Inappropriate Heroics by Gary Moshimer
Dr. Nolecki in the cool tiled hallway by the ER. He’s alone, but the echoes of his footsteps follow him closely, accusing. He paces, searching for words.
He must break the news to the tragically young wife and child, about their tragically stupid husband and father. What was he doing on the roof anyway? Asshole amateur handyman, is what.
They worked on him longer than necessary, with Dr. Nolecki in charge, Nolecki picturing that little family in his head, one like he should have but didn’t. The nurses said, Isn’t it time to stop? His neck is broken. There was never any hope.
Nolecki’s had a long shift, too, fourteen hours since his last little pill. He’s awfully alone in this hallway, his co-workers upset with his inappropriate heroics.
The waiting room is empty except for the kid. Mother’s in the bathroom, being sick, the kid says. Nolecki sits in a chair, his eyes level with the kid, but then looks down. The kid holds a box of markers and scribbles drawings of his father falling off the house. He’s using a terrible shade of green, drab olive.
“Is Daddy dead?”
The doctor can’t look at him.
“He is, isn’t he?”
Nolecki goes to stand up and escape, but the kid shrieks and starts jabbing the olive marker into his own neck, slashing and staining the skin that horrible color.
That won’t do, he tells the kid, get a grip. You need red. Here. He grabs the box and dumps the markers onto the floor. He spreads them with his foot, looking. There, firehouse red. Pick it up.
The kid’s eyes grow as Nolecki gashes and grinds at his own throat with it. He gives it to the kid, who follows. They rub the color into their cheeks, foreheads. Nolecki pops the marker into his mouth, gnashes it with his teeth, chomps plastic. The kid does the same. Their eyes meet, throbbing with rage and excitement.
They stomp the rest of the markers into the carpet, Nolecki with his hard heel and the kid with his sneaker, which makes a soft sound of exhalation. That’s what he sounded like, in the end. That’s not really breathing, said the nurse. That’s just deflation. Why was he on that roof, damn it?
Nolecki lifts the table lamp and sends it through the TV screen. The pop sucks their breath away. The flying glass dazzles their eyes. The box vibrates, buzzes, sizzles on its wall mount. Words from an old program inexplicably dribble through the air and die. The kid freezes. “My Dad’s favorite show.”
They mash the glass into the floor.
The kid’s tiny, but he picks up a chair and hurls it through the window and into the hallway. He cries and laughs. This is where Nolecki chooses to make his exit. Nothing will ever be the same again, of course.
The mother, running down the hall from the ladies room, sees this: Her baby sitting bloody-kneed in the smoking shards, crazy drawings on his neck, face painted for some rite of passage.
And a man in a white coat ducking out the exit.
Gary Moshimer works in a hospital. He has contributed stories to Storyglossia, Word Riot, Pank, Wigleaf and other places.
© 2009, Metazen. All rights reserved.
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