Joseph Porter Goes Down
Joseph Porter Goes Down
Joseph Porter had four major problems in his life:
His wife was having an affair.
His wife was having an affair with his boss.
His job was in jeopardy because his wife was having an affair with his boss.
He was currently having a heart attack.
(Now that I see this in print, I should have put no. 4 in the no. 1 slot.)
The sky was so blue, Joseph Porter thought. He couldn’t remember it being such a brilliant blue. And had there always been crows flying around? In the city? The back of his head hurt for some reason. Also, his chest. Can’t forget about the crushing pain in his chest. Oh, right, the heart attack. Yes, now he remembered, he had fallen on the sidewalk outside the building where he worked when his congested heart clenched like a
Hey, you okay?
He just fell.
Is he all right?
What happened to him?
Joseph Porter, fifty-four years and two hundred eighty-nine days old, coughed twice as he lay on the sidewalk. This intensified his chest pain to such a degree he passed out. In this unconscious state, he transported himself back to his sophomore year at the University of Maryland. He was, he now believed, nineteen years of age, occupying a carrel at the Hornbake Library, furiously writing his memoirs, the ending of which you are reading now. Of course, this is complete nonsense, because I am writing his Life Account three hours after Joseph Porter, my former self in a flesh bag, became… how should I put it… no longer. I am required to submit his Life Account to my “higher-ups” by next
Somebody call 9-1-1!
I think he had a stroke or something.
He didn’t have a stroke; the side of his face isn’t sagging.
Your face doesn’t need to be sagging if you’re having a stroke.
Is that blood?
The paramedics were summoned, and between the time they were summoned and the time they arrived, a young woman who studies biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University, named Claire Stafford, kneeled next to Joseph Porter to assess his condition. She checked his pulse, and his breathing, and came to the semi-professional conclusion that Joseph Porter was currently experiencing a myocardial infarction. Claire made a makeshift pillow from her cardigan sweater and used cold water from her stainless steel Yeti water bottle to dampen a
I think he’s dead.
He’s not dead; his foot moved for a second.
Should we take off his shoes?
What? Why?
I don’t know; I was only trying to be helpful.
Claire Stafford began speaking in a low, calm, soothing voice to Joseph Porter. Physiologically speaking, Joseph Porter could hear Claire Stafford’s words but mixed up the meaning and the context. Luckily for you, I could hear and decipher every word since I was hovering sixteen inches above the top of Claire Stafford’s ponytailed head and thirty-seven and a half inches above Joseph Porter’s gaunt, but still technically alive, face.
Here is what I overheard Claire Stafford say to the unconscious Joseph Porter:
a) Hello, sir, can you hear me?
b) Can you squeeze my hand?
c) You’re going to be fine; an ambulance is on the way.
d) Stay calm; everything is going to be okay.
In the state Joseph Porter was in—the pain, the bleeding head, the disorientation from being horizontal on a sidewalk which he normally traverses vertically—he misunderstood e) all of the above. He was no longer in a corner of Hornbake Library; he was now with Anya Baritskova, his twenty-year-old coworker at Borders Books, with whom he has a massive crush and to whom he graciously offered to drive home. Joseph Porter heard Anya Baritskova speaking, not Claire Stafford, and felt Anya Baritskova’s hand holding his, not Claire Stafford’s. At that moment, Joseph Porter was twenty-three years and sixty-seven days old, and the happiest he would ever
I hear the sirens!
Dude, you’re gonna be fine.
Ew, did he just shit himself?
Do people shit themselves when they die?
He’s not dead; his foot moved again.
At this point, Joseph Porter now had only two major problems in his life:
He just released some intestinal gas. (Actually, this was only a minor embarrassment.)
He had twenty-seven minutes left in his life. (This one was pretty major.)
The police and the paramedics arrived within seconds of each other. The police cleared the immediate area and interviewed the bystanders. The paramedics tended to Joseph Porter. Well, one paramedic tended to Joseph Porter; the other seemed to be taking an extraordinary amount of time extracting information from Claire Stafford.
Minutes later, as the paramedics exited the scene with Joseph Porter strapped to a gurney in the back of their wailing vehicle, the crowd dispersed. Claire Stafford picked up her bloody sweater, rolled it up, bloody side inwards, and stowed it in her backpack. She felt like crying, but she didn’t. One of the last remaining onlookers came up and spoke to her:
You were great; you know, what you did with that guy.
Oh, thanks. I couldn’t not do anything.
Do you think he’ll be all right?
I don’t know; I hope so.
Hey, you want to get a coffee or something?
Um… sure.
Joseph Porter expired inside the speeding ambulance while it crossed under a red traffic light—the final intersection before reaching the hospital. The paramedics attending to Joseph Porter knew he had passed but let the emergency room doctor on duty make it official. Joseph Porter’s wife was called, and she was given the sad information, but nobody called Claire Stafford or Anya Baritskova.
As the sun baked a dead man’s blood into the sidewalk, a passerby dropped seventeen percent of a jelly donut six and a half yards from where Joseph Porter had lain, believing he was holding hands with a cute girl, heading back to her place in a rusty Honda Civic he had bought from his brother, where she invited him in and
Did you see that? A crow picked up a piece of jelly donut.
I heard they’re very intelligent creatures.
I loved the opening. I hate being compared to other writers so forgive me but this sounded very Vonnegut.
I found your story interesting. It makes me wonder if it is possible to witness our own death like that. Did he become the crow out of curiosity?