Sirens and Ghosts
by Eliot Hudson
Everything ok, everything be will…said the nurse, her green eyes darting beneath a furrowed brow. An urgent voice called her to the adjacent room wherefrom I heard wailing. I was caught off guard by her paleness, she looked like Death, but Death spoke broken English: everything alright will be, her words trailed behind her as though she had left them in the room along with a box, two round pills, and a dead woman I’d seen on the boat.
Before me on a silver tray she’d placed a box of apple juice with Kalypso written on it along with two codeine tablets like little addictive berries of flowers. I’d never had tablets like this, though I’d seen their flowers, red poppies—and I was afraid, because I’d seen what they did to the soldiers. But I was in such pain I took the pills…they tasted chalky, and before long it felt like everything became liquid. Like the muscles between my vertebrae became loose and I was floating in the hospital bed as if it were that treacherous sea. This chemical induced sea did not scare me as the one that delivered me here. Neither did the IV stuck into my arm like a serpent drawing blood. What terrified me was her absence.
No give him more! Don’t have we enough! I heard a male’s voice barking from the dark corridor, his voice booming as if from the deep chasm of a giant’s lungs. At first I thought it a hospital, but the cabinets on the wall made it appear more an apartment. Altered. Perhaps a cave, then I received the first text from Panni:
Honey, I’m so
sorry that you have to
stay there alone.
I hope that everything
ll be ok and you don’t feel
pain. Kisses
A male doctor, a giant of a man with an eye-patch, came into the room. I groaned in pain, kicking my feet against the metal gurney, cutting my feet against little rust spots. He stole my blood for sampling and replaced it with someone else’s blood. He was gargantuan, gangly, and then wheeled the dead woman out, though he could have just as easily thrown her over his shoulder. When he left the room, the nurse came in, looking over her shoulder as I writhed. She used an IV to administer more codeine—this time not in pill form but in a liquid form streaming directly into my veins, and she hid the bag of liquid behind the curtain. My stomach hurt less, but the fever kept increasing. I’d almost forgotten my journey sitting in this room, dark as a cave. Six men and the woman have already died in this cave. Let alone the seventy-two in the storm.
The foreign blood streaming into my body was room temperature, and I felt terribly cold. I shivered uncontrollably, groaning. I heard her shout into the hallway, don’t forget about him! Bring him blanket!
The blanket didn’t help. I moaned at her in the broken English I learned from school and films. Her paleness made her appear neither Greek nor Arabic. Please, blanket…please, blank…in…under…blank…it. But sensing the male doctor was about to enter the room, his large shadow forecasting his presence, she quickly removed the codeine IV and put a bandage over my arm, and the doctor shouted at her to leave the room immediately.
The one eyed doctor loomed over me with his great frame, the pen in his hands almost more of a toothpick than a pen. He asked me questions for information and to test my consciousness: my name, what year it was, when WWI started, my next of kin, my religion. What? I asked.
Your religion? He paused and stared at me with his one eye.
I could not speak Greek, I stammered, Mu…um…Christian? In my heart I asked forgiveness. He sat down next to me and examined me with his one eye. There wasn’t as much screaming or yelling from other rooms, so I assumed some of the chaos had settled: tell me the story again…
From Anatolia…to Greece come we…when boat…the
I paused because I did not know what I should say. Or how to say it. Did the scar above my knee give me away? I had to leave because they would have killed me. Back in my country, I’d destroyed the man’s cellphone, I grabbed it from him and threw it across the room so he couldn’t call more soldiers. Were my fingerprint still on the phone? Is that why I’m taken away? My momentary decision would curse Panni forever? My sight began to blur and cross. I cursed Europe. This irresistible compulsion, this siren’s call that lured my boat with its song and had run it into the rocks. How could I explain this in a language that was not my own?
His only eye winked. Or blinked. I could feel my face turn red, but hoped the fever hid it. I wanted to stab him in the eye. To stow away beneath the gurney, hide, clutching the bottom to escape the damned cave. Where was Panni?
You only have for tonight here. We have don’t rooms, medicine, money, time, said the pale cyclops, Your fever’s too high, take off the blankets.
No, no! Please!
