Short Story from Last Summer by Sara N. '28

It is June of last year. I am interning at a medical devices company in Seaport and living near Kenmore Station, so my daily commute is either thirty minutes and pleasant or nearing two hours and hell, depending on time of day and whether there’s a game at Fenway Park. Twice through the summer, I decide to walk the 2.5 miles back from work, both times with a friend. The first time is because the trains are broken down and we are too tired to wait. There is a heat wave going on and the air is thick, like a sludge. In our long-sleeve button-downs, we wade through the summer air. For a while, the heat is relentless and then, all at once, it becomes toothless: we are as hot as we can be and the air feels like nothing. We just push, and push, walking alongside brownstones and storefronts, and for a little while, the river. When I reach home, the heat comes again, all of it at once, and I feel all that I had ignored before: the heat, and the way everything is clinging to me.

The second time we walk is because the weather is too nice to spend on an underground train. It must have been in the low sixties. Gray sky and gentle breeze. Everything light and fluttering. Halfway through, it starts raining. It is not the kind of halfhearted drizzle I’ve grown to expect from Boston, but a real thunderstorm. Neither my friend or I are carrying an umbrella and so wind and water whip around us. But the rest of Boston is still out and about, and both the air and rain are cool, not cold. There is nothing to fear, so all we do is laugh. I zip my phone up in one of the pockets in my backpack, and continue walking, hands free.

All the other mornings and evenings are spent taking the T, which, despite everything, I grow to love. Twice, though, I almost faint. Both times, I reach the moment right before the full-body collapse. Colors dim until they all look the same. There is too much and not enough: distance, pressure, light, air. The solution is the same each time. I get off at the closest station and sit on a bench with help. I take deep breaths and large gulps of water until the trains stop sounding so far away. I remember that I learned in neuroscience that perception is a two-pronged process: there is the “taking in” — light hitting retina — and there is the “making sense of” — the signal cascade of neurons ultimately leading to processing in the visual cortex of the brain. And I realize this is not something I properly understood until the near-faintings, when the eyes continued to take in without doing any of the sense-making.

It’s a striking experience, and in the days that follow, I build whole new personal philosophies around it. I am certain my life has changed in some way that will only become obvious after many years, when I look back on it. Whether that’s true or not remains an open question for the future, but in the meantime, everything else goes on as before.

I continue to come home from work and slouch on the couch closest to the kitchen, my head on the couch arm and my feet outstretched, or on the ground, or on the table, or wherever. There, I lie and scroll on my phone, or call home, or read, or stare at the thick, snaking projector cords that are stuck to the ceiling by criss-crossing strips of painters’ tape.