left of my parents.
I'm practicing my mom's smile. People don't practice their smiles nearly enough, so when they most need to look happy they're not fooling anyone. I'm rehearsing my smile when—there it is: my ticket to a gloriously happy future working in fast food. That's opposed to a miserable life as a world-famous architect or heart surgeon.
Hovering over my shoulder and a smidgen behind me, it's reflected in the mirror. Like the bubble containing my thoughts in a comic-strip panel, there's a cardiac defibrillator. It's mounted on the wall in back of me, shut inside a metal case with a glass door you could open to set off alarm bells and a red strobe light. A sign above the box says AED and shows a lightning bolt striking a Valentine's heart. The metal case is like the hands-off showcase holding some crown jewels in a Hollywood heist movie.
Opening the case, automatically I set off the alarm and flashing red light. Quick, before any heroes come running, I dash into a handicapped stall with the defibrillator. Sitting on the toilet, I pry it open. The instructions are printed on the lid in English, Spanish, French and comic-book pictures. Making it foolproof, more or less. If I wait too long I won't have this option. Defibrillators will be under lock and key soon, and once defibrillators are illegal only paramedics will have them.
In my grasp, here's my permanent childhood. My very own bliss machine.
My hands are smarter than the rest of me. My fingers know to peel the electrodes and paste them to my temples. My ears know to listen for the loud beep that means the thing is fully charged.
My thumbs know what's best for me. They hover over the big red button. Like this is a video game. Like the button the president gets to press to trigger the launch of nuclear war. One push and the world as I know it comes to an end. A new reality begins.
To be or not to be. God's gift to animals is they don't get a choice.
Every time I open the newspaper I want to throw up. In another 10 seconds I won't know how to read. Better yet, I won't have to. I won't know about global climate change. I won't know about cancer or genocide or SARS or environmental degradation or religious conflict.
The public address system is paging my name. I won't even know my name.
Before I can blast off, I picture my uncle Henry at the gate, holding his boarding pass. He deserves better than this. He needs to know this is not his fault.
With the electrodes stuck to my forehead, I carry the defibrillator out of the bathroom and walk down the concourse toward the gate. The coiling electric wires trail down the sides of my face like thin, white pigtails. My hands carry the battery pack in front of me like a suicide bomber who's only going to blow up all my IQ points.
When they catch sight of me, businesspeople abandon their roller bags. People on family vacations, they flap their arms, wide, and herd their little kids in the other direction. Some guy thinks he's a hero. He shouts, 'Everything is going to be all right.' He tells me, 'You have everything to live for.'
We both know he's a liar.
My face is sweating so hard the electrodes might slip off. Here's my last chance to say everything that's on my mind, so with everyone watching I'll confess: I don't know what's a happy ending. And I don't know how to fix anything. Doors open in the concourse and Homeland Security soldiers storm out, and I feel like one of those Buddhist monks in Tibet or wherever who splash on gasoline before they check to make sure their cigarette lighter actually works. How embarrassing that would be, to be soaking in gasoline and have to bum a match off some stranger, especially since so few people smoke anymore. Me, in the middle of the airport concourse, I'm dripping with sweat instead of gasoline, but this is how out of control my thoughts are spinning.
From out of nowhere my uncle grabs my arm, and he says, 'If you hurt yourself, Trevor, you hurt me.'
He's gripping my arm, and I'm gripping the red button. I tell him this isn't so tragic. I say, 'I'll keep loving you, Uncle Henry…I just won't know who you are.'
Inside my head, my last thoughts are prayers. I'm praying that this battery is fully charged. There's got to be enough voltage to erase the fact that I've just said the word
Most people, instead of saving me, they pull out their telephones and start shooting video. Everyone's jockeying for the best full-on angle. It reminds me of something. It reminds me of birthday parties and Christmas. A thousand memories crash over me for the last time, and that's something else I hadn't anticipated. I don't mind losing my education. I don't mind forgetting my name. But I will miss the little bit I can remember about my parents.
