“Of course.”
“That smile,” he cries. “That sad, beautiful smile. I’ve never known anyone as beautiful…or as sweet. I’ve never loved anyone this way…I’ve never loved anyone, period. I was never happy, until
“I know he does too…I mean to tell you guys, that man loves me. He wears me out!” Tammy laughs a little. “He takes, and takes, and takes love from me…then he gives me his love…so much love…sweet, dirtylove…”
God, I love him.
And I don’t even mind him using the “D” word. In fact, I love it. He sighs, and Peggyblushes, “Tam!”
“But he’s not dirty…not at all…he’s so good to me…so pure,
Stacy kisses Tammy’s cheek. Peggy holds on tight and kisses his other cheek.
I’m loving this. I’m not there, so I know he is being real. I’m not present to cause him to censor this affectionate vernacular.
He sobs anew. “Hasn’t he been through
enough
?! Who could do this?!”
“I think it’s going to be okay, son,” Peggytells him.
“I’m praying…but I have a bad feeling, Mom…”
I feel that premonitory tickling sensation in my chest.
I’m going to crash again. I’ve got to concentrate! I can’t do this to him!
“Code blue, ICU,” the speaker announces below me.
“He’d want you to go on, Tammy,” Stacy says, and immediately, she looks like she could kick herself.
“I can’t…I can’t…” Tammyscreeches. “Please!”
I’m still breathing, that is, the vent is still breathing for me, but myheart is exhausted and trying to give out. Myskin is deathlygray again, like it was in mybedroom the dayLloyd found me. Now my telemetry monitor shows v-tach again. I watch, furious at myself, as Tammyclings to Stacyand Peggy, and the three of them cryas the doctors and nurses shock me once, twice, three, four times.
Finally, myheart is restored to normal sinus.
But now I’m deeply asleep. I’m so deep, so far down, or up, that I don’t return to mybed, to myflesh, like I did in the ambulance and in the orchard. Everything I hear is in faint, surreal echo, dreamlike.
“He’s in a coma,” the doctor tells myfriends. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”
“Do you think he’s brain dead?” asks Tammy. I know neither Stacynor Peggywould have dared ask it.
“The scans show brain activity, so no, he’s not brain dead… however, we don’t know if…when he’ll wake up…it may be days...weeks…months…we just don’t know.”
“How did he live?” Stacy asks tearfully. “How did he live after all that happened? He must have been laying there at least nine hours!”
“It was freezing,” the doctor says quietly. “His systems slowed down. It bought him just enough time until those men found him…if theyhadn’t…”
Stacynods jerkily.
Tammy either won’t or can’t say anything now. It’s like the tears are never going to stop. Then the doctor says, “You’re his power of attorney.”
“What?” Tammy’s eyes flood over again.
“He made you his power of attorney,” the doctor says. “If he doesn’t recover…if he doesn’t awaken…if he continues to decline…you have to make decisions for him.”
Tammy sobs into his mother’s neck. Stacy runs to the restroom, probablyto throw up.
suffering in the ER with hypoglycemia, Stacy helped me fill out paperwork with routine questions like, “Who will make your healthcare decisions should you become unable to make them yourself?” I made TammymyDPOA.
I don’t think he’s taking this too well.
After a while, he raises his head from where he’s soaked Peg’s shirt. “I deserted him…I wasted all those years…and now that we’ve finally gotten together, this happens. I’ve loved him forever…he doesn’t believe me when I tell him that we met the first time in a supermarket when we were little.”
“What are you talking about, Tammy?” asks Peg.
“Don’t you remember? A long time ago? We were in Sacramento, getting groceries, and we got in the checkout behind this woman…she had the prettiest little boy in her cart…beautiful, big blue eyes…” Tammysobs.
you?”
“You can’t remember that far back!” Peggy exclaims. “Can
“I didn’t, until one night after a football game, when I saw Jamie eating red licorice,” Tammy says. “He looked at me…and I knew it was that little boy from the shopping cart. I know it’s him, Mommy.” Tammy nods, tears spilling again, like Niagra Falls. “I know it’s him…and that woman…that woman he was with was that evil woman in the video!”
Peggylooks at Stacy.
“Fuck,” Stacywhispers harshly, and theyhold him. I am not solid. There is no matter to me. Now I
want
to be in
“That little boy was eating red licorice, remember, Mommy? And I kissed him…and he kissed me…remember Mommy? Remember?”
