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Ink in my Blood (poetry edition)
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Ink in my Blood (poetry edition)
Nirvana

R.C. Speck

    The last time I saw Nirvana Singh we were the two best beggars in Nepal. Her family lived close to mine in a poor village that is not even represented on a map. When tourists came I would recite the names of cities in their home countries as well as all their prime ministers and heads of state until they dropped shiny coins in my hands out of sheer wonder. Nirvana would often undermine my efforts by singing popular songs until the tourists gave her money as well, thinking we were brother and sister. She was beautiful and had a very pretty voice, so she was difficult competition. She left for America with her family when she was eight years old. My relief was immediate. The loneliness settled in soon after.
    I knocked on her door, but there was no answer. The music from her headphones revealed that she was inside, so I tried again and again, and then decided to violate protocol and enter uninvited. The odds were miraculous that I would ever see Nirvana again. She was seated facing away from the door. The only light in her semi-private dormitory room came from the lamp on the desk behind her. It brushed gently along her smooth profile and kissed the curls on the back of her head. I admit that I lingered in the doorway a moment before announcing my presence.`
    She didn’t recognize me at first, but inclined her head and separated her eyelids at me like all patients do here. But as I stood before her, her expression transformed into a look of alarm and then happiness. I felt almost honored to have elicited such a change from so beautiful a woman.
    She stood and immediately I could see how different we’d become, despite that we were now both Americans. Me in my standard doctor’s white coat and slacks, she in her...I don’t even know what she was wearing that morning. Tight pants, tight blouse, a useless skirt in between. Tattoos on her arm. Piercings in her eyebrow. Colorful things in her hair. She had practically forgotten her Nepali and now spoke like an American in a vernacular I could not entirely understand. I remembered how as a girl she couldn’t keep her eyes in one place for very long when telling stories. And she was always telling stories...or singing. She was always a brilliant girl.`
    There is a small canon of questions medical students are supposed to ask when talking with patients during their psychiatry rotations. How would you describe your mood? Do you have any thoughts of harming yourself or others? Do you hear voices? But I could not ask these things. I could not ask her anything that would betray our official relationship here. It’s like we were children again. Gossip occupied our minds.
    I know this seems arrogant, making friendly conversation when I should have been carefully observing a mentally ill woman. But, unlike most other patients, she had been committed to Inpatient Psychiatry Services at the University of North Carolina against her will. Her father had convinced a judge that she was a potential danger to herself. I know her father. I know what an erratic and overbearing man he can be, so this came as no surprise. Nirvana is odd and eccentric, and she proved this by dancing and bursting into song unpredictably throughout our conversation. But nothing she said struck me as coming from a mentally ill person.`
    This aside, however, I never quite understood how people can be so passionate about intangible things such as music. It is just sounds sharing mathematical relationships. What meaning could there be? I believe I had asked her some variant of this question when she placed her headphones over my ears and said, “Listen to this.”`
    Loud, rumbling sounds came from unrecognizable instruments. A male voice screamed incomprehensible English. It was like angry gorillas throwing themselves against the bars of a cage. It bordered on pain.
    I was about to remove the headphones when the noise stopped. I sighed. My body returned to normal.`
    “No, not that one. This one,” she said. “It’s by a band called Beetgarden. They play it all the time on VH1. It was written about me. I’m the girl in this song.”
    I became momentarily distracted since I was aware of a band called Beetgarden. They are very popular. Many of my medical school colleagues listen to them. Thankfully this song had only a piano and a guitar. It seemed pleasant, but otherwise provoked no response from me at all. The singer was singing to a girl named Nirvana.`
    “What do you think?” she asked through a smile. “I first heard it at Beatback Records where I work. Doesn’t it just bring you to tears?”
    I wasn’t crying and didn’t want to insult her by pointing out the obvious. “Why would it make me cry?”
    “Because it’s so sad,” she whispered. Her pupils would not stop trembling even though her eyes remained trained on me. It was the longest she had looked at me all morning.`
    “Why is it sad?”
    “Didn’t you listen to it?” she asked. A frown began to hold her large brown eyes in place.
    “Of course. Every word.”
    “And you felt nothing?”`
    “I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel. It was only a song.”
    Her eyes began to wander again. She stepped away. “You didn’t listen.”
    “I can recite it for you,” I offered.
    She turned and blinked, realizing that I was serious. I cleared my throat and began.

    Freeze frame to real to clean living
    I wish it were this way.
    You loved me once
    But as I write this you fade to reverie.

    You were skating in circles all around me.
    Remember how you found me and flirting?
    Our friends could all see it.
    You acted so cleverly.

