Sing

CHAPTER 6.

JONATHAN

When I first felt like I was dying, I stood in a doorway at the LA Mod for half an hour, trying to get control of the tightness in my chest. I focused on my breathing, sat down, tried to think about anything else, but it kept getting worse, and I kept sitting there, thinking I had to get to Monica before my father did, and I really started panicking.

It all tumbled down from there, to that ridiculously long hospital stay, to getting wheeled into an operating room for surgery at 32. When I woke up, I had the feeling something had gone terribly wrong.

I swam to consciousness feeling like I was being choked. I panicked the same panic I felt in that doorway. I couldn’t control anything, my sensations, my body, my thoughts. I couldn’t see clearly. I couldn’t move my arms. I was bound like a prisoner. My voice was dead. My face itched. Was I warned it would feel like this?

Or was I dead and in the hell of everything I’ve ever done to every woman I’ve tied down and fucked? I thought of Dante, his hells being the excess of our desires, and in the deepest circles, the pain of our victims. Here I was. Fuck. I was terrified, and for eternity, I didn’t think I could stand it. This blackness. The crippling paralysis. No control. Utter submission to emptiness. And my throat. I was breathing, but the pressure on my throat was enormous. I’d never choked a sex partner, because I never believed I’d be able to control the results. How could my hell include this? I never believed life was fair, but was God this unjust?

“Jonathan.”

A voice. Female. I recognized it as Sheila’s. She always had a way about her, like she gave birth to the world and loved it to maturity, even when her words cut deep and rage twisted her mouth.

I realized I could open my eyes if I chose to. The whisper and beep of machines broke the silence of my anxiety.

Okay. Not hell. Not dead. But the choking feeling was real, and I started to panic again.

Sheila’s face blocked out the light. “You’re intubated. The machine is breathing for you. Keep still. It’s okay.”

I chose to believe her. And I waited. It was five minutes to three. I couldn’t speak to ask her to unbind my wrists, so I stared at the clock for five minutes, and when the hands met, I closed my eyes and imagined I could lift my arm and touch my lips.