Wetlands

by Charlotte Roche

  He notices me smiling.

  “What?” He doesn’t even take his mouth off the valve.

  He’s thoroughly mixed his spit with mine. Does he find that as interesting as I do? Does he think about such things, too? If you don’t ask, you never find out the answer. And I’ll never ask.

  “Nothing. Thanks for the hemorrhoid pillow and for blowing it up, dad.”

  The door opens. Now they’ve stopped knocking altogether.

  It’s a new nurse. How many are there here?

  I already know what she wants.

  “No, I haven’t had a bowel movement.”

  “That’s not what I wanted. I just wanted to change the plastic bag in your trash can. You produce such a steady stream of used gauze pads.”

  “Well my ass is producing a steady stream of blood and ass piss.”

  The nurse—Valerie according to her nametag—and my father just stare at me in shock. Go ahead, stare. So what? All the belittling by the nursing staff is slowly starting to get on my nerves.

  The nurse quickly pulls the plastic bag out of the chrome trash can, puts a knot in the top of it, snaps open a new one like a windsock, and puts it into the trash can. She watches my father continue inflating the pillow.

  She lets the top of the trash can close loudly and says, as she’s walking out, “If that pillow is supposed to be for the patient, I’d advise against it. It’ll tear everything open again if she sits in it. It’s not for people who have had surgery.”

  My father gets up and puts the pillow in my wardrobe. He seems sad that he’s given me something harmful.

  Now what? He says he has to get going soon. Needs to get to work. What does he even do?

  With certain things, if you don’t ask about them soon enough you can never ask about them.

  Because I’ve been hanging around boys for so long, I never paid any attention to what my father did. I can only guess from what others used to say at family meals that it has something to do with research and science.

  I promise myself that when I get out of the hospital, which shouldn’t be too long from now, I’ll look through the things in my father’s secret cabinet and figure out what he does.

  “Okay, dad. Say hi to all your coworkers from a stranger.”

  “What coworkers?” he says softly as he walks out the door.

  My dad has a whole lot of gray and silver hair now. He’ll die soon. That means I’ll have to part with him soon. It’s best if I get used to the idea now so it hurts less when it happens. I’ll make a mental note of it in my forgetful, sievelike brain: make peace with the fact that you have to say good-bye to dad. When it actually comes to pass, everyone will wonder how I manage to come to grips with it so well. Winning the battle of mourning by advanced preparation.

  One thing my father’s short visit accomplished is that I now know how I can remain in the hospital longer. All I have to do is sit on the ring pillow with a lot of pressure and my wound will rip open again. That’s what the huffy Valerie promised would happen. I just can’t get caught. I take a painkiller. A little numbness is something I’m definitely going to want.

  Using my proven method I turn onto my stomach, shimmy down off the bed, and, hunched over with pain, walk over to the wardrobe. I open the doors my father closed. Down on the bottom is the would-be culprit. The normal squatting down by bending my legs won’t work. Hurts too much. I’ll have to figure out another way to reach down and pick it up. I keep my legs straight and bend at the waist. Keep my back straight, too. I look like an upside-down L now. I can just barely reach the ring with my hand. Success. Raise my back upright again. And retrace my steps. Back beside the bed, I put the ring down near the edge of the mattress so I can sit directly on it from a standing position. I turn my ass to the bed and sit myself down like a bird on a nest. I wiggle around on my ass. A little this way, a little that way, it’s not difficult. With the movement, the skin of the wound really strains. I stand up and feel around back there with my hand. I look at my hand. No blood! You promised too much, Valerie.

  What now? It was a good plan to reopen the wound. Won’t work with the pillow. I’ll have to find something else to rip open my ass. Concentrate, Helen. You don’t have a lot of time. You know how often the door opens and witnesses come in. I look at all the available objects in the room. Metal nightstand: useless. Bottle of water on the nightstand: you could stick it in, but I don’t think you’d be able to hurt yourself with it the way I need to. Television: too high. The spoons on the table: too harmless. Granola bowl: you can’t do anything with that. My gaze falls on the bed. There. That’s it. The brakes on the bed’s rollers. The wheels are big and metal with a rubber coating. They’re equipped with some sort of foot brakes, operated by a metal pedal that sticks out. You’ve got the job, pedal. I go as fast as I can to the end of the bed. I line my back up with it and slide awkwardly down, letting my ass land on the pedal. Now I sit on it. I wiggle back and forth. I have to scream with pain and put both of my hands over my mouth. If this doesn’t work I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can feel the pedal penetrating the wound. Pressing down hard I make it bore in deeper. This is going to have to do. Valiant Helen. Well done. I’m crying and shaking with pain. It must have worked. My test hand makes its way down and wipes around. I look. My entire palm is covered with fresh, red blood. I need to lie down fast or I’m going to faint right here. That would ruin the whole exercise. I need to be found lying in bed so I can pretend it just happened to me as I was lying there. I lie down.

