Metonymy

Someone wheeled me to the curb. A different friend helped me into a car. We got to the condo and managed to get me down the stairs, into the living room, where I fell asleep on a mattress we put on the floor. I slept, I peed myself, I fell off the mattress, I fell out of chairs talking wildly. I scared them, whoever they were, the people I was supposed to know. I knew who James was, he was on the phone. He was in California. You can’t stay there. You have to go to the hospital. You can go to a different hospital. I changed my clothes. It was like dressing a mannequin. Getting into the car, I fell on the emergency brake and broke my glasses. In the emergency room, at the second hospital, the woman at the desk said Oh no, you’ve had a stroke, and they wheeled me in. The doctor was handsome and it embarrassed me. For a while, I was talking to a brightness in the corner of the room. When they tried to give me a Heparin shot I threw a bedpan. I kept asking for someone, over and over—the friend who took me to the first hospital. I said black tree when I meant night. I said The branches blow and we sleep in dirt. I said Telephone. Safe harbor. Perhaps you are, perhaps you are diamonds.