    You sprang fully formed from a book.
    Lovely smile, full of bile,
    Eyes too scared to look.
    Pry open holes to your soul like a crook.
    Oh, Nirvana,
    What should you take the blame for?

    So you faced down your demons on a dare,
    Knocking back bears in the mirror.
    Open just a little.
    Did you leave enough room for regret?

    Now you curl up, by your mesmerizing fire,
    Swearing I’m a liar and waiting.
    Your big moment.
    It hasn’t yet happened.


    “...and here the chorus is repeated,” I interjected before continuing...

    Now you swept up your cluttered room floor.
    Life was such a bore that you kicked it.
    Oh, but that ending,
    I’ll bet you’re glad we couldn’t predict it.


    “...and again the chorus is repeated but for the final line...”`

    I hope you got what you were named for.

    I never cease to enjoy the expressions on people’s faces when they realize that I am a genius. I have eidetic memory, or total recall. I can memorize long passages of text with little effort. In Nepal I achieved a perfect score on my medical school entrance examinations and was awarded the first of fifteen spots available from a pool of over three thousand applicants. From being raised in abject circumstances I expect to make millions as an American surgeon before my fortieth birthday.
    Nirvana folded her arms and remained unsurprised. I reminded myself that she knew me as well as I knew her.`
    “This song is about you?” I asked.`
    “Uh-huh,” she said with strange, sharp pride like a child.
    I unsuccessfully suppressed a smile and then a laugh. She is a child, I thought. She has become like so many Americans floating on their ancestors’ wealth and sacrifice. She came here too young. She can listen to a song many times and not grasp it, whereas I can swallow it whole and understand it at once. The song is a false tragedy about people who have everything. It is about nothing. I didn’t own a pair of shoes until I was six years old. I know what nothing is.
    “So you have ice skated with the singer of a famous band?” I challenged. “You live in a house with a fireplace? You sweep his floors? Were you his wife or his Nepalese maid?” I realized my mistake as soon as I said these things. Her big, beautiful eyes disappeared beneath her eyelids as she called for the nurse. I would have apologized except that she snatched her headphones from my lap and put them on. The volume of the music must have been unbearable.
    The next morning I decided to ignore this incident and voice my opinion of Nirvana when the attending physician met with the residents and medical students in the conference room. Normally it is not a student’s place to offer unsolicited diagnoses, but I knew Nirvana. I also knew I was more talented and intelligent than any of these people. I had not yet completed my third year in medical school and had already taken my G.I. surgery and neurosurgery electives, each with perfect grades. My grades for all my other rotations including pediatrics had been perfect as well. My Step I Board exam scores were in the ninety-ninth percentile. I was what we call in medical school a “gunner”, a student wholly committed to medicine to the point of intimidating even some of his professors. So time spent on a soft, subjective field like psychiatry for one such as myself was the merest of rigamarole. “Nirvana is not crazy,” I told them. That word is looked down upon in the field, of course, but I wasn’t bothered. “She is immature and undisciplined,” I went on, speaking clearly and patiently like a schoolmaster, “which can lead to behavior unbecoming of a young lady. But she is not crazy.” Their narrowed eyes flashed at me like swords lifted from their scabbards. I looked at all of them one by one and for the third time said, “Not crazy.” They released her that afternoon.

***


    Ten days later Nirvana Singh attempted suicide with an overdose of aspirin in her parents’ bathroom. She managed to consume sixteen of them before vomiting the contents of her stomach in the toilet. Her father found her passed out on the floor.