  It hurts like hell. I’m still holding my mouth shut. Tears stream down my face. Should I call somebody now or wait so the wound makes more of an impression? I’ll wait. I can manage. Be sure to wipe off the brake pedal, Helen, and get rid of the evidence. The hemorrhoid pillow I hide under the covers. I can take care of that later. More and more blood is gushing out. I reach back with my hand again and this time it’s even more covered with blood than the first time. The feeling in my crotch and down my legs is just like when you wet yourself as a kid. When body-temperature liquid is running down you, the first innocent thought is of piss—since that’s what it’s usually been in past experience. I lie in a pool of my own blood and cry. I open my eyes and see an upside-down bottle cap from the mineral water on my nightstand. I take it in my hand and try to catch my tears. I can distract myself from the horrible pain with this challenge, and maybe I’ll find a use for the tears later. I almost never cry. But now its just spewing out of me. Tears up top, blood down below.

  I hold the bottle cap up near my tear ducts and after a few seconds look to see what I’ve managed to collect. At least the bottom of the cap is wet. Helen, you’ve fooled around long enough. I push the emergency buzzer. As I’m waiting for someone to come, I hide the bottle cap at the back of my nightstand behind everything else. So none of these idiots knock it over. There’s a lot of pain in that little vessel.

  I think it’s high time somebody showed up. I am, after all, losing a lot of blood. Regardless of whether I did it to myself or it just happened. They have to help me stop the bleeding now. So much has gushed out of me that it’s dripping onto the floor. How is that possible? Shouldn’t the bed soak it up? I know. Because of the plastic lining. The blood is pooling beneath me and not soaking in to the mattress. It’s trickling past me onto the floor. I lie in bed and look at my blood on the floor. There’s more and more. Interesting view. It’s beginning to look like a butcher’s shop in here. Only the butcher’s floor slopes into a runoff channel so the blood can drain. They should think about doing that here in the proctology unit. Though not many patients do to themselves what I’ve just done to my ass. Forget putting a drainage channel in the floor. Bad idea. I push the buzzer again. Three times, one after the other. I can hear out on the hall that it doesn’t help. Pushing three times still only creates a single tone in the nurses’ station. They don’t want to be driven crazy by the patients. Though they could use a more clever system for communications between the patients and staf
f. One buzz: I need a little more butter for my whole-grain bread. Two buzzes: please bring a flower vase with water. Three buzzes: help, blood is gushing out of my ass so fast that I hardly have enough left in my brain to think straight and I’m stuck here thinking up stupid ways to improve the hospital.

  I can see the blood-smeared brake pedal. I’ve got to wipe that clean or I’m going to get it. I stand up quickly and nearly slip over in my own blood. I brace myself on the bed and go slowly toward the foot of it. The blood splashes up between my toes and onto my foot. I have to be careful not to hydroplane on the blood. I squat down and wipe the pedal with a corner of my gown. Evidence gone. Well. At least the evidence on the brake pedal. Squatting hurts. Walking hurts. I’m about to collapse. Come on, Helen, you can make it into bed. Lie down, little one. Made it. I press both hands to my face.

  I wait an eternity. You always have to wait. I could also go to them and cause a big commotion by leaving a trail of blood down the hallway. I’ll restrain myself from doing that.

  I’m getting dizzy. It smells like blood in here. A lot of blood. Shall I use the time to clean up a little? After all, I want to be the best patient they’ve ever had. But maybe that’s asking too much of myself. I don’t need to tidy up right now.

  Knock. The door opens. Robin. Good. He can do it. Do what exactly, Helen? Whatever. I’m going downhill fast.

  I explain right away: “I don’t know what happened. I think I must have moved in an odd way and all of a sudden the blood started to gush. What should we do now?”

  Robin’s eyes open wide. He says he’s going to call the doctor right away.

  He comes up to me. Didn’t he say he was going to call the doctor?

  He says I look pale. He’s stepped in the pooled blood and as he goes out he tracks bloody footprints all over the room.

  I think to myself afterward: be careful you don’t hydroplane on the blood. I hold both hands on the bleeding, trying to slow it. My hands fill with blood. What a waste. Don’t some people have too little blood? Or is it that they have diseased blood? How should I know?

  Anemic. That’s what it is. There are people they describe as anemic. You will be, too, soon, Helen, if you keep this up.

  The anesthesiologist comes in. He asks if I’ve eaten anything. I have. I had a lot of granola for breakfast. He finds this a shame. Why?

  “Because then you can’t have general anesthesia. There’s too much risk you’ll vomit in your sleep and suffocate. An epidural is the only possibility.”

  He runs out and returns with a form and needles and some other stuff.

  That’s what pregnant women get, pregnant women who can’t manage a normal birth. Cowardly mothers. Ones who want a natural birth but with no pain, thanks. I’ve heard about it from my mother.

  I have to sign something. I’m not sure what it is because I wasn’t listening. I trust him. It definitely makes me nervous that this otherwise calm man is running around. I begin to worry about myself. He seems to be in a major hurry.

