By Ben Greenman
from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled
A veteran sailor, Frank Shelley, who was struck on the head and arm by the beak of a seagull while standing on Deptford’s Dock, went directly to the hospital Friday night, and was dead by Saturday morning. By Saturday night, he was alive again, and went for a walk down the hall, at which point he somehow tangled his feet in his IV tube, pitched face-first onto the floor, and was dead again. He was delivered to the morgue in the hospital basement, came alive again by dawn Sunday, and bounded back up to the nurse’s station on the floor where he had been admitted on Friday night. He asked after his things, was given them back, and left the hospital under his own power. Returning to his boat, The Floating Opera, he stood on the deck, shook his fists at the sky, and dared the seagulls to come for him. Shelley’s movements after leaving the hospital are known because he was accompanied by a nurse who had left her job to follow him back to Deptford’s Dock. “He was charismatic,” she said. “But it was more than that. He had twice gone out of life, twice gone back into it. How can you prevent yourself from following a man like that?” The nurse, Nelly Nash, said that she hopes to marry Shelley by May, but that she will most likely not take his name, as the combination between her first and his last is infelicitous.
A veteran sailor, Frank Shelley, who was struck on the head and arm by the beak of a seagull while standing on Deptford’s Dock, went directly to the hospital Friday night, and was dead by Saturday morning. By Saturday night, he was alive again, and went for a walk down the hall, at which point he somehow tangled his feet in his IV tube, pitched face-first onto the floor, and was dead again. He was delivered to the morgue in the hospital basement, came alive again by dawn Sunday, and bounded back up to the nurse’s station on the floor where he had been admitted on Friday night. He asked after his things, was given them back, and left the hospital under his own power. Returning to his boat, The Floating Opera, he stood on the deck, shook his fists at the sky, and dared the seagulls to come for him. Shelley’s movements after leaving the hospital are known because he was accompanied by a nurse who had left her job to follow him back to Deptford’s Dock. “He was charismatic,” she said. “But it was more than that. He had twice gone out of life, twice gone back into it. How can you prevent yourself from following a man like that?” The nurse, Nelly Nash, said that she hopes to marry Shelley by May, but that she will most likely not take his name, as the combination between her first and his last is infelicitous.
No comments:
Post a Comment