Nano, page 1
NANO
MARC STAPLETON
Copyright © 2023 by Marc Stapleton
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
“The cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.”
CHARLES DE GAULLE
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
CHAPTER 1
“God,” I mumble under my breath, hopefully quietly enough that no-one heard me. It’s 3:00 AM, the second of my three weekly shifts at the sandwich packing plant. A very careful process of taking sandwiches off a conveyor belt and placing them into plastic packaging, and then sealing the packaging.
At least careful would be the idea but in practice no one cares.
My manager shuffles along the conveyor belt, eyeing us tiredly. He’s a 36-year-veteran of the conveyer belt and looks like a man weary of carrying the industry of sandwich packaging on his shoulders. He makes eye contact for a second before dragging his eyes away from mine.
Then I feel a chunk of something wet and slimy hit me on the cheek. I look across the belt to see one of my esteemed colleagues – Dave, or Carl, or Charlie, or whoever’s name I never bothered to memorize in my two months here – grinning at me inanely. I look down to see a wet trail of egg-mayonnaise sitting on the belt. Great, now I’m getting food catapulted at me.
Another hour passes. I’ve almost forgotten about the egg assault when a chunk of processed chicken lands on the lapel of my coat. I look up and there’s that grin again. At least he’s managed to figure out that the chicken will travel easier than the egg-mayo. Learning on the job.
“Hey, Pedro,” I call to my manager. “Have you seen this?”
He looks over with those sunken, tired eyes and sees me brushing food from my lapel. He looks over at Dave or Carl or Charlie, and then shrugs at me before continuing his languid walk along the line. There he goes, another weak, beaten man. Too weary and tired to stand up for the very workers he’s paid to manage. I shouldn’t be surprised.
And yet I know I’m the weakest of the three of us. Why couldn’t I reach across, grab the guy by his lapel, jam it into the conveyer belt, and watch him beg for his life? Because I don’t dare. Because I need this job. Because I need any job. Because I have a heart condition. But mostly? Because it just isn’t me.
And that's how I passed the remaining five hours of work: quietly seething and yet paralyzed by my own inability to do anything. And now, some 3000 sandwich packages later, it’s time to go home.
The bus home is a numbing experience. The sun is just peeking out above the towers and apartment buildings on the horizon, blinding me with golden rays every couple of yards. It’s the start of another beautiful day, and yet my own day is just ending. I like to think if I were lucky enough to have another job – one with sociable hours – I wouldn’t wake up at 3:00 PM and stumble into bed at 7:00 AM; hell, I might even have a social life. But deep down, I know I’m kidding myself.
I unlock the door to our apartment, and like every morning my Dad is sitting there, hastily stubbing out a cigarette by the open window. He nods to me and goes back to the television in the corner of the room, burying himself in whatever sports show happens to be on. I used to get a welcome. Then I got a word. Now I just get a nod.
I don’t dislike him, even though we’re worlds apart. He’s a lot like me. He was a steelworker for 20 years until an accident took away his ability to walk without a limp. Now he shambles around the apartment, smoking, and speaking Bible verses. When I can finally get him to speak, we do one of two things: pick a takeout or argue.
I leave him to ignite another cigarette and go to my room. I put some wildlife documentary on the lowest volume, wrap my head around a pillow, and fall asleep.
You know the immense powers bestowed on us by Jesus, the Lord, our Savior…
He plays this stuff way too loud. The tinny sound of my Dad’s radio fills the air. Once, after my mother died, Dad fell into a deep depression. Then, he fell into what he considers a deep embrace from God. But in my eyes? He just plain fell.
I shake my head, rub my eyes, and look at my cellphone. My lockscreen still hasn’t changed. It’s been one month, but I still haven’t changed the picture. Maybe it’s laziness; maybe I’ve been too busy. Or maybe there’s something else rattling around in my subconscious.
Jessica. Her face stares at me. I thumb it away and spend some time absent-mindedly browsing social media, trying to force her from my mind. And then I remember something that makes me bite my tongue in frustration. My stuff is still at hers and has been for the better part of a month. Why haven’t I been and picked it up yet? Laziness, boredom, forgetfulness, etc.
I decide: I’ll do it today.
“Uhh, yeah, it’s me,” I croak down the line to her voicemail inbox. “I’ll be over later today to pick up my stuff. Let me know if that makes sense.”
I sound stupid.
