FFP#24 – Chronic
The pain lives in the region between the navel and the right hip. Medical tests have ruled out any disease or infection, such as appendicitis, mainly because there is no accompanying fever. Kneading down hard on the area alleviates the pain.
This explains the bruising.
In that area of the abdomen, between belly button and bone, stretches a four-inch bruise. The bruise is exactly as long as the distance across my knuckles. If I could, if I were brave or crazy or stupid enough, I’d dig my fingers through my abdominal flesh, locate the pain and destroy it.
#
When I was thirteen, I broke the pinky finger of my left hand while playing basketball. The resulting pain, a dull ache that radiated throughout my entire finger, wasn’t unbearable. But a lump formed below the first joint of my pinky, making the finger appear impregnated.
My father, who didn’t like how my finger looked, took me to an orthopedic surgeon. We learned that surgery would straighten and return my pinky to its original size, but it would be purely cosmetic. There was nothing wrong with the finger, other than that it was broken. It would heal. With surgery there was a possibility that use of the finger would become limited. I was a guitarist, which I liked more than being a basketball player, so the idea that this would keep me from playing guitar upset me. I whined a bit, and we decided to leave the finger as it was.
A week later, while watching Tora! Tora! Tora! in Mr. G’s American history class, I felt a sharp pain in my pinky. I had noticed the previous day that the lump was larger. A part of me feared that the lump would continue to grow, transforming my finger into an unbendable, sausage-like appendage. The finger felt tight and stiff, as though it were about to burst.
“Juan,” I whispered to my friend. He was seated behind me. “Juan, gimme your pocketknife.”
The room was dark, but I could see well enough to slice open my pinky finger. The only mistake I’d made was not realizing how much blood there would be. Nor was I expecting an odor. Cutting through the lump released an extreme amount of both. Blood spilled onto the desk and my eyes watered from the acrid scent.
“Blood!” someone yelled.
“Jesus Christ,” Mr. G said as he searched his desk for the bio-hazard kit. “Turn on the lights!”
“Yuck.” Juan covered his mouth and nose with his hands. “You can keep the knife.”
More than a few students gagged. A girl named Lindsay, a girl who tortured me for wearing high water pants in fifth grade, fainted. Her head hit the floor with a satisfying whack.
“Oh God. Someone go help Lindsay.” With his latex gloves on, Mr. G wrapped my hand in gauze.
“You,” he said when he finished. “You need to go straight to the nurse’s office.”
But I couldn’t move. I wasn’t really listening to him. My focus had shifted from my smelly wound to something small, about the size of an almond, in the pool of blood which had collected on my desk. I picked it up, my good hand shaky. What I held was fleshy, soft, and baby-like. A tinier version of my pinky.
“It’s a little finger,” I said, suddenly feeling cold.
Mr. G squinted at it. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Did you cut off your finger?”
Someone in the class squealed.
“I don’t think so.” I felt my fingers through the gauze. “They’re all there.”
“You need to get to the nurse’s office now. Take that finger. Hurry up and go!” Mr. G pointed at the door.
I ran out of the classroom, bloodied gauze trailing from my hand.
I didn’t show the nurse my extra finger, but I did end up having to get stitches. A few days later, my pinky returned to its original size and shape. A couple of weeks later, I could play guitar as well as I ever had.
For years, I kept the finger in a small bottle of formaldehyde. A science geek friend of mine helped me get the stuff, but I bottled it myself. I kept the petite container on top of my bookshelf, next to my collection of glass cat figurines. A tiny finger suspended in liquid. A part of me, pickled forever.
#
Three days ago, a small bump appeared an inch above the bruise. About the size of a pimple, the bump is hard. When I rub it, a clear liquid beads up around it, as though the pimple were sweating. I try not to touch it, but it itches. I rub my bruise and pick at the pimple. This is how I fall asleep.
