The sound of footsteps on the ceramic floor awoke me. They grew louder as they progressed down the hall to my room. I sat up in my bed trying to adjust my eyes to the dark as my bedroom door opened and produced a large, shadowy figure. It moved closer to my bed and stood for, what I imagined to be, minutes. A bright light flooded my sight, leaving my vision blotchy after it disappeared. As my eyes slowly adjusted, the figure revealed his face by way of flashlight. His large, deep set, brown eyes stared at me. I could almost hear the air recycling through his husky yet flat nose, making him appear tribal.
“Room checks,” he said reassuringly, turning off his flashlight and leaving the room.
I had seen this man before and knew him as Old Africa. This was the nickname the fore-patients of my psychiatric unit had given him years before and also rumored him of belonging to the refugee group “The Lost Boys” from Darfur.
I lay back in my bed, releasing a tired sigh. My body ached and my anxious blood rushed through my body, producing the most unpleasant taste in my mouth. I couldn’t fall back asleep. Eyes wide open, I sat and recalled the events that had left me here, again, at Proctor I; the inpatient detoxification unit in the historical McLean Hospital, of Belmont, Massachusetts.
Almost a year prior, I had started living a toxic lifestyle of drug experimentation. At the time, I was selling Acuras for a dealership on the Charles River.
I began slowly, sometimes accepting crushed up lines of Oxycontin co-workers would offer me, a medication often prescribed for severe pain. I didn’t see any harm in it, life was good. I had a beautiful girlfriend, Rebecca, I rented a gorgeous house in Somerville and, to boot, the money was great.
I began using more and more Oxycontin. The drugs were interfering with my work, which caused stress, and the stress led me to a progressive pattern of drug use.
After months passed and thousands of dollars spent on drugs, my work performance was what some would call non-existent. The dealership let me go and, as for myself, I did the same.
It should now be said that I had two current relationships in my life, one with the sweet Rebecca Patterson and one with my parasitic chemical romance. When push came to shove, I invariably chose the latter. I was out, either copping drugs or lying in bed, high, with not a care in the world. Well, eventually, Rebecca was tired of dealing with me and didn’t think twice before leaving. Not necessarily because her knowing about the drugs I was using but my unreliability and erratic behavior.
My bank account was empty, credit cards maxed and I had lost my job and Rebecca. I was not using drugs for the high anymore, but to prevent the astonishingly painful withdrawals.
At eighty bucks a pop, I could no longer afford Oxycontin. I called my drug dealer in hopes he would cut me a deal. After pleading with him on the phone, he went on to say that I couldn’t be his customer anymore; I had just become too needy and asked for too many deals. He referred me to his cousin, who was in the same business of selling drugs, but of a different, cheaper variety.
That day, I injected Heroin for the first time. It felt like nothing I had ever experienced, a universal truth… transferred by intravenous curiosity.
At that moment, I had taken my chemical romance to a place that I would not come back from for a very long time.

