Captain America

It’s at least 1:30 a.m. and she’s distressed. So much that her breathing is out of her control and her pulse is making the entire room heat up.

She’s also aware that it’s no time to be heating up like that, but then again, she can’t help it, so minutes later she finds herself hugging her own body with nothing on but green pajamas and a lousy sweater, no socks but an old pair of flats.

She is walking and she can’t see straight ahead; not because she’s crying, but because she’s not wearing her glasses.

Someone is calling her but she refuses to hear. The strange neighbour is standing against his doorway again, German-Sheppard’s leash in hand. She can’t really distinguish his facial expression because her sight is getting worst. Might be the tears now.

She crosses the street. Aimless, phone clinched in hand as if it will protect her. She steps into the super market, “NOW OPEN 24 HOURS!”

She walks in. Warm enough, but too bright— safe, nevertheless.

There is the safety of the first aisle where she usually grabs seasonal fruits, the third row where she picks vegetables and mushrooms; mushrooms, always.

But she’s not comfortable. She doesn’t feel safe, even if she is. So she veers off toward the unknown: “Exotic Fruits.”

Passion fruit, Dragon fruit, something illegible fruit, all with some expensive price tag. She grabs and grabs and stacks them in a plastic bag.

She continues toward the unexplored red meat section. Better yet, frozen meat. Or even better, jerk sausage. That’s new: in the bag.

“You must be a nurse!” says the pale man re-stocking from a box.

“Pardon?”

“You must be a nurse…I said. Because of the, the late shifts and hours…”

“No,” she says with a frail, forced smile. “I just . . . need groceries.”

She reaches for a large chocolate replica of Captain America.

Maybe I need a nurse.

By the time she’s paying for the items, she knows that what she carries back home, and places in the fridge, will be different than all the other items that ever existed in her kitchen.