12:32 AMLauren falls asleep half sitting up, propped with two white pillows. Embroidery of pink shiny flesh and black floss crisscrosses down her chest from her sternum to the hollow space below her breasts. It’s an embellishment left behind after her heart, stretched like putty, was repaired last week. I lay next to her, curled like a cat, and I want to lick her wound. She reminds me of my mother for a moment. My mother slept in that position for an entire year, as if she were already in the coffin.
I never slept next to her when she was ill. I turn away from her as water fills my eyes and the puckered white paint pours off the wall and then disappears.
9 AMThe sunlight oozes into Lauren’s kitchen as we eat cinnamon raisin toast with dairy-free margarine. I trip into frayed denim shorts and she slips into tight black jeans. I should have showered. We step onto the sizzling streets of Brooklyn, like potatoes plunked in hot oil, and get into my car to drive to the Upper West Side.
11:31 AMWe sit side-by-side across from her cardiologist, both holding our notebooks, both documenting what it is we are both grappling with: her with illness, me with support. I am having trouble listening to what the doctor is saying because my eyes are fixed on the parade of glass animals across her desk; their insides swirling colors of neon organs visible through a translucent exterior.
Is it mandatory for every doctor to have so many paper weights on their desk? There are no fucking papers anywhere! Everything is filed away. Everything is in its right place. There is no business left unattended, neglected, ignored, or put aside to be dealt with at a later time. There are no loose papers to be weighed down anywhere in sight.
1:24 PMLauren is having an exam done to be sure there hasn’t been a build up of fluid around her heart. In the waiting room, where I do what is expected, I imagine this as a moat surrounding a castle of vermillion muscle. Snoring interrupts my daydream. The man across from me is sleeping sitting up, legs outstretched with his arms across his chest.
Maybe he is dead. Death by waiting. I am eating Skittles and the nurse calls the man’s name. No movement. She calls again. Nothing. “Kick him,” another nurse says. He opens one eye. I laugh and eat my last Skittle; it’s red.
2:37 PMThe results are in and Lauren cries. We leave in a hurry to the emergency room at Weill Cornell.
The tide of the moat is dangerously high. There is a weight pressing down on my chest, like two meaty palms, as we get into the car. I take a breath and count to see how long it takes before I have to exhale. 32 seconds. I feel like a failure, so I try again.
2:50 PMDriving south on the FDR I see a sign for the Triborough Bridge and I realize I will never call it the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. I will not call it the RFK, either. I call it the Triborough, or “The Tribe” if I’m feeling cute.
Will they build a bridge over the moat to the castle?
3:01 PMThere is a clipper floating up the East River and I am staring at it more than the road. “I wish it had a pirate flag at the top,” Lauren says from the backseat. My right rear view mirror then detaches from the base and blows chaotically in the wind, attached only by a thin black wire. It is a kite.
3:08 PMThere is a shirtless man sitting in a lawn chair wearing a party hat on the side of the FDR as we drive by. Next to him is a large dirty teddy bear face down in a carriage and a tall sign that reads, “Sweet pussy, sweet dick, sweet people.” Richard is my father’s name, a widower, but nobody calls him Dick.
Sweet kitten, sweet Richard, sweet nobody. I look at the man and think how this is the first day without rain in weeks.
3:19 PMThe parking here is really expensive. The idea of having to pay $60 when you are suffering an emergency just disgusts me. A severely broken heart (from reasons other than being alone), but fork it over.
3:34 PMWe fill up on free coffee and Keebler Graham Crackers in the waiting room. I hold my cup of black coffee with both hands and run my lips along it’s waxy edge. I look at my bare legs and see the little erect blonde hairs. I look at Lauren and say, “You look great, but I understand that doesn’t mean you feel great.”
4:03 PMThey wheel her into the emergency room and lay her in a sterile bed while I sit next to her and write. She is propped with two white pillows. There are curtains all around us, like we are in a small tent.
I want to build a fire, I want to feel warmth. The doctor tries to be funny and quirky, but is only making things worse. He reminds me of Zach Braff’s character on the television show “Scrubs”. I don’t like him.
4:18 PMOver the intercom someone says, “Taco City in the lobby” and I’m starving.
4:22 PMA nurse walks by and says, “I think my patient just peaced out with an IV in his arm. It’s not cool to do that.”
4:27 PMAnother nurse says, “There’s blood on this stretcher.”
4:28 PMI sit in our tent and
I want to back stroke across the moat. I want to know everything that goes on within the neon colored insides. I want to sleep next to you eternally and I want to make a new name for myself. I sit in our tent and, goddamn, I want to be a better person.
