Bleeder Read online

  In William’s car, I feel safe, timeless, untouchable like a movie star frozen on a slip of celluloid. As the sun glints off the roaring red metal, I posture the actor’s part: a dashing young man happily cruising the beach highway in a catchy red convertible. I twist my shoulders, clutch the wind in my outturned palm, and breathe out. But my HIV is still with me. Even the whip of this wind can’t blow it away.

  After a long silence, William questions my gloomy pall.

  “Are you okay?” he asks, eyes on the road. Part Middle Eastern, part Minnesotan, William wears thin-rimmed glasses that shine brightly in the sun; the frame’s right leg disappears into a mat of thick-black hair that complements a skin that easily tans.

  “Yeah, of course I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  He looks to me, his glasses now reflecting light so that his eyes appear as tiny suns. “Just asking.”

  William pulls into a gas station, parks, and starts filling up while explaining about small cars, small gas tanks, and the small islands Sprites were meant to be driven on. It is our third stop. He shakes the nozzle and bounces his car to make more room in the tank. He pays and we drive on.

  The sun shines above me and the wind dries the sweat on my brow, and when I gaze into the bright sky, my eyes water. Then I start to feel those unannounced tears gathering, again, at the back of my throat. They come so often now. Roost behind my tonsils and beckon for me to let them loose. And then, I begin to cry.

  “Oh my God. What’s going on?”

  “It’s nothing. I can’t talk about it.” I look away and swipe my arm across my face to dab the wetness.

  We arch across the Waterway bridge as boats churn summer-warmed water underneath us and as gulls canopy above. I gaze down the south channel. It disappears in the heat’s haze and the curve of the horizon. Then I scan northward, following a cloud trail, catching William’s eyes scrutinizing me.

  “I’m scared to talk because of what you may think of me.”

  William assures me that what I have to say won’t leave the open space of his car. I trust him, but I’m not sure what to do. But sometimes secrets come spilling out because they have to, because they must.

  “I’m HIV positive.”

  We come to the other side of the bridge, and William drives past our Cherry Grove exit while my hands cover my rosy face. I sob again.

  “Oh, man,” William lets out. “Oh, man.”

  He says it in a whisper, barely catching in my ear over the slowing motor’s idle. The wind slackens as we stall in North Myrtle Beach traffic. It is hot and getting worse. A trickle of sweat slides from beneath my armpit, runs its rivulet down my side, and disappears into my dampened clothing.

  “Wow.” He exhales quietly into the windshield, a long and calming breath. “Is this because of your hemophilia?”

  “Yes.”

  My eyes close between my hands and my mind seizes upon a memory: in my parents’ backyard as evening fell, Dad sipped iced tea from a sweating glass while Anne jumped rope nearby on the patio. I’d been waiting all day for the heat to abate so that I could play outside, and I’d been anxious for night, for fireflies and their light’s flicker. I watched as the first tails sparked. Still able to see their bodies in the dark purple light, I chased their glimmer through the fresh-cut grass and cupped their fragile bodies in my palms, watching my hands glow a strange red as the bug’s tail ignited. After I forced their flashing bodies into thick-glass Mason jars, Mom punched air holes through the lid, and when bedtime came I propped the jar on my dresser and watched their tails dance light across my room as crickets hymned songs outside my open window. Lying flat atop the sheets, catching the cool wind from an electric fan, I played like a little god and wondered if I should let these fireflies go the next day or if I should keep them here for as long as their tails still lighted, for as long as their lives still flashed. There was such power and consequence in my decision and I knew it, and I knew, too, that fate was a fragile notion.

  William reaches across the seat, rests his hand on my leg. “You’ll get through this,” he says over the caterwaul of angry horns snarled in hot traffic. “I know it.”

  I tell him that I am scared, that I don’t know who I should blame, that I can’t understand why it happened to me, that I don’t know what I am supposed to do.

  “I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “I know. There’s nothing to say . . . But at least I can talk to you now.”

  He wheels the car past the Pavilion, turns, turns again, and we ride on the last road before ocean. The Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum is there, advertising its miracles. Along the sidewalk, bathing suits bob and tan bodies bustle by, and I watch a group of girls pass, their strained bathing tops bouncing with their gait. One swings her blonde strands behind her shoulders and reveals to me a stretch of skin, and it doesn’t seem to me that I belong anymore in such a physical world, in such a sexy place. Everyone here seems so healthy, so happy.

  I wipe my eyes.

  “Does anyone else know?”

  “No. Well, my family. But no one else. Please keep it a secret, too. Don’t tell.”

  “I won’t. It’s between us.”

  William’s hands tightly grip the steering wheel. He stares silently ahead as we move forward slowly.

  When we arrive, we find our other friends enjoying long afternoon naps and although William joins them in sleep, I am restless and in want of an ocean swim, so I head to the beach, alone.

