Infinite Jim (First Pages)

SERLING MEMORIAL

The TV on the wall droned on, and Jim faded out.

He was good at fading out, always had been, even when he wasn’t so close to dying. Fading out was a clean relief from the mustard yellow walls of the hospital room, a break from the clickety-clack curtain on ceiling tracks that the doctor pulled for privacy when it was time to lob another diagnostic bomb.

Jim had been blown to bits by all the bombs.

There wasn’t much left of him. First the firecracker—a small pop—he was HIV plus. Then dynamite, he had hepatitis. Then the Nuclear Bomb, millions of creepy things had invaded his weakened, immune-less body and he was going to die pretty soon, quite probably very.

And each time a new explosive was chucked at him, Jim noticed his Doctor, Dr. Snow, stood further away from his bedside. Eventually the small, olive-skinned, balding Doc seemed to just glance around the curtain, mumbling bad news at Jim and rushing off.

Okay then, thanks for the fuckin’ update, Doc, Jim would say, but just in his mind. What was the point of telling him anything, anymore?

Jim knew what was coming.

He faded back in. He was lying on his side. The curtain was open. His roommate’s side was empty. Jim stared over at the vacated bed. Dead? Was his name Tony? Car wreck? Then pneumonia? Poor dude. Car wreck pneumonia sounded right, but he wasn’t sure.

Jim also faced the hall where the nurses swished on by. Beyond the frame of the door, ten feet away, the world was too blurred to make out. It was like he needed major thick specs, and all his life he had perfect 20/20. Maybe, he admitted, his eyes were just finally giving it up.

At first, a few days before, he’d noticed the nurse’s station had become a bit darker, like it was on emergency power. A day later, by the evening, the entire unit of phone books, file cabinets and chatting nurses—the very edge of his world for a month—had been eaten up by a dull gray fuzz. He could barely see movement out there. He did still hear their voices out there, quite clearly. Even laughter from time to time. And all the paging and phones. What else was out there?

Mister Death is out there now, Jim was sure. Waiting patiently. That’s why he couldn’t see beyond the room . . .  This thought brought no panic in him, and he was worried about that, for it really should have.

Someone came through the fuzzy gateway of the room. The good nurse, Latika? She was tall and black, in bright whites. She came to his bedside, put her hand gently on his shoulder, and rolled him over from his side onto his back.

“There we go . . .” she said.

Jim greeted the white pressboard tiles of the ceiling. And here we are, he said inside. He knew the tiles quite well, their relief bumps, usually trippy with the painkillers, but now, strangely . . . flat white just like a new snow.

Shit, he thought, close-up vision’s going, too.

“Sorry I didn’t come by sooner to change the view for you,” she said.

And suddenly Latika surged into clear focus between Jim and the tiles. And she was smiling, a true grin on a wide, dark face. Her eyes were heavy with resignation, though. He realized he had been seeing it on people for a few weeks now . . . the look said oh so sad he’s gonna die.

Jim couldn’t speak back at the moment. Not a peep. He tried to joke “The view still sucks, thanks anyway,” but he felt like something deep inside him had been unplugged.

The TV news babbled away, leaking cranky tones around the room. It went from unnoticed on his part to really really annoying him. Jim suddenly wanted like anything to tell Latika to shut it off, toss the fucking thing out the window, and then they’d listen to its wonderful crash! on the loading dock below.

Instead, Latika gently lifted his frail, skeletal neck and stuck a pillow behind his bony head so he could get a good view.

Damp black hair fell across his face. She brushed it to the side. “You have such wonderful baby brows, James.” She said this like she felt she was never going to see them again ever. He felt sorry for her and not for him about that.

About the eyes, he’d heard this before from people. Girls. They liked it on him. Big brown eyes on a square-ish face. Like the face of an Irish gangster, he always felt, with his kind-of-flat nose. Which was just fine. He had curly black hair, long and big on his head. When he was well, he was actually okay looking.

But not now.

Latika left back for the gray world beyond.

Jim moved his two-ton hand with all his strength to the TV clicker box hanging on the bed rail nine inches away. He missed. His meager arm fell short and rested softly on the blanket, releasing the trapped smell of bleach from the cloth.

So he just watched the blurry CNN. More mayhem out there in the world, he was sure. But really he had no idea what was going on in the world. Why, my goodness, he thought, there were so many things he was missing while he was dying . . . Jim grinned to himself.

Who the fuck cared.

But . . .

Suddenly something very clear materialized on the screen.

It was the face of a tan, moon-faced man, with long black hair framing his head. The guy’s voice came booming at Jim like someone was turning up the volume with each word.

“Well hey there . . . I was wondering how long it would take you to come around!”

Jim was pretty sure the guy was an American Indian. It was probably some kind of commercial about how everybody needed to stop trashing the Earth. Come around, you white idiots!

Then, the guy looked down out of the TV right into Jim’s eyes, and nodded at him.

!

“Uhhh,” Jim grunted.

“Poor Jim,” the guy said. “They’re sure good back there at keeping the dead alive longer than they should.”

Now, panic.

Jim lost all his weak breath. “Uhhhh uhhh!” he let out. Drool spilled down his stubbly chin and over his gown.

“Anyway,” the guy continued. “Not for much longer.”

The screen flickered like a candle in a door’s draft. Then, the TV completely disappeared from the wall. Then the whole rest of the room—yellow walls, clackity curtain on a track, gray fuzz of the hallway beyond—faded to a dull white.

And then the American Indian guy appeared over him, the flat white ceiling above him. He smelled like wood smoke. The guy grinned wide, seemed really happy. Jim closed his eyes, tightly, for a long minute, hoping the hallucination would stop, and the world would come back, even as worn-out and shitty as it was . . .

When Jim finally opened his eyes, the guy was still looking down at him, but above him was a deep blue sky.