Here is what I will do today. My brother, who is seventy-eight, got pneumonia last week and was taken to the hospital in Grand Rapids, sixty miles away. He called his wife, who was on a fishing trip in the upper peninsula. She had just got out on the water. She had her daughter-in-law go to her husband and check on him. She ordered an ambulance to take him to the hospital in Big Rapids. From there, he was sent to Grand Rapids and placed in intensive care. He had had a pacemaker for about ten years, but the wires that come with it had given him an infection. The experts overseeing his care, decided the pacemaker could come out and not be replaced. He would need a dose of antibiotic for the rest of his life to keep that infection from coming back. That was the health crisis that hospitalized him a couple of years ago.

We play low-stakes poker every Wednesday, unless some holiday like Christmas or New Year comes on Wednesday. I poured him two tablespoons of the Costco Kirkland Brand of orange liqueur that gets pretty close to Grand Marnier, in a faceted, fancy little glass and put two cubes of ice in it. He is not supposed to have any alcohol because his liver is close to the tipping point, but I thought he should taste it; it has the initial hit of whiskey but does not burn your throat because it is intensely sweet. I thought he might like to know what it was, perhaps for the first time in his life. He said, somewhat to my surprise, that he liked it. His wife, sitting beside him reminded him that he shouldn’t be drinking any alcohol. He sipped it in very small amounts. She advised him to pour it out. He had decided to finish it.

Then, I remembered this thing that happened to me. Once, when I was visiting my parents on a long stay from my job in Japan (long stay because they were getting to the point that we could all them aged), I drank some bootleg whiskey that my older brother had made; it partly filled a brown-and-white clay crock, with a cover over it, in the dark cubby-hole, that is, the landing behind a small door that leads to the dirt-floor basement of their house. I just wanted to say that I had tried some homemade whiskey. I drank only about two tablespoons of it, but it removed the lining in the back of my throat and opened me up to a serious infection. I suffered with it for a week or so until my sister-in-law got me a free, perfunctory appointment with a doctor she worked with. He gave me a free prescription of an antibiotic—Bactrim—from samples he had in his examining room. I was playing cards a couple of days later, and suddenly, my infected, stuffed sinuses drained nearly completely, almost all at once. I was thrilled and relieved. To get back to the moment, I hoped that I had not, in wanting to share that Cognac (a kind of brandy) and orange extract with my brother, opened him up to a serious infection. Maybe I shouldn’t talk about this because my sister-in-law might sue me for a million dollars, which I don’t have. But, what the hell; I can justify it. We always have food at cards. Orange liqueur is an aperitif, something to stimulate the appetite. Yes, it’s solid: I can’t be sued.

I will drive to Grand Rapids now; I may drive past Medical Mile on my way to Costco. For most of last week, he was in Butterworth Hospital, which I always see when I take the downtown free, I-196, named the Gerald R Ford. I am likely to drive over—across town—to Costco and get another bottle of that Cognac; I like to watch some interesting Netflix feature and sip it on ice. That is what I will do today. I will live the life of a free person in America, free to think and do just whatever the fuck I feel like thinking and doing.