G.R.I.D.
by Francis Jarvis
Trigger Warning:
Mentions of blood, mentions of extreme sickness,
mentions of death.
The chair you’re sitting in is uncomfortable. Its padding has deflated with age and overuse, but no one cares enough to replace it. Maybe they don’t have enough funding. You pick at a fraying seam to avoid making eye contact. The goddamn chair is really the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen.
The whole room is horrible, you think. The minimal furniture is all the same shade of shit-pink and the walls are all the same blinding shade of angel-white. You don’t think it would kill them to add a splash of colour.
At least the windows are big.
It is fall, 1986.
Watching anyone waste away in a hospital is not fun. His blond curls are kind of always stuck to his forehead. He usually just sleeps all day. His medications make him drowsy, but at least his pneumonia is getting better.
Sitting around in a hospital all day is horribly boring. Because he’s always sleeping, you don’t really have anything to do. You entertain yourself by looking out the window and exploring the building while he sleeps.
You learn about his neighbors when you wander around. There’s one little girl, maybe 5 or 6 years old, who’s staying next door. She has leukemia and nobody knows how much time she has left. You suppose that no one ever knows how much time anyone has, but that’s beside the point. Her name is Lucia and her mother only speaks Italian. Lucia talks to you sometimes. She talks about Italy and how her mother came to New York because she had to. She talks about Mateou, her miniature magical dragon friend. You like listening to her talk. She reminds you of your sister.
You’re really sad that she’s going to die.
You’ll miss her.
Two rooms over, there’s an elderly man named Johann. He is very bitter and racist, saying all sorts of questionable things at all hours of the day. His liver failed and now he can’t drink, and you think that’s why he’s so angry.
You think dying people should be able to do whatever the hell they want.
James should be able to do whatever he wants. But he can’t because he’s sick. You had plans to go to Disneyland next summer. You had plans to move to Madrid together and get an apartment and a dog and maybe a joint bank account.
You’re going to miss him, too.
You’re still sitting in your chair when he finally wakes up after his nap. His eyes are glassy and he can’t really sit up. You lean in to help support him.
“Hey, baby,” you murmur quietly, “Rise and shine.”
He holds out his hand to feel for where you are. His vision has been getting progressively worse and worse, and you’re both worried that soon he’ll go completely blind. But you don’t talk about that.
His smile is flat, but he finds your hand with his and grasps it. His palm is clammy, but so is yours. He looks too pale and he can’t quite breathe properly, but he manages a weak,
“How long have you been sitting there?”
You tell him, “Not long at all”, even though it’s 4:00 in the afternoon and you’ve been at this
bloody hospital for thirty straight hours.
He asks about Lucia, and you tell him she’s been well. You both know she hasn’t been well, but it’s nice to pretend. You tell him that Johann yelled a slur at you in the hallway, and that makes him chuckle. He can’t really laugh either, because he always ends up coughing up blood or some yellow pneumonia fluid, but you’re ready with tissues to wipe it off his chin.
“I probably look a mess,” he says, trying to straighten out his hospital gown. You stop him gently with your hands.
“You look handsome as ever,” you say softly. Because he does. Even now, covered in bruises and tubes and oxygen wires and blood and mucus, he looks beautiful. “Every day you get more beautiful,” you tell him. He smiles big this time, his whole face lighting up.
You sit in silence for an hour or so, just holding hands and breathing together. Eventually, he asks you what it’s like outside.
You tell him about the colour-changing trees—red leaves like specks of blood on the branches. You tell him about how everything smells fresh and cold, how everything tastes cleaner in the fall air. You tell him about how blue the sky is and how pretty the grass is. You tell him about a mother holding her tiny daughter’s hand as they walk along the path slowly together, looking at the swans and the leaves. You tell him about how it rained while he was asleep, and how the whole world seemed to stop for ten minutes. You tell him about how cold it’s getting and how heavy the traffic is and how construction never goes away.
And when he asks you if you’re crying, you wipe your eyes frantically with your sleeve and say no.
At that moment, a nurse comes in with a tiny paper cup full of pills and a big glass of water. The nurse places these in his hands and he thanks her softly. He downs the pills in one go. A drop of water rolls down his chin and before you can reach out to wipe it off for him, the nurse reaches out with a cloth and helps him. You look up at her
and take in her appearance. She’s wearing a surgical mask, latex gloves, and full scrubs. The hospital doesn’t know that you can’t get his illness by touching him or breathing in his air or being around him. They don’t know it’s only contagious for people like you and him.
