Death Grip

by Barbara Ebel

  “I can’t wait. You process the only hunter’s meat that I trust. You’re so damn thorough and careful about stuff.”

  “Of course, you’re being kind. I’m the only hunter you know.”

  Debris and blood rinsed out of the carcass, but Jae took a step forward to peer inside, particularly for any hair which may have found its way inside.

  “This water will cool him down a little bit, too, besides washing him clean.”

  “I better get back to work,” she said. “Just wanted to come over and say hello. Get some rest later.”

  “Thanks. Nothing like working on a day off … doing what I adore doing.”

  She agreed and stepped away. The center was extra busy with tourists. Even the gift shop had folks browsing in every aisle.

  With particular attention to the inside, Jae gave the carcass one more rinse. Then he again checked his knife for sharpness. It was time to skin the hide.

  After hours and hours – after awakening and up until now - Jae was ready to put the big tasks behind him; ready to pamper his own body, which was spent, tired, and fulfilled. He had enough in one day of what he called his “love and labor of hunting.”

  Inside his cedar door, Jae went straight to the laundry room and peeled off his clothes. They went straight into the washing machine and he started a cycle with extra sudsy detergent.

  Now, instead of clothes sticking like Band Aid adhesive on his skin, clean air swept over him, which made him feel that much more grubby. In his birthday suit, he padded to his bedroom and stepped straight into the bathroom. He opened the shower door, turned on the water to let it warm up, and slipped a bath towel in the door handle.

  But before he made his decision to step in, Jae was aware of a new sensation. As if his leg smarted from the sting of nettles, he swiped his hand over the skin of his right ankle.

  The prickly sensation didn’t stop, so he looked down at the wispy hair on his lower leg and saw a dark diminutive creature crawling like a bulldozer up his shin.

  Holy shit. He hated those things.

  But he didn’t just hate those things.

  He hated them with such zeal, such intense fervor, that his panic against them was worse than if a rattlesnake threatened his hand.

  It took at least a half a minute before Jae had the little monster between his thumb and forefinger. Its legs thrashed and yanked forward like there were a hundred of them instead of eight. And in his opinion, eight were too many, but at least that number helped distinguish them from insects … which only have six legs.

  It was a tick.

  And as Jae carried it over to the sink, the damn thing finally contorted its legs closer into the side of its body as if playing dead. He eyed a small glass bottle of cologne next to the sink and decided that would be his weapon.

  He tried to drop the critter on the counter, but the thing clung to his finger like it was ready to eat his last meal. Jae harshly flicked it and it landed on the tile countertop.

  He grabbed the bottle and rammed the bottom edge into the flat, dark body until he was satisfied he’d crushed the living life out of it. Being thorough, he knocked the little beast into the toilet bowl, pushed down the handle, and watched the swirling water pressure flush it into the depths of his underground septic tank.

  CHAPTER 23

  Annabel and Dr. Burg still hovered over Jae. From the medical team’s perspective, they believed that Jae Nixon rested in an unconscious state, a medically diagnosed coma, which was true for the most part.

  Especially during periods of stimulation, like now when the two women poked and prodded on him to insert a subclavian central line, he arose from his more profound mental sluggishness to replay or dream snippets from his recent past.

  The ranger had replayed his entire last hunting expedition when he cross-bowed a ten-point buck and processed the deer where he made the kill. Then he lugged it home in his pickup truck and completed the arduous task of hanging, washing, and skinning the thing.

  The most intense memory, however, was not the large hoofed mammal he’d bagged, but the tick no bigger than a pinhead crawling on his leg.

  His thoughts continued onward as the student doctor sutured the central line into his skin and applied a dressing to ward off an infection. In a few minutes, a technician entered his room and they all helped to position him for a chest X-ray. He hated being moved, but by the time they all left, he was deeply involved again with hunting memories … now post-hunting memories of getting ready to shower. His recollections about some events were as vivid as if he were inside a live reenactment.