Waiting for me in the living room is Dad along with the sound of today’s flavor of mega-preacher from who the hell knows where. I shamble over to the radio, turn it down, and earn a look of something between annoyance and surprise from him.
I try to time my run to the refrigerator so that I can grab something to eat and pace back to my room, but it’s too late. He’s already put his cigarette out and cleared his throat with a hacking cough.
“You know,” he says, turning to face me. “I’m walking past the college today, why don’t I pick up a brochure?”
“Sure,” I reply, in the dullest tone I can muster before making my escape. I’ve just woken up and I don’t want to fight. He’s still on his Christian education kick – harboring ambitions that I’m going to find the light and become some mega-preacher – and I’ve just got to wait it out.
It’s not that I don’t believe in God. It’s just the performance that I can’t stand. The grasping and the flailing and the undying need to figure it all out. The need to absolve himself of guilt somehow or show me that he isn’t just stumbling around in the dark; that he can guide my path too. But it’s hopeless. He won’t ever make sense of what happened to Mom. Neither of us will.
Anyway.
I spend some time wasting time. Videogames, TV, whatever. Really I’m just wiling away the hours until Jessica replies. Of course, an hour passes and she doesn’t. So I decide to just go down there.
It’s a brisk October afternoon; the sun has disappeared, the sky is a blank white coat above, and my skin breaks out in goosebumps. At the bus stop there’s me, what I can only describe as a generic old man, and a skinny younger guy, shivering from the cold. Or just another dope fiend waiting for his next fix.
He turns to look around, and when I lock eyes with him, I instinctively look away. Why do I do that? He’s got a scar on the back of his shaven head. A bottle broken over his head in a fight? A scar from the surgery they forced him through to enable his release from the sanatorium for the criminally insane? I’m kidding. I think.
After 10 minutes an old lady joins the queue. And then another generic old man, this time bald. He’s reading a newspaper, holding it high in the air with his arms splayed wide. You don’t see that much. I can see the headlines and practically smell the black ink drifting off them:
BOMBING CAMPAIGN INJURES ANOTHER
Some lunatic with too much free time and no streaming TV subscription, renovating the city one bomb at a time. I don’t even pay attention to that sort of thing anymore. Unless this guy had a traumatic run-in with a packaged sandwich, what do I have to fear?
The skinny guy turns around and looks at me again. What’s his problem? I look down and feel his eyes burning a hole in the side of my head. I begin to feel something – a slow bubbling of panic deep within beneath my ster
The bus turns up at last and I watch as everyone gets on. Old man, old man, old woman, skinny guy. And then, without another thought, I bail. I walk, briskly at first, and then when I see the bus pass me I slow down. I feel a wave of something like embarrassment and relief pass through me. It’s a regular occurrence.
At least I have an excuse. When I was a baby, I caught a virus. I forgot its name. I wasn’t close to dying or anything, but they found something – a heart defect. A hole between the chambers of my heart. It was serious enough for my Dad to say he wouldn’t have another child. And for my mother to let every PE teacher, summer camp instructor, best friend’s parent, and scruffy-looking kid around the block to know I was a fragile little boy.
I spent my whole 24 years living like this: under the shadow of a heart attack that I may or may not have, that may or may not kill me.
And how does that play out? By me avoiding every provocation, confrontation, or conversation that begins to make me feel the fear. And today, that’s me running from the skinny guy on the bus, and instead walking the three or four miles to Jessica’s apartment.
You know, now that I consider it out-loud, I guess I overreacted.
I cross the road, looking up and down the road for traffic, and then up and down the gutter for needles or broken glass. Any bit of trash that could rise up out of the skeleton of this city and stab me.
I’m so preoccupied I barely notice the giant billboard above me: the perfect family – mom, dad, brother, and sister, all smiling, perfectly wholesome – holding a can of soft drink, or soup, something else I clearly paid no attention to.
Dad’s attitude – his advice to me and my fragile heart – was always live every day like it’ll be your last, and then when my mother passed, it became live every day for Jesus Christ. I don’t feel capable of doing either. Some things are out of your control, he’d say. And still says.
I’m about a mile into my walk when I succeed in getting that billboard out of my head, then someone passing me on the sidewalk breathes a lungful of smoke into my face and makes my mind instantly zero in on Dad again.
I take a turn off the road and head down an alley. I make it a few steps before I even realize that this probably isn’t the safest of paths. I’ve walked it a hundred times before, but something’s already caught my eye.
