//|\\ john williams \\|//
The Paketa Watch
As J. Sibley entered through the automatic double doors and then awaited their expected metallic rejoining, he pulled up his cuff and glanced at his wrist, partially out of habit, but also to confirm the length of his drive. Staring blankly at bare skin and light, matted hair strands he wondered where his watch had gone. Every morning, after shaving and seeing his new wife off, he wrapped the ancient leather band around his bony, pale wrist, but he couldn’t recall doing so this morning, or any morning for that matter. It was as if the watch was just there, strapped tightly to an absurd extent, whenever he needed use of its sole function. However, J. never contemplated the significance behind the little picture that adorned its face, or the Eastern name, Paketa, that he assumed to be the company that mothered it. Where had he gotten it anyway, for travel and souvenirs hadn’t plagued his life like it did his mother’s? Childhood, somewhere in childhood he remembered its first appearance, but that image vanished, blurred together with the whole of his memory like an individual frame in a motion picture. The idea that he couldn’t remember its origin bothered him to no end, and he tore apart with desperate claws any clues that would eventually lead to such a realization. Again, blurs, independent images of solitary events ran simultaneously, overlapping each other; a dog with three legs (oh, what was its name) leaping with confident strides across a crowded breakfast table; warm, sweaty hands that belonged to a parent, although which he could only suppose, feeling his forehead for signs of fever; a yearless Christmas tree perched atop superficial gifts of plenty.
“Excuse me”, a short, paunchy woman mumbled in an affected tone as she stepped around J. Oh, where was he? Long white corridors of chilly indifference met his confusion, and a light smell of something foreign permeated his sense of recognition. J. had never seen white as anything but bland; he didn’t know it could be so overpowering. Yes, a hospital; he had driven all this time (how long was it again?) with this, a hospital, as his destination. But why? Why would he call his editor and explain his family emergency, just to end up in such a place? He had spent some unknown amount of time, perhaps a few weeks, at a hospital when he was a child. Something about his back, he remembered, but his mother had brought him his comic books and a sundae of chocolate ice cream to alleviate some of the discomfort, but did it work? All that remained for him was the pressure in his head and the related uneasiness in his own skin that attacked from behind masked hospital doors. Oh, why had he come?
And what of the length of the bed of coals which needed traversing before he could reach the immense, frigid, curved front desk behind which various uniformed officers of some health army criticized death’s omnipotent hand? The paradox of attempting such a potentially harmful feat, of crossing such a roaring river of cold white and waiting bodies, just to reach an unwanted destination never dawned over the landscape of his mind. Instead, blindly and deafly, J. began down the corridor with no particular hope of reaching the desk or even, as it grew further out of reach, knowledge of what he would say if he did get there.
On his right, sitting on an uncaring blue-padded bench, a gaunt man of at least fifty leaned forward, clenching the dying yellow roses that rested peacefully in his lap, and followed J.’s steps intently, one after another. J. noticed a small boil on the man’s forehead, and a lost image ran through his projector, one whose authenticity he could not verify. Had someone in his past been such afflicted? When he snapped back to reality, or at least to the hospital, he realized that he and the man had been connected somehow; that some direct, organic link existed between them that couldn’t be placed properly into words without losing its significance. However, simultaneously he recognized the familiar demon of memory lurking, and he knew that this moment, with all its present power, would go unrecorded in his life log. This opened the floodgates for a wall of helplessness that engulfed him completely and nearly left him without balance. Was this realization somehow aural, for balance originated in the ear? A system of deep, panicked breaths erupted out of necessity, and the helplessness faded quickly with the memory of the passed man. He held tightly to the boil and to the moment of innate human recognition that it represented, but discerned that he had to give it wings, for without them, the bird of sorrow would build a cage out of the raw material of his mind.
