I slip on leather work gloves I’ve only ever worn once, back when I pruned a Japanese maple to death, and I strap the blower to my back, testing my center of gravity before lifting a sixteen-foot Werner ladder with one hand and a plastic bucket with the other, taking great care not to bash our cars when exiting the garage, pivoting and making a sharp left at the hosta, at which point I get a good view of the gutter at last. The problem is obvious: a wad of leaves and debris, a whole nest of funk blocking drainage at the point aligned with my leak. That PVC extension probably wouldn’t have cut it, anyway. I’ll get a better angle from the top rung. I tighten my grip and walk toward a revolting stench, deciding that if a squirrel died in my gutter, I’ll be man enough to handle it like a boss—which is to say, to call animal control. God, this smell. Jesus, it’s vile. Can gasoline fumes trip olfactory nerves? Or trigger flashbacks, or summon sensory apparitions of flowers rotting in cubes of moldy water?

A branch cracks. So what if a shrub gets wacked by the back of my ladder? So what if my deltoids still hurt? Pulling my shirt collar up over my mouth and nose, standing under the gutter pileup, dreading what’s up there, I realize I need a garbage bag, so I turn the ladder upright and go to plant its rubber feet in front of our best blue hydrangeas, which are all cracked and beaten and smashed, I now see, only to find my path obstructed, obstructed, obliterated, annihilated, and all I can do is question reality and hope this isn’t it.

Am I dreaming? Am I flashing back to that summer of hallucinogens a lifetime ago?

Is this an event that’s now happened?

(“What did you do when you saw it, Robert?” someone will ask. “Dr. Hart, what did you do?”)

Stepping back and back again, putting a couple of yards between me and the bushes, laying my ladder in the grass, perfectly parallel to the side of my house, keeping my gloves on, taking this contraption off my back. Leaving everything else as it is. Time untwists and stops being a thing, and it’s as though the entire planet is only as big as me, a battered shrub, and the body rotting below my broken roof.

Making choices: to panic or not to panic.

(“How on earth did you stay so calm?” someone will ask.)

I should yell for help or attempt to find a pulse—first, do no harm—but even with my shirt pulled over my face like this, even with gloves smothering my mouth and nose, I can smell the decomposition. I can taste it.