The Sitter

I’d awoken in an unfamiliar room with a woman sitting on my lap, and I didn’t want to know who or why. It felt so good to be pressed into the chair and to feel a soft weight on top of me. What to do? I looked up to see the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen smiling at me. “Have I died?” I said. “You are always dying,” she said. “That’s different than having died,” I said. “Only the dead can know that, and they have a history of being unreliable narrators,” she said. “Who are you?” I said. She told me her name was Margaret, and that she used to be a dancer, but when she grew up, she realized the only reason she ever wanted to dance was because she felt trapped in her small-town life, never felt legitimate in the eyes of her mother who wanted her to become a doctor with at least three kids, and that modeling had really made her feel like a piece of meat enabling toxic masculinity and female objectification and consumption. As a result of these awakenings, as she referred to them, she became reborn as Saint Jude, and has now committed herself to a life of helping others to not run away from their fear of death. “Don’t be scared,” she said. “Perfectly comfortable,” I said. “I’m glad to hear that,” she said. “How long can you stay?” I said. “As long as you’d like,” she said. I wanted to tell her forever, but the blood was leaving my legs, and my feet were starting to prick something awful. “Can you shift a little?” I said. She shifted, but the legs, my legs I mean, remained quite numb. By the evening they’d started to turn gangrenous. “It’s almost time,” she said. “Time for what? And where are we anyway?” I said. “It’s almost time for you to pass on,” she said. She explained we were in a place inside my consciousness, somewhere between dying and living, and that, while my heart had stopped an hour ago, my brain was still working a little. She held my hand, and I’d never felt so loved. I could see the leaves falling through a window in what resembled a kind of run-down warehouse much like the variety of those I’d throw rocks at when I was a kid, and breaking an abandoned window made me feel like I was setting a captured animal free. It was so sunny outside. I’d never seen it so bright. I felt a sliver of wind cutting across my cheek, and on the other side of the window I appeared to be drawing closer and closer to, I thought I could see a doctor’s masked face. As the light overcame me, and I started to wail, I was thinking about the kindness of my Margaret, and thought that, maybe if I cried loud and long enough, she’d come back. But instead, they put me in the arms of some weirdo, who sat me down on her chest and started looking up at me like she was afraid to die.