A general malaise took control, and J. yearned to seat himself upon the sea of tiles that constituted the floor, but a sign immediately before him warned of a possibly slick surface, so he continued down the corridor without thinking what lay ahead and, if he did momentarily ponder, without care as to whether he reached it. The white walls unfolded before him, as if they extended to prolong his journey. Were they breathing? Yes, he swore that the white walls heaved slightly like a sleeping chest, but how could that be? Walls haven’t lungs, he thought, and if any did, for the purpose of breathing life into its environment, this would not be the proper setting for such a display. Nevertheless he gaped open-mouthed at the spectacle, and wondered if walls were really capable of performing in such a way, and whether they were performing here just for him, a private show. Nobody else in the hospital outwardly noticed the exhibition. Were they simply unobservant? Or was he wrong? Can my eyes be wrong, he questioned?
As if in quicksand, J. struggled to free himself from his finite footing and continue on this strange and already painstaking journey, whose necessity he could never have doubted yet would never have contemplated. “Whenever you feel unloved, son, remember me.” That familiar voice whispered from some distant land. The source defied him, remained cloaked behind a natural fog. Had he read that somewhere, or had someone actually spoken it to him? He couldn’t even posit a speaker, so could he really consider it familiar? If one has no information or connection to something, how can he say he knows it? A level of recognition perhaps, but no familiarity.
“ I haven’t made any progress,” he observed, drawing the attention of a group passing by. “I’m no nearer to where I should be. Where should I be?” A young brunette followed J. with her blue eyes, sparkling blue he would later recall (although immediately he would reflect upon the validity of his memory, for his mother’s eyes glared Pacific-blue from within and could have interjected their presence easily). Both J. and this girl (he named her Jeanette for no reason other than making their internal distance lessen) turned their heads as they passed each other, eyes locked; his lost somewhere, hers of unknown constitution. When caught thieving another’s glare, when mesmerized beyond voluntary motion, what happens to the mind? Does such an occurrence drag one like a disobedient child over the drawbridge of reality or, inversely, does it widen the moat?
“Hey, watch where you’re walking! Freak, talking to yourself and walking into people.” After an extensive pause, “Where are you right now?” J. couldn’t answer her. In fact, he didn’t even know that he had walked into anyone, and the fact that she spoke to him barely registered. Why was she talking to him? Why did everyone seem to notice him, to stare at him, to speak to him? Oh, I’ve done nothing wrong, he thought. Let me alone. J. expected an answer, but received none. Fine; stare and criticize, but don’t respond. I had to leave; I couldn’t live there forever; it wasn’t my fault; this has nothing to do with me. What had nothing to do with him? Nothing, nothing at all. He visited the hospital on his own accord; nothing drove him here (throughout J. unconsciously twisted his new wedding band clockwise around his finger in spastic jerks and once pulled it off, rolled it around his palm, and replaced it). What type of hospital has no clocks? What time is it, and where is my watch?
An oasis appeared on the horizon. Yes, light leapt from the desk as if it were a prize to be possessed. Only a few more miles before he completed his unknown task; perhaps another day’s journey, no more. “Can I help you? Sir, is there anything I can do for you?” The desk was immediately before him, not miles away. But wasn’t it so just moments before? Bewildered, J. couldn’t respond; his muteness wrapped around his finger in gold. “Who are you,” he forced out. No, he wasn’t even at the hospital. Or perhaps he was, but the desk remained aloof, untouchable, unattainable. If he couldn’t reach it then he couldn’t find her room, and if he couldn’t find her room…
Agitated, the pillowy nurse contorted her face into deep crevices where hints of make-up caches could be mapped. She grimaced slightly as she propped herself upon thick elbows. Could she look through him? He yearned to be transparent or to be expelled by force from his confines. Her eyes told otherwise; he was quite concrete.
“Ah, yes, last name Sibley. I’m looking for her room.” The nurse pummeled the computer keys in purposeful aggression. “See, she is an older woman. A single mother.” No response. “Not mine. My mother is at home, relaxing with a book I’d think. Yes that paints a pretty picture.” When had he last seen his mother, though, for the canvass to such a portrait? A year; two years. Perhaps he could gauge it by his wedding date.
