{"id":7300,"date":"2016-09-07T18:17:33","date_gmt":"2016-09-08T00:17:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=7300"},"modified":"2016-09-07T18:17:33","modified_gmt":"2016-09-08T00:17:33","slug":"heads","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=7300","title":{"rendered":"Heads"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hamdy Elgammal<\/strong><\/p>\n

The hospital cafeteria was closed; I figured I\u2019d wait on the street. The surgery was supposed to take a few hours. My ten-year-old had a small brain and they needed to put most of it back inside.<\/p>\n

It was 6-A.M.-cold and my fingers still tingled from the car crash. My head was hot; I had banged it against the bathroom\u2019s hand dryer. It kept me warm.<\/p>\n

It was going to be fine. All of it, everything. I talked to myself like this.<\/p>\n

The hospital stood beside a patch of woodland, tall trees filled with green and birds that shrieked. In front of me, a lumberjack, wearing a red shirt and jeans, was working his way through one of the trees with an axe.<\/p>\n

He had a stern face. The sound his axe made was persistent and precise.<\/p>\n

The tree\u2019s top fell down, leaves green and lush and a stub was all that was left. The lumberjack looked at the stub\u2019s smooth surface before it began to crack. It broke upwards and a man\u2019s head came out, popping above the broken wood. The head was bald and pale and crowned with splinters.<\/p>\n

It exhaled.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened to you?\u201d the lumberjack asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could ask you the same question,\u201d the stub man said.<\/p>\n

The stub man stared in confusion at the axe and the lumberjack laid it down.<\/p>\n

The lumberjack sat with his back to the stub. He put his face in his hands, wiped the sweat from his forehead.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsn\u2019t it a little too early for beheading?\u201d the stub man asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just trying to do my job.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere is the rest of you?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d he said. He gazed, confused, at his stub. \u201cIt\u2019s all quiet inside,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

I turned to the lumberjack. \u201cWhere,\u201d I said, \u201cwhere is the rest of him?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the way this works,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan you grow back?\u201d I asked the stub man. \u201cAfter what was taken from inside you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGrow where? I\u2019m trapped.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lumberjack looked at a stream of birds above us. They flew under the cloud-blotched sky, contracted and expanded against it like a slow-beating heart. Their wings made this sound.<\/p>\n

The lumberjack stood and looked at the stub man.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d he said, \u201cfor your loss.\u201d<\/p>\n

He patted the head but only drove splinters further into the skull. The stub man winced.<\/p>\n

From the corner of my eye, I saw the ER nurse from earlier coming up to the glass front doors, holding a chart. She looked around, searching for someone, then came out and walked to me.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour son,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

HAMDY ELGAMMAL <\/strong>is a software engineer based in Berkeley, CA and a hobbyist writer. In the evenings he studies writing at the UC Berkeley Extension and adjusts a nonexistent beret while discussing writing and art in local writing groups.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hamdy Elgammal The hospital cafeteria was closed; I figured I\u2019d wait on the street. The surgery was supposed to take a few hours. My ten-year-old had a small brain and they needed to put most of it back inside. It … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":7298,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-7300","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P15duy-1TK","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7300"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7318,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7300\/revisions\/7318"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}