Saving Elijah

you rock in the misty sea,
Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three:
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.

    I listened, I watched him, until the verses were done. And only then did I realize that I no longer heard the rhythm of the Angel of Death. Only the machines of the PICU.
    Elijah opened his eyes then, saved.

Demon

eighteen
    I   hold my breath and brace myself, but it's impossible to prepare. It slips its arms around my body, clamps its hand over my mouth, crushes my sides like a vise, holding me captive and mute. It places its cold lips at my neck and slides them over my skin, searching, searching for an opening. Its lips become fumes that enter my mouth and throat and nostrils, flooding every cavity. There is a sucking sound in my ears and in my head, a throbbing against the cortex of my brain that drowns out all hearing. Fumes alter into liquid rage, which fills my larynx like strong liquor, so I cannot speak, then travel downward, flowing into my chest and belly, my groin, finally moving out to the tips of my fingers and toes, replacing flesh and tissue with itself. My body is plunged into absolute zero, my in-sides churn like an arctic sea.
    Now fumes become like saltwater lashing, corrosive as acid, hollowing out my chest cavity, eroding the tissue in my belly, licking the inside of my groin. At last I am beginning to understand the fate and the longing of this unquiet soul. This soul is made of rage and arrogance and sorrow and loneliness, striated with history and pain and regret. I feel a profound sadness, a sadness beyond hope, without flesh to make amends.
    I know this is a fierce intelligence that exists not to create but only to plan in the service of its master, this is hunger without love, bitter fruit without end, utter desolation. I had not even imagined the swarming I would feel within me, the buzzing sounds in my ears and my head, as if I have swallowed a hive of frantic bees. Eternity is alone, suffering, ranting, raging against God, regretting each moment. Looking for release. And thinking I am its salvation.
    My own vision begins to dim as I look out through its eyes. I see dark shapes rising before me, a landscape gray on gray, a jumbled procession of tormented souls, each going its own way, carrying its own burden, counting and cursing its fate, without even each other for company. Only the buzzing of a thousand wasps, within and without.
    I cannot hear my son, but I am not yet blind, some part of me sees Elijah's sweet mouth move, and sees him try to reach out for me.
    I totter on the edge of possession, of perfect suction, of becoming what it is at last, and I begin to understand what it wants from me. It wants to be with me and inside me, to feel the boundaries of my flesh, the heat of my body. To live through me. But can I still live then? Will Dinah not be obliterated?
    My God, my God, what have I promised?

    *    *    *

    "E-li-jah?" I was lost in a dark, whipping vortex, but I could see Elijah crying out, struggling against the restraints, and could not leave him there without me. Somehow I croaked out the syllables of the name I gave to my child, his name like a prayer or benediction.
    The spirit fled from my body then, out through my mouth as I spoke my son's name, and love and joy refilled the places where it had violated and stung and begun to annihilate me. "Baby?" I moved toward him.
    He was twisting and turning his arms, his whole body, trying to get free just as Dr. Moore had said he would. He was tied down and fighting, hopping mad.
    The nurse on duty pressed the alarm for the doctor.
    "Wait, Dinah!" Sam said.
    But I already had Elijah half out of the restraints. By the time Dr. Jonas arrived, all three of us were holding his hands because he was trying to grab at the intubation tube and we needed Jonas for that. And there he was. He withdrew the ventilator from Elijah's throat, which left him sputtering for breath and sputtering mad, but he calmed down as Sam and I hugged him and covered him in kisses and tears. We sat down on the bed, one on either side of him.
    "Elijah?" Dr. Jonas said, touching his arm. "Can you hear me?"
    I held my breath as Elijah turned his head to look at the doctor, then nodded, slowly.
    I gasped. He understood. He was awake and alert.
    "Could you take off that white coat?" I said. "He hates white coats."
    Dr. Jonas took off the coat and laid it on the table by the bed. He was wearing a polo shirt, and looked even younger without it. "Now, you