Michael Christie - The Beggar's Garden

When I was in the hospital with my broken arms there was a lady in the gift shop who gave me penny-candy fish or bookmarks with funny sayings. She didn’t have to be nice to me, but was anyway. When I was older I returned to the hospital and a different lady was behind the counter. She said the other lady had died. I asked her for some free penny candy and she scowled.

Nobody does something kind for someone else if they don’t love them, even a little. I’m not stupid, though, I knew my paramedic was supposed to come to my apartment to help me, that it was his job, and people do jobs for money not because they want to. But people choose careers in health care because they love caring for people. The problem was my paramedic and I wouldn’t be given the chances other couples were, happening into each other on the street, or joining the same life-drawing class. He’d chosen to find my nightgown interesting, which means he must have loved at least some little part in me, and I couldn’t let that slip away.

I passed the nurses’ station and none of them looked up from their computers or cups of microwavable soup. I came across a pair of orderlies striding the blue line in the direction I’d come from and ducked my head.

Then came the thrilling moment in the lobby when I saw him, wheeling a guy on a stretcher through automatically parting doors. I called to him but my words were outstripped by what he and the other paramedics and nurses were yelling to one another about colours and codes.

I’d prepared for complications like this by accustoming myself to the thought of him caring for other patients, so I wasn’t anywhere near jealous. His job was important to him, he was career oriented, that’s why I liked him, and trust is something that must be unconditional.

They were moving quickly toward the No Entry doors so I had to trot to catch him, even though at that moment I was finding it difficult to breathe.

Hi, I said, tapping him on the shoulder.

He turned and I saw that our time apart had infused his face with an even greater surplus of beauty. He began to speak but I accidentally interrupted him by blurting, Your card! horrified that I must have left my bag in the examination room.

Wait here! I said, and thanked the god that I don’t believe in for the blue line that I was able to trace back, because otherwise I would have got lost because people do silly things in the throes of passion with their guards down.

I whipped open a few wrong curtains, saying sorry to the different sick people, some of whom I recognized from the lobby, until I found my old examination room, where there was now an old man laying on his stomach, his withered butt peeking through his gown. I found my bag tucked under a little stool and the old man didn’t stir. So even though it wasn’t nighttime, I changed into my interesting nightgown because I was worried my paramedic hadn’t remembered me without it to trigger his memory. It crossed my mind that the next person to undo each of its five neck buttons that were shaped like mini-seashells might not be me, and my heart felt like four different hearts who were all best friends, pumping away in unison for a good and noble cause.

When I got back my paramedic was gone. I pushed through the No Entry doors and spotted him and some others down a hallway. They had stopped beside an elevator, waiting for something or someone.

Hi, I said when I caught up to him. He was holding some bags of fluid up in the air and his armpits were sweaty, but not too sweaty, a good, healthy amount.

Hi? he said, glancing down at my nightgown and I could tell he still found it profoundly interesting.

You can’t be in here, said a bearded security guard, his hand on my back.

It’s okay, the paramedic said to him, which he didn’t have to do, and this warmed my heart and proved that I and I alone remained his favourite patient. His eyes were so blue that I bet on a clear day, looking up at him from underneath with his hands planted in the grass on each side of your face, they would look like holes bored all the way through his head.

Can I help you? he said.

Here, I said, holding out his card, this is for you.

He didn’t reach for it and I prayed I’d spelled Paramedic right because he was regarding the envelope with a funny expression.

He laughed. Sorry, we don’t really accept gifts, he said.

He was trying to be professional, but I couldn’t help but take this personally, especially because my card was nothing if not personal. If only I could tell him what was inside the envelope, then he would know why he actually wanted to accept it as a gift, but that would ruin the whole surprise effect that is so great about card-giving.

You should open it. You’ll like it, I said, winking, with a feeling that I was already giving too much of the card away.

He said he couldn’t right now because he was in the middle of an emergency. I looked down at the unconscious man on the stretcher whose legs were both wrapped with large pads of bloody gauze, and he seemed pretty content to me.

The elevator chimed and the medical people started pushing the man through the doors. Do you want to grab a coffee after work? I asked, with no other choice than to ruin the most exciting part of the card completely.

He mustered a strange expression, the bewildered kind people give when they’ve just heard something that is so absolutely impossible that they can’t even consider it. Did he think he was too good for me? For my card?

Sorry, he said, and walked into the elevator and I saw now that he was just as heartless as Sideburns or any other guyfriend I’d ever loved — perhaps more so — and that he was probably just accidentally horny the day he came over and found me so interesting. I yearned now to prove him wrong, to wound him and show him how much he did in fact care for me, deep inside him, on frequencies that his heart couldn’t detect, with a tenderness and compassion crafted only for me, and during this contemplation I found myself warming again to the whole killing-myself business. I wondered how many people had actually killed themselves because of the callousness of others, or even just so they didn’t have to feel like a liar anymore, and I figured it was probably all of them.

I took the deepest breath I could and locked it away in my chest. I felt my eyes bulge and my lungs began to chip away at the air. Miniature crystal bells tolled in my ears and it was as if I was pressing my stomach to a brick wall, peering through a window, and then I knew I was envisioning our future, his and mine. I watched the paramedic and I on a queen-sized bed, spending entire days entwined, our arms going to sleep from constant embracing, breaking only for one of us to make toast while wearing the rumpled clothes of the other, settling for the lightest toast setting because the longer toasting time seemed like a painful eternity to be apart.

How much do you love me right now? I would say, returning with fresh toast slices on our last clean dish.

I love you this much, he’d say, stretching his arms past the edges of the bed, as wide as was physically possible for him.

Only that much? I’d say.

Then I love you as far from here to Neptune.

Do you love me more than you did yesterday?

He’d think a minute, and here I mean really think.

Yes, I do, he’d say.

Then you didn’t really love me yesterday, I’d say, not really. But I didn’t know yesterday that I could’ve loved you more today.

What if you love me more tomorrow?

Oh stop this, he’d say, kissing me in rapid fire. And then he would say that he didn’t care, he just loved me today and tomorrow and forever and I would believe him and we would have sex with each other’s bodies as well as our minds because the mind is the largest erogenous zone and we would live with no need for greeting cards because we would speak in our own voices without fear and each day would be the day before the day he would leave me.