***


    I have always known that guilt is for the weak. Either you cannot control yourself and therefore do things that would merit guilt, or you can control yourself and then regret acting in a natural self-interest at the expense of others. For good or for evil, the pure of heart have no time for guilt.
    But what I underwent was different. My body at all times felt like it was shaking, when it clearly wasn’t. It was as if the joints in my fingers and arms were being dislocated and set back in place every nanosecond. Something was alive in my stomach that digested my food and fed its shit into my intestines. For the first time in medical school, my grades began to suffer. I was barely one standard deviation above the mean in my oncology rotation, which occurred immediately after psychiatry. I could not sleep.
    It was not my fault, of course. A medical student has no influence over the decisions of physicians. I also did not instruct Nirvana to attempt suicide. To celebrate my innocence I traveled to Atlantic City one weekend between rotations and won $705 in blackjack. I went kayaking with colleagues on a camping trip in Virginia during spring break. I had my first relationship with an American girl.
    But my mind always returned to Nirvana.`
    After three uncomfortable months I decided something must be done. My grades continued to dip, and I had my Board Two exams coming up. I needed to admit to her that I had made a mistake. The idea of seeing her again excited me as well, but I decided not to let that influence my decision.
    She had been sent back to Inpatient Services for observation after being discharged from the hospital. She stayed there for a week and was sent home with her parents in Chapel Hill where she had lived since emigrating. I arrived there late one Sunday morning. Her mother remembered me, of course, but failed to convince Nirvana to leave her bedroom. I stayed and made difficult conversation with her over tea and namkeen. She was very kind and very sad to see her daughter rebuff me. She gave me some biscuits to take with me and walked me to my car.
    Whatever was living in my stomach seemed to grow suddenly as I drove away. I felt heavier, emptier, as if this thing were a parasite eating me from the inside. At a red light I held my hand up to see if my fingers were trembling, but they were not. I felt tired, but not sleepy, and an unfamiliar impatience made me dread the twenty minute drive home. Lying on my bed in my apartment, I had my first cigarette in seven and a half years.`
    Asking for a year off from medical school was not an option, however tempting that option became as summer approached. Less talented students ask for a year off when the pressure gets too much. Female students ask for a year off when they discover they’re pregnant. Gunners do not ask for a year off, not without a very good reason. And Nirvana was not a very good reason.`
    I underperformed in my dermatology elective, relying much more on my photographic memory than I should have. Often I would memorize textbook passages in case physicians asked about patients whom I had no intention of observing very closely. I made several unfortunate and embarrassing mistakes as a result.`
    I lost weight and began to shave less often. My interest in exercise waned. My habit of studying in the evening slowly gave way to snack food and television. Still my hands refused to tremble. Holding them up in the bathroom mirror every morning became a ritual for me. The tenant in my stomach continued to digest my meals and began complaining about their poor quality.
    It was during my family medicine rotation, the last rotation of my third year, when things finally changed. I had been assigned to a clinic an hour away in Greensboro, which was run by a man and wife physician team whose overflowing sympathy for the trite concerns of their patients disconcerted me. No one is sick in places like these. The routine consisted of physicals, pap smears, diabetes checkups, prescription refills, and other mundane chores. All interesting or problematic cases got referred.`
    It is unusual for men to come into places like this, but one morning one did. He was in his mid-thirties and solidly built. Perfect health. No history of drug use, disease, or psychosis. His complaint? Stress. He managed a pet store, and since his divorce, had been suffering from a malaise that he couldn’t describe very well. The physician listened sympathetically and almost without hesitating prescribed some low-risk anti-anxiety medication. The man was grateful nearly to the point of tears when he left.
    As nauseated as I was watching this, I became even more so knowing that I had been behaving just like this man! I was the one letting external events control my life. I was the one being weak. If I were to continue this way, I would become common despite my great talents. And common men achieve nothing.`
    But Nirvana was an uncommon problem. It wasn’t enough to ask for forgiveness. Forgiveness means little coming from a child. I had to know for certain if she were mentally ill. If not, then I should no longer hold myself responsible for her actions. But if so, well, then I would need to admit my mistake to the attending physician and residents at Inpatient Services and to Nirvana herself, and then take whatever constructive measures necessary to redeem myself. Success does not necessarily involve winning. It involves controlling yourself and thereby having a strong hand in controlling your environment.
    But how would I determine the mental state of this girl? This is something the best psychiatrists cannot always do. Textbooks and journals were no use, neither was my total recall. I agonized over this problem during my OBGYN rotation, during which I bottomed out to a level of above-average mediocrity that fortunately I was not capable of sinking below. Unlike any quandary I had faced before, I felt more confused each time I applied my mind to it.`
    The answer came after I resorted to a truly desperate measure. I did not allow myself to sleep until I found the answer. It was a Tuesday evening, and I was expected in the hospital by seven the next morning. I made a pot of coffee and sat at my desk. I tried to remember everything that I had read and heard about her. I revisited our conversation until I could recreate everything that had happened. I wrote it out like a theater script and studied it repeatedly. I continued until my mind grew weak, playing with details of my penmanship and the imperfections on the paper rather than the words themselves. Once I woke myself up when my head fell and collided with the desk. It was 5:20 AM.`
    The alarm clock switched on an hour later. My radio had been tuned to a popular music station, and playing was a pleasant, piano song, much like the one Nirvana had played for me. The answer came to me at once. The song! She claimed that she was the girl in the song. This is why I scoffed at her. No sane person would say this unless it were true! Solving my problem was now just a matter of finding the singer of this Beetgarden and asking him if he indeed sang that song about Nirvana. My problem had just been downgraded from impossible to difficult. Such relief! I made a fresh pot of coffee, showered for the first time in days, and had the most productive day of my rotation.

