Excerpt from Sing Me, work-in-progress

"I need a fix cause I'm going dowwwwn...."

Magic Man


She rushed up to the room, just in time to see Clarence's shrunken body, his ribs, so...ema – so enunciated (she gave him what she could, even in her mind), and then to see a shockingly violent heaving into a large plastic container the nurse held for him, her other arm around his back so he could sit up as the most virulent substance gushed out of his mouth, so viscous and black it looked like oil, but thicker -- and the smell --!  Jesus, she had no words to describe that smell: it was beyond sulfuric, it was toxicity itself.
     She let go of his head and he fell back down as the nurse lifted the bucket of putridity, headed for disposal till Zoe stopped her in the doorway.
What is that, she whispered even though Clarence had fallen back unconscious.
That his blood, nina.  He got a hole in his heart, como se – fungal -- and is infected his blood.       That (eying the bucket) is what 'nourish' his system ri' now.
Oh my God!  Oh my God, oh my God – what can I do?  Can I do something?
Si, said the little Puerto Rican nurse.  Puedes rogar.  Her voice was calm but fierce, even as she eased out of the room.  You can pray.  You can pray for your amigo.  And I think maybe on your knees, pray hard as you can.
Yo me voy a mi casa, y voy a rezar tambien, she went on.  In my own house, she deciphered it for Zoe's stunned look, I will pray, too.
And here still were more women, strangers, willing to get on their knees for him.  Women, always wanting to save him!  Including, and most fiercely (the bitterness in her gut), herself.
In truth, the minute the nurse left, carrying that substance with her, that's what Zoe did because she had to feel like was doing something.   She knelt next to his gone self and prayed until her knees were killing, until even her wrists ached, she was clutching the steeple of her own hands so hard.
He was thoroughly gone, but she kept vigil at his bedside, only going into the bathroom late at night to sneak a shower, scrubs out her dainties, then eat the tray of food both she and the nurses knew was really for her, since he couldn't eat (not with that tube feeding him – a picc line, they called it, and she kept thinking, how appropriate/ for a music man...)
Ti-ny dancer, she sang in a half-whisper, letting the melody lilt, switching randomly from one song to the next midstream.
It seemed like the minutes dragged and then she looked up and it was two hours later – the best part of playing, always.  She strummed a silly lullabye, noodling it around a song somehow every child seemed to learn:

Floatin on the river down Jordan
Floatin on the river down Styx
Floatin on the ri-ver Ni-le
Floatin on the Am-a-zon.../
I got Cerberus here to guide me
His wing-man starry Sirius
S'long's I got doggies paddlin
Know they gonna take me home...