She leaves eventually. After a beat of silence, he looks in your general direction and says,
“I want to go home.”
“I know, baby. I know,” you say, gently smoothing out the wrinkles on his forehead.
His eyes start watering and your heart drops. He hasn’t cried this whole time. Sometimes it feels like you’re the one who’s sick because of how much he’s cared for you, been your rock. You were the one who cried when he got diagnosed. You were the one who stayed up at night worrying. But as he starts quietly sobbing, you feel a tightness in your chest and a lump in your throat.
“Hey,” you whisper, “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”
“No, I’m not,” he says sadly, sniffing and coughing up more blood. “No. I’m not.”
You don’t know what to do. He’s never been so dejected or upset before. Not in the twelve years you’ve been together. You’re at a complete loss for what to say.
So you just watch him cry.
Finally he slows down a bit, but he seems out of it.
“Daniel?” he asks, frantically reaching out to find your body. “Daniel? Did you leave? Where are you? I can’t… I can’t see… Daniel, I can’t see you.”
You reach for him hastily, climbing onto his tiny hospital bed and holding him to your chest.
“Shhh… I’m right here, baby, I’m right here. I won’t leave. I promise. Shhh…”
He cries into you. He cries until the sun dips below the horizon, until you’re sitting in the pitch black alone, until he’s all dried up. He sits up, coughing worse than before, so you rub his back and wipe away the blood.
He sighs and falls back into you. You help him lie down properly and then let him curl up into you. There is silence.
“Daniel?” he asks finally.
You hum in response.
“I’m scared.”
“I know... I’m scared, too.”
He chuckles humourlessly. “You’re not the one who’s dying.”
“No… no, I suppose I’m not.”
You might not be sick, but it feels like you’re dying. You wonder if you’ll die with him. You wonder if, with every breath he takes, you yourself are one breath closer to the end. You wonder if he’s not going to make it through the night. You wonder if you won’t either.
The walls are still white, the chairs are still shit-pink and uncomfortable, the windows are still big, and James is still dying.
Once he’s fallen asleep again, you look out the window. The city would be dark if it weren’t for all the light pollution. You can just barely see Times Square in the distance, big and bold and always flashing. You wish you could see the Statue of Liberty, but you’re nowhere near the island. The Statue is James’ favourite place to go. It reminds him of “the truth about America”—whatever that means.
The city looks flat, like God’s taken one big fly swatter and crushed everything so hard it’s burst into a grid of streets and houses and slums and ghettos and restaurants and show tunes and fame. Car lights zoom past and momentarily illuminate the disgusting hospital room. In the faint light, James looks peaceful.
He hasn’t looked this calm in months.
You miss seeing his dimples and his crooked front tooth when he smiles. You miss curling strands of his hair around your finger while he hums quietly. You miss his tiny smirk when he would brush against you “accidentally”.
You hate seeing him like this. This sickly, grey, tiny man isn’t James.
You think about how maybe tomorrow you’ll sneak in some paint and have fun splashing colour onto the walls. Maybe tomorrow you’ll wake up and he’ll be better, his pneumonia gone, his lesions suddenly disappearing, his face regaining its full colour. Maybe tomorrow the doctors will say he’s on the mend and you can finally go to Madrid and get that dog and that apartment and that joint bank account. Or you’ll go to Disneyland and push him around in his wheelchair and meet Mickey Mouse and Cinderella like he’s always wanted.
You don’t dare think about if tomorrow will be his last. You don’t think about how tomorrow you might wake up too cold and find him dead, not just asleep. You don’t think about how tomorrow he might say goodbye.
You finally fall asleep wrapped in his arms, breathing with him and dreaming about what you’ll do together once he gets discharged.
But tomorrow, when you wake up, you’ll go back to your disgusting chair and watch James sleep for awhile. You’ll talk to Lucia about Mateou, and you’ll get called a faggot again by Johann. You’ll eat hospital food and hide your crying and look out the window at the colour-changing trees.
By summer 1987, James will be a memory.
And you will be wandering the grid, trying desperately to forget about blond curls and hospital rooms.