The Year of April

Chapter 6

Author's Note: I apologize completely for the long wait. I finally had to get out of the house for enough peace and quiet to write. I'm currently sitting in a gas station's burrito shop, sipping a slurpie and ignoring both the World Cup streaming on a precariously placed television and the couple next to me smooching over wedding plans. How romantic.

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"Ugh," I grimaced groggily at the sunlight that streamed through the decorative and completely ineffective plastic blinds. The rays of cheerful sunshine only served to exacerbate the growing throbbing in the base of my skull.

Reluctantly, I sat up, rubbing gentle circles on my eyelids with my right thumb and index finger.

I moved to brush the thin wisps of hair that had settled haphazardly across my freckled forehead, when an acute stinging sensation appeared in the crook of my left elbow. I unbent my arm at lightning speed, glancing quickly down at it to see the source of my affliction.

There, jutting out of my left arm, was a needle attached to a long tube hooked up to an IV of some sort.

All at once, I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move. I couldn't see clearly. All I could do was wonder what the hell I was doing in the hospital and why I wasn't at home like I thought I was.

My eyes scanned rapidly around the room, taking in the flimsy hospital gown that covered my trembling form, the unsettlingly white walls, and the curtain that partitioned me from-presumably- another patient.

I flinched internally at the last thought. If the person lying beside me was a patient, that classified me as one too.

I shuddered, and at last took note of the miniature white board across the room that was enscribed "severe..." and struggled to decipher the second word scrawled below.

"Ma...man, maln, malnit," I sounded aloud as I had been taught to in kindergarten. My eyes widened in massive proportions as I finally read the word properly. "Malnutrition."

"Severe malnutrition."

My jaw slackened, and I realized with sudden clarity that they knew. That they were going to make me give up my fasting and force calories down my throat.

And then it hit me. They already were. The IV.

I lost it, then. The panic that surfaced threatened to take hold of my very identity and release me only once my body had fulfilled its singleminded desire.

It clawed at the tape that held the needle to my bloodstream and perhaps mangled my own exposed skin as well in its desperate attempts of self-preservation. It paid no mind. It flung the bedsheets from my lap in a pitiful attempt to upturn the cart that contained the nutrients which threatened to unmake me. It rested only once the IV was yanked from my flailing arm, unable to continue its fattening.

Through short, shallow breaths, I surveyed the damage that had been wrought with my hands but not my permission.

The IV cart was skewed but erect, undamaged by my weak tantrum. A pitcher of water on a night stand had been upset to devastate my cell phone beside it. The water dripped slowly off of the table, onto the stained tiles.

It had dripped onto my arm, too. I turned slightly to my side to wipe the moisture off when my breath caught in my throat.

My forearm was not damp from the overturned water pitcher; it was slick with my blood. The blood didn't spray out and soil all of the crisp whites around it, though, like it did in all of those television shows. No, it ran down the length of my arm from where I had violently ripped the needle from my bloodstream and from where I had mangled my skin with dull, grubby little nails.

I was unable to tear my gaze from the serene drip drip of the red droplets onto the starched white sheets.

Beautiful, I thought fleetingly, and it was, in a morbid sort of way. As I peered intently at the scarlet that continued to taint more and more of the once-flawless alabaster, an idea permeated my mind and I contemplated it over and over.

I thought about it as the blood continued to flow, refusing to coagulate.

I thought about it as two nurses pushed open the door and sprinted to my left arm, slapping ointments and bandages on.

I thought about it as my mother made a beeline to my side and shook me in a desperate attempt to rid my eyes of the vacant, glazed over look they had acquired.

I thought about it as the nurses dragged her from the room and locked the door.

I thought about it as I once again danced on the edge of consciousness.

Even as I at last submitted to the pause in reality and slipped under, this thought played over and over in my mind. Just maybe, I thought, the most grotesque things are also the most beautiful.