Lifeline
Dear Diary,
My life couldn’t be more complete right now. Micah has been a bright bulb at the center
of my life for nearly a year. This is the longest relationship I have ever had and enjoyed so
much I didn’t want it to end. My mother thinks he will marry me, but I just laugh at her silly
wishes. I love his eyelashes. They are thick and long for a man’s. Once when he was over
watching a movie and in a mood to let me do anything, he let me put mascara on them. They
made his eyes look so fine that I begged to do it again. I remember sitting in his lap that
night, my legs dangling over the arm of the chair, and softly tickling the short, soft, dark hairs
on the back of his neck. “So you’re hinting I need a haircut, I see.” “Of course not! I’m trying
to send tingles all the way up and down your back with the touch of one finger! Is it working?”
I knew it was, but I asked anyway. He agreed that it was working.
Last week when we were at the supermarket, the little girl in front of us was over a
dollar short on a handful of candy she’d tediously selected. Micah didn’t hesitate to cover the
difference. What a kind man. How could I be so lucky? At times I think I’m too lucky, but then
he reminds me softly that he’s the lucky one.
He’s so cute when he’s frustrated. He gets quiet and grumbles under his breath as his
eyebrows begin to delicately knit together. His garbage disposal in his new apartment wasn’t
working and he’d decided that he was an expert on fixing the simple mechanism. As soon as he
had it apart he realized he wasn’t and blamed his inadequacies on the disposal.
Always, Jeena
My arms wrapped around his broad shoulders as I stood on my tip-toes for a hug and a
kiss goodbye. I could feel his papas on my cheek as my head moved to rest on his shoulder. He
was so warm. I could feel his warmth right through my fluffy feather-down jacket. I closed my
eyes. I felt so safe in his arms. I felt his grasp loosen, a hint that he was prepared to let me go
back to the world. I squeezed tightly just one last time to save up until I would see him
tomorrow.
His arms slid down mine until we were holding hands and locking eyes. “Goodbye,
Micah. See you tomorrow night,” I said, a smile thick on my face, mirrored on his face.
“I love you, Jeena.” His fingertips stretched to hold mine as I pulled away and stepped out
the door as was our goodbye ritual.
“I love you, too!” I mouthed to him from the stairs. His intense blue eyes held me as I
went down the dirt-caked carpeting of the stairs to the lobby with the broken front door. I had
already learned the trick to keeping it closed even though he’d only lived there a short time.
I caressed my brand new cell phone in my coat pocket. It was worth the money I’d saved
to get it. “Now I wouldn’t have to worry about missing calls and my mom wouldn’t have an
excuse not to call me. And better yet, I’d be able to call Micah from almost anywhere,” I
thought, as I turned to walk down the sidewalk back to my apartment --a mere ten blocks away.
I was a real sucker this morning when I picked my phone up. The salesperson didn’t have
any trouble getting me to buy the leather phone case and car adapter. I wanted it all. It was one
of the few things I had decided to splurge on with my cookie jar money. Okay, so it wasn’t a real
cookie jar. It was actually a giant ceramic dog biscuit jar shaped like a fat dog biscuit standing on
end. I had talked Grandma into buying it for me at a rummage sale when Lulu was a puppy and I
was a second grade brat.
When I first moved away from home I had used it for Oreos, but then I went up two sizes
in jeans. My New Year’s resolution had been to keep it empty, so what better way to keep it
empty than use it for a bank? I started putting my tip money in it and by February I’d determined
that I would use the money to buy a cell phone and a year of pre-paid service when I had enough.
Then my car broke down. Stupid fuel pump. It took a good bite out of my cookies.
Finally I’d had enough money to get my cell phone now. After I bought my phone, the first thing
I could think to do was go right over to Micah’s and tell him my new number. I wrote my
number down on a deposit slip for him before I arrived at his door. He was about the only thing
I’d thought about since last Christmas when I’d met him at a friend’s Christmas party.
The crosswalk blinked not to walk. “What if I run?” I chuckled. Five more blocks. The
crosswalk at the stoplight was half way between my place and Micah’s. We’d been seeing each
other almost a year when he suggested moving downtown so we could be closer. I’d never really
minded the drive to the outskirts of the suburb, though. It gave me an excuse to stay over at his
place when I was too tired to drive home.
Five blocks away from him and I already missed him. When he kissed me at the door,
shortly after I’d arrived, I’d secured my fingers in his front pockets. He loved it when I did that.
Then when he’d stepped back from the kiss, I’d slid my hands into his back pockets and deposited
my phone number. I’d debated not telling him it was there, to see if he’d call it, but then my
better judgment told me he’d probably wash his jeans without seeing it. I’d placed it in his back
right pocket.
He was wearing “Woods” again. Mmmmm . . . he smelled so good! That had taken a bite
out of my cookies for his birthday in March, but those cookies were well spent. The scent
lingered in my jacket, his sweet residue.
