Terminal

John. Good old John. Nobody, other than me, had ever treated him with any respect. Not his family. Not his teachers. Not the other kids. How many times had he been called stupid in his life? Way too many to count. But that’s because he really was stupid. I’ve known John most of my life, and I’ve never known him to be clever. When we were kids, I was always bailing him out of trouble. Like the time he threw rocks at Mr. Nelson’s trailer, breaking all of the windows in the front. I confessed to it and took the rap just to keep him out of trouble, and Old Man Nelson marched over to my house, foaming at the mouth, and demanded that my mother pay for the damage. She just laughed and, after he stormed away, she beat the shit out of me. Later, when I could sit down again without wincing, I asked John why he did it. I don’t know, Tommy. I guess I just like the sound of breaking glass . . . That was John in a nutshell. Old Man Nelson hadn’t done anything to him. He hadn’t done it to be malicious. He just liked the sound of breaking glass. He didn’t know why he did things— he just did them. But I loved him anyway. Sherm, crazy enough to drink gasoline and piss on a fire; and John, dumb as a fucking fencepost. I loved them both, though I would have never told them that.

But I would have to tell them about the cancer. I had to tell somebody. Both the secret and the disease were eating me up inside.

I took a sip of beer and my nose started running. I wiped at it and my index finger came away glistening and red. John and Sherm both got quiet and I looked up to find them staring at me.

“Yo man,” Sherm pointed, “your nose is bleeding and shit.”

“Fuck! Okay, I’ll be right back. Don’t either of you drink my beer.”

I shoved a soggy napkin up my nostrils to stop the flow, got up from the table, and weaved toward the bathroom. Juan caught me, wrapped an arm around my shoulder and slurred out a drunken half-English, half-Spanish apology. I told him that it was okay, peeled him off of me, and waited in line for the bathroom. Eventually, the door banged open and a fat, drunken redneck in a beer-stained flannel shirt stumbled out. I slipped inside, carefully avoiding stepping in the puddle of piss on the floor.

I stared into the mirror and what I saw didn’t look good.

“Son of a bitch . . .”

I ran some paper towels under the cold water, then wadded them up and held them to my nose. I leaned my head backward, giving me an unobstructed view of the dingy bathroom ceiling. Somebody had managed to scrawl graffiti up there, between the dim lightbulb and the spiderwebs; SUICIDE RUN KICKS ASS and NUKE GUMBY and that popular old standby EVELYN IS A HO, along with the phone number where you could supposedly reach her for a good time.

After a few minutes, the bleeding slowed to a trickle and stopped completely. I cleaned my face and washed my hands, then wiped the droplets of blood from the sink and garbage can. Considering the bathroom’s filthy condition, it was useless, but I did it anyway. The nausea hit me with no warning just as I was finishing. I bolted for the stall and the hot bile erupted, spraying through my fingers, spattering the walls and running down my forearms. Something hard pushed itself up through my throat. I fell to my knees, and the stench from the toilet made me puke more. The bowl was caked with brown and yellow stains and I noticed that I was kneeling in something wet. But what I threw up was even grosser. Unless I was mistaken, I’d just thrown up my own feces. It seemed impossible, but that’s what it looked and smelled like.

Just the sight of it— the very thought— made me puke a third time. There was enough force this time to cause a splash-back effect, and brackish toilet water hit my face, dripping from my nose and eyes and cheeks. I stayed there, heaving and crying and gagging, until there was absolutely nothing left to come up. My stomach cramped and my throat burned, like I’d drunk battery acid. I knew it would only get worse in the days to come. This was only a taste of what the cancer had in store for me.

For the second time since entering the bathroom, I cleaned myself up as best I could. My mouth tasted like shit (literally) and I lit up a smoke to correct the problem. Then I returned to the table. John and Sherm had ordered another round while I was gone, and now I had two beers in front of me. The cold soothed my throat. I made quick work of them both, and signaled Angie for another. She arched her eyebrow in concern, but took the order.

“Coke?” Sherm asked.

“No, another beer.”

“No man, I mean your nose. You been doing coke?”

“I don’t fuck with that shit. You know that. All I do is weed.”

“You sick then?”

“Yeah. I’ve been a little under the weather. Look, it was just a nosebleed, Sherm. It’s no big deal.”

“You should get that shit checked out, dog,” John mused. “I once heard about a guy that bled to death from a nosebleed.”

“That’s just an urban legend.”

“What does that mean?”