Shane Jones: Crystal Eaters

“What’s a hospital? Was he okay?”

“It’s a place people go to get injected with crystals,” interrupts Bobby T., who stands but keeps losing his balance, his legs bruised from being hacked with batons, the ground again shaking. “I read that in Death Movement. He’s in trouble.”

“Listen,” says Arnold, interrupting. “A hospital is suppose to help people. And Bobby T. is right, you should hurry.”

“Where is it?”

Remy kicks a doctor in the throat. She’s been kicking doctors in the throat. The doctor falls backward and slips in her blood. She spins and ducks from the grip of the others. She reaches for the door again.

Here he comes, dazed, light-headed, worried-eyebrows, never seen a place like this before, Brother.

“Who is this?” says one of the doctors. “Is he friend or family? SECURITY!”

“Adam,” says Remy.

His orange jumpsuit is covered in black holes of sweat. He walks with a limp. His hair is matted with crusted blood from landing on a concrete floor. Transparent skin. His overall look is what you’d imagine someone to look like who spent days in solitary confinement, little light. Remy wraps her arms around his thighs and they both want to believe that their counts rise. They both want to slip backward in time, and together, here holding each other in the hospital with everything around them fogging away in green dream, they feel like children again. Adam pats Remy’s head and kisses her. She imagines each pat adding one inside her. She feels so good in the swirling moment that the outside world is obliterated, it’s just them now, they are together and bright now.

Adam looks at Dad and smiles, then sees Mom on the table and realizes nothing is wrong with Dad at all, it’s Mom, that’s why they are here. It’s been Mom this entire time. He’s known this. He walks to the side of the table where she is, where a few doctors continue to work. One doctor stands against the wall. He’s on the phone with the police. Each step is floating, as if walking through connected tunnels of dream. Adam touches her face with the backside of his hand and combs her hair to the one side it wants to go. He leans over, almost falls onto the table, and the doctors give space.

He slides his arms under and around her body, the hospital sheets cool against his skin, dirt cracking off his forearms. He lifts her from the table until his body and her body touch with her head resting on his shoulder. She weighs nothing. She is nothing. Against his ear her breathing sounds like mouth-blown mud. She smells sour with something inside burning and leaving. All her life, all her numbers, have led up to this point, this hospital reckoning. She’s trying to remember all the good moments. She’s trying to make sense of it all.

Remy walks over and supports Mom’s head with her hands.

“It’s okay,” Adam says to Mom.

Her breathing gets louder.

“I’m here,” he says.

He’s a good one. He’s a good one he’s a good one I knew he’d be a good one he’s a good one .

Her body jolts forward.

“No,” says Adam. “I have you.”

There’s a Mom breath so deep that her chest expands into his chest. He feels the connection, the beating, the whatever it is inside them that makes them what they are. Two of the doctors nod and unhook wires.

“Call it,” says a doctor snapping off his gloves. “What’s everyone doing for lunch?”

“11:11 on her.”

“I could eat.”

Remy points to her feet.

Red slush. It flows from Mom’s back and oozes off the edges of the table and drips warm on Remy’s feet. She’s never seen a color so bright. The twin horses appear in the center of the room and tell her it’s time to go and she opens her eyes for the last time against Adam’s chest and her mouth falls open. Hundred the dog howls from the sidewalk surrounded by cops looking at the sky. Remy taps Adam on his shoulder, who is connected to Mom because he still holds her, he can’t let go, and they are connected to Dad who stands on the other side of the bed squeezing Mom’s hand and it’s true, the sun is here.