Bleeder Read online

  “Okay, then. Let’s do it.”

  Several weeks later, I arrive at the hospital to have my tubes inserted. As I slip into an operation gown, Dr. Cameron rushes into the room, and he pumps my hand, slaps me on the back, and assures me that it’s going to be a cakewalk. “You’ll be done before you know it.”

  When I am laid out on the operation table, my heart palpitates with fear. Not since childhood have I had an operation, and I am nervous. An orderly positions me on the table while a nurse begins the IV drip, which contains my factor as well as the anesthesia.

  “Now count back from ten,” she advises as I watch the medicine flow through the tubing. I count ten, nine, eight in rapid succession, and she tells me to slow down, that I’m going too fast. I laugh. She laughs. I laugh again, but louder and more silly. I try to count again but keep laughing. My heavy eyes roll in my head as loose marbles, and soon they no longer catch light.

  When I come to in the recovery room, I swivel my head around to take in the surroundings and then lazily raise a hand to my ears where I feel gauze packed tight against them. Inside they itch. A nurse notices me and shuffles over to take my blood pressure, my pulse, my temperature.

  “The operation went fine,” she says. “You’ll be hearing again in no time,” she adds with a smile.

  I nod my head in understanding, return her smile, but when they bring in my mom and she asks questions about my bleeding ears, I start to doubt the surgery’s success.

  “That’s an awful lot of blood,” she says, scrunching up her face with concern. “Is he supposed to bleeding like that? You were giving him his factor during the operation, weren’t you? Was it not enough?”

  “Give it time,” Dr. Cameron responds. “It’ll heal. Just give him his factor every day for the next five days, and that bleeding will stop. He’ll be good as new.”

  In three weeks when I return for my postoperative checkup, I suspect problems. Despite my constant factoring to stop it, blood still oozes from my left ear canal, and the Q-tip reddens when I gently probe. Additionally, it hurts and I can’t hear. I wait to see what the specialist has to say.

  The fast man enters, flips through my chart lightning quick.

  “How’s the recovery going?” he asks.

  “Not sure.” I point to my left ear. “Still bleeding.”

  “Let’s take a look.” He wheels his stool over, shines his probe into my ear, and declares that my tube has been dislodged. “We need to pop one back in there,” he announces as he begins giving orders, directing the nurses to gather things together. “Is anybody up here with you today?” he asks, spinning around to me.

  “My girlfriend. She’s waiting in the lobby.” I pitched today’s visit to Kaitlin as a day-trip to Chapel Hill, where I’d make a quick stop at Ear, Nose, and Throat, and where we could then have the rest of the afternoon to do as we wished. But now things are changing.

  “That’s good,” Dr. Cameron says. “You may not feel like driving after this. Some patients get a little woozy from the numbing drops I’ll have to give you.”

  “My truck’s a manual, though. She can’t drive that.”

  The doctor pauses, the first hesitation I’ve known him to take. “Well,” he resumes, “we can either do it today, or have you come back another time. My thinking is you need to have it done now. We do this kind of thing all the time, so there shouldn’t be any complications. So, what do you think?”

  “Well . . .” I pause, feeling as if I’m on a game show. “I guess let’s go for it. You’re the doctor.”

  “All right, then.”

  “Is it gonna hurt?” I’m thinking about pain: all the pain of my unordinary life. Pain lingers in my elbow, in my legs, in my ankles. Pain stays in my heart. But I try to keep it out of my head.

  “You’ll feel a little discomfort,” the doctor says. “But that’s it.” This is the newest catch phrase of the medical profession—“a little discomfort”—and I realize that it’s going to hurt like hell. But I want to hear again. “Here’s the drops to ease the pain,” Dr. Cameron says as he drips them into my ear. They slip down my canal and burn, and sting, and wet my inner ear, but, alas, they do not work. I feel everything.

