Krakow Melt by Daniel Allen Cox Read Free Book Online

two percent silocaine solution into the tracheal incision to prevent cough. I hadn’t performed a tracheotomy in a while, but the pistol brought back much of my medical training, as I knew it would. For example, I remembered that tracheotomies are actually called trache os tomies. When did we start forgetting the s? A Vatican doctor in the room reminded us that the patient’s breathing still sounded difficult and that we needed to hurry up.
    [What better time to buy His Eminence’s latest book, Memory and Identity: Conversations at the Dawn of a Millennium , released this past Wednesday in hardcover by Rizzoli Press?]
    5:17 pm
We inserted the tracheostomy tube and confirmed its position by holding a piece of gauze in front of the nozzle; it fluttered with every inhale and exhale, indicating that the patient’s breathing had become more regular with the device in place. I pressed my thumb on the hole to feel the alternating blow and suction, just to be sure. I blocked the Holy Father’s breathing for a few eternal seconds, and couldn’t help but feel supernatural. His jugular was so, so close. We inflated the balloon cuff with air.
    [From the critics: “The world will remember Pope John Paul II for espousing many of the convictions he expresses here: that good is ultimately victorious, life conquers death, and love triumphs over hate.” — Amazon.com ]
    5:28pm
We performed two sutures to secure the tracheal tube to the Pope’s skin, and then taped the free ends of the suture wire to his chest.
    His Holiness has a preference for Polish doctors, which is why I was chosen. But if the man with the pistol had discovered I was homosexual, would he have shot me right there, or would he have taken the time to drag me outside into the piazza ?
    [Once his Holiness makes a full recovery, if he has not done so already by the grace of God and the Holy Virgin Mary, he will give Mass in Piazza San Pietro. We look forward to hearing the warmth and vigour in his voice once again.]
    [“He says of pro-choice and gay marriage advocacy that ‘it is ... necessary to ask whether this is not the work of another ideology of evil, more subtle and hidden, perhaps, intent upon exploiting human rights themselves against man and against the family.’” — Village Voice ]
    5:30 pm
I did it.
    It is known that someone who saves the life of the Pope on the operating table is guaranteed an early retirement with a casa signorile in the Alps, paid for by the state. In the span of an hour, I rose to the top of my profession and secured comfort for the rest of my life.
    But I do not want it. This is what I want: a traditional Polish wedding with hundreds of friends and family, a giant cake made of serek , and “ sto lat ” and “ na zdrowie ” toasts with Žubrówka vodka, and bigos at midnight. I want to observe the old tradition of my husband and me getting our hands tied with a white scarf, and I want a mazurka dance that ends when we fall down from exhaustion.
    This might never happen in my lifetime.
    The Holy Father, on the other hand, will speak again. The vocal cords were very close to the incisions I made. I definitely thought about making a few fateful snips too many. He almost lost his voice for good.
    I confess this to you, but there is nobody who can forgive me, especially not the patient.
    He is not my Holy Father.

SEA SALT
    She put me on a train, this crazy girl. And she was sitting in the seat beside me.
    “I want you to know exactly why we’re doing this,” Dorota said, wiping the can opener clean on her sleeve.
    “Because you want to see me naked again?”
    “Yes, but that’s beside the point. It’s because freedom fighters can’t be inhibited.”
    “I can whip it out now, if you like.”
    When I had told Doktor Dorota about my sex and nudity issues, she prescribed a trip to the Baltic Sea. I wasn’t sure about the exact details, though I knew we were going to get naked. A lot of old folks go there to dance panty-free