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This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue... Down in the Dirt magazine (v093) (the April 2011 Issue) You can also order this 5.5" x 8.5" issue as an ISSN# paperback book:						This writing also appears in this 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback “Wake Up and Smell the Flowers” Order this 6" x 9" ISBN# book: (also available through amazon.com)

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Sunrise

Ryan G. Beckman

    Ian’s mother died over winter break when we were seniors at Rutgers. We were in the living room of our apartment, vermin free, but that’s the best you could say. Wood floors blackened by years of dirt, cracked walls that looked like load bearing spackle. The wind came through glass panes like they were screen. We were watching Groundhog Day, the right movie for the weather. It was a few days before he was going home for Christmas and we were drinking Red Stripe and smoking a joint when his phone rang. He looked at the number: it was his cousin. “I’ll call him back.” A minute later his cousin called again, then his aunt.
    He was looking down at her number while he finished the beer; smoke curled around his hand as answered the phone. She was conscious, but they told him to get there as soon as he could.
    He didn’t say what was going on, just asked for a ride. I’d only had a few sips of my beer so I grabbed my keys and we went out to the car: it’s an olive LeBaron, a few years my senior. The cloth that covered the ceiling fell off, exposing flesh colored foam; when it rains, the interior smells like my grandfather’s attic.
    Ian nestled into the passenger seat, head back and looking out his window, legs bent and pulled close to his chest. On Route 18, he put his feet to the floor and asked if I had another joint. I put one to my lips to light it, took a puff and then passed it to him; I didn’t say anything when he didn’t pass it back.
    He told me that it probably wasn’t a big deal, she was probably fine. He said something happened with his mother.
    I knew it was really bad when he wasn’t concerned. He’s not the type to brush things off. A few months ago, he went to the doctor convinced he had a tumor; it was a pimple. He almost looked proud when he said the doctor laughed at him. He explained that he’d rather expect the worst and be surprised with good news than deal with disappointment.
    We took the exit for the Turnpike. I pulled up to the tollbooth to grab my ticket from the machine. “Can you hold this?” He put it under his leg so it wouldn’t follow the smoke out the open windows. I took the ramp for the Turnpike North and we saw signs saying that exit 11 was eight miles away.
    I heard him sniffle and tried thinking it was the cold weather. I asked if he was alright; when I looked over, he was wiping his nose across the sleeve of his sweater. He shook his head and said, “I hate the turnpike.” I asked if it was the smell of industrial waste, of the meadowlands. He just stared straight ahead and explained that when he’s on the turnpike he can only pay attention to the next exit. “On the parkway, it’s just an hour twenty and you’re in Bergen County; the turnpike feels too compartmentalized.” He rambled on for a bit; when he trailed off, I told him, “the turnpike actually is faster.” As we passed the five mile marker for exit 11, he said “It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t feel that way.”
    We were silent for a minute and, to say something, I started talking about the fisheye lens I’d just bought, telling him it’s 12mm, it’s got a high aperture, shit I don’t think he would’ve cared about under normal circumstances. “It’s really great for low light.” The whole time, he just keeps nodding along to the soundtrack of my voice.
    Four miles before the cluster of exits at 14(a-d) and I realized my tank was almost empty. “I’m going to need to stop to get gas.” He reminded me that there was a station around exit 16 so I didn’t have to get off the road. He flicked the roach out his window and watched the cherry bouncing across the dark highway in the sideview.
    As he rolled the window up, he started talking about graduating, about the astronomy course he’d be in the following semester. He’s not a photographer, but he told me about film technology, how it got pushed forward to assist astrophysicists. “Kodak didn’t really care about photographers.” He talked about blue and red sensitive film, about the different stars they enhance and obscure. Then he paused in the middle of a sentence to ask me what he’d do if his mom died. I took my eyes off the road to look over at him sliding through patches of streetlight, not looking sad so much as vacant.
    I said, “It’s ok, I’m sure she’ll be fine.” Because really, who’s going to be a dick and say you were wrong when his mom dies.
    When I was filling up with gas, Ian went to the bathroom and came back with half a roll of toilet paper in hand. I told him he wasn’t allowed to shit in the car and he forced a smile. He spent the rest of the ride filling his pockets with used tissues. I didn’t know what to say; I tried not to look over at him.
    We got to the hospital and I pulled up in front to drop him off, but he said to park, “Another minute won’t make a difference.” Inside, he said we were looking for the ER. We followed signs through a labyrinth of hallways covered in paintings of the same purple flowers, the same basket of still life. When we got to a set of double doors with Emergency Room painted on them, someone tapped Ian on his shoulder: it was his cousin James. He’s tall, probably 6'2 and he’s built like a football player, like a lineman. His short, choppy words bracing against any possible emotion: “They’re in the room on the left.” He didn’t look at Ian when he said this, reflective eyes just staring at his shoes.
    We opened the door and his Aunt came out and gave him a big hug. She introduced herself to me as Abby. When I went to shake her hand, she hugged me tightly then went back into the room; I asked Ian if I should wait outside, but he said, “She’d be happy to see you again.” Still, I felt strange: I’d only been out to dinner with him and his mom twice when she came to pick him up in New Brunswick. Both times were with other roommates of ours. I hadn’t said much more than hello or thank you to her.
    Inside the room, everything seemed quiet. Every three seconds there was a beep or the press of her ventilator, but the noise coming from the machines just punctuated the silence from the rest of us, from his mother.
    His aunt told us that they were trying to transfer her to a room upstairs, but she couldn’t remember the ward. She started crying a little, but you couldn’t hear it in her voice. Ian walked over to the bed and just looked at his mother. He asked if she was asleep. “The nurses are waking her up every now and then to make sure she doesn’t slip into a coma.” Later on we found out it was just to see if she’d gone into one. Abby walked over and tapped her sister on the shoulder, saying “Ian is here.” She kept tapping her, hitting a little harder each time, the whispers getting awkwardly loud.
    She left the room and Ian stood, reaching towards her hand, but pulling back each time. His aunt came back with a nurse who shook Ian’s mother. He asked the nurse if she should be doing that and we were told that she wasn’t shaking very hard. “Ms. Rosen,” she said, “can you open your eyes?” She repeated this a few times before we heard groaning. Eeeehh ahhh oeee. The nurse shook her again, “can you open your eyes?”
    Mrs. Rosen was groaning; Ian’s hand was covering his mouth, his head shaking side to side; his aunt told the nurse to stop. Ian took his mother’s right hand, the one that machines weren’t connected to, “I think she’s saying they are open.”
    From over his shoulder, I could see her eyelids flutter, but unable to part.

