Bloodsuckers
It’s getting late and I imagine that if my curtains were drawn I would see the grey mist of an incoming fog. I’m exhausted, but my mutilated fingers are twitching with a desire to be itched – an unfortunate side effect of the leech bites. I can’t scratch them, of course. Can’t wiggle them, can’t rub them, can’t dunk them into an oatmeal bath. All I can really do is try to distract myself. I’ve been given a very strict order of bed rest but considering that my IV is disconnected, I don’t see any reason I can’t take a short stroll around the wing.
I’ve learned to glide my feet across the floor and hold my arm up at a thirty-degree angle to minimize the pounding in my fingers. The first few steps are fine – the equivalent of a trip to the bathroom – but by the time I reach the door, I can feel the antibiotics and tranquilizers at work. My legs are someone else’s. Or, if they’re mine, they’ve been severed and sewn back on like my fingers, forming two long, semi-detached entities with unreliable nerve endings and faulty tissue. My brain says walk, damn it and my legs pause to consider before awkwardly, leadenly, inching forward.
There’s no one at the nurses’ station, for which I’m relieved, and I take respite just outside my room, unsure of which direction to go in and unwilling to waste a step. The door to my right, the car accident neighbor, is closed, but the door to my left, stair woman, is cracked. I veer left and my tread feels lighter, more purposeful.
A few steps out from her room, I’m suddenly nervous, as if preparing to greet an ambassador or a movie star I’ve had illicit dreams about. From where I stand, I can see that the fluorescent lamp above her bed is the only light that’s still on. It pitches shadows on her walls and pales the already colorless decor. As I edge forward, I take in her nightstand, a vase of flowers, a stack of pillows, and finally, her face.
It takes me a moment to register that the woman I’m staring at is not my son’s caregiver or an erotic librarian. She’s old, with papery skin and age spots. Her hair is thin and matted, although I imagine that when she’s well, it’s perfectly groomed with a charming tint of purple. Both of her legs are in casts, and she’s hooked up to oxygen, an IV, and a blood pressure monitor. If she weren’t lying flat on her back, I might call her fleshy, but the actual flesh of her fleshiness has spread to her sides, the result of which is not unlike letting the air out of a balloon.
I want to believe that she’s ninety years old, even one hundred, but the truth is, she’s probably closer to eighty. Standing in her doorway, I try to reconstruct the story of her fall, but without the librarian as my heroine I’m at a loss. The scenario is simply too predictable. And worse, I can’t stop seeing my mother. Right now, Mother only has a sprained wrist, but in the past two years I’ve rushed her to the hospital with several cuts needing stitches, a broken ankle, a concussion, and a bruised hip. Vertigo, they say. Something’s fallen out of place from an ear surgery she had ten years ago and now it’s inoperable. Her mind is still intact but her body is weak because she’s too afraid to stand up.
I wonder if this woman’s problems began with vertigo. Or perhaps high blood pressure – something that also runs in my family. Or arthritis. Or heart disease. Or cancer. I don’t know how long I stare at the woman, but when the nurse touches my arm I’m taken by surprise.
“And what exactly do you think you’re doing?”
“I was just –” I start, but I’ve forgotten why I got out of bed.
“How does your hand feel?” she asks, and then I remember. The itching. But there’s more now. My fingers are full. Bursting, in fact. Three ugly water balloons ready to pop.
I tell her this, in so many words. She takes a look at my hand and suggests a few leeches.
“One for each finger,” she says. “To ease the pressure.”
As the nurse dunks her gloved hand into the water containing my new, hungry friends, I consider the blood that’s pooling in the tips of my fingers: reluctant, stubborn, a substance once vital becoming toxic in its stagnance. It used to know how to navigate the vessels in my hands, but now it’s confused, territorial.
Then there are the leeches: slimy, ugly, commonly regarded as parasitic, organisms that contribute nothing to their host. And yet mere seconds after one latches onto my skin, I feel relief. Not only does its saliva anesthetize my finger but it also drains my septic blood. And what do I give it in return?
The nurse hovers after attaching the first leech and together we watch it suck. I want to know the truth about the woman next door – everything she can tell me about the fall – but I hold back. Something tells me I’m not ready to hear the answer. Instead, I ask about the Y-shaped scars the leeches leave behind after each treatment.
“They should be gone in a few weeks,” she says, to which I feel inexplicably guilty.
The first time my doctor mentioned alternative therapy, Tess protested. It was only hours after my surgery and my fingers were already engorged. The conversation is somewhat of a blur but I remember thinking that I would do just about anything to be able to move those fingers again, even if the concept was slightly revolting. I could have readily complied, but instead, I sat and watched. I watched Tess cross her arms, uncross, cross again. I watched the doctor sit patiently in a chair and nod, nod, nod. I watched Tess squirm when the doctor finally brought out the leeches, and I watched her slowly come around as he explained that the blood in my fingers wasn’t draining properly, and that I might lose my fingers without them.
Three weeks have passed since I first asked if my mother could move in with us. I thought Tess would come around – that it would eventually grow clear that what I had suggested was not only logical, but in fact, in everyone’s best interest. But as I lie here watching the leeches fill, their bodies stretching to accommodate their final meals, I find that I’m not so sure anymore. About anything.
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