I clutched the blanket, but he ripped it from me. Before leaving, he turned on the fan as if he let all the trade winds escape from a secret bag. I moaned. Sobs and shivers trembled the frame of my body and perhaps the nurse heard me, because she smuggled in a blanket, concealing it beneath her scrubs. She reapplied the codeine serpents into my veins and exited quickly, but left the fan on. The gusts blew strong, billowing beneath my blanket and I wished the sheet were sails carrying me home. The gale howled powerfully, cackling, wailing, and tossing me from my course. Teeth chattering, I shook. I put my hands on my groin. I couldn’t feel the tips of my fingers. Was I in hell? Darkness fell outside and soon fell inside.
The halogen lights dimmed like halos relinquishing their deity. Nighttime is for the monsters and mares. The serpents spewing venom into my veins made my vision cross, and it became hard to focus on the figures that passed in the hallway, carting men to and fro who disappeared and I became convinced they were cannibals, and I was all alone. I spun in the whirlpool of movements. Dizzy and clinging to my gurney as though it were the boat that was tossed at sea and had sunk in the waves. By now was everyone dead because of my decision? Did Panni leave me continuing to Lebanon?
I prayed in the night, like grandmother used to, but God was angry at me and threatened never to rise. I saw lizards climbing the walls. The white pebbles and palm trees. Pills like clusters of grapes and orange biohazard bags like thousands of blooming flowers across the mouth of a cave. Palm leaves everywhere, while I froze, praying to God because religion is the language of the dying, and you will always revert to your native tongue. I saw my Mother. What was she doing in hell? Is this her new home? To flee rather than see her daughter defiled by men who slept in my bed, drank my wine, wore my clothes? When can I go home? I must stop thinking like this. No, not home.
I received a text from Panni.
How r u feeling?
I passed out again before I could reply.
The fever bloomed. The nurse came in again. Green eyed and luscious. Her skin radiant as a god. She was my savior. She took care of me and did not cringe at my disgusting parts.
Woe to me, she said, and woe to any immortal who loves a man.
She moved the gurney closer toward the window because among the dead we desire to return home. Seeing that she was moving me, the doctor shouted something in his language, Οὖτις ἐμοί γ᾽.
I have no ship to give him…she said, arguing with the doctor with the serpents on his breast, and no company of men to help him cross the sea.
She left the doctor with one eye in his cave and met me by the sea. You must go.
I looked across the wide sea with tears in my eyes.
Don’t be sorrowful anymore, Odysseus, the time has come. Beware that your sail does not get torn while skimming the constellations.
Everything ok, everything be will…said the nurse, her green eyes darting beneath a furrowed brow. An urgent voice called her to the adjacent room wherefrom I heard wailing. I was caught off guard by her paleness, she looked like Death, but Death spoke broken English: everything alright will be, her words trailed behind her as though she had left them in the room along with a box, two round pills, and a dead woman I’d seen on the boat.
Before me on a silver tray she’d placed a box of apple juice with Kalypso written on it along with two codeine tablets like little addictive berries of flowers. I’d never had tablets like this, though I’d seen their flowers, red poppies—and I was afraid, because I’d seen what they did to the soldiers. But I was in such pain I took the pills…they tasted chalky, and before long it felt like everything became liquid. Like the muscles between my vertebrae became loose and I was floating in the hospital bed as if it were that treacherous sea. This chemical induced sea did not scare me as the one that delivered me here. Neither did the IV stuck into my arm like a serpent drawing blood. What terrified me was her absence.
No give him more! Don’t have we enough! I heard a male’s voice barking from the dark corridor, his voice booming as if from the deep chasm of a giant’s lungs. At first I thought it a hospital, but the cabinets on the wall made it appear more an apartment. Altered. Perhaps a cave, then I received the first text from Panni:
Honey, I’m so
sorry that you have to
stay there alone.
I hope that everything
ll be ok and you don’t feel
pain. Kisses
A male doctor, a giant of a man with an eye-patch, came into the room. I groaned in pain, kicking my feet against the metal gurney, cutting my feet against little rust spots. He stole my blood for sampling and replaced it with someone else’s blood. He was gargantuan, gangly, and then wheeled the dead woman out, though he could have just as easily thrown her over his shoulder. When he left the room, the nurse came in, looking over her shoulder as I writhed. She used an IV to administer more codeine—this time not in pill form but in a liquid form streaming directly into my veins, and she hid the bag of liquid behind the curtain. My stomach hurt less, but the fever kept increasing. I’d almost forgotten my journey sitting in this room, dark as a cave. Six men and the woman have already died in this cave. Let alone the seventy-two in the storm.
The foreign blood streaming into my body was room temperature, and I felt terribly cold. I shivered uncontrollably, groaning. I heard her shout into the hallway, don’t forget about him! Bring him blanket!
