Nevada Writer

fiction

by Melanie on 16/09/07 at 2:16 am

September 16, 2007

OK, now I’ve read three stories in a row about ICU. Melanie Rae Thon’s “First, Body,” which was utterly creepy, “Intensive Care,” by Lee Smith, and “Emergency,” by Denis Johnson. “First, Body,” made me remember my own four days in ICU wavering between life and death, and not in a pleasant way. Strange story. My own and Thon’s. I chose to read Smith’s story because it was, obviously, about ICU. It wasn’t a bad portrait of ICU. It was sad. I liked the story. Yes, it was cliché-filled, but the clichés fit the story. It was a love story, beautiful. But why did he not tell people about his UFO experience?

I have seen two UFOs. I’m not saying there couldn’t have been an earthly explanation for them, but that I have seen two, maybe three, unidentified flying objects. The first was when I was about 15 and being driven home from baby-sitting in Palo Alto, Calif. I remember the four kids crawling on me and telling me that I had zits and was their second favorite sitter. The other played more games with them. On the way home I saw a streak of brilliant turquoise slash the sky, followed by a bright white flash. It lingered in night sky for some minutes, glowing like a cloud on acid, before fading away. At 15, it must have been about 1967 or so. I said, “Stop the car!” The father didn’t stop. I repeated, “Stop the car. The Martians are coming!” I was perplexed that this startling phenomena wasn’t so arresting that the kid’s father wouldn’t have also been just as interested as me. To me there was no question that I had to stare at this marvel in the heavens. He did pull over, even if reluctantly. I got out and was just amazed. In the morning’s S.F. Chronicle, the explanation was a “rocket firing over the Pacific.” Oh, bullshit and a half. They fire rockets all the time and there is never anything like this, except one other time, it might have been when I was living in L.A., that I saw something similar, and a similar phony sounding explanation was offered by authorities. No wonder there are UFO groups and conspiracy theorists. It probably was some sort of military experiment gone wrong, but to say it was just a rocket insulted my teen-age intelligence.

When I was 18 and living in Tønsberg, Norway, I also saw a UFO. I was walking home along a path that was somewhat out in the country, not many houses around. It was cloudy and dark. To my left, I suddenly was aware of two pulsating white lights in the sky. They seemed to be isolated, in other words, not part of a larger aurora borealis, for example. Tønsberg is pretty far south, just north of Oslo, so there weren’t many aurora borealis sightings. In the entire time I lived there, about two years, I never saw the sky light up with northern lights, but that might have explained what I saw that night, except that there were no colors. Just two, white pulsating lights, side by side. As I walked, at first I thought they were some sort of aircraft, but then it seemed as if they were following me — going the same speed as I was, but staying the same distance apart. I got scared and ran the rest of the way home. The family I was au pairing for came out to take a look, but by then the lights seemed to have moved farther away and weren’t as bright. They brushed it off. I’ve never figured it out. It doesn’t fit with what most people say they see when they see the northern lights. Some people say the moon can “follow” you like that. So maybe it was . . . . BLANK . . . that was in the sky that night, and following me like the moon.

“Emergency,” made me think of the crappy care I got in ICU. Was all of “Emergency” an hallucination? Some people did live through the ‘60s and ‘70s in a drug-induced daze. I liked the way Johnson’s interjections from the narrative voice keyed the reader into his current, nostalgic state vs. the state of his 1973 characters. I want to write a story about my ICU experience. I actually started it. It’s called “Voice.” But it’s hard because it’s about me. I thought I was dead, but maybe had been given a reprieve just to say goodbye to my daughters. I saw ghosts. I lost all my blood several times over. I was puffed up from edema. I almost died in several ways: exsanguination, suffocation, and drowning. I’ve never, not even once, felt “lucky to be alive,” and it pisses me off to hear people say that to me. “Oh, you’re so lucky,” like they’re passing judgment on me, or assuaging their own helplessness and guilt. Lucky is when nothing goes wrong. Unlucky is spending nine days in the hospital and coming out butchered from head to toe, mainly due to incompetent docs. Waking up was the hard part. For months and months afterward, I didn’t really feel like I was part of the living. I could feel the other side very close to me. Just a flick of the wrist while driving. It’s on the other side of that hill. When you close your eyes. There it is. The great unknown. Not so bad maybe. I could have said goodbye to all of this. Welcomed the dark. But I am glad that I am here today. That’s as good as it gets.

Print PDF