Mephibosheth
a short story by Andrew Kooman
Copyright © 2010 by Andrew Kooman
All rights reserved.
Smashwords Edition 1.0, July 2010
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Mephibosheth
This was a suicide note, but then I remembered crying. It was a true story. I thought the little actress was the little girl. I cried because the doctor said she would get better, because she was about the same age as me. It was probably the first made-for-TV movie I ever watched. She had a strange disease. No one knew what it was. It was the mid-seventies, so television writers could pass off the disease as some mysterious condition that science couldn’t explain, in the days before kids had HIV, or Tay-Sachs. Then, kids were scared by kids coughing up blood, even if the blood only showed up in black-and-white. I remember coughing a few days later before going to bed. My mom turned my hand over and looked at my palm. She didn’t say anything, just turned the palm over slowly, eyes wide, to check for spots of black-and-white blood.
You want your own tragedy to have its own TV movie, because you want proof it’s sad enough. You want to know who’s gonna cry. My movie plays in my mind on a loop, the same images all over again. I can remember what I ate for breakfast that morning, and what I ate for breakfast the morning after. But somehow in the midst of bursting glass and police sirens I’ve forgotten the details in between. Wheaties with brown sugar and a hot-cross bun. Who was the first athlete to be featured on a Wheaties box? Then sugar water in a bag.
I stepped outside of time that morning before the accident, stepped outside the continuum of my life. I was at the breakfast table and sensed the world had changed. Time had stopped but I had not. Everything around me was frozen. The curtains slowly breezing. The neighbor outside trimming the hedge. The morning radio newscast. Only I moved, I alone, when everything else was motionless. I picture myself there now, at that table, spoon in hand, can smell the scent of pine cones and grass in the air. That’s the last memory as my former self. One quiet moment I spent unmarked by time, sitting at the table eating cereal.
After breakfast I pulled out of the driveway, maybe a little carelessly. I was late for work and then it was tires squealing, broken glass, and complete silence.
I can remember now the moment of decision, of entering my body for the first time. How I was above myself lying on the gurney. You see yourself but you are a stranger to yourself. Not bound by the law of gravity. At that point free to observe the tubes pump fluids in. Free to watch what tubes the fluid comes out. It is weightlessness. You don’t need to breathe because breath suspends you. You are outside, unhomed. You’re a spectator. You hover. You’re unmade. You aren’t defined because in that moment you aren’t contained.
Slowly I became aware that the man I watched was me. Time was still again. Only I moved in the blur of stilled motion. I see myself lying there. Blood covering my hands. Nothing in the room is moving. The hospital staff. The ceiling fan. The graph on the heart rate monitor. I close my eyes and imagine blue-white sky. I hear my name called and turn toward the voice.