How I discovered that with an ID visitor badge you can wander through the hospital. As long as they see you have an ID, nobody looks at it closely or questions you. A hospital is a crazy busy place, especially in the morning.

Depressing as hell in Mom’s room. Though it’s a single room with a view from the window of the city skyline. Also the sky—clouds to watch. Poor Mom with IVs in both her arms, scheduled for a kidney biopsy in the morning.

Didn’t leave the Juul home today, figuring the stress would be such, in this place, I’d need to score a hit. Or two. There’s a lavatory in the room I can use, slide the door shut. No smoking in the hospital but—no vaping? Would they kick me out if they knew?

Lucky, no smell that lasts beyond a few seconds. No ashes!

Nurse enters my mom’s room, pushing a little cart to check her vital signs—(oxygen intake, blood pressure, pulse)—but I’m in the bathroom grinning at my face in the mirror and the smoke has evaporated and when I come out, I am ultra-normal, I am sure.

So high, I don’t even hear what the nurse is saying. Is the oxygen intake improved or worse. Is the pulse fast. Blood pressure low? High? Mom’s hurt, scared eyes looking at me, but I don’t even see.

On some doorframes, white sheets of paper with autumn leaves printed on them. Meaning?

Hanging out in the visitors’ lounge, far end of the corridor by the elevators. Three, four people in the lounge and one of them crying, two of them crying, someone with a deep, gravelly voice trying to console a child, none of it makes the slightest impression on me, like, could be TV. Admiring the fantastic view of the city, late-afternoon sun like a broken egg yolk. My head is feeling dry like bone, but the taste in my mouth is good.

Staring out the window toward the turnpike. S-L-O-W rush hour traffic moving out of the city like zombies. Land of the dead. Jesus!—it’s good not to be one of those zombies but Spider-Man, flying high above.

Flying high. Above.

Vaping Dreams.

Long-term plan is: buy an assault rifle, online. Mom’s Visa Explorer.

Scope out where Dad is living. Google Maps: 54 Roslyn Circle, Bay Ridge, NJ. Follow Dad to, like, the Bay Ridge mall. Asshole has got to drive to the mall sometime.

Well—if he saw me in the Lexus. That’d end it.

(If he saw, like, the license plate he’d recognize. I’d be wearing a hoodie, dark glasses.)

If the kid is with him, the new wife’s kid with the asshole name Tyler, eight years old, or so Mom says, too fucking bad—collateral damage.