  Dr. Cameron forces a metal spike into my left ear, and I can do nothing to mute my childish cries. I squirm. I squeal. I bite my lips between my teeth and dig my fingernails into the vinyl chair. I fear that Dr. Cameron is going to pierce my eardrum and drive it through my brain, quieting me forever.

  “Almost there,” he says as my feet kick wildly, my head restrained by a nurse.

  “Almost there,” he repeats. “Almost, almost.” Pain. Pain. “Okayyyy . . . Got it.” The sharp, intolerable hurt subsides and is replaced by a dull throb thumping in my head.

  “The tube’s back in,” Dr. Cameron says, sliding off his gloves.

  He gives me some more drops—a lot of good they are going to do—and after making another appointment for two weeks later, I am ushered on my way. Dr. Cameron weaves around me, wishes me a good recovery, and exits into another patient’s room. And as I leave, I feel woozy, like Dr. Cameron thought I might.

  I wobble into the lobby where Kaitlin waits for me.

  “What took you so long?” she asks, rising from her chair. “It’s almost one o’clock and you’ve been back there since ten.”

  I attempt to answer, but the world carousels me. Kaitlin grabs my arm.

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  And then my barfing begins.

  I totter toward a trash can, and my insides pour into it. When I stop, I waver drunkenly, and I notice that the waiting room audience watches me, perhaps hoping that their visit will go a little better than mine. An elderly lady whispers, “Oh my stars,” and I smile to her. I am worse than drunk; I am sick and drunk. Then, as if choreographed, nurses encircle me and I am quickly coddled away in a coronation of white.

  “Let’s get you in back,” one of them says, guiding my arms, and I give into my dizzy lean and allow them to help me.

  Away from the waiting area and in the patient room corridor, I stop. “I have to throw up again,” I say, and a green pan is shoved to me. Mouth agape, insides rivering out of me, I wretch uncontrollably in the open door of another patient’s room. The man’s eyes widen as he looks on, and when I have a break, I give him hope. “Yours’ll go better,” I say before I am pulled down the hall.

  The nurses return me to the room I just left. “It’s the drops,” one of them says, spreading the white paper across the bed. “They’ve gotten inside his ear.”

  “Oh, child,” the other nurse responds. “I hope not.” She looks at her watch as I begin to vomit again. “Gonna be a long day if you’re right.”

  I lean up to catch my breath and regain my senses, but everything continues to spin, so I tilt my head back toward the green pan the nurse holds. She yells to another nurse. “I need a clean one. This one’s filling up.” I rest, hurl again, rest, hurl, rest, hurl.

  Soon the nurses have an assembly line set up for my barfing. Nurse 1 passes a clean pan to Nurse 2 who holds this underneath my vomit. Nurse 2 then hands her full pan to Nurse 3 who disappears and returns with another green pan that she gives to Nurse 1. This continues while my stomach muscles grow taut. I feel as if I’ve been doing crunches for half an hour, as if I am ribbing my stomach like those Bowflex men on the commercials. My head dizzies and my mouth tastes like regurgitation, while my insides spill and splash into that little green pan Nurse 2 holds. Oh, I am sick.

  At six, the nurse assembly line slows, for I have slowed. I rest between bouts, while the nurses dally around me, consult their watches, and hold onto their pans. Dr. Cameron presses into my room. He gazes at the clock, taps his foot. Nearby, Kaitlin flips through a magazine. The hallway outside has quieted; the rustle of charts and the rush of nurses is replaced by the calm of an ending workday. I am the last patient.

  “What time are you being picked up?” Dr. Cameron asks Kaitlin.

  “My parents
should be here within the hour,” she answers. “They live just outside of Raleigh.” Understanding that I won’t be able to drive until the drops evaporate from my inner ear—which may take several more hours—Kaitlin has called for a ride. She is to drive her parents’ car, while her father will steer my manual behind us. It seems we thought of calling my parents, who live two hours away, but I hardly remember. I have not been any help in the planning of my evacuation.