The warm steam from the dry cleaners on the corner clouded the cold November air. Two
more blocks and I’d be home. My fingers hugged the warm charged battery of my cell phone in
my pocket and my nose dripped spitefully. For some reason, I was aware of the noise the cars
were making today and I was frustrated with their rude interruption of my pleasant thoughts. I
could hear an ambulance in the distance. It moved toward me with urgent speed. I blinked and it
was gone: out of sight, out of mind. Then, just as it went over the hill that I’d just come over, the
siren stopped abruptly as it reached its destination. There were so many elderly people in our
neighborhood it seemed there was always somebody having a heart attack or breaking a hip. I
stepped inside my apartment complex and reveled in the heat the entrance heaters threw at me. I
opened my tiny mailbox and peeked in at the electric bill I’d left there for two weeks. It was
against the cookie jar rules to use cookies for bills. My last paycheck had gone almost completely
to Visa, so the electricity would have to wait until next Friday.
I took my jacket off and held it to my nose for one last whiff of Micah before hanging it
up. I plugged in my space heater, snuggled into my well-broken-in couch with a blanket and
flipped on the TV. Two-forty-six: an hour to watch TV before I head to work from four to
midnight. Oprah was just making her final comments at the end of yet another re-run. I started
channel surfing and became engaged in “The Butterflies of South America” on the Nature channel
when my cell phone ringing snapped me out of my television trance. I rushed to answer my first
call, throwing off my blanket and promptly tripping on the space heater that I’d forgotten I’d
plugged in. It had to be Micah. I hadn’t given my number to anyone else yet.
“Hello?” I pulled out the little antennae.
“Jeena McAmpton?” It was a woman’s voice.
“Yes?”
“This is Metro Area Hospital calling and we have Micah Jesson here. Can you come
down to emergency as soon as possible? One of the doctors found your number in his pocket and
when we asked him about it he said we should call you. He also mentioned something about you
having O- blood if he needed a transfusion. Is that correct?”
It took a moment for all of this to sink in. A little over an hour ago I had kissed him
goodbye. I had hugged him. He was home. Safe.
“Jeena?”
“Yes, yes. I have O-.” I contemplated the depth of what the woman had said. “Will he
need a transfusion? Is he hurt bad?”
“We haven’t confirmed that he’ll need a transfusion, but with the nature of his injuries he
probably will. I’ll tell you more when you arrive. Come to the ER registration window. Thanks,
Jeena.”
I pressed “End” on my cell phone. I left the television on just in case I woke up later to
find I’d been dreaming. He was alive and well in my hands almost an hour ago. I didn’t want to
believe any of this nonsense, but it couldn’t be ignored. I hopped in my car and I was elated that
it started on only the second try. My mind raced as I merged into traffic on the four lane that led
to the hospital.
Parking was impossible. I had to drive all the way up to the roof level of the ramp and
then take the elevator all the way back down to ground floor. Once free of the elevator’s greedy
hold I walked briskly to the registration window where a melancholy woman nonchalantly asked
for my name.
“One moment, please,” she responded, her voice nasal and rude. She paged some hospital
jargon over the loud speaker. Soon a nurse in purple scrubs came up to the desk and stood next
to me.
“Jeena?”
“Yes?” It was the woman from the phone.
“Micah’s been a victim of armed robbery. The creep must have shot him when he
answered the door. He was shot at a fairly close range in the abdomen. The bullet exited near his
spinal column, but we don’t think it damaged it. We think we’ll have to remove his spleen and
maybe one of his kidneys, but if everything goes as planned he should have an excellent rate of
survival. Do you know any of the numbers for his family? We’d like to talk to them and be sure
it’s all right with them that you give the blood for the transfusion.” My mind lingered on her
words. Rate of survival? There was a chance that he wouldn’t survive? My mind began to panic,
but my face and physical reactions remained calm and distant
“Yeah, his mom lives in Ohio. His dad is dead, but his mom’s number is 333-555-6625, I
think.”
I knew Libby wouldn’t mind. I’d gone home with Micah on several occasions to meet his
family. They loved me and I was quite fond of them. I’d never felt so comfortable in a
boyfriend’s home. Everything just felt so right.
After it became concrete that I would supply the blood for Micah’s transfusion, a strange,
cooperative calm consumed me. I would have given him anything to keep him alive. Blood was
trivial.
I sat on the edge of the Red Cross cot. It had been over a year since I’d given blood.
The hospital had my number on a list of emergency donors that could be called if there was a
shortage, so I knew the procedure well. I just hoped that my iron level was high enough to
donate. It would be devastating to get this far and be told I couldn’t help.
“Do you know how Micah is?” I asked the lab tech servicing my punctured fingertip.
