Bloodsuckers
Ryan bolts toward me and starts scaling the side of my bed. He reaches for my bandaged arm to steady his ascent but Tess is faster than he is. She swoops him up from behind and hoists him onto my lap.
“You have worms?” Ryan asks, searching my bed.
“I told him about the leeches,” Tess says.
I explain to Ryan that the leeches are done for the day, pausing briefly mid-sentence to make sure the lid on the hazardous waste receptacle is closed.
“What’s this?” he asks, pointing to the peripheral IV in my good hand.
“It’s where the nurses give me my medicine,” I say, and for the next ten minutes, I entertain every possible question a three-year -old might ask about hospitals, detached fingers and most abundantly, leeches. When he’s satisfied, he climbs down and runs into my bathroom to play with the toilet.
Tess sits next to me on the bed. “He’s really missed you the past few days.”
I nod. The toilet flushes. She scoots forward and begins to massage the shoulder of my elevated arm.
“Have you looked at the pamphlet yet?” she asks.
Over the years, I’ve learned that if I respond to massages in the way that’s natural to me – to croon and arch my back like a cat – Tess will remove her hand because she thinks it’s annoying. If I remain still and pretend not to notice she’s there, stroking my muscles, removing the tension from my stiff, overworked body, she’ll continue. Today, I croon and arch with fury, and within moments, her hands are back at her side.
When we first started dating, I used to look forward to our silences together. I looked forward to the usual stuff, too, but the silences were particularly alluring because it was the first time in my life that I was able to sit with a woman and not talk. I could do it with my mother to an extent but my silences with Tess were more meaningful. Like learning another language by way of total immersion in a foreign country. A union through osmosis. Somewhere along the line, however, the silence has lost its sense of impregnation. While it’s not comfortable, neither is it educational. It’s just silence, or what little silence there is amidst the continuous flushing in my hospital bathroom.
“Ryan, stop,” Tess says. “That’s enough.”
He flashes a mischievous grin and shuts the door behind him.
“I mean it,” she says, her voice several decibels louder. “If you’re not out of there by the count of three, we’re going home. One.”
The toilet flushes again.
“Two.”
Nothing.
“Two and a half.” She sighs.
It’s here where the guilt usually comes in. The it’s-not-fair-to-punish-you-because-if-I-were-a-perfect-mother-you-would-be-a-more-obedient-child guilt, otherwise known as Mama guilt, a term our friends have since validated as a very real, very natural, very haunting condition of motherhood. It’s something my mother suffered from, I’m sure, when her schedule dictated that I come home to an empty house each night, or when I asked her for the thirtieth time why I was the only kid my age that didn’t have any siblings, or more importantly, a father. Guilt. It’s something that lately I’ve been feeling on a more regular basis. Right now, it’s the wasting-time-in-the-hospital-when-I-could-be-making-money kind of guilt, but it varies.
When, at the count of three, Ryan is still in the bathroom, Tess opens the door and drags him out by the hand.
“We’re going home.”
He whines and stomps his feet. She tries to pick him up, but he plays the limp noodle and slides through her fingers toward the floor. In one motion, she swoops down and slips an arm through his legs as she wraps the other around his midsection, and after a good ten-second wrestling match, he freezes, gathers the saliva in his mouth, and spits at her face.
“What the hell has gotten into you?” She turns to me, wiping her cheek with the back of her arm. “Did you just see that?”
Ryan laughs.
“He’s tired,” I say, although I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have done that to me. “That wasn’t nice, Ryan. Say you’re sorry.”
Tess frowns at me as Ryan gives her a perfunctory kiss, and I see her, really see her, for the first time since she entered the room. And for a moment, I consider apologizing to her. Because what I see right now is the same face my mother wore for the first ten, twenty years of my life: haggard, stripped. The face one puts on in an unsuccessful attempt at bravery. But unlike my mother, Tess isn’t alone. I may have a few fickle digits, but I’m still here. Aren’t I?
Tess takes a deep breath and gathers her things. “Don’t be surprised if you’re childless by the morning,” she says. “That’s all I’m saying.”
At this, she walks out the door, taking all of my empathy with her.
