Friday, March 16, 2007

Days And Nights of The Scarlet Sponge






At work today, I could see sunlight coming through the skylight at around 2:30 PM, a neat way to not the lengthening of daylight, the passing of winter into spring. Not so at Holy Cross Hospital, my room had a window that faced the back end of the credit union on Lithuania Avenue, and for many days I could not even look at the bricks without the entire window moving like a metronome in my eyesight. Every day, Dr. Shaefer would check the three contusions above my right eye, there were countless MRIs, each proving my brain was still a scarlet sponge (my final breath, my sins expunge)and my arm could not be reattached. The bones, you know what I mean. I might bleed out on the operating table, a joke almost a decade later when my letterhead decreed I WILL FLATLINE BEFORE I GO ONLINE! I learned to dial the phone with my tongue between my teeth, and you really don't want to know how I improvised my pissing. No hands, big head. The throbbing in my head sounded like a washing machine full of sneakers. The photo of me in bed, ice around my arm to ease the burning, was taken on day 22. Mid-April, people on the outside scurrying to finish their taxes. I was on being fed Tylenol#3 every half hour and Demoral shots in my ass every two hours. I still regret to this day, that being so out of it, I never even knew the show COP ROCK had been on and cancelled within a few episodes. Many months later, I still bled at odd times, as the second photo shows (I always have disposable cameras at my, well, disposal, and had been taking photos for possible insurance purposes). I eventually had laser surgery into my brain, but that was later. This is sill Spring 1989. Finally, plates were put into my arm, those later broke, this will be in a future entry, and there was my first look at my withered arm, as they changed casts on day 65, before I went home. Page 243 rolled out of my Smith-Corona like an ancient scroll, the dust motes in the sunbeams like a plague.