Recovery from Simultaneous Stroke and Cardiac Arrest
A health reporter’s non-scientific abstract on what really happened to her boyfriend during the scariest year of her life Background: Fifty-nine-year-old Caucasian male collapses without warning on July 26, 2011 at approximately 7 p.m. Central Time. Incident takes place on public street while patient is walking son’s dog, Joanie (as …
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The Blessing of the Throats
They came for Blaise of Sebaste in the late afternoon, just before supper. Light filtered through the trees on the mountain before it entered the mouth of the cave where he knelt in prayer on a mat of reeds. He had seen patients earlier in the day, but retired to …
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Lucinda’s Bouquet
Lucinda sat very straight on a chair in front of the small window in the tiny living room. She stared out, as though watching a movie screen. A dozen or so onlookers had already gathered outside the window by the time Ana and I arrived, our arms full of flowers. …
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Perfect For The Small Family
One egg. Two cups flour. One cup sugar. One cup shortening. I trace my finger down the ingredient list, hoping that I have everything already. Vanilla. Baking soda. Salt. This recipe promises a cake that is “light, moist, delicious anytime.” It is baked in a nine-by-nine-inch cake pan. It is …
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The Anatomy of Loss
Yet there is no return: rolling up out of chaos, a nine month’s wonder, the city the man, an identity—it can’t be otherwise—an interpenetration, both ways. -W.C. Williams, Paterson I. I was in Spain when I …
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Giddy
I. February, a year since my first episode, and I think I count past 200 beats a minute as I lie in bed, listening to my heart. My arms and legs tingle, like the flesh washed out to static under the blood rush. I try to stay still, to look …
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What Fills the Spaces
The Floor The orange parquet where you sat with your grandson, tickled his neck, his toddler belly. Where he dumped out the tub of plastic animals. Where he, the gorilla, saved you, the giraffe, from tumbling off a blanket cliff. The floor where your beer stood untouched for a time, …
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An Apology, from a Daughter of Mormon Pioneers
I had never once thought of my period these past six years, its kicks and strains; the crimson prints stamped into my Levi’s—not until I, walking 600 East in Salt Lake City, stumble upon a memorial, rounded with peeling Doric columns, a 1930s marker from the Daughters of Utah Pioneers: …
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Play Pretend
My mother called on a summer day while I was riding my bike. This call happens once a year, sometimes twice. Always on her terms. So I stopped to walk. “Hello?” I lifted my voice to sound chipper and bright. Not angry that I was going into debt to pay …
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The Ruins on Bourbon and Condé
In 1905, my great-grandfather, Ferdinand Bellande, built a two-story colonial-style house in southern Haiti on the corner of Rues Bourbon and Condé in Jacmel’s Bel-Air neighborhood. With its louvered shutters and high ceilings, the architecture was typical of former French colonies in the Caribbean. He and my great-grandmother raised nine …
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