more and more these days, i find myself simply coasting along.
path of least resistance. until our lease is renewed no more. what my friend said to me just weeks before he ironically enlisted with the army at seventeen years old.
i mean, what's the point in resisting, anyway? no denying the fatuity of thrashing like crazy in a world committed to drowning what's left decent of me.
and then there are days like yesterday. days when it felt sane again to just beat on, to whore a nick carraway line, against the relentless current of an otherwise emasculating existence. no drama here.
2 am, my break, last night. mild weather and all, i headed for the morgue exit by the east wing of the hospital to smoke.
a doleful entourage of what I assumed was a mother and her two daughters was leaving the morgue. i later recognized the older woman as the wife of an intubated patient in the ward opposite ours.
earlier that night, that ward called for a team, a hospitalese for ritualized advanced cpr and other life resuscitating protocols.
the mother looked logy. one of her daughters, the one in ill fitting purple velour track suit, was inconsolable.
she could not stop bawling, punctuating her wailing with muted screams of daddy, daddy, daddy.
as they were about to be ushered by a morgue technician out of the electronically locked doors, the security guard manning the nearby post just screamed into his two way it's a boy, nigga. a boy.
lost, the lugubrious women stared at each other. then as if on cue, the sobbing daughter just stopped. then each one of them spontaneously offered her congratulations to the new dad.
the mother even managed to ask the security guard-dad who was there with her? i faintly heard the guard, his west indies accent distinct, saying it was unexpected, man. unexpected.
under an overhang overlooking the morgue parking lot, i took out my now crushed pack of lights. as i lighted a bent camel, i saw the women took their respective seats in a truck, the sides of which was emblazoned with the sign castro construction contractors.
just before the car's interior light was turned off, i saw the other daughter and the mother in the front seats looking still exhausted to engage in any kind of talk.
as the daughter started the engine, i saw the mother stare straight ahead, a hint of smile on her face she did not suppress.
just as soon as their truck went out of the hospital premises, another car, an indistinct family sedan, entered the parking lot and took their spot.