Peg and Stacy go home, but Tammy demands that a cot be brought in. “I’m his power of attorney,” Tammysays so endearingly and importantly that I wish I could tease him about it. When it’s brought in, he doesn’t bother laying down and putting it to use. He’s so tired. He sits in one of the ubiquitous beige vinyl chairs, leans over me, strokes my hair, caresses my face, winces at my black eye and cloven head. “There won’t be too bad of a scar, Baby,” he whispers to me, twirling a lock of hair over the uglygash. “Your hair will cover it…you’ll still be pretty…nothing will ever make you ugly.”
“Come back to me, Jamie,” he begs me. “Come home…it’s so lonelywithout you…I miss you…”
I can’t find my way…I’m lost…I’m alone…
You’re not alone, he says…I’m here.
Keep talking, Honey…I’m looking for you…I can’t see…
I’m praying for you, Jamie.
You’re praying?
Yes, I’m praying…come home to me, Jamie…come home…
I fight through the black forest, swatting the limbs as they slap my face…
I’m back in my body, but it’s a different body…a different me. I’m two years old, sitting in a shopping cart, my legs kicking and dangling, and I’m resplendently lacking in any clairvoyance of the abuse the dark haired woman accompanying me will inflict on me in less than a year.
A boy with dark brown, almost black hair and fathomless greenish-blue eyes looks up at me. He seems so familiar…
I reach out, my fingers wrapped around my Red Vine. “Come here,” I beckon him. He stands on tiptoe and says, “Look at you! You have the biggest eyes I’ve ever seen!” He looks back at his Mother, who smiles at him and then me.
“
What a sweetie!”
Peggy!
I look at the pretty boy…
Tammy!
I squirm between the bars of the baby seat on the cart. I want to talk to him so badly…but as yet, though I’m past my second birthday, I haven’t learned to say much more than Dada, Mama, Baba. My babbles translate silently, only to me, “You mean
you
don’t have to sit in your Mom’s cart? No fair!”
“
Howold is he?” the boy asks my Mother.
“
Two!” Mom barks in her raspy voice. I jabber to my new friend, “Don’t mind her…she’s a grouch.”
“
You don’t say!”
I giggle at him. “Yeah…she’s even crabby to my Daddy!”
“
Is that right?” the boy gasps.
“
You better believe it…I try to stay out of her way…”
“
What’s his name, please?” Tammy asks my Mom. But she pretends she doesn’t hear him. She treats all kids like this. At stores, at libraries, at the preschool/daycare center she takes me to on her way to work.
“
Come on, Jamie,” she mutters grumpily. “Let’s get out of here!”
“
See what I mean?” I coo to Tammy. “Grouchy!”
Tammy laughs. “His name is Jamie?” he asks my Mother.
She gives him a mean look…she’s an unhappy person. She never smiles. She acts like she’s too good to smile or talk to people. She says the most hateful thing to him, “Yeah, Jamie! What do you care? You’ll never see him again anyway!”
Awww, Tammy’s eyes moisten and he appeals silently to Peggy, who shakes her head sadly. I wish she’d tell my mean Mother off!
Poor Tammy! I reach for him again…“Come here...”
He comes to me, stands on tiptoe.
“
Don’t you even mind her,” I gurgle.
He reaches up and kisses my cheek.
I kissed your cheek, Tammy says. And you kissed my mouth.
My baby eyes wide open, I lean as far over as I can go, and babble, “I love you, Tammy.” My tiny red mouth touches his. We kiss each other goodbye.
I’m deeply asleep, but I taste the licorice. I do…I taste it… The story is true.
It was our first kiss. And we’ve loved each other almost our whole lives.
This old, new, wonderful memory dispels my fear, my loneliness. All memories of being savagely beaten are erased, and replaced by the softness of Tammy’s lips against mine, the taste of him.
Of licorice.
I’ve always loved you, he says. Since this day…
His face begins to distort…
“
Don’t go, Tammy,” I cry plaintively. “Please…where are you?”
“
I’m here…come to me, Jamie…come back to me…I miss you…” I feel his lips. He kisses me softly, again and again. “Come back to me…come back…”
He knows I love him. I know he loves me. Our love has grown. In the measly five or six days we’ve been together, in the sixteen years we were apart, in the thirty years since we met, it’s grown. It’s grown from the innocent affection between two toddlers, from the crushing teenage lust of two high schoolers, from the sexual discovery of two thirty-somethings, to this, this absolute need and belief in each other. It’s matured into something bigger, stronger than the fear, the anger and the hatred, both internal and external, that has tried to vanquish it.