The blanket didn’t help. I moaned at her in the broken English I learned from school and films. Her paleness made her appear neither Greek nor Arabic. Please, blanket…please, blank…in…under…blank…it. But sensing the male doctor was about to enter the room, his large shadow forecasting his presence, she quickly removed the codeine IV and put a bandage over my arm, and the doctor shouted at her to leave the room immediately.
The one eyed doctor loomed over me with his great frame, the pen in his hands almost more of a toothpick than a pen. He asked me questions for information and to test my consciousness: my name, what year it was, when WWI started, my next of kin, my religion. What? I asked.
Your religion? He paused and stared at me with his one eye.
I could not speak Greek, I stammered, Mu…um…Christian? In my heart I asked forgiveness. He sat down next to me and examined me with his one eye. There wasn’t as much screaming or yelling from other rooms, so I assumed some of the chaos had settled: tell me the story again…
From Anatolia…to Greece come we…when boat…the
I paused because I did not know what I should say. Or how to say it. Did the scar above my knee give me away? I had to leave because they would have killed me. Back in my country, I’d destroyed the man’s cellphone, I grabbed it from him and threw it across the room so he couldn’t call more soldiers. Were my fingerprint still on the phone? Is that why I’m taken away? My momentary decision would curse Panni forever? My sight began to blur and cross. I cursed Europe. This irresistible compulsion, this siren’s call that lured my boat with its song and had run it into the rocks. How could I explain this in a language that was not my own?
His only eye winked. Or blinked. I could feel my face turn red, but hoped the fever hid it. I wanted to stab him in the eye. To stow away beneath the gurney, hide, clutching the bottom to escape the damned cave. Where was Panni?
You only have for tonight here. We have don’t rooms, medicine, money, time, said the pale cyclops, Your fever’s too high, take off the blankets.
No, no! Please!
I clutched the blanket, but he ripped it from me. Before leaving, he turned on the fan as if he let all the trade winds escape from a secret bag. I moaned. Sobs and shivers trembled the frame of my body and perhaps the nurse heard me, because she smuggled in a blanket, concealing it beneath her scrubs. She reapplied the codeine serpents into my veins and exited quickly, but left the fan on. The gusts blew strong, billowing beneath my blanket and I wished the sheet were sails carrying me home. The gale howled powerfully, cackling, wailing, and tossing me from my course. Teeth chattering, I shook. I put my hands on my groin. I couldn’t feel the tips of my fingers. Was I in hell? Darkness fell outside and soon fell inside.
The halogen lights dimmed like halos relinquishing their deity. Nighttime is for the monsters and mares. The serpents spewing venom into my veins made my vision cross, and it became hard to focus on the figures that passed in the hallway, carting men to and fro who disappeared and I became convinced they were cannibals, and I was all alone. I spun in the whirlpool of movements. Dizzy and clinging to my gurney as though it were the boat that was tossed at sea and had sunk in the waves. By now was everyone dead because of my decision? Did Panni leave me continuing to Lebanon?
I prayed in the night, like grandmother used to, but God was angry at me and threatened never to rise. I saw lizards climbing the walls. The white pebbles and palm trees. Pills like clusters of grapes and orange biohazard bags like thousands of blooming flowers across the mouth of a cave. Palm leaves everywhere, while I froze, praying to God because religion is the language of the dying, and you will always revert to your native tongue. I saw my Mother. What was she doing in hell? Is this her new home? To flee rather than see her daughter defiled by men who slept in my bed, drank my wine, wore my clothes? When can I go home? I must stop thinking like this. No, not home.
I received a text from Panni.
How r u feeling?
I passed out again before I could reply.
The fever bloomed. The nurse came in again. Green eyed and luscious. Her skin radiant as a god. She was my savior. She took care of me and did not cringe at my disgusting parts.
Woe to me, she said, and woe to any immortal who loves a man.
She moved the gurney closer toward the window because among the dead we desire to return home. Seeing that she was moving me, the doctor shouted something in his language, Οὖτις ἐμοί γ᾽.
I have no ship to give him…she said, arguing with the doctor with the serpents on his breast, and no company of men to help him cross the sea.
She left the doctor with one eye in his cave and met me by the sea. You must go.
I looked across the wide sea with tears in my eyes.
Don’t be sorrowful anymore, Odysseus, the time has come. Beware that your sail does not get torn while skimming the constellations.