***


    The nightclub was loud and murky. I passed the pool table and stepped up to the bar, hoping to buy a bottled water. A sign sold earplugs for fifty cents, and I gratefully bought a pair of those as well. I had hoped for a place to sit after driving nearly six hours from Chapel Hill to Baltimore but found nothing but some drab, half-occupied couches near the entrance.`
    According to the Beetgarden website this was the closest to Chapel Hill they would come all year. I had to negotiate the following day off and left immediately after work, but I didn’t even have time to check into my hotel. It was nearly midnight when I arrived. The bartender told me that Beetgarden would be ending their show soon.
    I jostled through bodies towards the stage. The people there reminded me much of Nirvana with their tattoos and piercings and their casual clothing. I tried looking into their faces, their bright, young, intelligent faces, moving almost in unison to the rapid sounds of a beat, and then stopped trying. What a useless exercise. It wasn’t even dancing. And the music wasn’t even music. It was pounding, screaming, violent noise delivered with unfathomable enthusiasm. The musicians were dressed no differently than their audience, and with three singers it was difficult to tell who the leader was. They did not play the song about Nirvana.`
    After the show, I tried to gain access to their dressing room, but was blocked by a tall man in a black T-shirt. He asked to see my press credentials. I told him I was a physician who wanted to have a serious discussion with the bandleader about Nirvana. I produced the band’s CD and pointed to the song listed on the back. My English is tolerable, but I am not a very loud person, so he had difficultly understanding. After several minutes he let me into their room.
    Many people lingered about, and at first I couldn’t recognize any of the band members. Finally, I found one of the singers. He had just finished speaking with a reporter and was free the moment I approached. He was drinking a beer and drying his hair with a towel.
    “Excuse me,” I said, after clearing my throat, “may I please speak to you about your song called ‘Nirvana’? You are the singer of that song, aren’t you?”
    A sudden smile made him seem less weary. “Yeah, that’s me.”
    “I would like to know if you wrote that song about a real girl named Nirvana.”
    He blinked and didn’t seem to know how to respond. I was about to repeat myself when he shook his head hesitantly and murmured, “No. . .”
    I nodded, feeling my heart rate began to rise. I took a deep breath and tried to fight through the disappointment. “Thank you,” I whispered. “I’m sorry for disturbing you.”
    I was about to turn away when he touched my arm. “Wait,” he said. “Why do you ask?”
    “I know a young woman named Nirvana who thinks the song is about her,” I said. He gave me a blank, reflexive nod before squinting at me carefully. He said nothing as I walked away.
    In the parking lot he ran up to me just as I was about to open my car door. “Hold up! I couldn’t help noticing your shirt,” he said, pointing to my UNC polo shirt. “Are you from Chapel Hill?”
    “Yes.”
    “So am I!” he said, slapping his chest. “I went to high school with a girl named Nirvana. Nirvana Singh. Is that...?”
    “That is her name,” I said. “But you said the song wasn’t—”
    “It isn’t,” he said, slashing the air in front of him with his hand. “Nirvana had nothing to do with the song! I barely knew her. I just picked the name because it sounded cool for a girl and I remembered her from high school!”
    He spoke so quickly I had to make sure I understood him properly before responding. “So you know Nirvana?”
    He shrugged dramatically. “I haven’t even spoken to her in like ten years! Look, I am so sorry about this. Is...is she okay? She’s still okay, isn’t she?”
    In my fifteen year career as a student I have never been faced with a question so difficult to answer. My mouth suddenly became parched. “How did you know she was unwell?” I whispered.
    He began to laugh bitterly and then stopped. “Well, she would have to be if she were emulating the girl in the song!”
    “Sorry, I don’t follow.”`
    “The song is about a suicide,” he said.`
    I tried to relieve the dryness in my mouth, but couldn’t. I told myself to stay calm. “No,” I said.`
    He held his mouth open for several seconds before responding. “Yes it is. I wrote it. It happened to someone I knew.”
    “But I remember all the words. How is it about a suicide?”
    “Remember the part about knocking back—”
    “Yes, of course,” I said, gesturing in front of me like a push. “’Knocking back bears in the mirror.’ Like she faced down her demons.”
    “Not ‘bears’,” he said scornfully. “‘Bay-ers! Bayer aspirins!” At this I felt a sudden stab of fear. Only my university math professors could ever make me feel this way. It was when their minds proved nimbler than mine.
     “The girl killed herself by knocking back aspirins in her bathroom,” he went on. “I thought I made her death clear with all the film imagery.”
    “What film imagery?”
    “Her image was swept up off the cutting room floor. Like in film editing. She cut herself out of the story.”
    I remained silent as I recalled the song, unsuccessfully trying to understand. “Are you saying she didn’t sweep a cluttered floor?”
    “What?” he asked, his concentration suddenly shaken.`
    We stared at each other, and the depth of my mistake began to reveal itself. I had heard the song incorrectly and misunderstood it with an immigrant’s foolish certainty. This is what his confused silence was saying to me. But I would not let myself believe it because there was one part of the song I knew I remembered well. “Well, if your song is about a suicide,” I challenged, “why did you end it optimistically?”
    He grimaced as if I had splashed water in his face. “How’s that?”
    “You say you hope she achieves nirvana.”
    “And...?”
    “Nirvana is the state of perfect wisdom and serenity in which one overcomes desire and individual consciousness,” I explained. He tried to interrupt, but I spoke over him because obviously he did not know the term as well as I. “One must be alive to attain this. How can the song be about a suicide when the ending refers to a person who must still be alive?”
    “Because in English,” he instructed, “nirvana is also a synonym for Heaven. The Hereafter . . .” I made no indication that I understood. “...Where ya go when ya die.”`
    I finally understood. I understood everything. Everything except what mattered most, of course. I thanked him and entered my car. He tried to keep me. He repeated he was sorry and asked again if Nirvana was all right. Despite his awful music, he seemed like a nice person. I told him she was fine. I said it three times. He looked like he wanted to believe me.`
    On the way home, my hands would not stop trembling.`

