2011 Issue - Santa Fe Community College

Heavy Metal
by Ellen Birkett Morris
Laura’s body felt heavy. Heavy was the word her son Jason had used
when he could no longer lift his head up or hold the controller to play
video games. She’d sat by his bed reading to him like he was eight, not
16. He’d been dead for four months now. She still had trouble getting
out of bed. Sometimes she stayed there until noon.
She lay there while stacks of patient charts waited in her office to be
coded. 204.00 was more polite than acute lymphoid leukemia without
remission. In her darkest hours, Laura thought of getting 204.00 tattooed
over her heart. She spent hours drawing the numbers across her chest
with her fingertip.
Laura drifted off and woke to the sound of drums pounding in the
apartment below. It was noon. She pulled on sweatpants and Jason’s
flannel shirt, and went down to apartment 2D. She knocked on the
door. The drumming didn’t stop. She kicked the door hard. Then she
reached down to rub her aching foot.
“F-ing door,” she shouted. The door opened to a boy, about Jason’s
age, with stringy jet black hair and a nose ring.
“What do you want lady”
“I want you to stop that damn drumming; some of us are trying to
sleep.”
“Don’t you have, like, a job or something” asked the kid with a
smirk.
“Shouldn’t you be, like, in school or something” replied Laura.
They glared at each other. A look of recognition crossed the kid’s face.
“Hey, aren’t you the cancer kid’s mom Jason, right” It had been so
long since anyone had spoken Jason’s name. She savored the sound of it,
in spite of his attitude.
“Yeah, I’m Laura,” she held out her hand stiffly.
“I’m Ike,” he said, lightly slapping her palm in greeting.
“Did you know Jason”
“He lent me a pen once to take a test.”
Laura smiled to herself. She could imagine him handing the pen
96 Santa Fe Literary Review