“She’s up on the third floor, intensive care unit. You’ll have to ask about visitation, though.” J. wandered away, checked his baron wrist, and realized he must be late for something. No, wait, he wasn’t visiting anyone here. Why would he visit a stranger, a random lady? But hadn’t someone called him yesterday evening? Twirling the ring, he boarded the elevator and pressed the floor number.
Elevators usually made J. feel larger than his structure would allow. Often he anticipated the collision that his head would have with its ceiling as he began to fill out the limited dimensions. But now the inverse occurred. J. dripped into a puddle that quivered lightly with each movement of the elevator. He couldn’t even reach high enough to press the emergency stop button, which loomed overhead, next to the little enclosed phone, like a sweet that remains one inch too far from the child. Had he made the wrong choice? Had he taken the ? pill? The air smelled J., not taking a liking to him, and he, in turn, noticed its sterile fragrance. In some indistinguishable amount of time, the elevator finally leveled to a stop with the mechanical grunt of sweet human labor, and he crept out, making sure his proportions were here correct.
But what floor had the nurse said this woman was on? It was a woman, he recalled, but where was she? The nurse that he had spoken to, make-up still caked like hidden treasure, peered at him from behind a large white desk quite similar to her previous one; the sole difference being a box of cheap, pink tissues fraying from it. How long did the elevator take for her to have mounted the stairs and seated herself so quickly? She didn’t even appear out of breath. “Excuse me, yes, where did you say she was again?”
“Who sir?”
“The woman I asked you about downstairs. Sibley her name is.”
“I haven’t seen you here before, sir, but I can look her up for you. You must have gotten us confused; we do all have the same uniforms.”
“No, I spoke to you, downstairs, just a moment ago. I know it was you, just a moment ago. Or…” Where was he? This was the same nurse; he was sure of it, but how long had he been stuffed in that moving box? Was he in a different hospital or a different time? Could he be mistaken about her? J. realized to his dismay that he couldn’t remember the nurse’s features at all, or her stature. Why did he think that they were one in the same? I have to leave, he thought. This is no place for me. I am not really here.
“Room 324, sir. Go down the hall there and it’s all the way down on your left.” The snake-like finger that she used to point the directions ended with a fine, sharp tip that stung J., implanting its venom. “Yes, good, good,” J. followed the snake’s trail until out of view of the queer nurse. The hallway ahead cut shorter than the other, and the door that he assumed to be his destination lay close at hand. What if I’m dreaming, he thought. Did I even wake up today? He couldn’t decipher the morning activities from any other day’s, and therefore couldn’t fit the remaining pieces into the jigsaw puzzle.
A hand grabbed J.’s bent elbow, startling his core into this other reality. A prosaic man in a doctor’s coat apologized and explained that he was the caring physician for J.’s mother. Why did he seem so familiar? Then J. realized that this man, who he presumed to be some health care professional, had absolutely average features, in every respect. He was astonished at finding someone who fit so tightly to every normal Caucasian description that he could give. In a police line-up, J. knew this man could never be picked out individually, even by a witness within arm’s-length at noon on a sunny day. What a perfectly casual, nonchalant nose, eyebrows, wholly unpiercing and unremarkable eyes? Could this man be a god of some sort? Or perhaps the original man, the prototype?
“Lynda, the nurse on duty that you spoke with, she said you were here to see her. She was right too; the resemblance is striking. You must be J. Sibley.” How did this man know his name, and why did he think that the woman lying ill in that cold hospital room was his mother? “No, I…my mother…she is not here.”