God, Clarence said, his voice a croak, as her face slowly rose to see him trying to wipe the crust off his single open eye, too shaky to manage.  Is this how they torture you back to life?
Back to/real-i-ty!, sprang the song line in her head, lumping up her throat, tears running down her face, Thank God, she thought, God thank you thank you thank you GOD!
Back to the he-re and nowww, she sang, so quietly nothing but Clarence's bat ears could've heard.
Jesus, my man, Clarence said, and she caught the sideways-tears pillow swipe.  What fresh hell is this?
Hell?  No, hell is where you wuz headed, blackman.  This here is a li'l patch of cloud, got your own morphine drip – (ignoring his snort of derision – 'morphine's just a body high,' he'd always said this – 'but heroin, now, that takes you down some serious rivers...') And your own personal harpist –
Yeah, playin a guitar –
-– singing you some serious river lullabyes.
Do I look gone?  You're missin some real bye in your lullas.
But ain't it sweet to fucking wake up and swim some riverwater, you ungrateful otter?
She saw him catch his breath then, hit the morphine pump onetwothree onetwothree onetwothree then saw the sweat beading his brow, and just like the rivers she was picturing, he was drenched.
I'm getting the nurse, she said, her guitar banging gracelessly onto the floor, Clarence trying to lift a hand as if to stop her, unable to keep it upright.
She stood in the doorway while the skilled, big, fresh-on-duty and stoic dreadlocked Jamaican RN swapped the wet sheets for dry so deftly Clarence was simply rolled back, then forth – something the man would do twelve times in the next ten hours -- and done with great gentleness, the RN untied and lifted off his hospital gown and swapped it with the new, smelling sweetly of laundry, tying it for him tenderly in the back, doing his best not to touch the patient whose every bloodstream, every nerve ending, every bone and muscle and the all of his skin screamed pain.
Gown! Came the absurd thought as she lurked in the doorway – I'm lurking, this thought, too, I'm a lurker -- and then again, Gown?  Wow, there was some pie-eyed optimism!
Delusion, Clarence had once pronounced, Is its own reward.
Unless you're a paranoid junkie with delusions of grandeur, she'd retorted.
What, you think me not a Person of Interest?
A POA?  I believe that's gone, sold to the dealer who holds your paycheck!  By far, she'd added, The highest bidder – considering his interest, of course.
Thank you, Z-bitch – you're so good at kickin a dawg when he's down.
Save the ghetto-speak for your starry-eyed debutantes.  Tell me, though, seriously, do you let them ALL tramp stamp your birthdate?
Nah, he said, Soma them just get C was here (nodding, but not without effort he tried to hide, to his innermost thigh).
Ah, the groin.  So sub-subtle.
You were gonna say sublet weren'tcha.
Fuck you.
Fuck YOU, he said.  Ain't nobody axed you to sit me bedside –
And there he did his uncanny impression of a young Jamaican girl – 'my babynurse,' is what he'd called the woman his mother had hired three months after he was born and her maternity leave was over, a young woman arrived so recently from her own delivery that she brought her own baby along and secretly breastfed Clarence, too – 'extra antibodies,' he said she'd said in her beautiful accent).
Obviously you're making that up, Zoe had responded at the time of the story, but he just went on, 'I know about all kinds of t'ings,' she'd said.  She did, too.  Shit's kept me alive, he used to say.  And boy did it make a tata fetishist outta me.'  All of it fiction, surely, but only Clarence could make it come alive.
And it did seem Jamaica (or at least its hired nurses) were fighting for him.
Third sheet change later, Clarence snugged dry and tight as an infant swaddled, Zoe saw him shivering nevertheless, a shiver like an earthquake, making his jaws audibly clang against each other, his arms gone rigid over his hiccuping ribcage.
Before she could even turn, the RN was bustling back in with an armful of blankets.
Straight from the warmer, he said, ignoring Clarence when he tried to thank him, putting a stick with a small green sponge at the end into his patient's mouth.  He poured a glass of water from a small bedside pitcher.
Try to keep dis 'tween your teeths, he said, And dis–here -- he turned and lasered a look at Zoe before looking back to Clarence, Dis water, you drink it all up.
You put the lime in de coconut, she half-sang, and got a smile from the RN before he left.
And shut the fuck up, Clarence said, his teeths still knocking.
Sure, why not, she said, walking into the room only as much as she needed to grab the handle of her guitar.  Incredible how much better the conversation went when you were still in a coma.
He turned his face away.
What, no zinger?  No 'but isn't that the way you like it, just the sound of your own voice?'
He tried to turn away and succeeded only in making the covers come loose, his cocoon come undone.  She could see his body shaking still, and stiffly she pushed the blankets tighter.  He said nothing, but his lips were blue.
Fucking hell, she said, both fright and curse, double-making sure she'd left no draft uncovered.
Thanks, he muttered tersely, and she knew he was working very hard not to cry, his misery as palpable as a mist in that dark room.
God how men hated to let anyone see them cry.   
    Well, she thought.  So do I.
She turned to finally leave, and next thing she knew she was crawling on top of him, draping her own hot, near-sweating body across him, limb for limb, burying her face in his neck, until finally the shivering subsided and he was breathing more easily – enough, at least, to say, Shit whitegirl, I ain't up to doin the mystery dance so you best quit crushin me.
You thank God for me, she said, getting off him only to sit back in the chair, to pull the guitar back into her waiting lap, and with relief, watched his eyes drift shut.
She sang to his closed eyes as if she were alone, just bits and riffs of this and that, of Joni Mitchell and the Smiths, of Courtney Love a cappella and Snoop Dog w/ Dre, threw in a little Lhasa de Sela, and some Tupac too, humming or making stuff up when she forgot the words, playing as though she were simply distracting herself in some nameless airport, her thoughts already on the plane she was about to board or the one she'd just got off.
This, she realized, as she heard his labored breathing come easier, This endless back and forth – this is Clarence 'n me.