Unholy Confessions

We boarded a cable car, and sat close to each other with our hands on each other’s knees. This was our second trip to the smokehouses. Clearly, going to smokehouses was like eating Chinese food on Sundays on Long Island—a well cultivated habit.

We sat down, and I ordered Colombian. The waitress brought it to the table and we shared.

“I have a confession to make,” I said sheepishly.

“You are full of confessions,” Hanna replied. “What have you got to tell me?”

“I was hospitalized after my last break-up. I took a hit on the joint, and proceeded to describe the terror. I had to tell it in the third person because of the raw pain.

Her lover’s deep brown eyes stared coldly at Penelope Goode who lay on the hospital gurney, blood pouring from her left wrist. The room was set apart from the rest of the emergency room by a curtainless portal.  Its pale beige walls reflected the sound of nurses whisking from one bed to another, mumbling to themselves about the ineptitude of the doctors and the endless demands of the patients. Other nurses huddled around the central nurses’ station, and ate freshly baked brownies. Still others watched “The Today Show” in a corner while Penelope wondered what was next.  The room’s clock melted into the wall like in a Salvador Dali painting--its hands dendrites moving crookedly through time. Voices echoed from the hospital’s paging system like a proctor reciting the rules of a forthcoming standardized test. The adrenaline of her suicide attempt kept her awake until a doctor finally arrived.

“You’ll need surgery,” a young male doctor in his early 30s said. His brown hair had a side part, and his rectangular glasses sat squarely on his nose. He held a clipboard and looked at Penelope briefly while taking notes, and then turned to Jill Siegel. “Are you her sister?” he asked.

“No,” Jill replied. “We were lovers. She’s got this illness. She hears voices. I refuse to take responsibility for this.”

Jill Stein besides having Multiple Sclerosis, and appearing healthy--with only that hitch in her gait--had memory and cognitive problems. The circles under her eyes were worse than usual. She wore her signature black Versace jeans which clung to her small, tight buttocks and shapely thighs. Her t-shirt covered her hips. She wore black ankle high Reeboks.