with Real Strawberries
A short story
My EKG is incessant.
Echoes of a living drum; it sounds off, haunting the background in ill effect, fighting the natural silence of the room, and the worst part? Sheets rank smell of my pee. I won't be around to enjoy that quiet when it comes, but at least I'll leave behind something hard to clean.
And they should clean it. Should have to deal with it. My last request is at this low of a resolution? The doctor says that when you die, most people's bowels are evacuated— you mess yourself. Your body, as it shuts down with muscles clenching and everything tightening in rigor mortis, and there simply is no room for whatever you ate, whatever you were digesting before God called you back to His country. Under hospital light, Johnny probably wouldn’t catch much of a shadow, but the fact it’s missing is distracting. You betcha I ate every morsel of that rubber oatmeal this morning. This kind of service? Yeah, I'll tax them in poop.
A rotating fan bolted to the upper corner wall waves left to right. Its yellow-beige plastic shell is covered in decades of dust.
An extra pillow helps me none. I am far from comfortable. In this dirty hospital bed, sour in sulfur scent and the sheets are still crisp as a chip. My feet are cold too. Or dead. Can your feet die before your head? Never liked them anyway, too big for a lady, one with class anyways.
Ahead of me, smiling like the babe he is, my adult son stands. Johnny's hair isn’t long anymore, his sharp ears out for the world to see and he's almost presentable in a polo shirt, white as his skin. His hands, usually fiddling, are still, and you betcha when I hear that EKG flatten I'll start pushing— to be sure. Next to him a woman, blonde, modest, blue eyes with fear of God in them. She’s every woman from a Sears catalog but with more clothes on. Remember those? Perfect.
They are waiting for me to start instead of finish.
Might as well.
I reach across the bedside-thing, the IV is leashes of fine rubber tubing needled into my bruised purple flesh, pumping saline into me; always, and I grab the plastic sippy cup full of too sweet apple juice. Funny, that a sippy cup bookends my life. I sip, wetting my tongue for this final performance.
"I knew you wasn't gay," I motion to the blonde beside my perfect Johnny with my cup.
Johnny smiles, snaps into action. Hands on his hips.
"Of course not Mom," and his right hand falls to hold the woman’s tender, gold ringed hand in his own.
"That was a mistake, Mom, Manuel burned and died in a horrible fire, like you said he should, and Melissa and I immediately married so you'll have grandkids and we'll name them after you."
I tell him how relieved I am, that the last thing his doting mother wants is to die going to heaven knowing her son will never join her there.
Hell is eternal, you know?
Leaning in, Melissa flutters her diet Pepsi blue eyes.
“Did they give you Kellogg’s this morning?"
"No." How am I to know?
"Mom, you know I would not miss this. I'm sorry I called you racist," and he squeezes Melissa's dainty hand.
The apple juice is warm, tastes like too much sugar because it is. My tongue is staying dry.
"I know, sweetheart, thank you," without my dentures, I know I sound ridiculous.
Gracefully, Johnny's eyes brighten, his smile widens.
"It's like you said, it's not racist if it's true."
The EKG misses a beat.
"Said it all my life."
"Did you know Kellogg’s branded cereal contains your daily needs of iron, niacin, and fiber?" wife to my son asks.
I tell it the last thing I want is fiber with pain in my bowels. It has been hard work, but I've been holding it in all day.
The nurses know or are hoping it happens today. Three weeks in this cursed hospital and the door to my room has been open wide as my study bible. Except for today. You live this long and you've been standing where my son and daughter-in-law are now plenty of times. You walk down a hospital's hallway and you see doctors dart in and out of each room; a shut door is an impediment to care. Closed means family, privacy. Closed means care is not a thing to be further worried about. Whatever. Good. I don't like them and they don't like me. Thank the Lord and Savior I've got nothing for them to steal in this closure.
"I didn't mean all of those other things," my precious Johnny says. No one smiles like my Johnny. "You were the best mom, I love and respect you, I was just jealous of how pious and pure you lived."
I correct him— I still am— and I fart.
The EKG stumbles.
"Your gorgeous brown eyes are like Kellogg’s brand Cornflakes floating in milk, mother-in-law.”
"What's wrong with Melissa?" I'm patting around my bed, hunting for the button to call a nurse.
"Nothing, isn't she perfect? She's exactly as you chose for me!" I hate it when Johnny's brow furrows; it makes him look like his father.
"I'm as American as Eggos and as moral as Quaker Oats for Kids!"
Melisa is facing me, but she isn't looking at me and her long skirt stays flat despite the rotating fan behind her. Thank the goodness of Christ her shoulders are covered, but it's with one of those gross French sweaters. I try to look at the positive, always have, Lord knows it; at least it means that this Johnny has the money to travel.
"Paris for your honeymoon?"
"You are such an observant mother, that's a trait of yours that I'm proud of. I got a Job in finance and gave up music like you said I should."
"Rap isn't music, it's thug noise and it's ugly."
"You are correct, as always, Mom. I love you."
"You have great taste, almost as good as Special K. Now that's how you feed a family!"
eek, goes the EKG, eek eek eek. It's picked up in pace. I reach down the side of my bed, feel the cold steel frame but the button alludes me, still.
"The fuck is wrong with Melisa?" I've never cursed in my life. I promise.
"Don't you like her? For another token you can—”
“Always after my money!" eek "I wanna speak to a manager!"
Johnny's furrow sloughs to pristine and placid. Melisa's the same but Johnny says:
"Welcome to Customer Service, please state your concerns clearly.”
The fan waves back, not a hair or cloth from the standing two moves but I feel the artificial wind through them.
"The fuck's wrong with Melissa?" I'm hitting the side of the bed as fast as the EKG beats.
"You have purchased the basic package for the Surrounded by Your Family One Last Time brainchip simulation," my boy, still as a cardboard cutout says through marionetted mouth, "for an ad-free experience, please purchase the premium package."
eek... eeek… eek...
By the glorious grace of God I find the button and I'm strangling it.
The doctors told me that the colon is as tall as me at five foot. A seprintine pipe coiled within me sucking out what little nutrients my stomach neglected to and greedy for it and it turns to poop. Mine's been shortened to three feet. I’m clenching my anus tighter than I'm choking the button.
They told me to stay away from nitrates, too.
Guess why it came back?
In this not-silence, I feel weak. I'm alone with my heart loud as regret. Ticking clock tocks slower as its battery drains. And my baby boy is an illusion.
All I can do is hold shit back.
My eyes dry as my tongue.
ek… eeeek… eeeeek...
Three knocks and the door opens. The nurse walks right through my Johnny, and asks what I want. Blunt. Like I'm wasting her precious time.
"Have you heard from my son?" Legs tense. Bowels in agony. "Is he coming?"
“A Family Size of Frosted Mini Wheats feeds four, or just one!" Melisa sells.
M.P. Fitzgerald writes darkly humorous sci-fi for dream criminals. This story took craft and time to write for you:
this made me remember my ex's horrible horrible bitter twisted mother dying in a hospice. christ she was awful to her daughter and i dont know how she grew up only half damaged.
really clever twist. rubbing salt into the wounds of the rejected bitter old dying racist. you want to feel empathy... you feel you should...but then you painted her so well you just couldn't like her.
great work my friend!
This was a really good story. Appreciate the social critique and also humanizing effect of the use of the story world/advertisement. I like how the story world becomes inflected at the end … makes you sad for the prison she is in ….