  Dr. Cameron looks around the office, then to the clock. “Well, we’re almost done here, and this building’s about to be locked tight for the night.” Dr. Cameron fires quick glances from Kaitlin to me to a nurse. “We’re going to shuttle you to the main hospital, where you can wait for your ride and where you’ll be closer to help should anything worsen.” I understand that I am about to be moved. I understand, too, that Dr. Cameron fails to specify who is to help me should I worsen, but, as if reading my thoughts, he adds, “But that’s not going to happen. You’ll be fine as soon as those drops dry up.” He darts his eyes to me, to Kaitlin, and then to his pit-crew nurses. “Is he ready to be moved?”

  “That suppository ain’t done much good. He’s still throwing up every fifteen to twenty minutes,” Nurse 2 says.

  “Let’s sit him up. See how he does,” Nurse 1 advises.

  They talk of me in the third person as if I don’t exist. I let them. Exhausted from my upchuck workout, I don’t care.

  “Time to try and sit up,” Nurse 2 coaxes as she places her green pan on the nearby sink.

  I sling my feet over the bed’s edge, right my head. Everything spins. A pan appears before me, and I gag over it. The roll of water in its corner tells me that it has been cleaned for reuse, that I have been spitting up in this one earlier. Stomach clenched, muscles ribbed, liquid comes up, and then I am done. Nurse 3 rolls a wheelchair into the room, and I try to remain vertical, yet the world seesaws around me. I huff an unproductive nauseous gag. Then helped into the chair, I am pushed to the elevator, down, and out the front door while Kaitlin follows and carries our things.

  Outside, the sky is a soft purple and a spring zephyr cools my hot face, reminding me of the summer nights I spent sitting outside with Dad, but this vague nostalgic memory fades as my wheelchair and I are hoisted into the shuttle and I throw up once more. Two passengers move toward the rear, away from me.

  Nurse 1 and 2 unload me in front of the main hospital near the smokers, and they wish me the best before leaving. “You’re gonna be jus’ fine,” Nurse 1 says. “I’d stay but I don’t have a babysitter for my boy,” Nurse 2 adds. And then they wave good-bye from the shuttle window.

  Beside me, Kaitlin anxiously watches for our ride. She nestles her chestnut hair behind her ears and turns her head toward me.

  “How you feeling?”

  “Maybe better,” I offer, shrugging my shoulders. “Don’t want to call it too early.”

  “I hope it’s over,” she says quietly.

  She returns her gaze to the road, and I feel a pang of guilt and sadness toss inside me. I know she hates this. I was supposed to have had a quick checkup and—thinking that we’d have the rest of the afternoon to stroll Franklin Street, search for books, and sip coffee before driving back home—Kaitlin had skipped her classes and had ridden with me. Yet this has become the unpredictable hemophiliac’s day.

  A few minutes pass. Smokers come and go, pretending they don’t see the sick boy in the wheelchair. I am a common fixture in this setting. I nod to a lady whose eyes I catch and she blinks back, tugs on her smoke, exhales, looks away. A lone pigeon pecks near her feet and then toddles to another spot, pecks again. I sit full into the chair and begin to feel as if my strength is returning. My stomach is quieting, my vision stabilizing.

  As we wait and watch the patients being loaded and unloaded into passing vehicles and as my thoughts drift and recount the day, a silver Porsche whips through the drive and stops. Appearing oversized in his tiny toy car, Dr. Cameron half stands and half sits as he draws my attention with the back-and-forth jerk of his waving hand. He yells out over the engine’s roar.

  “Feeling better?”

  I nod my head yes.

  “Just a matter of time now. Those ear drops will soon be evaporated and you’ll be just fine.”

  His motor roars. I nod yes again.

  Dr. Cameron lowers himself back into the driver’s seat and speeds away, giving me a backwards wave. The powerful rev of his polished car and its pristine engine is muffled in my blood-clogged ear.

  “Jerk,” Kaitlin whispers. “What an asshole. Don’t go back to see him,” she says.

  “I won’t.”

