Pomegranates.

I would give everything I have to taste them again.

New Punch Line

Apparently, to get a second chance at life I needn’t give up everything I have, merely the sum total of all dignity I have accrued during my lifetime. I wake up on my stomach in the dedicated pulse subacute-care unit with a tech—how can I put this?—wiping my ass. The odor, my abject babylike position, ass-high, and the mortifying heat and viscosity laminating everything south of the belt line eliminate any doubt about what has transpired.

“Hey,” I say to the tech as he goes about his ungentle business. “What do you think you’re doing? We haven’t even been properly introduced.”

“Hunh?”

“Don’t you think you should at least buy me dinner first? Or take me to a show or compliment my shoes or something?”

“What?”

“It’s O.K.,” I tell him. “You don’t have to do that. I can take it from here.” The tech shrugs and tosses me the box of moist wipes. Fine by him, I’m sure.

Delicately I peel up from the bed and teeter behind the curtain, where I continue in private my disgraceful ablutions.

“How long have I been out?”

“Nearly two hours.”

“Jesus,” I say through the plastic sheeting. “They hit me with some kind of soporific I don’t know about?”

“No, you suffered some extracranial nonpenetrating trauma.” When I stare at him blankly he says, “A nasty boo-boo. To your squash. Presumably when you fell over. Conked yourself out.”

“Well, in one way, I guess I feel lucky to be alive. I had no idea what hit me. My stomach felt like it was on fire. Thought it was some kind of acid.”

Before I get his “Nope” I am pretty sure I hear a snicker.

“If it was a tranq it’s got weird side effects.”

“Not a tranq,” the guy says, a warble in his voice.

“Some kind of poison I don’t know about?”

“Nope. It was nonlethal.”

“I didn’t feel a dart.”

“Wasn’t one.”

“Airborne?”

“Nope.”

“I don’t get it.”

“It was an old-fashioned pill. Someone got to you.”

“How would someone get to me?”

The guy shrugs.

“Well,” I say. “Go on then. What was it? Lay it on me.”

After a silent interval I peer out from behind the curtain and see the tech vibrating with mirth. When he regains motor control he says, “You were temporarily debilitated by acute muscular seizure induced by a sizable overdose of ingested pachylax.”

“By what?”

After a few poorly suppressed giggles the guy manages to bear the bad news, a tidbit that will, I’m sure, be the highlight of Janus headquarters gossip for weeks to come. “Pachylax,” he repeats without the equanimity you hope for in a bedside manner. “Elephant laxative.”

There’s no getting around it: after my vitals check out stable at the SAC unit I have to report to Po-Mo at headquarters. On the long interborough ride the escort team doesn’t hide it very well. They try to swallow it down, or cough over it, but I can hear their jaws crunching, their vocal folds tensing. They want to laugh so bad. I almost tell them it’s O.K., just get it over with, but instead I try to concentrate on how I’m going to explain this one to the boss.