“No, I don’t, but I think they brought him down to the OR to prep him a little while ago.”
“Will I get to see him soon?”
“Probably not until he’s through with his surgery.”
“How’s my Iron level?” I asked eagerly, as he compared my blood sample to the guide.
“Well, it’s right on the lower end of acceptable but it should fine. You can give blood.”
“Thank you!”
“Oh, but it wasn’t me. It was all you!”
“Thank you so much!”
“I’ve never seen someone so eager to get stuck!” the technician chuckled.
“You couldn’t understand.”
“Maybe not. Now, if you could lie down and roll up your sleeves, we’ll get started.” the
technician said, checking which arm had the best vein. He situated my arm in the raised cuff of
the Red Cross cot and hung the empty blood bag from the hook just out of my sight. I closed my
eyes in relief. If I was going to have to wait while Micah was in surgery, at least now I could do
something about it. I became lost in my thoughts thinking about him.
I envisioned him lying there on the surgical table. My imagination was only restricted by
the blue paper curtains and the reality of a gunshot victim being surrounded by doctors and
nurses. I had this clear picture of him as if I were looking through the eyes of the monitors
situated nearby. Being the gunshot was in his abdomen, there was a blue surgical sheet that began
at his scrawny, but defined, chest and it angled up over his face, casting a blue shadow.
His arms were by his sides, comfortably resting laxly near his body. His face showed no
signs of the blood that had been coming out of his mouth from his punctured digestive system. It
is clean and soft and smells of his fresh aftershave. A small oxygen tube rests under his nose and
the nearby IV pole administers a clear liquid through its clear tube that rises onto the table and
follows his arm behind the medical staff where it pierces the soft skin of his wrist. The second
hook of the IV pole sits empty now, but soon it will hold my life-saving blood. I hear myself sigh
at the comforting thought. It pulls me to consciousness and I realize that I have already been
stuck and my warm blood is flowing through a plastic tube taped gently to my arm.
Comfortable with my status, I continue to envision Micah. His shoulders that feel so
broad and strong when I hug him look small on the large, cold stainless steel table. If he were
conscious, the cool temperature of the table would surely bother him. His apartment is almost a
constant sauna. It started to irritate me seeing him lay there and not get up from something so
unnatural for him. I lifted his eyelid gently, craving those soft, expressive blue eyes that
consistently told me that everything was all right and that I was the most wonderful person. I was
dismayed to find only eyes when I opened the lids. The dilated pupils quickly shrank to pins in the
fluorescent lighting of the operating room. Micah wasn’t in them, they were just eyes.
I shifted from his face to the curtain that framed the hole in his abdomen. The surgeons
seemed not like the physically defaming fiends that truly they were, but instead careful jewelers
simply installing a new battery in a watch. They had opened the watch as if it were meant to open
and they were simply tweaking the intricate workings of the watch’s mechanisms. Soon they
would reassemble the watch and it would be like new with no lingering hints as to its previously
vacated state.
“Well, you’re all done.” The technician snapped my thoughts like fragile blown glass. I
investigated my arm to find that not only had I filled the bag full of blood, but the technician had
also removed the needle and bandaged the small prick. A brief panic fluttered through me as I
began to realize that there would be nothing more for me to do but wait. Just wait: sit in a
waiting room of other people that were trapped waiting in a waiting room. A place where time
sat as still as it did for a misquito trapped in amber for a millennium.
The OR waiting room glowed its soft red hue into the white hall. It was like another
dimension: carpeting, comfortable chairs, relaxed clothing, coffee, magazines and bored lamps
reading what the room’s guests only looked at. Once inside, I could see how objective the
hospital looked from within its subjective seclusions.
I picked up a Time magazine from September and began to flip through the colorful pages.
The article presenting the pros and cons of cloning piqued my interest. I made it to the article
after smelling the new Calvin Klein cologne sample that was tucked haphazardly between the
pages. “It must have been ripped from a teen magazine,” I thought. My nose automatically filled
with Micah’s cologne as I closed my eyes. If only my nose hadn’t been lying to me, my arms
would have mechanically reached to embrace him. My eyes told the harsh truth when I opened
them to see only the television flickering different images. . . and mesmerized by the idea that
everyone else could go on living while I was trapped in a place where time doesn’t move. I
simply forgot to shut them. I stared blindly at the television, not feeling my eyes getting dry.
“Miss? Are you through with that magazine?” One of the other waiters was reaching to
request it from me. My eyes stung as I blinked again. I peered into my lap to see it still open to
the first page of the article on cloning.
“Sure, sure --here.” I gave him the magazine and flipped my wrist to check the time. It
had been a half hour.
I was in and out of consciousness like that for most of the evening except for a quick call
to work to tell them I wasn’t coming and a short stroll in the gift shop which was cut short when I
considered that maybe the doctor would come to the waiting room while I was gone.
