Vital Signs

Part 9

Miraculously, I'm still alive when I emerge from the chemical cloud. I steer my car to the side of the road, throw open the door, and bail out onto the pavement, dizzy and disoriented. I crawl to the curb choking and spitting, wiping the tears from my inflamed eyes. In a moment of clarity, before my vision once again goes blurry, I see a city park, a manicured grassy hill gently rising into a line of lush, green trees.

I stumble toward a drinking fountain hoping to extinguish the chemical that burns my eyes, nose, and throat. Dipping my face into the running water, I rub away as much of the residue as possible. I raise my head when I hear a dog barking. A teenage boy sails a Frisbee. His dog leaps into the air and clamps the Frisbee in its jaws.

A smile raises my wet cheeks. Still light-headed, I plop down on a park bench and extend my arms across the wooden, slatted back. I close my eyes and slowly inhale, enjoying the warmth of the sun on my face, glad to fill my lungs with fresh, uncontaminated air. When I feel a warm stream of liquid dripping from my nostril I wipe my nose. It's blood. I shut my eyes and pinch my nose closed.

I open my eyes when I feel the bench jostled. A cherubic little girl who's probably a little younger than Jilly-bean kneels in the grass at the end of the bench. She uses the bench as a surface for her coloring book. Her bright eyes look up at me.

"Hi," she says.

"Hi."

She returns to her coloring. Her mom calls, "Shannon!"

"What?"

"Come over here!"

"Why?'

"Just get over here."

I glance down at her coloring book and am suddenly transported back to first grade at St. Quadragesimus Catholic school. I remember being reprimanded by Sister Caterina for an innocent coloring error that, in her opinion, was a result of me not paying attention.

For the sake of comparison, she held my Jesus coloring book beside the coloring book of my classmate, Patty and growled, "Do you see? Jesus' robe is red and the Blessed Virgin Mary's robe is blue. Do you see? That's not what you colored."

I remember explaining that blue is a boy's color and pink is a girl's color, which really set her off.

"Jesus' robe is not pink. It's red!"

She confiscated my coloring book, ordered me to say ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Mary's, and to beg God's forgiveness. As she left me sitting red-faced in my seat I heard her mutter, "What's the matter with kids like you?"

#######

Maybe my life would be a whole lot easier if I stopped swimming upstream and floated along with all the other humanoids. So what if Utah is being evacuated for no good reason? Who cares? And maybe Disney World is the happiest place on earth and maybe McDonald's actually makes the most delicious burgers in the universe and maybe it's best if people don't talk to one another. So with that in mind, I do what every normal American does when they need to make a purchase. I shop at Walmart.

7:19. I carry my Walmart bag to my car and get in. Examining myself in the mirror, I discover that my eyes are red and glassy but the good news is that my nose has stopped bleeding. I pull a bottle of Advil from my bag, toss back a few pills and wash them down with a gulp of Coke. Ah, refreshing.

Next, I unwrap a car air freshener shaped like a pine tree and hang it from my battered mirror. I open another and then another.

A man passing by observes my peculiar behavior.