As I felt my self drifting back asleep, the hallway delivered tones of dissonance, proving not to be the sounds of footsteps this time, but, something different. I lifted my head off the pillow and could smell the strong antiseptic vapors wafting off of it as I sat perfectly still, listening. I could hear the ghostly echoes of a person weeping.
I tiptoed to the door, trying to not wake the other patients in my room. Sticking my head out the door, the weeping became clearer. Its sweeping melodies sounded promisingly like a woman.
I walked down the dark cold halls of Proctor I, following the noise. I stepped through the double doors into the woman’s side of the unit after looking both ways for Old Africa. Light leaked out of one of the single rooms, one usually provided for patients with special needs.
Costively, I placed my ear on the thick wood of the door, leaving no question in my mind as to where the crying was coming from.
My body was achy and I felt weak. Suddenly I lost my balance and fell against the door, opening it and exposing the room, bare of any furnishing except for an electronic bed. The floor was made of old, mundane colored vinyl tiles.
On it, sat Bridget Gilmore, a middle aged lady that appeared to be much older from the lines running through her face that told stories of too much life in too little time. I knew her from the unit’s group therapy and from what I had gathered of her, besides her name, she was a well to do woman that had become an alcoholic during what she called a mid life crises, right after her twelve year old son had been killed. Hit by a car, riding his bike.
Legs pulled to her chest, sitting, she was wearing a pair of faded hospital scrubs. She stared up at me with wonder as I stood nervously at her door.
“Oh, Mrs. Gilmore, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to...”
“Asher, right?” she asked, drying her tears and pushing aside her long, tangled hair with her bony, wrinkled hands.
“Yeah… Yeah, that’s right,” I replied
She smiled and looked down, her gray locks falling back in front of her eyes.
“I never forget a biblical name,” she said before peering back up at me and adding, “It was said in the Old Testament, Asher, was one of the twelve sons of Jacob. It means ‘blessing’ in Hebrew you know.”
I blushed.
“That’s right Mrs. Gilmore,” I agreed.
“Please call me Bridget,” she said stiffly.
I looked around the empty room, with a puzzled look on my face.
“They took away my furniture because the nurse thinks I want to kill myself,” she laughed to herself.
I gave a nervous laugh as I looked out into the hallway, keeping a watch for Old Africa.
“Well, I should get back to my room.” I was stepping out, starting to close the door when she called out.
“Wait!”
I paused and consentingly lifted my eyebrows in her direction.
“Come in, sit down, I need to show you something,” she said softly.
I cautiously walked into her room and sat on her bed, folding my hands on my lap.
She reached down to her foot and removed her slipper, which was embroidered with red roses. From it she pulled out a crumpled photograph and handed it to me. I carefully observed the portrait of a young blond boy with a robust smile, a baseball bat slung over his shoulder.
“You know, I used to have a son. That’s him,” she said, releasing her legs to lay flat on the floor before adding, “He looked just like you.” She closed her eyes and slowly tilted her head up.
“Oh, such a handsome boy he was.” She opened her bloodshot eyes and I could see the saline that had collected. Gradually more tears leaked from her eyes until altogether she had her face in her palms, sobbing.
I kneeled down in front of her, placing my hand on her shoulder.
“Bridget, I’m so sorry,” I said trying to sound genuine.
Watching Bridget cry made me feel as though someone were squeezing my heart with a vice. She continued crying as I comforted her.
“Hold on. Wait right here,” I said as I slipped out of her room, back into the halls of Proctor I.
Returning to my bedroom, I reached under my bed and pulled out my acoustic guitar that the unit’s head nurse finally allowed me to keep after extensive pleading.
Quietly heading back to Bridget’s room, I poked my head into the window of the nurse’s station. Old Africa was snoring heavily on the couch while the television played silently in the room.
Bridget gave a wide smile as she saw me enter her room with my guitar.
The guitar was passed down to me. It had once belonged to my father while he was serving in Zahal, the Israeli Defense Force, during the Six Day War. Cracks ran down the body and it was the color of a well oiled baseball mitt. Besides that, the neck was in very good condition and the intonation was perfect.
“Here, lay down, I want to play you something,” I said while pointing my chin at the electronic, hospital issue bed in the corner of her room. She obliged. Her legs shook as they supported her body to the bed. Lying down, she turned her head looking out the window, through the old metal grating guarding it.
I sat down on the floor cross legged, next to the Bible she had been reading from. It was open to the book of Exodus, in which the Jews, after recently escaping a life of slavery in Egypt, wandered the Negev desert for forty years, in search of god and the Promised Land, Israel.
I quietly started to play “Fire and Rain” by James Taylor. Hearing the intro, Bridget closed her eyes, and her mouth slowly curled at each end. As I softly cooed the lyrics, her mouth moved as though she were singing along.

“Ooh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you again

Been walking my mind to an easy time
my back turned towards the sun
Lord knows when the cold wind blows
it’ll turn your head around
Well, there’s hours of time
on the telephone line to talk about things to come
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground”

“Oh Asher, that was beautiful, you truly are a blessing,” she said, remaining perfectly still.
I could tell she was starting to fall asleep. I quietly stood and started walking for the door, which, at that moment, Old Africa walked through, with a bewildered look on his face.
“What are you doing in here?” he said in his thick African tongue, eyeing my guitar.
“Give me that!” he demanded as he pulled it right from my hands.
“I could lose my job over this! You will speak with Mrs. Richards about this tomorrow!” he reprimanded while watching me suspiciously as I left the room.
As I walked down to my room, I could hear him baby her.
“Okay, now get some rest Mrs. Gilmore.”
I knew Mrs. Richards to be the units head nurse, a very strict lady with very little, if any, tolerance for insubordination.
I crawled into my bed and pulled the sheets up to my chest. I thought about singing for Bridget, and seeing how happy it made her. I think I may have even actually felt better myself. I smiled contently as I fell asleep.