    The nurse looked down, “Ms. Rosen, your son is here. Can you say hi to him? We’ll let you get back to sleep if you say hi to him.”
    There was a pause with a few beeps. Her lips didn’t move, but we all heard her: Iiiiiii; it was the last thing she said.
    The nurse wrote something on the chart, checked her watch, then walked out of the room. Ian kissed his mother on the forehead. His aunt walked over to the other side of her sister, fingering her hair. I wondered if his mother could feel Ian’s skin through her dreams the way I do when someone is sleeping beside me.
    I excused myself from the room and found his cousin pacing the hallway. He told me that she was at the grocery store when she lost her balance and fell down; she called the ambulance, but couldn’t get up. When she got to the hospital, they performed a CAT scan and something ruptured; her brain was hemorrhaging.
    While I was out, talking to the cousin, Ian must’ve been getting the same story from his aunt. He came out of the room, walked past us and went into the bathroom. It sounded like a stall door slamming shut; there was silence for a few minutes, then another slam; when he came back, he had a fistful of toilet paper, his face was pink, the knuckles of his right hand were bleeding.
    “The doctors will be taking another CAT scan in a little while; the bleeding might stop itself, but if it gets worse, they’ll have to operate.” He asked if I wanted to leave, “My aunt said she’d give me a ride back to New Brunswick,” but I knew he wasn’t leaving the hospital anytime soon.
    I wanted to go, but it felt wrong to leave the situation, no matter how detached from it I’d normally be. I told him I’d stick around as long as I found something to eat. So when Ian and his cousin went back to his mother’s room, I found a vending machine with hot food; I got onion rings and mozzarella sticks. It was better than I expected. After eating, I wiped my greasy hands on my pants and walked in to the room thumbing my face to make sure I didn’t have crumbs in my beard.
    Abby was sitting in a rose colored chair; James was on the floor beside her. When I walked in they both looked at me, but didn’t say anything. Ian was standing bedside, holding his mother’s hand like a kid waiting to cross the street. We heard footsteps walk past; the aunt switched places with Ian and asked how classes went this semester. They talked about James’ first year at college. While they talked, they were looking at the walls: a picture of a bird, a box of rubber gloves, and a chest of drawers under a sink; next to one door is a silver wastebasket and a few sharps containers, a wall hook and several bins loaded with plastic across the room. The last wall, everyone avoided: head of the bed, monitors, one of those old-school clocks with a rigid second hand.

