Andre returns home to find his brother Ivan breathing into the crease of a couch cushion between rounds of chest compressions.
“Did you eat?” Andre asks.
The only answer he hears is Ivan’s muffled breath against the cloth.
“Come up for air.”
Ivan’s chubby cheeks blush as he regains his breath.
“I’m trying to study.”
Ivan returns to his couch CPR and Andre begins to sift through the bog of bills on the coffee table. His brother hasn’t stopped talking about arrhythmias and entry wounds since the housing market collapsed and the roofing jobs stopped coming two years ago. He’s only one certification exam away from becoming an EMT, but after his first attempt (“trick questions”) and now second (“computer’s racist”), he’s become a life-saving fiend, mending snapped tree branches like broken arms and putting his mouth on every pillow case and open zipper. Andre keeps his head low and makes his way toward the kitchen.
“Can I practice on you?”
Ivan directs him to lie down. Andre accepts the floor like a corpse accepts a coffin.
“You’re having a heart attack. And…action.”
Andre closes his eyes and listens to the melody of clicks from his grandfather’s collection of solar figurines, which dance endlessly from the sunlight they collect from the windowsill. Ivan feels for a pulse with ice cold fingers.
“Get paid today?” he asks.
“Am I allowed to talk?”
“Shit, you’re right.”
Andre’s sore back muscles ease as he feels himself melt into the hardwood. He can’t remember the last time he wasn’t in pain, but just as it begins to release him, he thinks of the diseased plant, that strange, wrinkled fruit, and its sweet-smelling juice that stained his hand. It makes his stomach turn even now.
“Live, damn you,” Ivan mutters—an unsanctioned CPR tactic with an alarmingly low success rate.
Ivan’s chest compressions drive Andre into the floor. He lets the jolts flow through him. He doesn’t want to be resuscitated.
Then the phone rings.
“Hey, Papaw,” Ivan says. “Just getting into test-taking shape.”
Andre opens his eyes, mouths No and slices a hand across his neck.
“Want to talk to Andre?”
Ivan hands him the phone and Andre whispers Fuck you before putting it to his ear. He hears a soft hum when he says hello.
“I haven’t heard from you in a while,” his grandfather says.
His voice is hoarse. He’s dredging words from a throat that’s already been scraped of tumors twice. They used to talk every night, but their calls have become increasingly infrequent as work has begun to consume Andre and his grandfather’s energy has plummeted. The pain that’s present in his voice both aches like a burn and soothes like aloe in Andre’s ear.
“How are classes going?”
“Good. Really good. Almost too easy.”
Andre runs through the list of classes he recalls signing up for in spring. General Biology. Intro to Advertising. Even before he made the decision to drop out of school, he knew there was no way he’d make his way through the next semester. In his first class ever at University of Illinois at Chicago, his math professor smacked the quadratic equation on the board with his metal pointer and explained that he would skim this lesson since they “all should remember this from high school.” He moved on to a new problem as Andre was still grasping for memories of past lessons, which was when the panic set in like failing support beams. Blood pulsed in his ears. His palms sweated, his body set to broil. He searched the room for any glimmers of dread in his classmates’ faces but found none. He was alone, breathless and barren in the front row of a room he didn’t belong in.