  -----

  Jae was still in his cabin’s bathroom. After crushing and flushing the damn tick from his leg down the toilet bowl, he let out a sigh of relief. That was one arachnid he could have done without.

  As much as he hated the thing, he loved seeing it whiz around in the swirling water and disappear into the bowels of the commode.

  He backed away from the toilet bowl and stuck his hand into the shower stall where he had turned on the nozzle. The water temperature tested perfectly, so he stepped in. For what seemed like a magical eternity, he stood still and let the pure warm water flow on, and run off, his body. Like the buck he had just rinsed off with the hose, grime, dirt, and hair became dislodged and ran off him into the circular drain.

  Now he needed to focus on the significant impurities clinging to his body.

  He picked up his man soap from the resin soap dish mounted in the wall and scrubbed and lathered his hands. His legs came next because he wanted to wash off the physical, as well as the mental, idea of the tick who had just darted up his right leg a few minutes ago.

  After he lathered below his knees, and his legs felt reborn, he again took the cleanser and massaged the bar of soap into his thighs. He took a moment to let the dirty water runoff and away.

  Still holding the musk-scented soap, Jae washed his penis, scrotum, and the generalized region of his crotch. He clutched the soap tightly while he pressed laterally toward his right hip.

  But starting out from his groin, he could swear his fingers swiped over a bump.

  He lowered his head, dropped the bar of soap, and parted the dark pubic hair obscuring his view.

  “Fuck!”

  It was another tick.

  Worse than that, it was attached.

  Which made sense.

  Just like Jae had hunted in a likely area where he caught venison for his next meals, the tick had burrowed in a warm, moist area of Jae’s body where he hid as obscure and covert as he had lived in the foliage of the Ohio forest. After all, he wanted a meal as well.

  Jae’s anger, as well as his fear, ramped up along with his heartbeat. He turned off the water and tried to quell his rapid pulse. The little buggers carried diseases, but he guessed the odds for contracting one with one bite from one tick was probably low.

  It was the tick itself and now it’s vampire-like duty of sucking his blood that repulsed him. The parasite had sought him out - a warm-blooded vertebrate – to dine and feed on to continue his life cycle.

  He grabbed the flattened, tear-shaped body and pulled.

  But for fear of its own life, the tick held on with a death grip.

  The blooksucker had drilled too far into his flesh!

  Between Jae’s thumb and index finger was only a part of him - a dark brown remnant of his butt end.

  The tick’s snout was still gripped in a jaw lock … sucking near the vein running through Jae’s private parts. Maybe even a vein or an artery to or from his penis which helped sustain the reproductive act. What horrors!

  Wanting to get the ravenous head out of him immediately, Jae stepped out of the shower and over to the countertop. Right to where he’d just taken care of the first tick, which he’d found before it had latched on. He opened the top drawer and grabbed a pair of tweezers. Enough of the arachnid still sucked on him for the tweezers to hold on to, but pulling outward didn’t work.

  Jae’s strong anger continued.


  He could fell a buck, but he couldn’t extract a tick.

  From the same drawer, he pulled out a plastic container of petroleum jelly. He dried his groin thoroughly and then put a clump of the Vaseline on what was left of the protruding beast. That’d smother it and lubricate it, he’d read, making it easier to extract.

  As a hunter, it wasn’t like he never had them crawl on him before, but those experiences with them was one reason he hated them so much. They were unnerving sons of bitches and he didn’t want even one encounter with them. It was, however, a rare event for one to make himself, or herself, at home and become one with his body.

  -----

  The sun set as Jae tidied up the front seat of his pickup truck. This was the easy and last task of the day – gathering and disposing of wrappers, napkins, and a portable to-go cup – and giving the floor carpet a light vacuuming. He needed to go to bed soon and, undoubtedly, he would sleep like a baby.

