Chasing Nirvana

Seven

I was seated by the window of the ward. The book in my hand was opened but in the last half hour since I've been seated here, I had not read a single line. A few feet away, Jimmy sat on the bed, dwarfed by her blue patient gown, staring at me. When I arrived earlier, she had brought out a single photograph from under her pillow. It was picture of a restaurant called Nirvana. Under the neon green sign board of the restaurant's name was a man dressed in a plain white shirt and slacks. At the back of it, scrawled in barely legible cursives, was a note.

My dearest daughter,

If you ever lost hope, find nirvana.

Love,

Dad

Jimmy had found it inside an old copy of The Great Gatsby, which her mom had bought at the second hand bookstore around the corner of the hospital.

"This man is not your dad, right?" I asked again.

"No. I've never seen him."

"Then why would you be concerned with finding this stupid restaurant?"

"Because it's a sign. First I had that dream about going to New York with you, and then now, this. Bring me out of here, Nate, please," Jimmy said.

I stared at her. The extended days in the hospital had taken a toll on her appearance. Her eyes were duller. Her hair was matted to her head in lifeless waves. Even the way she moved was tired, hands weighed down some invisible shackles, feet dragged across the tiles of the hospital ward, voice muted, words desperate. Each time I came to visit, she begged me to get her out of the hospital. And it was getting extremely hard for me to say no. 

"I can't, Jim," I said. "You know what the doctor said..."

"I know, I know what he said. But I'm about to get discharged anyway. It wouldn't matter if I leave early, would it?"

We both knew that was a lie. I had overheard the doctor in-charge telling Jimmy's mom that it would be better for her to stay at a rehab center for young people for a few months after she was discharged from the hospital. As if that would help. As if they could remove the thoughts from her brain and replaced them with happier ones.

"It would just be for a few days," she said. "Just us. We could drive down to New York and be back." She grabbed my hands in hers. Her hands were cold, bony. That of a dying person. "What's the risk? Detention? Grounded for life? Jail?"

"Possible death," I said. "The doctor and your mother would kill me."

"We could trade places when they do..." she smiled a wry smile, the corners of her lips tilting up. It broke my heart to see her so depressed. I sighed.  

"One week," I said. "Just a week."

***

Almost everyone knew about my 'thing' with Jimmy, even Joe. Other than being the town's Number One mechanic, Joe was also one my dad's closest friend. Because of that, he sometime had a tendency to give me 'talks' that my dad would otherwise do, except that he was often out of town on business. He worked for a lumber company in down in Hickory, who often send him on trips across the country.

Towards the end of the summer Jimmy and her mom moved to town, Joe called me up and asked me to meet him his orchard. We had sat underneath a tree in the orchard, slugging down icy cold cans of beer (for him) and Mountain Dew (for me) and talking football when he paused. He sighed and tilted his head in a particular way he often did when he wanted to say something. I slid my fingers up and down the side of the can, felt the cool droplets of water under my fingertips drop into the warmth of the earth under our feet, and waited. Finally, Joe sat his beer down and spat out the wad of tobacco he had been chewing.

"You're spending a lot of time with that girl," he said.

"Who?" I asked, playing dumb.

"You know who I'm talking about. Be careful around her, she's a dangerous one."

"Why does everyone keep saying that? Just because she had some bad past doesn't make her some kind of a horrible person."

"I'm didn't say she's a horrible person."

"You said she's dangerous, it's the same difference."

"No, it's not." He paused to give a loud, hollow burp. "Trust me, kid. When you're as old as me, you'll learn some things about people. There are those who are born just fine and then goes off their rockers because they couldn't handle certain parts of life, and then there are those who are born straight off their rockers. The first, you can try to get them back on track with some help. The second, not so much. Even if you try and try, you can never do it because these kind of people have no tracks in the first place, no railways or frameworks in their minds for them to follow."

"Are you saying Jimmy is born crazy?" I asked, feeling a surge of indignation. It was one thing for me to call her crazy to her face, it was another thing for people to do it.

"Yes. No. Maybe. Look, Nate," Joe sighed. He seldom called me by my name, so when he did, I knew he meant business. "I'm an old man. I don't got the education you got. I don't know stuff about the internet or video games or how girls these days do things. And I won't try to preach you, you can do whatever you want. All I'm saying is, there are some people out there who are ruled by an invisible force that no one understands. They have their own paths to follow, even if it meant going through their life at full speed and crashing. Try messing with that, and you will only end up hurting yourself."

"What is your point?" I growled in frustration.

"Be careful," Joe said as he slid lower down the trunk of the tree and put his cap over his face. "That's my point. Be careful."

I should have listened to him, shouldn't I?