Hybrid: “Demetrius Lost or Lucid” by Jenzo DuQue
Demetrius Lost or Lucid
After Sandra Cisneros
Demetrius with his eyes taut perpetually cracked wide, Demetri bearer of the sharded teeth and discarded mind, D from whose open lips half-truths and instant-coffee and spit sputter endlessly, forming a tan delta cracked throughout his beard, friendless Demetrius hurries down the Ward hallway to the windowed Nurses’ Station, where weary staff dressed in muted colors hide away, skips past the dented door and its red floor rectangle he shouldn’t cross, brings a persistent fist to the glass instead, jolts the masked faces awake, shakes a styrofoam cup, this morning’s or last week’s maybe some stray he’s stumbled across, yells at them for Ensure or Pedialyte or whatever other demand erupts from his tawnied mouth, until a nurse waves him off, dismisses D using a tap at their wrist, indicates the invisible watch that neither can see in the gloaming right before a shift change is due.
Demetrius, lost or lucid, eventually wanders into the Day Room to rally his troops. Helps a physician attendant change the TV channel to make the rowdier patients quiet. Pulls his teammate Elezi not just from his chair but also the medication’s sleepy depths, cajoles Big Richard to abandon his precious iPad (permitted only due to years of good behavior), since Big R is the best shuffler to ever do it, trades two cookies and an orange so Angel will rush through his evening prayers, and finally, finally Demetri can play Spades. Can get lost in the slapping cards satisfaction, how they flick and blur and rotate on the wood table, the shit talk and background commercials filling the Day Room, all immaculate to his ears, because today, like yesterday, they’re playing for instant-coffee tubes hoarded from meals, thin green and red fingers Angel has fanned across the paper where Big R writes down numbers, keeps track of bets and books. Meanwhile, Elezi has to continue reminding D, who keeps an eye out for the overnight nurses, that it’s his turn to deal, gets annoyed, calls Demetri stupid when Angel and Big R collect round after round of wins.
Demetrius inside that stained hospital gown, inside the throat that is, due to a condition, always slick, salivated and never wrong whenever it speaks, inside the two-hundred pound body of a man with its mystery of faith, its history of resilience, neurons trained to fire against the world, in what layer of the soul, in what part of the heart, inside that hollow cavity where something hopeful sings—the birds will fly high—and knows only what Demetrius knows. Inside that body too wounded to see beyond the flames of fresh anger, the single spark of disrespect, is a patient akin to any other, one who flips the Spades table and goes out the Day Room door, where he berates the graveyard crew at the Nurses’ Station who has barely just arrived. Raises his thick hands even higher than his deep voice, crosses literal and figurative boundaries, ignores the alarms echoing around the Ward, those inevitable boots thrumming and arms gripping in tandem. Grows softer and softer under the fastened straps, melts away into Manhattan’s jagged skyline, hovers between the skyscrapers slowly dotting with lights, hesitates like a flock’s silhouette gone astray, paralyzed, uncertain, but still free.
About Jenzo DuQue
Jenzo DuQue is a Colombian American writer, editor, and teacher. His work has been published widely, as well as anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2021 and in Best Microfiction 2022. Jenzo's debut short story collection is forthcoming with Viking Books. Find him at jenzoduque.com or @papiwhathappen.