  The sky darkens, and cars motor by our silent thoughts as the evening cools around us. I watch as a woman swaddled in hospital sheets is wheeled out and packed into her car while her newborn infant sleeps in its child seat. I smile for a moment.

  “There he is,” Kaitlin announces, breaking our soundless pass of time.

  A red Chrysler pulls near us, and Kaitlin’s father steps out. I notice another man driving.

  “Sorry,” her father says. “Raleigh traffic was horrible. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Thanks for coming,” I offer, feeling terrible at the situation I’ve gotten him and his daughter into. I offer to drive, but her father takes my keys, asks me where I parked. I don’t argue.

  “Your uncle George is going to drive you guys home.”

  “Okay,” Kaitlin says. They hug and then her father hurries away.

  Kaitlin and I get into the Chrysler with her uncle and we leave, the sky now growing stars.

  “That must have been some day,” her uncle says over the quiet motor’s hum. “Some day,” he repeats in a faint whisper.

  “Yeah,” Kaitlin answers back. “It was that, to say the least.”

  Kaitlin rests her head full into the seat and stares straight ahead as I recline in the back, feeling something more than that seat divide between us. The vomiting over and the world no longer spinning, my ear reminds me of its pain. I recall the spike inside me and the procedure to heal me. The left stings and itches, and I still cannot hear for all the blood sloshing inside it. I palm the gauze against it, but the constant ache persists. The pain out of my reach, I leave my ear alone, for I understand something about being unable to touch the thing that hurts.

  YACHTS

  MAY 1994. AS COLLEGE GRADUATIONS GO, MINE IS NO DIFFERENT: full of fanfare and celebration and the excitement of another rite of passage achieved. I cross the stage—the sun smiling overhead—and accept my B.A. in English. And then my family, Kaitlin, and I lunch at a restaurant overlooking the Wrightsville inlet. Dad and Mom chime their wine glasses and toast me, and later they pass me cards filled with green bills; my life after college begins. As we part, Mom squeezes me and effuses about how proud she is of me; she yanks a tissue from her purse to blow her nose, dry her eyes. And then, Dad hugs me and leans in close and whispers in my ear, while his lanky arms encircle me, “Now all you need is a job with insurance, Son. We can’t keep you on there much longer. You’re aging out.”

  “I know, Dad. I know . . . And I’m looking.”

  He pats me on the back, hugs me again. And then, we part.

  The next morning, I scan the want ads, seeking a summer job to tide me over until something more permanent presents itself. Later, I call the Carolina Yacht Club, which needs summer help, and after a short interview, they hire me as a summer cabana boy. After doing some rough calculations based on their offer, I accept and cross my fingers that these wages will pay the bills for my apartment living. Indeed, with rent, utilities, car insurance, and so forth—it’s going to be tight.

  A series of two-story wooden structures whose length would match a football field and whose width—when considering its several buildings—spans the three blocks from the ocean to the inlet side of the island, the Yacht Club blends in with the surrounding beachfront properties in décor and color: beach gray. Its many rooms—kitchen, bar, showers (indo
or and out), changing rooms, dining hall—serve as a haven for club members and their guests. Club members can bronze their skin on the property’s private beach; swim in its delineated ocean; lunch over rounds of canasta; dine with cocktails of vermouth; dance beneath a solstice sun long gone down; and, well, simply drink beverages poured heavy with vodka, gin, or bourbon. And of course, there is, occasionally, yachting.

  At the club, I become known as “The Help.” And I help. Sitting in my small cabana, I fetch Band-Aids for children who’ve cut themselves on oyster shells or who’ve received splinters from the club’s weathered decks; I answer phone calls about luncheons, bridge tournaments, the bar’s hours, the ocean’s temperature, the weather forecast, and, sometimes, for those interested in taking a boat out, the wind knots; I sell the monogramed hats, T-shirts, shorts, towels, highball glasses, and beer huggies; and, ranking as my most important duty, I screen members and their guests for admittance to the club.