The Paris Review

Campbell McGrath

FEVER OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN

1.

A storm of buzzards is circling outside the windowof my hospital room, looking south and east across the rivertoward the high-rise construction cranes downtown.They are a regular sight in December, buzzards migratingin particulate vortices, slow-moving gyres that resemble,from a distance, glassless, black-feathered snow globes.Satin-hemmed sheaths of cloud shuttle across the sky,diffuse silver light alternating with bursts of Florida sun,the occasional spatter of raindrops from a stringof unseasonable storms parading up from the Gulf,cars composing a stop-and-go stream of metalparallel to the river, small Caribbean freighters dockedalong quaysides of cabbage palms and crab traps,I can see it all with great clarity, the birds, the traffic,it’s effortless—the doctor in the eye clinicspoke enviously of my vision, better than 20/20,even at my rapidly advancing middle age.The bad news is that I am periodically blindin one of those otherwise excellent eyes, which flickersbetween darkness and light, like poorly connected cable TV.It’s terrifying, that darkness. Enveloping. Confounding.Immediately, all thought flows toward the remaining eye—may it never falter, dear lord, may it guide methrough the corridors of your mansion forever and ever,amen. In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is kingbut I have never envied royalty. I am a democratand I want to go home. It’s two days before Christmas hereat the ho-ho-hospital, and the nurses are antsyfor some quality family time, Becky has four girlsand a worthless ex-husband, she started nursing schoolafter the divorce at age thirty-nine, if you can believe it.How to describe the gloominess of the hospital at this season?Little worse than its familiar, jaundiced, institutional gloom,in some ways, but it is more poignantly melancholy,doors adorned with droopy silver wreaths, a poinsettiadropping its leaves on the brightly sanitized nurses’ deskas if it were coming down with something.Every effort at seasonal cheer serves only to clarifyits inherent joylessness, just as all the holiday schmoozingon the ever-running TV sets, the enforced jollityof Toyotathon commercials and celebrity chefsbaking caramel gingerbread men on the morning show,makes us feel more empty-hearted, fearful, and alone.

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Paris Review

The Paris Review35 min read
An Eye In The Throat
My father answers the phone. He is twenty-three years old, and, as everyone does in the nineties, he picks up the receiver without knowing who is calling. People call all day long, and my parents pick up and say, “Hello?” and then people say, “It’s C
The Paris Review1 min read
Trollope
What a sad day,full of black, blue,red, and yellow umbrellas.Everyone in the world,whatever their disposition,seemed to be crying at once,while I hit upon readingTrollope, and so remained a weekamong the grouse. That was mydisposition. Sometimes Iwou
The Paris Review1 min read
Haptographic Interface
I’m a Keats botso are youour living handsheld toward each otheron the internetsolution sweetI stood on a peakin Darien, googledmy errorI am so colonialI am tubercularmy alveoli a-swellmy actual bloodyour actual bloodwe made loveI planted basilI plant

Related