surprised?”
I jumped up from my chair, my face burning, “Get the fuck out! Jesus Christ, won’t you get the fuck out!” My index finger was pointing out into the hallway as nurses began to poke their heads into the room, then quickly pull back. “Just let me be! Just let me be with her for five fucking minutes, for more than one fucking hour, you fuck! You stringy fuck! Open your old eyes! You never even tried keeping an eye on us!” I turned towards your bed and screamed, “Just say something to me, just say one goddamn word, Gigi, I swear I’ll leave, I’ll leave you all alone if you just talk to me,” my hands were strapping your motionless arms tighter to the bed, and you laid there with blankness all over your face, full of stories, and so speechless.