It was after midnight when the jewelers had finally finished stitching up the laceration to
set the mold for a nasty scar. The doctor had a compassionate, disappointed face on when he
finally approached me.
“Jeena, I have some good news and some bad.”
“Oh please, just tell me he’ll survive and I can handle anything!” I begged of him.
“Yes, Micah will survive. He’s resting in the ICU right now. That’s my good news.”
“Okay, what’s the bad?” I squinted my eyes, hoping that not seeing him would protect me.
“The bullet exited closer to his vertebrae than we had first thought. He’ll most likely be
paralyzed from the waist down.”
“Paralyzed? Will he ever walk again?”
“I don’t know. That will depend on a great many things. The bullet didn’t strike his
vertebrae, it only bumped one of them causing a small fracture to it. We fear that when it
fractured, the piece must have pushed against his spinal column. We will know more tomorrow.
I invite you to rest for the evening and stop by our counseling services right away in the morning
before you visit with him.” His voice was soft and comforting with an edge of credibility to it.
“Can’t I see him tonight?”
“Yes, you may look in on him through the ICU windows, but we can’t allow you contact
with him right now for fear of infection.”
“When are you going to tell him that he’s . . . paralyzed?”
“As soon as he fully regains consciousness and he has his thought processes about him.”
“Are you sure it’s Micah Jesson you’re talking about? You’re positive that he’s the one?”
My voice cracked under the strain of my restricted throat as I squeezed it hard to keep my eyes
from welling with tears. Not expecting such foul news, I’d accidentally let my heart hear what the
doctor said.
“Yes, Jeena. It’s Micah. Now why don’t you get some rest. I’ll speak with you more in
the morning.” Then just as softly as he had come, he left. The other waiters avoided eye contact
with me, hoping their doctors wouldn’t bring news like that to them, praying that their loved ones
would completely recover. Pray seemed pointless to me now. I’d been praying like them the last
eight hours and only to have it not work. My Micah was irreparable. Some asshole had blown a
hole through him and now the doctors couldn’t put him together again! WHY? A sarcastic laugh
chuckled in my chest. I recalled seeing a middle aged woman responding to her doctor’s news
that her husband had not survived his emergency heart procedure. She had sobbed to herself and
then whispered under her breath, “Why? Why God? Why are you doing this? Why are you taking
my husband! We’re not through with him yet!” She was eventually coaxed out of the room by
the counseling services staff.
As I got up and walked slowly from the OR waiting room, I looked around one last time
at the other waiters. Alone, I stepped into the cold blue light of the hall. When I looked back, I
was envious of the waiters still waiting in ignorance. All they wanted was to know their loved
ones would be all right, as I had. Now I wished I hadn’t reached my answer. They were the
lucky ones, not I. They could still hope in their innocence.
A father in the corner clutched a little boy’s baseball cap. I prayed one last prayer for him
as I exited, “Please let his son be all right.” The man lifted his eyes to mine as I stood in the
entrance as if to recognize my silent prayer. But the cool blueness of them only saw what I saw
when I looked at the television: nothing.
I found the elevator and the arrows pointing to the ICU. My mind willed my feet to stop.
They wouldn’t. They wouldn’t have to see what my eyes would consume. They didn’t know any
better. Visions of him from the day before, the weeks before, the year before whizzed through my
synapses. I was carefully safeguarding them so they wouldn’t be contaminated by Micah’s new
condition. His toothy smile, his soft hands with long, thin fingers, his legs . . .
The woman at the desk outside the ICU stopped me. Her suspicions subsided and she
showed me the window I could see him best from. They still had a breathing tube in his mouth.
The thin blanket was tucked around his gangly frame, with his toes making sharp points at the end
of the bed. His eyes were closed. I seemed to zoom in on them, thinking they might open if I
willed them to. Of course they did not. His confident cologne tickled my nose again, though I
was separated from him by the glass. He looked perfectly all right to me.
The sheet protected my mind from self destruction. My imagination could not convince
my conscious thoughts of the grotesque scar that lie beneath the sheet and the mangled organs
that struggled to continue functioning because Micah’s hypothalamus willed them to. The weary,
battle-damaged soldiers charging on because they’d rather die fighting than endure failure. Micah
wouldn’t live in their failure. My imagination played with the idea showing me plastic toy soldiers
wading through Micah’s bloodstream.
As was our goodbye ritual, I pulled away first lifting my hand from the fingerprinted
window, my own prints now added to the collection of people that had gazed on their loved ones
from this position. It was comforting to realize that people had looked in on brothers and sisters,
parents and children from this very spot. Other people had felt what I was feeling. Other people
had endured far worse fortunes.
I would visit Micah in the morning. “It will feel good to be out of the hospital,” I thought
on my long journey to my car on the top floor of the parking ramp.
