LITMIR.BIZ

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need to piss from the beer, but I can’t get up. No worries. I fall asleep.

      When I wake up it’s still dark. I don’t have a clock. Wait, my camera has a clock in it. I turn it on and take a picture of the room; when I view a shot, it always says when it was taken, right? 2:46 a.m. Too bad. I’d hoped the pill would allow me to sleep through the night. Did Peter leave more pills here?

      I turn on the light. It’s terribly bright and white. I’m dizzy. I guess these tablets they’re giving me are pretty strong. I’m having trouble thinking straight. My eyes adjust to the nightmarish light. Why did I bother with the clock in the camera? I have a mobile phone. You’re funny sometimes, Helen. It must be the medication. I hope. I see a tablet in a little plastic cup on the nightstand. Down the hatch. I can do it without a drink. It tastes disgustingly chemical. It takes a long time before I have enough spit to swallow it. Gulp. And it’s down. I turn off the light and try to go back to sleep. Can’t. My bladder’s full. Very full. At least it’s my bladder bothering me and not my ass. There’s a noise bothering me. It’s a loud hissing. From outside, I think. Sounds like the exhaust pipe of the hospital’s air-conditioning system. They must have moved it right outside my window while I was asleep. I refuse to go to the bathroom. You’re going to have to fall asleep with a full bladder, Helen, or not at all. To block out the hiss I put the pillow on top of my head. Top ear blocked by the pillow, bottom ear by the mattress.

      The hiss in my head is now as loud as the air conditioner outside. I press my eyelids together and try to force myself to sleep. Think about something else, Helen. But what?

      I smell something.

      I fear it’s gas. I sniff and sniff again. It still smells like gas. A gas leak. I can almost hear it. Sssssssss. Just to be sure not to make a fool of myself, I wait a little while longer. I hold my breath. I count a few seconds and then take another deep breath. It’s definitely gas. Turn on the light. I stand up. The motion hurts. But who cares. Better to have your ass hurt than to get blown sky high.

      I go out into the hall and call.

      “Hello? Is anyone there?”

      Mom always forbid us to call out “hello.” She thought it sounded as if you were talking down to handicapped people.

      I’ll make an exception. It’s an emergency.

      “Hello?”

      It’s silent in the hallway. Hospitals are creepy at night.

      A nurse comes out of the nurses’ station. Thankfully it’s not a man. Where’s Peter?

      “Can you come check this out? It smells like gas in my room.”

      Her face becomes very serious. Good, she believes me.

      We go into my room and sniff around. I can’t smell it anymore. The strong gas smell. It’s gone. No gas, no nothing. It’s happened again.

      “Oh, no, I guess it doesn’t. My mistake.” I exaggeratedly raise the corners of my mouth.

      I’m hoping to make it look as if I was joking.

      I don’t pull it off very well. I can’t believe I’ve fooled myself again. For the hundredth time. Approximately.

      She looks at me full of disdain and leaves. She’s right—it’s nothing to joke about. But it wasn’t meant to be one. The worst gas incident so far—except for the real one—happened at home. One night when I was trying to fall asleep I was sure I smelled gas. The smell just kept getting stronger. Because I know gas is lighter than air—even though it’s hard to believe—I thought I was well situated lying there in bed. It’s not far off the floor.

      I also know it takes a long time for all the rooms of a building to fill with gas and for the gas to slowly descend from the ceiling and spread out. I was sure my mom and brother were already dead. Whether the leak was in the basement or the kitchen, their rooms would be full by now.

      I lay in bed a long time with my eyes nearly closed—because of lack of oxygen, I thought, though it turned out to be from sleepiness—thinking about what I should do.

      I thought if I got out of bed I might cause a spark and it would be my fault if the apartment blew up and I died. The others were already dead—it wouldn’t matter to them if the place exploded.

      I decided to climb out of bed very slowly and inch my way outside on the floor.

      The apartment was silent. If I made it out alive I would still have my father, who, luckily, didn’t live in that deadly building. That’s the one advantage to having divorced parents.

      Lying on the floor I reached up for the handle of the front door and opened it. It took a long time to make it down the hall, snaking my way across the carpet. As soon as I was outside I took a few deep breaths. I’d made it.

      I walked away from the building so I wouldn’t be hit by any flying bricks if the place blew up.

      I stood on the sidewalk in my nightgown, lit up by the only street lamp on our block, and looked at the tomb of my mother and brother.

      There was a light on in the living room. I could see mom on the couch with a book in her hand. At first I thought she had suffocated and was frozen in that position. Rather improbable.

      Then she turned a page. She was alive, and I realized I had fooled myself again.

      I went back in and flopped down in bed. Real hard, to cause sparks.

      There’s no way for me to know whether I’m imagining it or not when I smell gas. It always smells strong. And it happens pretty often.

      It’s actually a pleasant smell.

      Fear makes you tired. Painkillers, too. I lie down in the hospital bed and fall asleep.

      I sleep through the rest of the night. Only two tablets. Not bad. I convince myself that’s a small amount of pain medication. To be honest, yesterday evening I had pictured a more difficult night ahead. In a shotglass-sized plastic cup on the nightstand is a pill. Another one. Very generous, Peter. Pain medication, I assume. I slurp it down. Today I’ll try to stand up. I also need to go to the bathroom. Bad. It doesn’t smell good in here. It’s not gas this time. It can only be my ass. What else?

      I feel around in back and find it wet. Blood? I look at my fingers. Not red. A hint of light brown. I smell them. Definitely crap. How did that get there, inspector Helen?

      From the container on the windowsill I pull out gauze bandages and wipe myself up. It’s brown water that smells like crap. In the photo yesterday my butthole was wide open and I think everything must just be running out because the hole is still not tightly closed the way it normally would be. The seal isn’t watertight. I christen the stuff coming out “ass piss” and I’m already used to it. I figure out a folding technique for the bandages: I hold my ass cheeks apart and shove my folded masterpiece up as close to the wound as possible so it stems the flow of ass piss. When I touch the wound itself with the bandages or my fingertips, it hurts bad. I gingerly let go of my ass cheeks. They hold the bandages in place. All set. Problem solved.

      It really doesn’t smell too good in this room. I’m afraid my ass is definitely air-incontinent. A constant flow of warm air is coming without warning out of my intestines. You can’t even call them farts. My ass is just wide open. Farts have a beginning and an end. They noisily find their way out, sometimes with a lot of pressure. That’s not the case here. It just billows out. And fills the room with all the smells that should stay inside me until I decide to let them out. It smells like warm pus mixed with diarrhea and something acidic that I can’t seem to identify. Maybe it’s from the medication.

      Now when somebody enters the room they know as much about me as if under normal circumstances they had shoved their head up my ass and taken a big whiff.

      I’m in a good mood because I slept so well, I think. The next problem: going to the bathroom. I lie on my stomach and drop my legs slowly toward the floor. It’s a long way down. These tall beds. Bad. My feet touch the ground. I brace myself with my forearms and lift my

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