In the morning, a Monday, sick day number two and the third consecutive day I’ve spent in bed, my cat Lola begins to show some interest in me. She leaps on top of me, her large speckled paws massaging my chest, her claws snagging my pajama top. She sniffs the area around my belly button before stepping back onto my chest, rubbing her head against my hand until I pet her. She turns around, purring and flicking her tail. “Scratch my back,” she seems to be saying.
That’s when I notice a hair poking out of her bottom. A stray strand of cat fur, I think at first, so I yank at it. But it’s human hair. I continue to pull at it, not wanting Lola running around with human hair trailing out of her butt. At about twelve inches out, it sticks. I tug harder. The cat’s tail swishes in circles, a warning to hurry up. I jerk the hair as hard as I can and Lola jumps off the bed. She disappears into the hallway.
I expect the worse: a piece of feces stuck on the end of the hair, a tape worm, a piece of undigested food entwined in hair. But on closer inspection, I realize it’s a tiny thumb.
#
The bump, the pimple, keeps me up all night. This morning, I finally decide to take care of it myself. If I went to my doctor, he would tell me to leave it alone, that it would heal. Or maybe he wouldn’t even see it; he’d say it was all in my head, like the inexplicable abdominal pain.
I take off my shirt to get a better look at the pimple. I squeeze it, and pus oozes out slowly. Then something thin and white, like a matte ribbon, leaks out. I grasp it using my fingernails.
I choke back the saliva that has gathered in the bottom of my mouth as I extract the narrow white strip. Four more thin white strips, all connected, pop out after it. I sway side-to-side, trying to keep myself calm, in a trance where I am deliberate in my actions but not completely aware of the situation.
That is, the removal of an anemic and flat hand from a pimple on my abdomen.
When the last bit of the hand, the boneless wrist, comes out, the pain in my side completely vanishes. A small amount of blood seeps from the wound. I drop the hand onto the bed where it moves gently, the tips of the fingers curling up softly.
I’m revolted, yet not surprised.
Pain comes from unusual things.
I climb out of bed and grab my robe. In the bathroom, I wash my real hands, my attached hands, and cover the pimple with a bandage. I look for something to kill the flat hand with, but decide against using any chemicals. I pick it up with a pair of tongs and toss it into a plastic grocery bag.
Lola follows me around, intrigued by what I’m doing.
I don’t want to throw the hand away. It’s a part of my body — but is it? What if it’s like the movie? Evil and capable of climbing out of a dumpster. Or worse — what if it’s a parasite? Something that infected me in my childhood. Would it infect another person or an animal? Just imagine a world with wiggly fingers and hands popping out of everywhere.
I decide to boil it.
The force of the boiling water moves the hand around the circumference of the pot. Within a couple of minutes, the hand turns from translucent white to opaque gray. I drain the water and return the hand to the plastic bag. Now I can throw it out.
Back in my apartment, I vomit three times. Then I take a long, hot shower. Change into jeans and a clean T-shirt. I sit at the kitchen table, sipping sweet tea. I start to cry.
#
In my life, there have been only two other instances in which I cried out of happiness.
The first time occurred when my parents brought me a guitar. I was around ten. Overwhelmed by the unexpected gift and the tremendous possibilities it meant for a lonely child, I broke down.
The second time, I was sixteen years old. My dog Linda, which we had adopted when I was eight, had gotten loose and ran away. Four months later, on a damp November morning, Linda appeared on our front porch. There she was: tail wagging, tongue dangling, as though she had never left. She’d come back home even though I had given up hoping for her return. As I ran to get her food and water dishes out of the shed, I wanted to yell, “Linda’s back!” I wanted the neighborhood — the world — to know my dog had returned. But as soon as I saw her blue plastic feeding bowls sitting dusty and empty on a low shelf, I lost it and started crying.
And now, here I am.
A pinky, a finger, a hand. My own body growing new parts within itself. My own body turning on itself. Or perhaps a parasite, a monster hiding in my organs, building itself within the warmth and darkness and safety of my corporeal self, trying to find its way out.
But for now, all I know for sure is that the pain is gone, and I’m moved to tears.
Tags: flash fiction project
Uncategorized | 
June 20, 2010 11:05 pm
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