The Electrician

4:27 AM. 90E heading north. Cassette deck clicking, window cracked, fog low. Past Garfield Blvd, row houses pressing close. He parks on Prairie Ave, cuts the engine, smokes. Brick duplex, lower half-sunk. On the window of that unit, dust thick as felt, plastic blinds, trashcan smell. He drops the cigarette, grinds it, grabs the key from his jacket and opens the door. He finds the light switch, grabs a brass key from the console table, pockets it, turns the lights off.

4:48 AM. The old ISPI. Fourteen stories, empty parking lot. He shows his ID at the back entrance, beside the dumpsters. Night security nods him through. Elevator down. Nurse at the station. They exchange greetings, she hands him a clipboard.

He unlocks the office with the brass key and checks the cabinet. IV bags. Midazolam. Propofol. Through the window he can see the procedure room. Gurney in the center, patient positioned, leather straps on. Male, brown hair, young. Eyes closed. Two nurses move around, placing small white circles on the temples. It smells like lavender—artificial, sweet.

A nurse comes inside. He nods. Both nurses step back. He flips the first switch. Red light. Sedative flows. He watches the timer and counts. Flips the second one. Yellow light. Anticonvulsant. Third. Flips. Green. The current runs. He watches the timer. Two minutes of 62 Hz, 842mA pulses. The smell comes first—faint, then stronger. Like hair singeing mixed with dog. He turns off the switches. The smell lingers. It always does.

5:47 AM. He unhooks the IV lines and bags the empty ones for disposal. The nurses remove the electrodes. He locks the panel cover and pockets the brass key. The electrodes left small marks on the temples. A nurse wipes them with alcohol pads and unbuckles the straps. Another one calls the attendants. He washes his hands in the sink. Turns the lights off, locks the door. Stops at the vending machine—coffee, black. He drinks it on his way to the car.

5:55 AM. The fog is thicker now. He pulls out of the lot. Damen Ave, 290 heading east. He stops at the apartment in Washington Park, puts the key back on the table, and lies on the couch—eyes open, then shut.

7:30 AM. He stands on a porch in Berwyn. The homeowner opens the door. “You the electrician?” He touches the wire cutters in his pouch. “Come this way.”

Mario Senzale is a South American writer and mathematician currently living in Indianapolis, Indiana. His stories can be found in Expat Press, Cryptic Frog, Last Girls’ Club, and Horrific Scribes, as well as in his website, mariosenzale.neocities.org