A strange, fleshy colored mound lying next to a dumpster below a fire escape staircase. The buildings around are derelict offices some five stories high, with broken windows and the occasional flicker of a bulb. There’s no natural light here.
I take another two steps before I see red marks on the pavement beside him, and a mass of brown that I quickly worry is hair. Then I pause in my tracks. I feel that deep welling of trepidation again rising in the pit of my stomach. The fear.
I should turn back. Whatever this is, I want no part of it. Nine times out of 10 it’ll be a shirtless drunk, passed out. I’ll walk over there, call out to them, and they’ll turn and slur obscenities at me, and I’ll turn and get out of there. The circle of city life.
But, then…
What if I’m wrong?
With my near fatal encounter at the bus stop fresh in my mind – and the hot rush of embarrassment that brings – something stops me from my usual halt, turn, and run routine. This could be someone hurt. Someone in need of help. Any normal member of society would rush to their aid. Why the hell can’t I?
I take a couple of tentative steps forward, and then a couple more. Already I can see red stains on the skin and rusty, dark brown puddles around them. They’re facing the wall, curled up in the fetal position with their hands sat politely by his sides. I see he’s male. His face is tucked up besides the wall, but I can see that his eyes are closed. My heart’s beating. I call out:
“Hey, buddy.”
But he doesn’t move. There’s no sound from him and no smell; just a motionless, completely conspicuous body lying in the alley. He almost looks like he fell from the fire escape above and landed neatly in the alleyway’s embrace.
I take another couple of steps and think to take out my cellphone to call an ambulance. There’s something else though. I feel an overwhelming urge to touch him – to rock him forward and back, and see if he really is sleeping or if he’s, you know, dead.
I bend down at the waist and reach out. He’s cold. But not just cold. He feels like he never ever had a degree of warmth in his body. I pull my hand away; my fingertip instinctively curls back to my palm, like I just touched a cube of ice. I hesitate for a moment, thinking what to do. This man is dead. Clearly. He’s not moving and he’s stone cold. He’s dead.
I swallow and look around. The street seems so far away, and the windows around are broken, dark, and empty.
I make myself look at the body again and take a deep breath. Then, I fumble around in my pocket for my cellphone and get as far as the lockscreen – that lockscreen – before I feel the strangest sensation. Almost like a tickling feeling at the side of my right eye, then my left.
I wonder if this man is wearing some extravagant aftershave I’m allergic to before the real fun starts: a high-pitched tone, small in volume but increasing every moment.
Louder now.
Deafening.
I drop my cellphone and clasp my ears, and then…
Nothing.
CHAPTER 2
And then, light. Blinding light.
And the strange dances of darker shapes behind it and a voice accompanying them.
“Hello, Mr. Chambers? Hello?”
There’s a hand raking itself across my face. It takes me a moment to realize that it’s mine. I blink a couple more times, and then I finally regain that sense of self-consciousness I’ve been missing.
“Huh?” is all I can say.
“You’re in the hospital Mr. Chambers.”
I pull my fingers across my face again, and slowly start to discern the nurse’s face in front of me. She’s pretty, if a little tired. Her eyes are small and buffeted by deep purple circles.
“Why am I…” I trail off as I start to recall the bus, the walk, the alley, and the…
“You were found with another gentleman, and uhm, you both made it here to us.”
“Another gentleman,” I repeated gormlessly, remembering him. “Is he, uhh…”
I can’t find it within myself to complete the sentence. Instead, I avert my eyes from the nurse’s and go back to my memories. I passed out. I dropped my phone and passed out.
“I’m afraid the man you were brought in with is dead.”
This isn’t exactly news to me. Instead, I’m beset by dread. The day I’ve been waiting for, the day when my heart finally gives way. Is this that day?
“Did I have a heart attack?” I bark at her. She blinks, and her expression hardens. I see I took her by surprise. Maybe she expected me to display more concern for my friend in the alley. She doesn’t know that we’d only just met, so to speak.
“The doctor will be here to see you in 10 minutes or so. Just try to remain calm and comfortable until then.”
I feel that panic again; my heart is oddly slow. No rapid heartbeat, no palpitations. Surely these are the symptoms of the afterburn of a heart attack? Or a consequence of the massive amounts of drugs with incomprehensible names they’ve undoubtedly pumped me with?
