"Code Blue!"
The lights of the hospital race past my line of sight as the gurney I am laying on is run down a long hallway. A woman, immensely beautiful, she looks like my ex-wife when she was young and we were in love - sorry, this woman, she asks me if I'm OK, if I understand what she's saying to me.
"Yes." I say. "I understand."
She smiles, the lights of the hospital framing her face perfectly, like the sun in Cancun at purple twilight, lowering over the distant horizon, the warm water enfolding us, soft sand between our toes.
"I love you." She whispered it, as she did so many years before, and I whisper back, as a wave takes us from underneath and pushes us up on its crest, up, up and out of the gurney, hands under my armpits, lifting me onto another bed.
A doctor is there - his eyes are concerned, filled with worry, red eyes, with yellow pupils, and it's the pupils that talk.
"Mr. Michaels, focus on my voice."
Sure, I think I say but don't know for certain, OK. "I'm listening." And I am, really - the doctor removes my chart and he holds it in his hands, his notebook, the two of us back in the hallway in middle school, Tim Janson running away cause we just taunted him mercilessly. Children are so mean.
"Mr. Michaels, when did you have the chip installed?"
That's a weird question for Jimmy Halstrom to ask me. He's only 13 years old and he looks like a 9 year old. But I answer, because it seems important somehow.
"I guess, 2 weeks ago."
Jimmy writes feverishly in his notebook, which is strange, because Jimmy was dislexic, never was good with words or numbers. His face is hidden in the notebook, and I can only see the handles of his glasses behind his ears now. When he looks up, the doctor asks another question, the smell of hospital disinfectant suddenly strong in my nostrils.
"When did the disassociations begin?"
That was a big word - a bit too big doc, didn't catch that one. But I give it the old yeoman's try and heft my glove into the air, but the ball passes way over my head, landing in the far left field. I hate fucking baseball, but my father still made me play. He stood at third base and yelled into the outfield, STOP THE BALL.
I ran after that ball but it did that thing that happens in dreams sometimes and just kept going and going and going, and I couldn't catch it. My dad yelled from the infield.
"Mr. Michaels, please, when did the hallucinations start?"
I am chasing this fucking ball, i can't get my hands around it, it just keeps slipping away, right out of reach. I yell after it in frustration, "five days ago! Stop rolling!"
It stops and I walk over through the grass to pick it up, the tall grass, it gets taller every step I take and the ball is hidden inside it. I take a flash light out of my pocket, a big flashlight, and aim it into the grass. It doesn't work, nothing. I hit it a few times, "fucking thing," and then turn it towards my face. It turns on and burns my eyes, and then the light passes and its that nurse again, real close to my face. Her lips are moving. Who knows what she could be saying?
The wall behind her in the hospital room is filled with graffitti, the words keep changing and morphing, spraying out in an unbroken colorful line. I read each word as it comes:
Mr. Michaels, we are going to sedate you, do you understand?
I try to say yes. I really do, I even draw it on the wall. The can of paint is in my hand, back on 121st street and 2nd avenue, the cops are coming, fuck. I run and run and run and fall into that loose sewer grate. It's so dark down here. So dark. Maybe I can finally get some sleep.
