Awake

Click, click, tock. Clop, clap, tap.   

Every day, the same rhythms. The same steps. The same words, sounds, seconds, minutes and hours. To and from work, shuffle, shuffle, eleven mind-numbing years, bedtime at 9:00 p.m. sharp, morning alarm at exactly 6:00 a.m. Cyclical. Mathematical. Variation? Today Raul Souza had two bananas for breakfast, a bold deviation from his usual single. Scandalous! 

Raul was not without humor about his plain life, but there was no denying it had dulled him, set him on a sorry course towards inevitable death. But before that promise of sweet release, he was certain there was more repetition and agony in his future. He could clearly picture his fate, sitting limply in a plastic chair at a cafeteria gathering in one of the many nursing homes nearby, his elderly body slumped, no choice but to join his fellow, bespectacled inmates as they all crammed pudding and cardiac medication into their maws.   

Click, click, tock. Clop, clap, tap.  Shuffle, shuffle.  

His footsteps on the train station stairwell on his morning commute to his administrative hospital job in the city.  The click, click, click of his fingers tapping away on his keyboard. At work, he often wore headphones, Enya or Indy Rock murmuring softly in his ears, to drown out the clanging and whirring of the copier/printer jammed directly behind him. His work area was snug, about three and a half by four feet squarish. The tight space got warm quickly, especially with the heat pouring off the copier/printer churning all day long, so he kept a portable fan clipped to the corner of his desk. Most people bumped into the fan and jarred it out of place, forcing him to straighten it again and again, another ritualistic motion to add to the monotonous arithmetic of his slow-moving day.   

Clack, clack, clack. The wheels of the PATCO train beating on the tracks on his way back home. Shuffle, shuffle. Moving through the sea of rush hour bodies.   

His coworkers were mostly predictable. Sure, some were louder than others. Surprisingly, a few of them even kept to themselves. But most of them were quite chatty, and in Raul’s opinion, way too forthcoming about their personal lives. For instance, he didn’t need to hear Paula talk about her disabled husband’s stomach issues and bowel movements, or Yolanda’s four children’s difficulties with school, backtalking and lice treatments. He didn’t care that Blaine, the front desk secretary, was hung over from staying out late with a stud he met at Milk Boy, stumbling home at 2:00 a.m. with his stonewashed jeans missing. The stories everyone told were the same day in, day out, with barely enough variation to qualify their retelling. I suppose if Blaine had lost his new leather belt or his Doc Martens, or Yolanda’s children were getting the hang of Eureka math, or if Paula’s husband suddenly started walking around on his own, that these things might qualify as a variation, but the rhythms, the tones, the cadence and undulations of all their babble stayed precisely the same. Same tune, slightly different lyrics. Raul was not impressed.   

“Click, clack, tap,” Raul explained to his psychiatrist, Dr. Marino. “Every day the same rhythms, the same steps.” 

“Fascinating,” Dr. Marino said, tap, tap, tapping away on his Dell laptop as Raul recounted his day. “Go on,” he urged, and so Raul continued his tale, touching on his concurrent issues, his ongoing malaise, his bone-deep boredom with life’s routines. Dr. Marino rarely offered useful advice, but Raul was on a high dose of multiple anti-depressants, a complex chemical mixture that kept him calm, stable and dulled. Without this delicate soupcon of meds, God only knows how Raul might react to the mundanity of his day to day. Who knew what outbursts or dangers would reveal themselves if he wasn’t doing the responsible thing by swallowing his daily prescriptions.    

What exactly he was supposed to be progressing on was not always clear, though. Just a general direction of self-improvement, he supposed. Everyone could better themselves on some level, right? Wasn’t the point of life to constantly improve yourself, Marino often asked? Shouldn’t we all aspire to a state of complete perfection? What happened in that state, Raul wondered? Did you get rewarded with a million Instagram followers? Would you share your struggles and triumphs in a bestselling memoir that would earn you a seven-figure advance from a fancy New York publishing company? Or would you acquire a highly lucrative product sponsorship that would net you enough dough to last several lifetimes?   

Who knew the secret? 

