by Paul Yoder

Present.

There’s no expert present, only a screaming woman, a dead boyfriend, and me.

Five minutes ago.

Sparks fly down my right leg. Sciatica. I’m 32, damn it. I’m lying on my couch in the only position that brings me back from the verge of weeping. I’m remembering. I’m wondering how my endless ambitions got bogged down – wondering why, after striving for a decade, after all those this-is-its, I’m still managing an eighteen-room apartment in Los Angeles for minimum wage and minimum board two thousand miles from home, writing stories nobody reads.

The wall beside my head dulls a piercing scream from the apartment next door, where this woman lives with her boyfriend and their West Highland White Terrier, Pudding. The woman screams her boyfriend’s name.

I’m just the manager. Not my business. But I’m knocking on their door, my bare feet cold on the pavement. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s her horrified tone. Maybe I just can’t live with one more nightmare about not living up to who I could have been.

My worst expectations don’t prepare me. After a lot of insistent knocking and doorbelling, the woman finally answers. She’s undressed, but she mumbles for help, so I’m inside, no hesitation, no modesty.

Sometimes, the present feels like a point on a long, long line. Sometimes, the line vanishes, leaving only the present point. I get to the point. I’m precisely there. There: a white dog yapping, some wobbling words from the woman, and a single, yellow lightbulb shining in the darkness, in the kitchen, right above the boyfriend. A single light: a spotlight. Maybe all light lenses down to a dense dot to highlight times like this.

Go twelve years back on the lifeline.

I’m depressed, clinically. I shouldn’t be working at a kids’ camp in Alaska. It’s the wild northwest, miles from roads. I’ve got no medicine. No clinic. I’m trapped in the circular logic of self-hatred. But I do my duty. I shoot and edit videos for the campers. I get my state-mandated CPR certification. I pinch closed a rubber mannequin’s nose and breathe air until his lungs inflate. I do my duty. My duty is to avoid jumping from the ziplining cliff without a zipline. When I want to get high on stress hormones, I brand myself with a red-hot iron.

I got help, worked hard, and lived twelve years down the line. I don’t know why.

I haven’t trained in CPR since. But this lady does nothing but panic – understandable – and the boyfriend does nothing but lay there, eyes rolled back, losing heat, losing color – understandable. I’m not even thinking, but they made me practice this procedure so I wouldn’t have to think.

I pump my whole weight into him. I breathe into his mouth. It’s disgusting. It’s kissing a corpse. I forget to pinch his nose, so my air cycles out his nostrils and sprays me with – don’t think – so I pinch his nose and try again. Between profanities, I pray.

Two weeks back.

I’m setting up for church. I tell the pastor I’m lifting light – folding chairs and pamphlets – and I tell him my excuse, my pain. He prays. For the next fifteen minutes, no pain. But then, the back pain comes back, only now, accompanied by hopelessness. I don’t know why.

God’s message? I can heal you, but I won’t.

Rude.

Back to the present.

911 dispatcher says the woman needs to get calm. She’s normally calm, but her boyfriend is normally alive. The woman’s breasts are dangling out in the open. Normally, I’d be embarrassed. But the boyfriend lies there, flopping. I’m pushing. He’s meat. I’m tenderizing. I’m praying and cursing. I inflate the rubber man’s lungs. Air comes back out through flapping lips. Sounds like a whoopie cushion. It wouldn’t surprise me if a flatlined boyfriend shows up in my every nightmare from here on down the line.

A few hours ago.

I’m in my girlfriend’s apartment. She’s studying for Law School. I’m just writing there so we can operate laptops in the same room together. Seems to help. But soon, I feel a vice grip closing on my back, cranking, squeezing. I can give her only so much of my presence. I must go home and take some medicine. I’d love to stay for the whole of our scheduled date night, but I’d also love to live like I wasn’t a broken-spined old man. The line has deviated from the line of my ambitions.

Present.

For five minutes, my existence narrows into this bright, brilliant focus, a laser-light jet beam cutting through the murk and settling here, in this kitchen. Past and present press into something simple, clean, and clear. Here: no regrets, no options, no future. Just pump thirty and breathe two, say shit and call God. No alternative. No pain. No frustration as we wait for the Narcan.

Forget it all. I forget everything except pump and breathe.

Just before this present.

Alone in my apartment, I hate life. The universe has dealt me a suffering hand, and God won’t play favorites with me; won’t make me young, successful, whole, and back in my girlfriend’s apartment. I don’t know why.

Now.

Now, I breathe with purpose.

Boyfriend’s eyes move. I ask him to breathe. His eyes swim around the room. I tell him to breathe. It takes convincing. He doesn’t immediately recognize me – he’s only ever seen me with my COVID mask, right up until tonight, when we’re locking lips – and he has questions – understandable.

He rose again. Holy shit; thank God.

The past is past. The present begins.

After.

I consult my law-school girlfriend, then report to the building owner precisely what I know but not what I surmise. I mention no heroin. The couple can remain housed, unharassed, and present.

I wasn’t supposed to be present tonight. The line just led here, to life, and I don’t know why.

Photo by Rodion Kutsaiev on Unsplash