  Better yet, maybe he’d sleep like a torpid bear. Especially since he had finally tugged out the tick’s head with tweezers after lubricating it for an hour with petroleum jelly.

  He shoved closed the driver’s door as Patty came walking home from the visitors’ center.

  “What are you still doing out here?” she asked.

  Jae shook his head. “I’m a glutton for punishment, but I’m done. Finished. I’m going inside and will be sleeping before Curley and Twist decide who they’re going to spend the night with.”

  “Here they come,” she said, upon seeing the two dogs jump up when they heard their names.

  “I found two ticks on me while showering,” Jae added. “I practiced surgery to carve one of them out of me.”

  Patty shuddered. “Really?”

  “I’m exaggerating. It took patience and tweezers to get the job done.”

  “I don’t know of any rangers coming down with Lyme disease, but there’s always a first time for everything. Please be careful.”

  Jae nodded and ruffled Curley’s ears. “Goes without saying. You watch it around here, too.”

  They both took a few steps in the same direction with the dogs sprinting in front.

  “I’ll walk the trails in the morning before opening up the visitor’s center,” Jae said. “Have a good night.”

  “Congrats again on your catch.”

  The two dogs split up. Curley jumped onto Jae’s porch and Twist sprang ahead of Patty.

  Exhausted, Jae went inside and fell into bed. Curley curled up on the washed-out bedspread at the foot of his bed.

  -----

  With Bob physically out of the internal medicine rotation, Annabel, Stuart, and Jordan theoretically picked up his admissions. Their call night was busier than usual and Annabel ended up with two new patients.

  That meant she never slept. At two a.m., it seemed like she would get to bed, but they called her back immediately to the E.R. before her head hit the pillow. The middle-of-the-nighter was a ninety-seven-year old who had tripped over his cat on his way back from the bathroom. EMS brought him in for evaluation. Not only did the residents want to monitor him for any adverse sequela, but they discovered his diuretic dose needed an adjustment.

  Fortunate for the team, Dr. Mejia didn’t show up for group rounds in the morning. No one wanted his extra teaching after a sleepless night.

  After the group dispersed and all the scut work for her floor patients was finished, Annabel went back to the ICU. She poured a jumbo cup of coffee and stumbled on a bottle of white chocolate syrup behind the regular creamers. It dressed up her coffee as well as a name-brand coffeehouse would do, and the caffeine perked her up enough to step into Jae’s room and reconsider his condition.

  The nursing staff now used the central line which Melody and she had inserted. Fluids flowed into one port and a low-dose dopamine infusion was plugged into another. His urine output had picked up and his lungs were still sounding clear.

  Annabel remained at the side of his bed as his lungs went up and down with the ventilator. She patted his tattoo and, since no one was around, she spoke softly.

  “The time has come to roust yourself awake and recover. I’m leaving the rotation soon, so I won’t be helping with your care anymore.”

  Annabel frowned as she went back to the desk. It made no sense to whisper to Jae, but she had done it anyway. She retrieved her unfinished coffee and went home.

  At least home was where she instructed the Uber driver to bring her.

  She stumbled into her apartment after the ride, and with all the energy she could muster, she unpacked from call and repacked to go over to Bob’s. Desperately, she wanted to wrap herself under her covers, but a promise was a promise. She told herself that he needed her more than she needed her bed.

  Although it took longer than she wanted, by mid-afternoon, she was ready to drive over to Bob’s. With one more important mission to do, she opened her refrigerator door.

  The cool air filtered out while she scoured the shelves. She put the remaining food from her date with Dustin in a brown shopping bag and added more things. Since she planned on being mostly gone for at least a few days, there was no reason to let leftovers go to waste.

  Annabel planned on two trips to her car. She needed to bring clothes, toiletries, medical books and instruments, food, power cords, and her laptop. She set out and took extra care walking the bumpy sidewalk with her arms full.

  “You moving out?” Travis asked, passing her on the street. A small backpack hung around his shoulders. Coming from his college classes, he carried far less than Annabel.

