The Joker

Have you ever been driving and thought you were going to die? There you are, going along Soldier’s Field Road, driving to work in the morning, listening to your favorite radio host agree with his guest that it is difficult to assess risk, when suddenly you feel a pain coming from the middle of your chest. It is sharp and real and heavy, and you take a few deep breaths, tying to exhale the problem out, but the breathing makes it worse, you realize, which is when you start to lose it, sweat, because how the hell are you going to drive to work if you can’t breathe because of the pain it causes you? You try holding your breath, knowing that the relief will last only as long as a minute, if that, and that this solution is silly and childish, but you have to try something. When you start to breathe again out of necessity, your face is hot and must be red, and you panic as a hand that should be on your steering wheel reaches for your heart, trapped under all the layers of clothes and zippers, not to mention skin and bone. So you reach up to your neck to check your pulse, knowing full well that this action will only confirm the devastating truth that yes, your heart is exploding, and you are dying here, pitifully, during your commute. In a panic, you foolishly run through the long list of possible causes that could have brought this on to your seemingly young body—the cigarettes, the late nights, the coffee and the booze, that first year in college, then the second—but the causes don’t matter, you realize, it’s futile recalling the damage you’ve done; it’s too late. So you sit there and drive, keep going, and when you’re not locking your eyes to the lane lines in front of you, you glance over at the other commuters to see if they’re noticing your pain; you check to see if they are looking over at your car in horror as they catch a glimpse of a figure of death sitting smugly in your passenger seat, pressing his fat hand on your chest—which is exactly what it feels like—a monsterous pressure seemingly coming from somewhere outside of you pressing down on your heart—but it’s not outside of you, it’s in you, which is the worst part of all. And you don’t think about how to relieve the pressure or what incisions the surgeons will have to make if you were to survive the inevitable crash once your heart finally stops and your muscles seize and the tiny bomb you’ve been steering is set loose. And you don’t think about the other horrible casualties you would cause once you’re body’s reached its final mile, and you don’t think about how you would recover from this, if you could, or if both sides of your face would be able to move simultaneously again. Instead, you keep driving, keep pushing forward through the pain of it all, thinking only about how much farther you are getting from the love you left sleeping a mere ten minutes ago when all you were worried about was traffic.

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(k)