The sun had just begun to rise as a blood curdling scream rang through the unit. My eyes shot open and I jumped from my bed, running out to the hall. The other patients in my unit were already peering around their doorjambs, down the hall at Mrs. Richards who stood before Bridget’s room.
She turned her head down the hall as if to acknowledge how loud she had screamed. Noticing the spectacle she had caused, she now stood tall and spoke sharply.
“Everyone in your room! Now!”
I returned to my room, not wanting to further the trouble I was already in.
Greeted by my roommates, they asked me what had happened.
“I dunno,” I said almost coyly, with a shrug of my shoulders.
I sat by my window and watched the sun rise through the metal gate. I was being honest, I didn’t know what had happened, although as I sat, my brain wouldn’t stop racing through the worst case scenarios.
After a few minutes had passed, I saw from my window, an ambulance approach my unit, speeding steadily across the fall colored campus. It pulled directly in front. EMTs rushed out of the van and into the building.
Watching the van as though a ticking bomb were inside, it felt like hours before anyone came back out of the building. Eventually the EMTs appeared, rolling a stretcher with a body on top. The body was covered head to toe by a white sheet except for one section at the end, where a foot, covered by a slipper, stuck out, displaying one, embroidered rose.
I gasped, covering my mouth. At that same moment a knock sounded at my door. Looking around, all my roommates had fallen back asleep. I walked over and opened it. ` Standing in front of me was one of the Residential Advisors, a young girl pursuing an internship through Boston University.
“Mrs. Richards needs to see you immediately,” she said in a self sufficient tone.
I followed her down to the Nurse’s station that was attached to Mrs. Richards’ office. The RA knocked on her door.
“Come in,” I could hear Mrs. Richards’ voice shout through the door.
The RA opened it, signaling me to enter. As the room consumed me, I first noticed Old Africa sitting in the corner, his sleep deprived eyes staring blankly into space.
I turned my attention to Mrs. Richards, sitting at her desk, on the phone, with a confused look on her face.
“She had no emergency contact? What about family?” She bit her bottom lip before responding, “None listed?” Looking up at me, she spoke into the receiver. “Okay, listen, something just came up, I’ll call you back.”
She hung up the head set and looked up at me curiously.
Mrs. Richards was squirrelly, with brown curly hair and a high jaw line. She also wore funky colored, plastic rimmed glasses, probably picked out on the rack of reading frames at her local drug store.
“Please, sit down Asher,” she said, motioning to the open chair across from her.
I obliged. After watching me carefully she took a deep breath and started to speak.
“So, it would seem that we had a little incident last night.”
“Mrs. Richards I didn’t mean…”
“Don’t worry you’re not in trouble. Unfortunately, Mrs. Gilmore, the lady you were serenading, passed in her sleep last night,” she said before adding as if she had almost forgotten, “of inconclusive reasons.”
“I don’t know anyth…”
“How do you feel, are the medications helping you?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Yes, thanks for asking,” I said quietly, not sure if she were luring me into some sort of trap. I looked down at my feet.
We sat in silence as Mrs. Richards continued to look me over, as if trying to unravel a deeply riddled philosophy.
“Anyway, it seems as though Mrs. Gilmore left a note,” she said while opening a folder on her desk and lifting a folded piece of paper, waving it in the air as she spoke.
“Now, normally these things are confidential, but the second half seems to be written… to you.”
I looked up from my feet and felt my head spin.
“Me?” I asked
“That’s what is says.”
Without hesitation, Mrs. Richards walked around from her desk and handed me the letter.
“Here you go, now get some rest sweetie, you look awful.”
I stuck the letter in my pocket and returned to my room. Stepping back through the door I felt as though the past night had been a surreal dream. I sighed, sitting quietly, not wanting to wake the sleeping patients. I stuck my hand in my pocket, and pulled out Mrs. Gilmore’s letter. As I did so, the crumpled photograph of her son came out with it and fell to the floor. I hadn’t even realized, until now, that I had never returned it. I picked it up off the floor and placed it next to me on the bed.
I unfolded the letter, and read.
Asher,
When Jacob, son of Isaac, was lying on his death bed, he blessed each one of his twelve sons, and Asher’s went as such.
“From Asher shall come the richest foods; he shall provide the king's delights”
Genesis 49:20
I always knew I would see you again.

Impressum

Texte: All text and image cover by A.E Michael and is had copyright ownership.
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 29.03.2010

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Widmung:
To Darby. Who gave his life and memory to this story.