  I love this time: a warm fading sun, the constant ebb and roll of the ocean’s sound, a rhythm I can count on. I remove my shoes and press my feet into the sand. The sun reddens my back as I face the sea, watching wave after wave after wave of salt water wash over a geography of silt and brine. The effortless curves of the ocean continually fold atop themselves, salty tiers of white foam. The water rides lazily around my feet, then retreats, pulling sand from underneath my soles. I wade deeper. Stroke out beyond the breakers, and from here I can see the fading blue of the horizon, the few birds that give form to this plain and shapeless sky. I slender my long body in the water and imagine the lands beyond my limited sight, cleft by the Earth’s curve. I think how all that lives by water lies undetected beneath this giant flat surface.

  Tucking my legs tightly to my stomach, I grab hold round the knees, dip my face in the sea, feel how the current moves me, tugs me north, then east, west, then north again in the undulating water. I’m a pale island of flesh in this quiet ocean of fish. I am moored to nothing.

  Uncurling, I swim with the tide. Swim more. Toward the pier, then back. Float freely. I return to my towel on the sand, where I no longer cast a shadow. The marine sky fades black all around me while the stars begin to peek their dim faces on a moonless eve. Salt water drips from my hair, clings to my eyebrows, tightens my pores, dries to my skin. I think of nothing, but enjoy this simple moment of living. I float in it and am in no other place. And I feel inexplicably cleansed.

  A MAN IN HIDING

  AUGUST 1990. ALTHOUGH I HAVE DECIDED TO ATTEND COLLEGE, IT has crossed my mind to forgo my education and do other things: to travel while I’m still healthy, to see Rome or Venice or Paris or London or Bali or any of a host of places that one wishes to see before they die. . . . Or perhaps, instead of tiring myself out with world travel, I should do nothing other than read books at poolside and let my mind slip away from this reality. How much of my life should I change? How much should I adapt to HIV? Or perhaps, it has already been altered enough. So instead of any of these grand plans, I am here at UNC-Wilmington, or as the natives call it: UNC by the sea. I will get my college education.

  My family and I hoist boxes of my belongings and cart these up two flights of stairs to my college dorm room, and after several hours the heat exhausts me. I sweat—trickles of perspiration slip from my pits. My family, too, sweats in the coastal heat, Dad the most, his cotton polo patched with dark splotches. We breathe heavy. We rest on the unmade bed. And then, feeling we’ve had enough
recovery, Dad announces that it’s time for the family to go. A mournful silence descends on us all.

  “You’re going to be so happy at college,” Mom says with half-hearted enthusiasm. “Everything’s going to work out. You’ll see.”

  She plasters me with kisses and holds back her tears while we hug good-bye. Dad stoically hugs me—wrapping his arms around my slender frame and then, with those same long thin arms, he sweeps my family away, and they are gone. I am alone, away from home, with my HIV.

  Immediately, I busy myself with unpacking. I fold my clothes in the drawers, store the snacks in the cupboard space, connect the wires for my stereo, and organize my books into milk crates—then I begin to hide my secrets: the 30cc syringes, the twenty-five gauge needles, my elastic tourniquet, my factor, and my AZT. I place my factor supplies underneath my bed and cover them with a towel. My clotting factor, however, must be refrigerated, so I wedge this behind a six-pack of Cokes, and although it can be seen, I have no other choice. I can only hope my roommate won’t ask too many questions. Yet the AZT is a problem. Its discovery would ruin me. I can’t keep this in the bathroom as I did at home, for I share my college bath with ten boys, any of whom could open my drawer and see the AZT bottle there, revealing immediately everything I seek to hide. I consider cloaking it underneath the bed along with the factor supplies, but the daily regime of dragging these pills out, morning and evening, would soon grow old. I rove my eyes around the room. The closet? No. Too accessible. The desk? No, though the pencil drawer has some promise. I squeeze the AZT bottle in my hands, its plastic unyielding in my tight clutch as I cast my eyes about the room for a safe hiding place. I spy my dresser, and I shove the AZT deep into a sock, it seeming safe for now.

  With my things unpacked and my secrets safely hidden, I rest beside the window at my desk and arrange my reference books—dictionary, thesaurus, word menu, guide to birds in America—before settling my view on the campus yard that is now wreathed in the soft pink of an evening sunset. Tall slash pines yawn into the dusk whose horizon begins to halo with the last thin rim of daylight. Then a last ribbon of sun catches through my window and hangs in a frail quiver before the dome of night is upon me.

  Before the first week of classes ends, I develop a knee bleed, another thing I must hide. “Bleed” is a hemophiliac’s jargon for what doctors call a hemathrosis: the accumulation of blood in the joint. The tissue underneath my right kneecap has grown soft and spongy and the skin gives and turns pink when I press my finger to it. If students saw my swollen knee, questions would be asked, and if I answered them honestly, said I had hemophilia, well . . . connections to HIV and AIDS might be made, and I can’t have that, so I must nurse myself in solitude.

  Bleeds also hurt and, when in the knees, make walking difficult.

