What I eat

Jerry used his forearms as a lever to pull himself up in the bed. But basic physiology worked against him, however, and no matter how hard he prayed, the forearms were connected to the elbow were connected to the biceps were connected to the shoulders were connected to the shoulder blades were connected to the back. The stitched-up muscles in his back seized up and Jerry felt the two sides of stitched muscles rub up against each other and lightning-white nerves zap him in the middle all the way up his neck and the back of his head.

Jerry had to remember, breathe through the pain, just like Nurse Gertler had told him. He relaxed into the sheets and, as his nerves began to quiet down, felt the soft mattress under his backside. Like sinking into a pillow, the one thing this Bronx hospital did pretty well.

And then he tasted the bile peek its way up from his throat, a reminder of that lunch he’d eaten. Meatloaf, apple sauce, chicken noodle soup, and under-toasted Wonder bread. The taste of bland had his taste buds crying out for salt or cayenne. If he had to be in a hospital, why couldn’t it be a Mexican or Chinese one? And why was hospital food always beige, tan, or taupe? Just as bland to look at as to taste.

As he reached in front of him for his book (“The Ten Best Anxiety Management Techniques”) which Mother had brought him to read – from one of the boxes he’d left in her Larchmont basement – he heard the familiar thomp-chump of his mother’s Oxford orthopedics. She stopped at the room’s entrance and pursed her lips, which only made her chin jut out even further than usual.

“Son,” she said, putting her hands on her hips in teapot formation, “your hospital gown is off your shoulders. You’ve lifted yourself up again. Haven’t I told you and told you, let the nurses do that? I can see your chest and that’s just not proper. Just not proper.”

“Knock it off, Mother,” Jerry said, fingering the soft matte finish of his book. “I have to do this some time, and the nurses don’t come by just for that. What’s up?”

“Your father has a message for you,” she said, rolling her eyes at the mention of Jerry Sr., “which I suppose I must give you. He’s moved you out of your old apartment in that terrible neighborhood.”

Mother reserved her heaviest emphasis for the word terrible, courtesy of five years of instruction with Lee Strasberg, or so she once said.

“Oh, yeah? And where am I supposed to live now?”

“You’re coming home with me when you leave the hospital. I’m setting you up in the basement.”