The Children's Hospital

25

Are you taking me to Heaven? Jarvis asks me.

No, I say. I am taking you to the roof.

I can do that myself, he says, but he does not take his hand from mine, or curse me, or even frown, because he knows he wasn’t going anywhere before I fetched him out of the PICU. He was not enjoying his out-of-body experience. Free at last, he stood outside his prison door and hollered to be let back in. I was diminished, crammed in the corner of his room, watching him pace at the foot of his bed, and throw himself every so often upon his body. Face to face with himself he said, You fucker, wake up! He sat down on the floor, put his head in his hands, and cried. My sister was saying that he should take comfort, and that everything was all right, but he ignored her.

I used to like the crying of children. I wished I could complain as profoundly as an infant, and I admired the way that toddlers sob against the world with their whole souls. I imagined an instrument of them, dozens of babies and toddlers arranged like the pipes on an organ, pedals to squeeze them and keys to poke them — I would play out a complaint to capture the ear of God, and in a whistling, snotty symphony of sobs and screams, articulate the thing that oppressed me, reason and remedy for my world-sized dissatisfaction.

But now I cannot stand to hear it. I unfold myself out of the air and say, Look at me.

Nobody looks any different, he said, staring at the passing faces. Even though I’m dead.

You aren’t dead, I say. I am dead, but they look the same to me as always. Which was not entirely true: they are easier for me to look at now.

Hey! he said as we passed the eighth floor. Hey! He tugged on my hand and my arm until I looked at him.

What is it?

I’m not so mad anymore. I feel fine and I just noticed it.

Felicitations, I say. I am not so mad anymore either. You need a fleshy heart, to really feel things.

All that time, all that shit! And all I needed to do was die. He walked on, leading me now.

Well, enjoy it while it lasts, I say.

I know when something is going to last forever, he says. I heard them talking down there. Nothing’s going to save me from dying. Maybe I’m not going to Heaven, but I’m not going back there.

Miracles have been known to happen.

Ha! he says, making it an ancient and ageless sound.

So here we are, I say, because we are on the roof.

So what? I’ve seen it. It looks the same.

It is the same. But you, for now, are different. I am the recording angel; you are just a boy. You can’t wander around all day prying into people’s business: you’ve got to have diversions. So here is one.

I bring him to the edge of the roof, our hands still joined, but when I say what we are going to do, he pulls away.

I can’t swim, he says,

You can now.

I’m not wearing my bathing suit.

You’re not wearing anything. And he notices that this is true.

Shit! I’m naked. You’re naked. You fag! He turns and is about to run, but I am quicker than any wandering undead soul could ever be. I take his hand and leap off the roof, dragging him after me, weighting my wings with memories of sadness and rage. Jarvis is shrieking all the way. We go down, past the long root of the hospital, and the bright globe at the bottom where my sister keeps her spirit, and further, feeling the pressure but not the wetness of the water, falling faster into the lightless cold abyss, but the cold doesn’t bother and we don’t need light for our eyes.

My rubber band, fastened securely to Jemma, is stretching, and Jarvis wears one that is similar, though like every other child there he is attached, soul and body, to the hospital, until they reach the new world. He is reaching next to me, stretching his hands and his fingers because he can tell we are nearing the bottom. We are drawn back before he can touch it.

We shoot out of the water, up into the air, down onto the roof. I have been alighting all my new life on bedposts and leafless trees and flagpole tops and live wires — Jarvis has only done it this one time. I land on my feet; he lands on his ass, but is up again immediately. I think I saw bones! he says, and then, Can I do it again?