So this is where over a decade of work together puts us, I think as the car winds through Florida. There is a heat wave here, too, but no one seems to notice. I slide down in my seat and close my eyes behind my sunglasses, counting down the seconds until I can take my next Percocet. We’re not far from where Mel grew up. I get a good color bar of Nascar and poor dentistry and pythons swallowing Pomeranians before stepping out of the car into the Super 8 parking lot and catching an eyeful of those pink grubby outdoor motel room entrances favored by serial killers and speed freaks.
Mel’s taxi is just behind mine. She wordlessly crosses the courtyard. I struggle with the lock on my door as she opens her own and smacks it shut.
As soon as I step into the room, my headache explodes.
It’s like being shot, the pain pushing out from the untouchable middle of my skull, racing down my spine. It hurts too much to scream. My knees give out. I fall onto the floor. I rock back and forth. I try a fetal position; I paddle my feet. I move everything except my head. It hurts so much I can’t catch a decent breath. The pain is deep, nuanced; it has character, it’s so forceful. Something is wrong. Something is really, really wrong.
I manage to grasp my purse and beat the door open, vision doubling. The sun blinds. I cry out, take a couple of staggering steps, fall onto the pavement.
She’s close by. I smell the warm, rotting scent of weed. “Sharon.” Footsteps. “Sharon.” She crouches down, puts her face next to mine. “What’s wrong.”
I try to gesture at my head. My arm is lead.
There’s a pop. The hurt fuzzes. It doesn’t lessen, but it moves slightly away. I’m on the roof now, outside my body, hanging above it all. I see the back of my head, the oily roots, love handles dimpling my waistband. Mel is on her knees beside me, joint smoldering near her on the ground. Sounds soften, light blurs. It’s a tussin buzz, but thicker—the fear and discomfort are there somewhere, but only in theory. It’s a sweet, whole feeling, a relief to escape from my body. I have discorporated. At long last.
I watch my mouth move a little, see my tongue quaver. “Aah.”
Mel leans in. “What?”
She grabs my arms and I’m pulled back down. My legs are scissored underneath me, the drilling behind my left eye swells. Numb: my chin, the back of my head. My left side.
“Aah ooh oye?”
Mel shakes her head, squints. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re saying.”
My hand is a claw. I lift it, slow, rake at my purse. It tilts and spills.
Mel reaches out, plucks my collar open. She cups my forehead, chin, then slides her arms under me. “Okay. To the hospital. Let’s go.” She spots a taxi idling across the pavement. Says, “Hold on.” I feel her move away, hear her footsteps. She returns, hefts me up. Calls, “Over here.” She slams my motel door shut and drags me by the armpits across the pavement, arms and legs dangling. Balances me on the trunk, one arm holding me around the waist.
I hear a guy say, “Is she drunk or somethin?”
“No,” Mel says, “something’s wrong. We need the nearest hospital right away.”
She struggles to open the car door, wraps her arms around my waist, and dumps me in. The car rocks. One of my legs is slung over the gearshift. She crouches beside me, breathes, “Christ.”
“Nuh guh,” I say.
“What?”
There are holes in the air. I want out so bad. I can’t go from being up there to being back down here. I start to cry, mouth open.
“All right,” Mel says. “Just hold on.”
The ignition splutters, I hear that same guy’s voice cuss and jerk at it for a moment. “What’s wrong,” Mel says. Her voice breaks. She’s scared. “What is it?”
The guy says, “Just hold on.” There’s cranking noises.
Mel looks down at me. She is peering into my eyes, first one, then the other. “I knew something was wrong,” she says.
The car finally moves. I burble and roll onto my side. The sound drips out of everything. Mel’s lips move at me, pink press and unpress, everything down to its gradient. Shades shift and move apart. I feel the car buck over a pothole. Ink spots. I can’t feel my face.
I pitch over and vomit.
“Stop the car!” Mel yells.
The taxi swerves to a stop. She leans over, lays her cool hands to my forehead. Her voice is a frequency, lines wavering, jumping. Cellphone a dark egg in her hand. Her thumb works. Everything goes black.
WE HAVE TO START FROM
WHEREVER WE ARE
Naked in a bed. People move over me. Lights blaze halogen. Fingers turn my arm, press for a vein. A prick and the pain scales down, bright red, maroon, pink. Sounds hook themselves together but do not make words. Mel bleats. Someone informs her that freelancer’s insurance will not cover an MRI and I hear her say, “Well, son of a bitch.”
—
More garbled back-and-forth around me. Someone I’m vaguely sure is Mel. Other people.
I try to pick out curves, get an anchor on where I am. I’m back watching the board in Principles of 2-D Design or Program Layouts 1, and figuring out being smart isn’t the same as being good is just as scary the second time around. Mel’s hand grabs mine.
I’m in a long tunnel. I wonder if I’m being operated on, if they’re going to, if they are right now, the sheet tented over, someone’s phantom hands inside me, manipulating. The black sand of anesthesia, the tin smell of blood. I wonder if I’m dead, or dying.
Mel talks low through the fever dream: I never told you and I never knew and I only wish and please. And she cries, mouth open, spine a soft C.
—