Raul liked to think that achieving perfection was like reaching a state of bliss or Nirvana. He would float, all the while smiling (cross-legged of course) eyes half-closed as his body turned into light, then dematerialized into little particles of energy and disappeared into the ether. Magnificence! 

On Wednesday, the pathetically named Hump Day of the work week, Enya felt loud in his ears, distracting. Usually, the music drowned things out just-so, creating a kind of musical homeostasis that shut out the painful sounds but did not leave him completely oblivious. But today something was different. He felt off. It all started the night before, when his newborn baby girl, Ellie, jarred him from a deep slumber at 2:30 in the morning. His wife Molly had just fed the three-month old, but the infant remained agitated. Clearly, Molly had reached a precipice: for the first time ever, she asked for his help with the baby.   

“Can you switch with me, please?” she pleaded. “I’m exhausted.” 

So, Raul agreeably took the baby from her arms and proceeded to walk and rock and shush her, pat, pat, shuffle. Eventually, Ellie calmed and fell into a rhythmic sleep. As he gently laid her down in the crib, something stirred inside him, deep down in his belly, a burning akin to when he witnessed the baby’s birth, watching her as she suddenly slipped into the waking light of the hospital room and was placed in Molly’s arms. His eyes were blurry with tears when he cut the umbilical cord. He was suddenly filled with equal parts love and fear, closely watching her belly rise and fall with each tiny breath. Moonlight came in through the slightly parted curtain and shed a soft angelic glow on Raul and Ellie, and he stood at her crib side for several minutes just watching her.   

When he returned to bed, his wife was snoring deeply, which made Raul happy, grateful. He lay awake for a long while, unable to still his energy. Eventually, he clicked on the fan on his bedside table and the steady, whirring sound coupled with the oscillating breeze, lulled him to sleep about an hour later.   

When he woke up that morning, he was groggy, his vision blurry, his mind altered. He looked at his bedside clock and realized he slept through his alarm. He leapt out of bed and quickly threw on his clothes, not even enough time for a shower. Downstairs in the kitchen he threw together his typical breakfast, lunch and snacks: banana, peanut butter, sweet ham and Muenster on honey wheat, a Pink Lady apple, two Cara Cara oranges and a cherry flavored can of seltzer. He kissed his wife and baby girl and flew out the door. 

Pulling into the Ashland station parking lot, he saw the 8:15 train pulling away. This meant he could still make the 8:25, which might make him only a few minutes late to the hospital. The wind stung his eyes as he jogged towards the entrance. He swiped his access card too quickly at the turnstile, and the obligatory big red X denied his entry. He tried again, this time swiping gently, the plastic swivel doors finally opening, and he slid through. The escalator was full of people standing in place, heads down and glued to their phones, so he opted for the stairs.  Thap, thap, thap went his feet, as he dashed up the concrete stairs.   

He caught the 8:25 without any trouble, reading the Metro paper for the few shorts stops it took to reach his Center City stop. He popped out of the underground station onto the drizzly city sidewalk and walked hurriedly to the ER entrance. He managed to punch in to the nearest timeclock just six short minutes after 9:00. Success! 

And now here he was, typing an email to the Insurance Verification department, Enya crooning in such way that he couldn’t quite focus, so he pulled his headset off and collected his thoughts. It was just as well, as his phone was ringing again, another nurse requesting insurance authorization for a patient going to a skilled nursing facility. Phone call after phone call he made, request after request, setting up ambulances, typing in authorization numbers, confirming pick-up times, following up with nurses. Before he knew it, the day had blown by. On his ride back home he drifted into a light sleep, the buzzers waking him at each stop as the train doors opened and closed.   

He ordered takeout and ate contentedly at the kitchen table with Molly, taking turns holding Ellie as they ate. When his head hit the pillow a few hours later, it took him only a few short minutes to fall asleep.   

At 2:30 a.m. he was rocked awake again by the baby’s cries. He turned over and saw his wife groggily pulling the covers off, starting to rise. He reached over to her.  

“I got this, honey,” he told her. “Go back to sleep.” 

“You sure,” she asked?   

“Absolutely,” he assured her. “I’m awake now.” 

Outside of Ellie’s door, Raul smiled, took in a deep but gentle breath, then pushed open the door, joining his daughter in the moonlight.