A Persistently Blinking Light

Stand back!” yelled the paramedic. He went through the motions of checking to make sure no one was touching Marlena before he hit the button. The defibrillator jolt caused her body to jump in a muted, but nonetheless slightly dramatic way. Marlena could see all this from a strange vantage point near the ceiling.

There was a ‘blip, blip, blip’ from the monitor as the paramedics studied the green squiggly line it produced with serious expressions while touching Marlena's neck. A few seconds later they nodded and the other two EMS people continued CPR.

Her friend, Zane, seemed to be in a panic. “Why don’t you just give her Narcan?” he asked.

“Your girlfriend is way beyond needing Narcan,” said the female paramedic, referring to the drug that reverses the effects of opioids.

“Ugh,” thought Marlena. “They think he’s my boyfriend.”

She watched as Zane paced back and forth, holding his head with one hand.

The decrepit studio apartment looked even worse when seen while hovering from the ceiling. The place still seemed dark, only one bulb was operable, but with each blink of the Arden Street Liquors sign outside the window, Marlena could see the barren, stained mattress in the corner and the many wrappers and bags of the fast-food diet she, Zane, and Missy subsided on. Where was Missy, now that she thought about it?

Missy stayed with Zane and Marlena frequently. She was another friend of Zane's, he seemed to make friends so easily. Marlena secretly hoped Zane’s affections would migrate toward the younger, prettier addict. She conceded that if that happened, she might have to leave the apartment she shared with him, and then where would she go? Solutions weren’t any clearer for a disembodied consciousness observing from above.

The apartment was in Zane’s name but Marlena was added on the Section 8 lease as a ‘family member’. Zane frequently reminded the landlord that he received more money with Marlena there and perhaps it was the only reason she hadn’t been kicked out.

She realized her thoughts were extremely clear, clearer than they ever had been, even before she had gotten high for the first time. This made her recount those days when she was 16 and her boyfriend was a scandalously older 21-year-old. He seemed so mature and worldly to a young girl in high school. It was he who first offered her the golden-brown powder.

Hal, a name that she could usually never remember easily, came back so sharply now. He told her she could snort it since she was afraid of needles. That idea alone made her laugh sarcastically to herself. Oh, how amazing it felt! It was similar to the bliss she experienced now, as she floated above her body looking down at the people trying to save her.

Heroin made her feel lightweight. It took away the pains she discovered she always had. The scratch of clothing on your back, the tug on your skin when you moved, a slight breeze against your eyes; every small, insignificant touch felt so brutal when you had an opportunity to know what it was like not to feel it at all. It was as if the drug made you suddenly aware of these countless, tiny assaults against your being at the same time it benevolently took it away.

From that moment on, her life was spent trying to recreate that feeling of elation and well-being. The highs afterward were good and satisfying but never as amazing as that first time. Everything else took a back seat in chasing that original splendor of euphoric tranquility.

Doing so destroyed everything else, of course.

She thought about all the things she’d done in order to keep that feeling of painlessness going. Some of it was humiliating, much of it was illegal. To appease herself she rationalized that she was helpless as an addict. The drug was controlling her, not the other way around. She was still a good person.

“What evidence is there of that?” came a voice. She was sure it was a voice.

Marlena looked around. Who said that? Who was listening in on her thoughts?

She saw that Zane was calling someone on his phone. The paramedics were having a banal conversation amongst themselves about a new supervisor they seemed to think was going to be a problem. None of them and no one she knew had that voice. It was neither male or female, loud or soft. It was almost, musical.

Maybe she hadn’t heard it at all and it was just a guilty conscience making itself known.

Given her newfound clarity, she wondered more about the natural predilection to assume oneself a “good person”. Was it fair to blame everything on a substance instead of the person using the substance? Where was the line drawn?

She remembered watching television news when they had a TV briefly. There was a drunk driver that stood out in her memory. The drunk woman had driven the wrong way on a highway, killing a family of five. As she was being led away in handcuffs she pleaded for consideration. “But I’m a good person!” she cried to the cameraman.

Hal had thought himself a good person as well. Marlena remembered the way he tried to reason with her parents when they came home late the first night. Her father was friends with the local sheriff and he had police waiting in front of the house to arrest him. “You got it all wrong!” he yelled. “I’m really a good person.”

That was certainly debatable. Aside from getting Marlena hooked on drugs, he only ‘dated’ teenage girls in high school. He introduced several young women to the addictive substances he always happened to have on hand. How many lives had he ruined?

So many times that same statement has been uttered by murderers and child abusers, by people who steal from the elderly. and the ones who do cruel things to animals. If they’re good people, then what are the parameters?

Marlena examined her own life and had to conclude she had never really been the most kindhearted person and her substance abuse wasn’t entirely to blame. Her need to test the boundaries of her parent’s tolerance had led her to Hal in the first place. She knew they’d never approve and that, honestly, was his biggest appeal at the time. What was that all about? Why was she so smug about making them uncomfortable?

Look at the way she treated Zane, another person who put up with her selfish behavior. He always had her back, always stuck up for her. What had she done for him, aside from what she did to any man who supplied her with what she wanted?

And Missy, she was so mean to Missy. In many ways, Marlena had been no better than Hal in regards to the young girl. She only wanted, so badly, to find an alternative sense of community that was different from the unkind judgmental public perception she felt.

The paramedic yelled another “Stand clear!” He checked around and hit the button again. Marlena’s skinny frame jolted slightly.

There was a sudden change to her field of vision. She seemed to be pulled backward but there was no proverbial white light or tunnel. The move was slow and gradual but she was losing sight of that filthy apartment with the big green neon liquor store sign glow every 3.5 seconds. Where was she going?

“Wait!” she yelled if you could call it that. She had no voice, actually. It was just a kind of a strong telepathic will.

“I know I can do better. I know I can be better. Just give me another chance. Please!”

From a faraway distance, the paramedic yelled again about “Standing clear!” and another jolt to Marlena’s skinny, mottled body sent her vision hurtling back into the cold body laying on the dirty linoleum floor like a tape measure snapping into the reel. Her body felt painful and hard. She could hear ‘the blip, blip, blip..’ but her consciousness, or whatever it was making observations from the top of the room, faded into a darkness that remained that way for several days.

In a hospital bed, a few days later, Marlena opened her eyes for the first time since the incident. Her blurry gaze fixated on a green light on a monitor nearby. ‘Blip, blip, blip…’

The green light moved along in an organized pattern.

She had no memory of that day when she died. There was no recall of the events prior to it or of anything that happened from a vantage point near the ceiling. But the green light shining through the haze of her cloudy vision sparked something familiar and also something different. But nothing she could quite put her finger on.

Zane was there, her mother too. The look of sadness and concern on their faces broke her heart. With all she had put them through, not just this episode but all the terrible things before it, they were still here, still worried. Marlena was filled with a sense of gratitude and love.

For some reason, Marlena remembered a voice in the darkness. Something about being a good person. She couldn’t place the time, date, or even the conversation. It filled her with some sadness and shame but there was something else as well. It was an overwhelming resolve to move forward.