I feel the anger, the bitterness, the self-hatred I’ve always toted with me, draining away, dying, melting like the witch in
The Wizard Of Oz,
replaced by this amazing strength, this love, pouring from Tammy’s mouth to mine, like synapses swapping neurotransmitters, like water into a dry chalice.
The kiss of life.
His voice, his lips…he’s charming my tears.
I’m getting a hard on…and, oh…it feels so good…Oh Tammy…Where are you?!
I try to kiss him back, but my lips won’t cooperate.
“Nurse?” I hear him shout. “Come here, please!” I hear the scuffing of nurse shoes on glossylinoleum. “Look at this…what…?”
The nurse studies me for a moment. I can’t
see
the nurse… but I hear him. I feel him touching myarm, checking myIV.
I’m back…in mythirty-one year old body.
“Is he crying?” asks Tammy, his voice thickening.
I feel a warm wetness…a trickling…
Tammy…I’m trying to find you…I’m trying…help me…
My sobs begin to shake my body as I wander in this pitch black…I hearing him cajoling me closer. I feel him kissing me. I taste his wonderful essence.
But I don’t see him.
“Is he crying…?” Tammysobs again.
“I don’t know,” replies the nurse.
“I think he’s crying…Jamie…come to me…come on…come to me…I’m here…I’m waiting…come on…”
The tears course down myface steadily. “Come on, Jamie… don’t be afraid…I’m here…Come back to me…” His lips touch mine again. “Come on…come on…please come to me.”
White begins to bleed into the black. Now I can see…I see myself…lying in the cot…I look like a ghost…my skin like dingy sheets.
“Please, Jamie…come home…I can’t do this without you…I need you…I need you, Baby…come home…”
I open my left eye to a world opposite the one I’ve just stepped from, of stark whiteness. I’m reminded of the time Tammy took me to the ER after those assheads beat me up.
There they are, the symbols of persecution: the IV dripping clear liquid, the big cast over my twice-busted right arm, the dried blood from cuts and scrapes too gently cleaned, the damned Foleycatheter theystuck up in mydick to collect myurine.
I’m going to get better. I’m going to live…I’m going to walk out of this hospital. They aren’t going to have the last damn laugh!
I look down to find myTammydraped across me, asleep, the tears still wet on his face, so close I am able to touch him with my nose. I kiss the two or three inches of air between my mouth and his cheek. Frustrated, but undaunted, I gently inch myself down. I can’t raise my right arm. It’s weighted down by that cast. My left arm is taped to a board so the IV doesn’t come out if I were to move suddenly.
I inhale his scent.
Yes…He’s here…
Mylips won’t stop until they’ve found his.
I open mymouth to say, “Wake up.”
But no words come out.
Oh, yeah…I’m on a ventilator
.
Even when I look to my left and fail to see any hissing, humming apparatus doing mybreathing for me…
When did they take me off the vent?
Howlong have I been out?
Howlong was I in the supermarket with Tammy?
I can’t believe, I
refuse
to believe I’ve lost the power to speak. I kiss Tammyagain…again…again…
He moans and raises his head.
I smile at him.
“I’m home,” I want to say.
His gorgeous mouth spreads horizontally. He fumbles for the call button and presses it.
When he crashes in his ICU bed, I’m sure he’s going to die. His heart is failing because he has “fluid overload” and it’s building up in his lungs. He lays there, inert, his skin ashen, like a corpse’s. The room thunders with the shouts of doctors and nurses who surround him, jabbing him with more needles, shoving diuretics to regulate his fluids, epi to kick-start his heart, bicarb because he’s “out of balance.” I have no idea what they’re yelling about. It’s like a scene from
House M.D
., the music in the scene is the ominous beeps and chimes of the alarms on the monitors above him. I should be grateful he has such a vigilant and hard-working team caring for him, but after five minutes of chest compressions, syringes, IVbags, yells and musical alarms, I onlysee Jamie’s doctors and nurses as another pack of bullies, torturing him, beating him, making him miserable. I want to charge them and chase them away, but Mom holds me back, using all of her strength, and I beat myfists on the vinyl chairs.