Miracle
Issue 7 loosed fire hose, spurting tears everywhere in a desperate attempt to douse an intangible inferno. Truly, there is no consoling the woman. The nurses have tried, even the doctors. All that resulted was spilt coffee, toppled chairs, torn magazines, scattered visitors, discarded forms... Security had finally been summoned. Yet, the cleaning lady hopes that the man will succeed in calming the woman before security arrives. There’s no need to add humiliation to the day. The cleaning lady stoops. She collects the scattered forms, the forms that had detonated all the hysterics. Heartless system. Couldn’t they hold off the forms for a day or two? Nah, guess not. The body needs burial; the hospital needs the room back. She straightens the files in her hands. The top form lists the daughter’s age—twenty-seven. Poor kid. Nice, old Celtic name. Gwendolyn. Sometimes, Gwen wonders if she is a ghost. The lemon man runs on the treadmill behind her. And though she’s immediately in front of him, his head looms far above hers. She can see his beautiful face, so perfect, superhero chiseled. But he looks straight ahead, at his own image—not hers, never hers. Is she a ghost? Sometimes Gwen wonders if she is, in fact, a ghost. She often discovers herself at her destination without remembering having traveled there. So, could it be that she maybe might have crashed? Could she only be an awareness, having reached a destination without actually progressing there? And wouldn’t that mean that everything is fake? Her location? Her state of being? Might she be little more than a dream? Because, how can you reach anything without having first traveled to it? Now. She tries now to remember the trip to the gym. But, honestly, she can’t. All she can remember is the intersection: Wilshire and Westwood. There’s always a hub of activity there because people are anxious to either enter or exit the 405 Freeway. There, people rush to their tall-building office jobs or to their classes or to their shopping sprees. Ants, busy over nothing. Gwen always has trouble zigzagging through that intersection. Maybe that’s where it happened: her crash. And unaware of her death, she can now only wonder how she has gotten here. Is she here now, physically on the treadmill? Or, is it her ghost? That would explain why the lemon man can’t see her. Because, she simply can’t remember how she got here! Is she a ghost? The pen is hard. The pen is too thin. It is too hard. It hurts her hand. And when she tries to sign the release form, well, the pen’s just too
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