    Eventually, the orderlies took Mrs. Rosen out of the room for her scan. We were escorted to a waiting room and told that someone would let us know how things were going in about half an hour. Ian said he was hungry, so I showed him the vending machine and we got french fries. He was entertained by the mechanized cooking, so we got a second batch that neither of us ate.
    Back in the waiting room, Ian took the used tissues out of his pocket and threw them into a garbage can one at a time. I remember watching him and thinking about the conversation we’d had about the turnpike. A doctor found us and explained that the hemorrhage had gotten worse, that the bleeding caused the brain to swell, that it was choking itself of oxygen. They’d bring her up to surgery in about two hours, the earliest the surgeon was available. They would drill into her skull and drain the fluid out, “The procedure is fairly simple, it’s just a question as to how she recovers.” He’d paused before saying “how,” probably debating whether he should say, “if she recovers.”
    He asked if there were any questions. His aunt asked for the cause and the doctor suggested a combination of her blood pressure and her medication.
    Ian turned to me and said to leave, “I’ll let you know how things go.”
    On the drive home I listened to the radio and thought about my parents sleeping in the house I grew up in. At the apartment I sat down on the couch with another Red Stripe, chilled by the absence of people and emotion. I put the movie back on, but stopped it shortly after. It felt wrong to watch the rest of it without Ian.
    I went back to the hospital two days later. Ian called me and said to bring my camera to the ICU; I thought it was good news so I picked up a get well soon balloon on my way over. It felt wrong to bring a camera into the hospital, so I just grabbed my pocket sized point and shoot.
    I passed a waiting room and saw James, Abby, and Ian’s uncle. He’s bald and overweight the way retired bodybuilders can get, paint was speckled across his boots. Abby gave me another clinging hug and I asked how things went. She told me, “Not so well.” Her lips pursed, her sister brain dead. She was looking at the balloon when she said, “the doctors told us there’s no chance for recovery at this point.” She was in the same jeans, same sweater I saw her in the other night, her face looked chapped and the bottom of her nose was raw. She hugged me again, then thanked me for coming back. The uncle, Bill, shook my hand from his chair. He had one of those bone crushing grips. James was looking at the floor, ears angled towards the TV that was airing a football game.
    In the hallway I heard yelling. I wandered around a few corners and saw an elderly woman standing on her bed and screaming at a small man in scrubs. He was slightly hunched over with his arms spread wide. It looked like he was debating whether to catch or tackle her.
    “You’re all fucking crazy, there’s nothing wrong with me....” I went to the doorway, “Ma’am?” They both look in my direction.
    I told her I brought the balloon for her. She smiled like a child and brought her hands together under her lips. She put a hand on the mattress, went down to her knees and asked the orderly for help getting off of the bed. She kissed my cheek before I left.
    Around the corner I found Ian sitting in the room with his mother. He was leaning over her body, holding her right hand and resting his head on her stomach. Everything above her eyes was enshrined with gauze. In addition to the tubes going in and out of her left arm, there were two coming from her head. One snaked its way from behind her, it was red and dropping the contents into a bag near the ventilator: the exact opposite of an IV drip. The other tube ran clear and stuck out from her forehead, an unnatural human unicorn. She looked plastic, her chest rose with the machine in the corner.
    There was a wire going from Ian’s ear to hers, from each of them to an MP3 player. I waited a few minutes, until some songs had ended. When he took the headphones off, I coughed so he would turn around. He looked tired.
    “I think she liked Louis Armstrong.” He told me she hadn’t woken up since the surgery, “I thought, in case she could hear it.”
    I told him I was sorry, that if there was anything I could do to help: the same things he’d hear hundreds of times over the next few days.