  I buttress myself against the wall and various pieces of furniture as I limp gently to my door, lock it for privacy, then hobble to the refrigerator and remove my factor. Before infusing, it must come to room temperature, a process that takes about half an hour. Once, in a hurry and not letting it warm up, I infused with it fresh from the fridge, and soon I felt my heart turn into a block of ice, the freeze cooling up my vein and into the right atrium, right ventricle, left ventricle, left atrium then out, finally acclimating as it spread to my limbs and diffused with my blood. Now I know to let it warm first.

  After this, I retrieve the supplies hidden underneath my bed and draw up the clear medicine into a sterile syringe and position myself under a strong light to search for a vein. Minus the sterile needles, germ-free syringes, gauze pads, and alcohol swabs, as I pump my fist and search for a vein, I feel like a junkie. Like an addict’s veins, my own have become bruised and callused from constant dependence. Scarred and unreliable, they hide from my needle; collapse from overuse; blow up from too many puncture wounds; and sometimes they just leak my medicine out, which causes my skin to puff up and feel as if it is burning from the inside out.

  I extend my arm, tighten the tourniquet above my elbow, pump my fist, stick the needle in my arm, and then I wait for the familiar blood return in the plastic tubing. I get a vein on my first attempt, which is not always the case. I am having a lucky day. Some days it can take three or more tries. It’s on days like that when I wonder why they haven’t invented a pill form of factor. At least, I say to myself, they invented a synthetically cloned product that is “safer” than the former plasma products. Then my mind imagines how, if Mononine had been invented ten years earlier, I wouldn’t be HIV positive . . . but this becomes wishful and unproductive speculation.

  I begin infusing, one CC at a time, so that the process takes twenty-five minutes. As I sit watching my vein; watching the needle in my arm; watching the syringe push medicine through the tubing and into my vein; and so on—there is a knock at my door. Someone calls out my name. But I remain quiet, pretend I am not here.

  “I saw you go in,” the voice says.

  No you didn’t. No you didn’t.

  “Hey, come on now. I just wanna borrow some paper.”

  Not now. Come back later.

  He bangs again, rapidly, angrily. “Whatever, man. You suck. Hope you enjoy your nap.” He raps heavily on the door, kicks it twice, and then is gone.

  When I finish infusing, I remove the needle and place gauze over the mark left along my arm. I don’t apply a Band-Aid because I’ve grown tired of the tediousness of always having to wear one. I discard my syringe and dirty needle in a Sharp’s container, another item that has proven difficult to hide in a college dorm. It’s bulky, painted red, and reads BIOHAZARD on all sides, including top and bottom. I’ve stored this under my bed as well, making that slip of space a veritable casket of secrets.

  Now there is nothing more to do but wait for the medicine to take effect. Yet factor is not an instant cure; it takes time to work. So I fluff a pillow underneath my swollen knee, and suppress its dull throb with Tylenol, laying Vicodin at bedside in case it worsens. But I sleep. I wake in an hour and a dull fire jolts through my knee. I wince, but settle back into slumber, hoping that by morning I will be healed.

  On a Sunday when the late-summer sun warms the campus, all my suitemates depart for the beach. The summer tourists have returned to their jobs, their public educations, and have left the warm ocean to us. It is like bathwater, my roommate says. He is lean like me, but older. He attended college for a while, flunked out, and is now back to give it another go. And this morning, he rose early to surf and has returned for a late breakfast, but plans to surf again. “It’s too perfect. The waves. The sun. The girls. Fuck studying. You should go.”

  “Maybe another time. I can’t today.”

  “What could be so important?”

  I can’t tell him, but today, I must drive three hours to Chapel Hill to refill my prescriptions. It is a secret mission, muling drugs from pharmacy to college dorm room. My monthly dose of AZT is almost out and I need factor, neither of which can be gotten in local pharmacies.

  I fuel up and as I drive west on I-40, I notice the other cars heading east toward the shore. I spy their towels, their inflated balls, their Frisbees, and can even smell their sun-tanning lotion. I drive on, stopping for a quick lunch, and at one o’clock, after having parked in the garage and walked over the bridgeway to UNC’s pharmacy located on the ground level of the main hospital, I arrive. I pull a number and wait for the pharmacist to call me. A half hour passes.

  “Number 215,” I hear. I rise. I go to the window.

  “Yes, your name, please,” the pharmacist asks, her thin glasses sliding down her thick nose.

  “Shelby Smoak. I’m here to pick up my factor along with a prescription. It was phoned in earlier this week by Dr. Trum.”

  She types. “Oh, yes. Here it is.” She leaves and then returns with the AZT, laying it on the counter while reading the computer screen. “It says here that your other prescription is in our fridge. I’ll have to go get that.” And she departs, but soon lobs back with a heavy paper bag that she sets
beside the AZT. “There was a problem with insurance,” she says casually. “They denied coverage on you, so you’ll need to pay the balance and work it out with them to get reimbursed.”

  I breathe deeply; I don’t have any money for this. But then I remember the emergency credit card Dad gave me. “Okay. I’ll need to make a quick call first. How much will I owe?”