Blurry faces bend over me. My eyes can’t focus on Oni, Mansour, the paramedics. My throat is locked up. I can hardly breathe. Why are they wasting time sticking me with wires? It’s not my heart. I struggle to find my voice, form words, explain what happened.
“Don’t fall asleep.”
I yank the wire from under my left breast. Point to my mouth, to the atrium, to my stomach; struggle to cough out one word.
“Common procedure.”
I don’t have time for common procedures. I press my palm to my neck, inhale, and rasp out, “Poison.”
They rush me into an ambulance, bound like a mummy, stuck with an IV. Sirens echo in my head. I can’t lose consciousness. Help me, Aziz. Help! I conjure him up with the last vestiges of my slipping breath. His sleepy eyes, olive-soap scent, smoke-shattered voice, searching tongue…in her mouth.
Click.
Someone presses the oxygen mask to my nose.
Mansour’s face is pale with fear.
I will not die. Not yet.
Senseless questions are thrown at me in the emergency room. What do they want? I am a foreigner without credit card or medical insurance. Without an identity. I possess an international driver’s license and a new checkbook in my purse back home. Check number 28. My signature at the bottom of one check can purchase a wing of this hospital. But I have no credit history. They are having discussions among themselves as if I’m already dead. I’ve managed to escape my husband, but not my stupidity, the clamor in my head, or the laws and regulations of this strange country. I am a rich immigrant who will die in a UCLA emergency cubicle.
“Bank America.” The words scratch my throat. I can pay cash. A piece of plastic card shouldn’t be worth more!
“Your name?”
“Soraya.”
“What day of the week is it?”
As hard as I try, I can’t recall what day it is, yet I am able to summon the scent of candles and Butterfly’s perfume with all of its cloying nuances. I fight the wedding band on my left finger. Twelve one-carat marquis bleu-blanc diamonds set in platinum. Mansour comes forward and gently removes the ring. I point to Mamabozorg’s amber chain around my neck. He places the ring and necklace in the nurse’s hands. Thirty-five exquisite amber beads, kernels of precious memories. A token of a once mighty Shah. And the nurse hands them back to Mansour as if they are plastic beads.
“Stay with us!”
“Don’t sleep!”
“Maintain respiration and blood circulation…!”
“Exposure? Through the veins? Lungs?”
“Did you ingest something?”
They rinse my face with a cold liquid. I am shaken into semi-consciousness. Trembling. Sweating. Excited.
“Concentrate. It’s important! What did you eat today?”
Today! What is today? I didn’t eat anything. I try to think in the ensuing silence, to concentrate, stop myself from drifting away. Remember the name of the plant.
“Some kind of food?”
I nod. My eyelids are heavy.
“Gastric lavage!” someone shouts.
“Induce vomiting!”
“Twenty milligrams syrup of ipecac!”
***
I rest against pillows and sip cranberry juice, a cleanser. The nurse croons in a sweet, tiny voice, as if she’s talking to a child. Her cherubic red curls surround plump, flushed cheeks and a heart-shaped mouth enhanced with lip liner. A single flap of fabric separates me from the chaos in the hallway and a patient in the next cubicle who asks for painkillers. A nurse reminds him that he has already been admitted, inebriated, three times this week and that she will not administer any more narcotics.
“I’m in pain, bitch!” he shouts.
I would have liked some narcotics myself to kill the dissonant waltz in my head, a cacophony of trumpets and rumbling drums that commands me to return to the flower before it dies. Find a way to preserve the potency of its poison until I lure her to America.
“I’m ready to go home,” I tell the nurse.
She pats my hair into place. “No, sweetie, not yet. Drink another sip. You can’t be discharged until a doctor sees you.”
“But I’m fine. Stronger than ever,” I lie.
“We’ll let the doctor decide that,” she replies.
My heart makes a double flip and refuses to settle. My liver or kidneys must have been affected. I ask the nurse what the problem is, but she tells me the doctor will answer all my questions soon. Soon seems an eternity in a foreign country, in an emergency cubicle, with a body that brims with poisons that no gastric lavage will manage to cleanse.
The doctor is far too young and too handsome to be allowed to examine female patients. Good-looking men should be banned from medical schools. They traumatize us. Suddenly, my hair feels oily, my legs too exposed, and I smell medicinal and bitter.
He appears no older than thirty, at least five years younger than me, but he addresses me as if he were my Baba. Does every patient regress to childhood here?
“Are you up for a few questions, Soraya?”
I am not. But I nod agreeably.
“Can you tell me what you ate?”
“I was gardening and a flower fell in my glass of water. I didn’t think much of it first. Left it there. But then removed it and took a few sips.”
“Could you tell what kind of flower?”
“Not really, but I know plants and this one looked harmless.”
“How are things at home, Soraya? Are you under pressure? Any thought of…suicide?”
“Suicide! I am in love, doctor. Desperate to go back home to my husband. Why would I want to kill myself?”
“Yes, of course. Well, whatever you ingested was super toxic. Your condition deteriorated fast. We were very concerned.”
I touch the bluish bruise on my forearm, noticing it for the first time. “You drew blood?”
“To identify the toxin.” He rests his hand on mine.
“And?” I ask.
“Considering the circumstances, it’s strange that we didn’t find traces of poison in your blood.”
“None?”
“None! Whatever caused the symptoms was excreted quite rapidly from your system.” He pats my icy hand. “You were lucky. A few more sips of that water and you’d have gone into shock.”
“Shock? Is that dangerous, doctor?”
“Yes, Soraya, very. It could lead to death.”
I shudder at the thought, not so much of death, but at the thought of leaving my work unfinished.
The doctor gazes down at me. “Soraya, sometimes when the body is under stress, one’s immune system becomes weak and everything affects it faster. I will dismiss you on condition that you promise to rest.”
I nod. A reassuring smile. I promise. Pull myself up and sit at the edge of the bed and wait for a spell of vertigo to subside.