The Last Time I Died by Joe Nelms Page A

back and even through the closed window I can hear him sob.
    And then I look away and find the bottom stair of the awful stoop. The neighbors still watch. They want me to cry. I won’t. Not a tear.
    The sound fades first. Then the colors begin to de-saturate. Soon, there is nothing left.
    Black.
    The memory is gone.
    The White is gone.
    My perfect, dimension-less body has regained weight and density and fatigue and pain and sorrow and regret. The memory storm is over. I am alone in the black with the chilling realization that I might still be alive.

16
    (Oh my.)
    The old boy gave it his best effort but succeeded only in the pusillanimous achievement of ‘attempted’ suicide. Again.
    Another failure.
    What would Arnold Rosen think? Or Dr. HackShag, for that matter? Or even Dr. Hirsch? Very little, I would guess. Something along the lines of it being a predictable course of action for a person in his condition. Followed by an
Oh well
or a
Such things happen
or perhaps even an
…Interesting
coupled with a stroke of the chin.
    In any event, our man is alive with a cautiously optimistic prognosis of full recovery, which, if he proceeds along a traditional trajectory, will undoubtedly include questions, introspection, honesty, and realizations. Everything the old boy was hoping to avoid.
    As the nurses cluck and the doctors grimace, our man lies in his hospital bed selfishly sucking up the time and energy of a dedicated staff while others embroiled in emergencies not of their own device suffer and call to the heavens to negotiate imaginary deals for their recovery or that of loved ones. The kinds of deals that are generally never heard and rarely honored. The kinds of deals that may not have been necessary were the proper resources available to them rather than having been exploited by our man who was too craven to entertain the idea of discharging a firearm into his mouth.
    What a disappointing awakening our man has ahead of him. Oh yes, he’ll wake up.
    Remember, he failed.

17
    I’m not in Heaven because there’s a tube in my dick.
    It’s not Hell because the tube would be much larger.
    Fuck.
    I’m alive.
    My eyes creak open. The hospital room is clean and cool and I can’t move a muscle. Exhausted. Tubes in every orifice, not just my Johnson. Machines making beeps that mean something to someone. A pudgy nurse in the process of changing my IV bag. She smiles a beautiful smile that doesn’t belong in a hospital. She must be new. I can see where the wrinkles and bags will be in five years if she lasts that long.
    —Well, hello. We thought we lost you.
    Her words are sweet, but I can tell she’s speeding up the IV swap out so she can run and tell the doctor I’m not brain dead. I wonder who lost money on that one.
    My eyes dart around the room. I’m assuming she’s taking this as a good sign.
    —How are you feeling?
    How am I feeling? My eyes slow to a stop and I drift off into a thousand yard stare. The last thing I need is self-awareness, but now that she’s asked the question I can’t help but assess my current state. I am feeling terrible.
    I’m too tired even to groan. My throat too dry to make any noise if I wanted to. I breathe a little deeper and hope she can translate that to mean that I’m feeling alive, for better or worse.
    They thought they lost me. I was dead. I killed myself. Fucking finally.
    And look what I found. I can see the room around me and I can see this highly trained, doughy woman looking at me like she cares what happens and I can see machines keeping me alive and the mound that is my feet at the end of the bed and the door to my room that’s slightly ajar. But really, wherever I look all I see is the recollection of my lifeflash, the vast mental landscape of unexplored content that I am now aware of, its infinite potential soaking in to my consciousness. Tainting my perception of everything else.
    My life.
    I can see the real world around me, but I am now completely aware of the