  “No,” she said. “I’m too attached to that place. I have a quiet neighbor downstairs and I wouldn’t trade that in for the world.”

  “Flattery will get you everywhere.”

  “Actually, I’m going to stay at my friend’s place for a few days. He’s sick, so I’m going to watch over him as well as help him study.”

  “Sounds platonic, but that’s none of my business.”

  “He’s my best friend.”

  “You need some help?”

  “Would you? I’m struggling with no sleep. You’d be a lifesaver.”

  “It’s not every day I rescue a doctor-to-be.”

  Annabel transferred an armload to him and they walked to her car.

  “I’ll keep an eye on your place,” Travis said after he placed two duffel bags in her trunk.

  “Thanks so much.” She opened the Nissan’s front door and hesitated. “Would you mind? Perhaps we should have each other’s number.”

  “Good idea.”

  They exchanged numbers and Annabel took off. Since the morning, the gray day had turned cloudless and she soaked in the sun’s rays through the windshield as she drove.

  -----

  After parking, Annabel walked a short distance to Bob’s apartment and appreciated that he lived on the ground floor. She rang the bell twice and he opened the door after a delay. His usual stylish haircut looked less perfect and a puffiness had grown under his eyes.

  “You look like something a cat dragged over,” he said.

  “I was going to say the same thing about you.”

  “Then we’re even.” He extended his hand and took a duffel bag. “Now I feel bad you came.”

  “Our night on call stayed crazy with admissions, but don’t worry about it. We’ll work together on study material and independently catch up on needed sleep. And look … I brought us leftovers.”

  Annabel opened the shopping bag on his counter, popped a container in the microwave, and then split up the jambalaya on two plates.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked. “Do you think you can eat some Cajun food?”

  “I’m not any worse. I might eat Creole.” He smiled and handed her utensils.

  “There’s a difference, you know, between Cajun and Creole.”

  “Will our internal medicine final exam test us on food?”

  “Dr. Raymond’s doxycycline prescription must be making you feel better. You’re j
oking.”

  “I hope so.”

  “No kidding. This rice dish is technically Cajun, so it’s a bit more spicey than it’s Creole counterpart, which is milder and sweeter.”

  “Sometimes I forget you’re more southern than I am.”

  “Do you hold that against me?”

  “Never. Where’d you get this anyway?”

  “I may have mentioned I went on a date with the police officer. Dustin took me to this Cajun restaurant and, well, we didn’t finish our food. In essence, we were sidetracked by a woman needing the Heimlich maneuver.”

  Bob’s expression dimmed. “He took you to a place where the dinners were that bad?”

  She swatted his upper arm. “Very funny. We better not dillydally because I’m running on caffeine.” On purpose, she didn’t mention Dustin stopping the robbery at the cash register.

  Bob nodded and ate half of what Annabel served him. They went over to the couch and Annabel laid out notes from the last grand rounds and opened her internal medicine textbook.

  “Why don’t we approach a case history,” she said, “like we did in our first and second year in the unit labs. A team-based approach … and work through a patient with a chronic cough.”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  Annabel buckled her legs under her. They scooted the coffee table closer and used it to spread a chart and books. They worked through an entire algorithm for the diagnosis and treatment of a chronic cough and ended up studying all methods of testing, disease entities, and treatments. They even ended up at a dead end workup with a patient who had a psychogenic cough.

  They took a break; it was getting late and both of them poured a half glass of wine. Annabel slumped further into the couch. She could not keep her eyes open any longer and fell asleep, but Bob didn’t want to disturb her. He was half dozing himself. With an easy pull, he lowered her to a pillow near the armrest and draped an afghan over her.

  Bob started for the bedroom, knowing he needed to set an alarm for her for the morning. On the kitchen counter, he heard her phone beep with an incoming text and decided to lower the volume so she wouldn’t be disturbed. His finger hit the screen and the text message popped up.