Casey Gilfillan

The doctor zip ties my wounds shut. I had never seen such a bandage, the pressure is the worst part. The blood, in diluted spurts, runs down my arm by the yanking pull of gravity, and pools in the slight ditch of my palm. His hands scurry to catch the blood or at least wipe its trail, the blood keeps coming and the bandage is soaked. We do it over again with a dry bandage. The two-inch gap of curtain allows the nurse the perfect view to where I sit, cutting off just where the surgical tray starts and the doctor sits beyond. She looks away and I hear her talk about ordering coffee, I hear her leave her father a voicemail.

They wanted to take pictures, so we took pictures. We go to the room for pictures, I do the poses and wince and bleed all over the backdrop. I follow the nurse back to the parchment paper-clothed medical bed, I sit down awkwardly on the edge of it. A flood of my own blood runs down my arm and rests obediently on the back of my hand. I dab it with the pile of bloodied gauze at the foot of my bed. Another nurse comes in to serve me a large pill and a miniature bottle of water, for which I am grateful.

The doctor remembers me, he says he’s seen me before. He digs politely at the causation of my fate, squirts a sharp, tingling red liquid into the gash, and presses down with clean gauze. I throw my head up into the stars, I taste the blood of my lips, I tense as though confronted with a brisk, damp wind. Externally, my fist clenches and a breath hitches before release; I have given myself away. I’m fine really, I’m just wondering when all the zip tying and bloodletting will be over.

I see it all, exposed and unadulterated and fleshed out to the core. The stuff that most try to wrap delicately, entice with an appealing ribbon and tagline to draw the mind away from the consumptive nature. And yet it looks me in the eye, snarls, and loosens blood. The metaphor that they take and dissolve you to the nothing of your being – there is no metaphor. Just a little piece here and there, I barely notice until I’m all gone.