“But I spoke with you last night, J.; can I call you J.? I phoned your house, spoke for a moment with your wife, and then you. Don’t you remember? About your mother.” His wedding ring nearly twisted his finger off, and J. checked for his watch. The younger man before him, who just moments ago appeared so bland, morphed immediately, upon a sharper glance, into a darker figure, with a slightly hinged nose and rather protruding ears that punctured his hair like an elf’s might. How had me missed this before, all these abnormal characteristics, this almost sinister complexion? Had he two sets of eyes through which he perceived, or did this man have different faces? If so, which set of eyes captured reality, or which was the true face?
“I think you have the wrong man, sorry. My name is J., but…you have the wrong man. I did receive a call last night, yes, but I can’t recall who it was. But no, I’m not here to see my mother. Sure she’s been a bit under the weather now for years, or at least it feels like years (one never can be too sure with time, you know?). She catches every bug that passes through town. Well, she used to when I lived at home, but she really didn’t need me around, and I certainly couldn’t bring my wife… No, listen, I’m not here to see her. I’m not here to see my mother.”
“Than why are you here?”
“I…I don’t know.” The brilliant white walls effected his eyes like a flashlight, spotting vividly everything within view, even the doctor’s face. J. didn’t understand his surroundings, the splotches of colorful white, the man’s distorted face, his feelings of nausea and panic that erupted from somewhere deep within. “Excuse me,” J. mumbled to an imaginary nobody that seemed to live somewhere in the hospital. Tumbling through a white-coated, moving obstacle, he propelled himself down the corridor toward room 324. The distance grew and grew while his steps seemed to shrivel. He couldn’t tell if he was covering any ground, or even moving in the direction that he was facing. Each door he passed blurred into the next, like memories. Behind each, however, held a life, a story, the brilliance and cowardice of lives lived in every way imaginable, the beauty of sublime human experience. But J. could not stop to argue with such demons or behold such subtleties of nature, if he bothered to separate sight from insight, for his mind immersed itself in the whiteness of the hospital, swallowed by blankness, and the unconscious action of jerking legs carried him ever so slowly to the door, despite his graceless speed. Wiping bulbous, individually wrapped beads of sweat from his dizzying forehead, J. panted for breath from his marathon advancing. No thoughts entered; no ideas exited; adrenaline propelled a mindless organism, like fuel in an automobile. Suddenly a door, the door, stretched aloft with ominous indifference. The numbers, which rose further above his head like an escaping balloon, seemed to be juxtaposed upon the door, as if they didn’t exist before he noticed them. Did someone just place them there so inconspicuously as he traversed his chosen road? Would they or the strange woman giving them significance have ever existed if J. didn’t end up at the hospital in such a state?
Wait, J. thought, I am not here. I have no business here, so why should I be present. Nobody even lies behind that door, not a stranger or loved one. The walls constricted, trying to squeeze him from his fragile, shifting perch atop the anthill of tensed astonishment and complete perplexity. He felt impelled, driven from the sight of the door, which now, he had concluded, held no mystery or patient, but existed solely to sacrifice to internal gods his remaining sanity. A ring of white gold dropped from his finger and echoed between his ears, hollering for his attention. Immediately growing in height as if he were seated throughout the encounter, J.’s conscious strength returned from its hibernation. Stooping down to retrieve the ring that his new wife had selected, he pivoted, swallowed hard, face elevated with resolution, and progressed with courage and purpose back down the corridor, redrawing his random, awkward steps with overly-intentional, in themselves awkward paces. As the doctor neared, J. shielded his eyes from the man’s face and curtly questioned, “What time is it? No, wait, I don’t care.” He smiled and walked off.
Everything white disappeared behind his back; it no longer existed. The sterile aroma vacated to make room for the intentionally fresh air that hung outside unchanged, static, until his return. Wasn’t it raining when he arrived? The sun now shown with a premeditated glitter, and the pools of rainwater that should have pocketed luckless worms dried to warm pavement so his shoes would not flood. Within weeks, J. would not recall ever visiting the hospital that day. Could it be argued, then, that he never did so? Before unlocking his car door, J. replaced the ring that he had been squeezing and glanced down at his watch.