Stephen Dixon: All Gone

Ether, ether, I yell from the hospital bed. This table. Wherever I’m being worked over on. The pain.

“He spoke,” the doctor, doctoress, sorceress says.

“More anesthetic,” someone says. Milligrams. Microgams. Look at those gams. Some pair. “Mm’s,” the anesthesiologist says.

“More ether,” I say. “The pain.”

But I’ve seen the movie too.

In the end the patient dies.

We couldn’t save him, the doctor says.

His heart, someone else says.

A sheet is thrown over my face.

Not thrown. Laid.

Not laid. Lain on my face.

Not lain. Placed. A sheet is placed on my face. I’m covered. A sheet was placed on my face and now covers my face.

Though I’ve never seen the movie from here.

Next.

Stories in this collection appeared in slightly different form in the following periodicals, to which the author and the publisher extend their thanks: “The Student” in Mundus Artium; “All Gone” in Kansas Quarterly; “On the Beach” in Threepenny Review; “The True Story” in Confrontation; “Capital Labor” in Pendragon; “Jackie” in Periodical Lunch; “The Batterer” in Cream City Review and Ohio Journal; “A Lack of Space” in Ohio Journal; “The Former World’s Greatest Raw Green Pea Eater” in Cake; “Wrong Words” in Appearances and Asylum; “The Doctor” in Confrontation; “Heads” in Florida Review; “The Onlooker” in City Paper and South Carolina Review; “Try Again” in Ambit and Chouteau Review; “Bo” in Asylum; “Joe” in Denver Quarterly; and “Next” in Remington Review .