    He pointed to the bag that was collecting excess fluid from her skull. “I keep looking at it,” he said, “it’s almost beautiful.” I walked closer to the bag; the bottom was a raspberry shade of red that diffused into a translucent yellow. “It reminds me of a New Brunswick Sunrise.” I didn’t ask if he was talking about the drink or if he was just talking about the morning sky. I didn’t ask if he meant that this beautiful thing was taking away the shadows that can hide the shit of the world.
    He asked me to take a picture of it, then he asked me to bring him to the supermarket where his mom’s car has been parked for the past few days. He was worried it might get towed.
    Outside, in the sun, Ian blinked the way prisoners do when they’re released in movies. We got into my car and he told me they were removing her from life support. “Last night the doctors pulled her off the ventilator for ten minutes.” Apparently, it’s a test they perform. “They wanted to see if she could breathe on her own.”
    So they wouldn’t kill her, they gave his mother pure oxygen beforehand: her blood was saturated with enough air to sustain her for the ten minute test. But, if Mrs. Rosen didn’t breathe during the test, she’d technically be brain dead.
    “At nine minutes she took one breath. The doctor said it wasn’t a good enough sign, that the damage was going to be irreversible.” The parts of her brain that controlled coordination, that housed memory, they were gone. He was telling me these things, dry as his cheeks and his eyes. He said he wished she hadn’t taken that breath, “it would’ve been easier.”
    The parking lot was empty aside from his mother’s car. There were some yellow and green flyers stuck in the windshield wipers. I told him we’d drop the car off at his mother’s house, “I’ll bring you back to the hospital.” He really shouldn’t have been driving at all.
    He opened his door and looked back at me. “You know, we’ve all been torturing her.” The doctors had said that any movement his mother might make was a sign of recovery. “I saw my aunt digging her nails into my mom’s hand, not enough to make her bleed, but close. I’ve been squeezing as hard as I can, almost breaking bone. I saw my cousin pinching the inside of her arm when he hugged her last night. She doesn’t move anymore.” He said this like he was asking for a beer; he didn’t wait for a reaction; he just closed my door and unlocked his mother’s. I saw him play with the air freshener and imaged what the smell reminded him of as he started punching the steering wheel. From inside my car, I could hear his scream, shrill and sustained.
    Ian took a long shower at his mother’s house. I sat in the living room and left the TV off. The floor was covered in a moss colored shag carpet; the wood panel walls had the same remnant 70’s feel. I stroked the blue velour couch and looked at two photos propped up on the end table. In an elaborate gold frame, Ian and his parents are wearing Mickey Mouse ears. It was a remarkably unflattering photograph of all of them. Ian looked like he was seven or eight, one front tooth was missing and his hyper neon shorts reminded me of the shame I felt looking at pictures of myself from the 80’s. His mother’s hair was caught in the wind, blown into her mouth. She was pulling the strands out when the picture was taken. His father’s pot belly was hanging out, and his taut t-shirt distorted the picture of Homer Simpson’s face. They were all in flip flops and nobody’s eyes were fully opened. The second picture was in a plain black plastic frame. It was Ian and his mother after his Golden Key ceremony. He looked surprised by the flash, but his mother was looking at him and smiling. Ian wouldn’t have either of his parents in graduation photos.
    When he came downstairs he told me he was fine to drive, that I could just go back to New Brunswick. “I guess I’ll have my own car now.” He wasn’t blinking, leaving eyes hanging open to stay dry. I told him I’d rather bring him to the hospital.
    At four o’clock, the doctor came and verified the family’s wishes. I stayed in the waiting room, the four family members stayed with Mrs. Rosen for her last minutes. Later, Ian told me that the motion they’d been waiting to see finally came, that he could actually see her body shutting down.
    It was his aunt that suggested we get some food. Ian mentioned a nearby diner he’d never been to, a place he’d be comfortable never seeing again. When the hostess asked how many people were coming, we looked at each other and counted heads. The waitresses were all wearing Santa hats and bright red t-shirts saying Merry Christmas; busboys wore green shirts with a picture of mistletoe. Tinsel was draped all over the place, a gold star on our napkin holder and an obligatory menorah near the cashier. They were out of booths so we sat a round table, trying to space ourselves evenly from one another. When the waitress brought the water over, I ordered a milkshake, everyone else got coffee. She smiled and talked about the holidays, told us she’d be back in a few minutes to take our order. His uncle flipped through his menu then looked around the table and said, “I think I’m getting pancakes, what about the rest of you?”

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