***


    I pulled over to the highway side after driving over 150 miles nonstop in the early hours of morning. I knew for the last hundred that this was a useless exercise. Controlling myself and my environment. This whole affair had stopped being about me. In fact it was never about me, and I was too stupid to realize it. How could I have been so stupid? And now I was endangering other drivers on the road by keeping myself awake at an unnatural hour. This had to end. I was asleep moments after lying down in the reclined seat of my car.
    I awoke with a gasp as cars sped by. It was past noon. I had slept over ten hours for the first time since I was in my teens. I hadn’t slept more than six per night since coming to this country three years ago. I was breathing quickly, but fortunately, my hands were no longer shaking. My stomach was sharp with hunger. Its emptiness invigorated me. I knew at once that I had to find Nirvana. I would not let her attempt suicide again. She was not the girl in the song. I would prove it to her. She was not that girl.
    I put the CD in my CD player and listened to nothing but that song as I drove home. Why would she do this? And why would the song sound so pretty if it was so sad? It sounded like a love song for a living girl, not a eulogy for a dead one. As I drove across southern Virginia and into North Carolina I listened carefully to the soft piano, from which I began to detect something indescribably sweet. The strumming guitar soon felt like gentle rain in spring. And the words. I listened especially to the words even though my genius could not help me. I always feel so alone and so frightened whenever my genius cannot help me.
    No one was home at Nirvana’s parents’ house. I rang the doorbell and banged on the door for five minutes. I got back in my car feeling desperate. How could I find her? Then I remembered that she worked in a music store. But which one? I could not remember! Why could I not remember? I had even written it down! There was no excuse for me not to remember. I took a chance that it was on Franklin Street, the center of town in Chapel Hill.
    I put the song on again and drove. Franklin Street was not far, and soon I was causing much consternation among the other drivers as I drove slowly up and down the street looking for a store that might sell music. During my second attempt I found it. Beatback Records. I parked in the nearest spot and did not bother to put coins in the meter. I stopped traffic running across the street.
    Nirvana. What should I say to you? That this song is about life and not death? Can’t those be bears instead of pills? “Bear” actually rhymes better with “dare” than “Bayer” does. Can’t they simply be like those psychological demons you face down? And must “knock back” mean taking a pill? Can’t it also mean to resist, to beat back, as your store is called? Couldn’t it also be that you’re sweeping away all that is unnecessary in your life, like how film editors cut out whatever is unnecessary in their stories? Isn’t that a good thing? Like the state of nirvana itself? Did you try to kill yourself simply because an American songwriter did not know the proper meaning of your name?
    I saw her in the store placing CDs in bins. This time she was wearing a tasteful blouse and matching skirt. There were no piercings above her eyes. There were no colorful things in her hair. Her beauty sucked the air out of me all at once. I came up to her tenderly. Unshaven, shirt untucked, sweaty, and exhausted. I had been listening to the song for hours now. I finally understood it. All of it. There was so much I wanted to say.
    She saw me finally and then smiled. It felt so good to see her smile, I don’t know why. I was about to tell her everything when, humming a sweet little song, she touched my arm and asked, “Why are you crying?””



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