My mother's eyes and my father's nose and forehead, they're dead except for in my face. And the idea hurts, to know that I won't recognize them anymore. Once I punch out, I'll think my reflection is nothing except me.
My uncle Henry repeats, 'If you hurt yourself, you hurt me too.'
I say, 'I'll still be your nephew, but I just won't know it.'
For no reason, some lady steps up and grabs my uncle Henry's other arm. This new person, she says, 'If you hurt yourself, you hurt me as well.…' Somebody else grabs that lady, and somebody grabs the last somebody, saying, 'If you hurt yourself, you hurt me.' Strangers reach out and grab hold of strangers in chains and branches, until we're all connected together. Like we're molecules crystallizing in solution in Organic Chem. Everyone's holding on to someone, and everyone's holding on to everyone, and their voices repeat the same sentence: 'If you hurt yourself, you hurt me.… If you hurt yourself, you hurt me.…'
These words form a slow wave. Like a slow-motion echo, they move away from me, going up and down the concourse in both directions. Each person steps up to grab a person who's grabbing a person who's grabbing a person who's grabbing my uncle who's grabbing me. This really happens. It sounds trite, but only because words make everything true sound trite. Because words always screw up what you're trying to say.
Voices from other people in other places, total strangers, say by telephone, watching by video cams, their long-distance voices say, 'If you hurt yourself, you hurt me.…' And some kid steps out from behind the cash register at Der Wienerschnitzel, all the way down at the food court, he grabs hold of somebody and shouts, 'If you hurt yourself, you hurt me.' And the kids making Taco Bell and the kids frothing milk at the Starbucks, they stop, and they all hold hands with someone connected to me across this vast crowd, and they say it too. And just when I think it's got to end and everyone's got to let go and fly away, because everything's stopped and people are holding hands, even going through the metal detectors they're holding hands, even then the talking news anchor on CNN, on the televisions mounted up high by the ceiling, the announcer puts a finger to his ear, like to hear better, and even he says, 'Breaking news.' He looks confused, obviously reading something off cue cards, and he says, 'If you hurt yourself, you hurt me.' And overlapping his voice are the voices of political pundits on Fox News and color commentators on ESPN, and they're all saying it.
The televisions show people outside in parking lots and in tow-away zones, all holding hands. Bonds forming. Everyone's uploading video of everyone, people standing miles away but still connected back to me.
And crackling with static, voices come over the walkie-talkies of the Homeland Security guards, saying, 'If you hurt yourself, you hurt me—do you copy?'
By that point there's not a big enough defibrillator in the universe to scramble all our brains. And, yeah, eventually we'll all have to let go, but for another moment everyone's holding tight, trying to make this connection last forever. And if this impossible thing can happen, then who knows what else is possible? And a girl at Burger King shouts, 'I'm scared too.' And a boy at Cinnabon shouts, 'I am scared
To top things off, a huge voice announces, 'Attention!' From overhead it says, 'May I have your attention, please?' It's a lady. It's the lady voice who pages people and tells them to pick up the white paging telephone. With everyone listening, the entire airport is reduced to silence.
'Whoever you are, you need to know…' says the lady voice of the white paging telephone. Everyone listens because everyone thinks she's talking only to them. From a thousand speakers she begins to sing. With that voice, she's singing the way a bird sings. Not like a parrot or an Edgar Allan Poe bird that speaks English. The sound is trills and scales the way a canary sings, notes too impossible for a mouth to conjugate into nouns and verbs. We can enjoy it without understanding it. And we can love it without knowing what it means. Connected by telephone and television, it's synchronizing everyone, worldwide. That voice so perfect, it's just singing down on us.
Best of all…her voice fills everywhere, leaving no room for being scared. Her song makes all our ears into one ear.
This isn't exactly the end. On every TV is me, sweating so hard an electrode slowly slides down one side of my face.
This certainly isn't the happy ending I had in mind, but compared to where this story began—with Griffin Wilson