  They think I’ve lost too much blood too fast. Once I realize they think the same thing I do, I’m sick with fear—afraid I may die as a result of my plan to get my parents back together. That wasn’t part of the plan.

  He says I need to sit up, bend forward, and arch my back like a cat so he can disinfect my back, insert a thick catheter between my lower vertebrae, and then administer the injection. It doesn’t sound good.

  I hate anything that gets near my spinal cord. I worry they’ll screw up and I’ll be permanently paralyzed and never feel anything again during sex. Might as well forget sex then. Everything he says he also simultaneously does. I can feel it as he searches around back there, wipes, inserts, and injects. Sitting in this position increases the pain. It feels as if my ass is ripping open even more.

  He says it takes exactly fifteen minutes for everything from the tube to my toes to go numb. It seems like a long time to both him and me. Calculated in liters of blood per minute. He goes out saying he’ll be right back. Good. I look at my mobile phone to check the time. Ten past. At twenty-five past I’ll be ready for surgery.

  Robin comes in and tells me the doctor is getting ready for an emergency operation. That’s why he can’t come see me. Robin described to him how much blood I had lost. The doctor immediately ordered the emergency surgery.

  Emergency operation. Man oh man, that sounds bad. But also important and exciting. As if I’m important. This is a good time to lure my parents here.

  I write down my parents’ numbers for Robin and ask him to call them during the operation and tell them to come down here.

  The anesthesiologist comes in and wants Robin to wheel me to the operating room. I touch my thigh and can feel my hand make contact. Wait. I can still feel everything. They can’t operate on me. Not yet. I look at my mobile. Quarter past. Only five minutes have gone by.

  They can’t be serious. They’re not going to wait for the anesthesia to kick in? They’re in more of a hurry than I thought. Very unnerving.

  Robin pushes me out into the hall. They won’t let me take my mobile. Because of all the equipment. What equipment? Are we flying there or something? Whatever.

  If I remember correctly, clocks are hanging in all the halls and waiting rooms. Those giant black-and-white train station clocks. Why do they have train station clocks in a hospital? Are they trying to tell us something? I’m not going to let them stick their tools up my ass until fifteen minutes have elapsed. Whether I bleed to death or not. Very defiant, Helen, but stupid. You don’t want to die.

  It would be the perfect reason for my parents to reunite, though. In their mourning they would drift back toward each other. They wouldn’t be able to take comfort in their respective new partners because they know the partners never accepted their stepchildren. If the stepchild dies, the new partner is exposed. Then it’ll be clear who won the power struggle and who lost. Great plan, Helen, except you wouldn’t be able to experience their reunion. If you die, you won’t be watching down from above.

  You know that there’s no heaven. That we’re just highly developed animals. Who, after death, simply rot in the earth and are eaten by worms. There’s no possibility of looking down after death at your beloved parental animals. Everything is just devoured. The reputed soul, the memory, every little recollection and bit of love will be turned into worm shit along with the brain. And the eyes. And the pussy. Worms can’t tell the difference. They eat synapses as happily as they eat clitorises. For them there’s no big picture of what or whom they’re eating. Their only concern is that it’s tasty.

  Back to the time. We pass several clocks but hardly any time is passing. Robin is in a hurry. He bumps into the walls a lot. I can feel the puddle of blood I’m lying in getting deeper.

  The depression my ass creates in the mattress has long since overflowed. That I can still feel these things is a bad sign. If I’ve understood the anesthesiologist correctly, I should feel like a quadriplegic before they start. If I have this much feeling left in my legs, then I must also still have it in my ass.

  We’ve arrived in the prep room. There’s a train station clock in here, too. I knew it. Clock-memory contest won. It’s eighteen minutes past. I stare at the long hand. Robin explains that we’ll be ready to go as soon as the operating room’s cleared out. Without looking away from the long hand, I tell him: “I’m not a stickler when it comes to tidiness. They don’t need to clear the place on my account. I’m happy to have a look at what was going on in there before.”

  Robin and the anesthesiologist laugh. Typical, Helen. Even in the worst situation you’ve still got a zinger on the tip of your tongue. It’s just so none of them notice how scared I am of them and of having their hands up my ass. I’m very proud of the flexibility of my sphincter muscle during sex, but several adult-male hands is too much for me. Sorry. I just can’t see anything good about it.

  Now, unfortunately, I know what a blown-out sphincter muscle feels like. And this time they’re going to do it w
ithout general anesthesia.

  These sick pigs. I’m scared. I grab Robin’s hand. It was near me, and I hold it tight. He seems used to it. It doesn’t surprise him at all.

  Every granny probably does the same thing. Most people get really nervous before an operation. Like before a big journey. It really is like a journey. You never know whether you’ll return.

  A journey of pain. I squeeze Robin’s hand so tight that his skin goes white from the pressure. I bore my long nails in so I’ll leave a different pattern in his skin than the grannies do. The big motorized doors of the operating room open and a nurse with a surgical mask says, muffled, “Here we go.”

  Bitch. Panicking, I look at the clock. The long hand jerks down to the four. Tick. Twenty past. The clock hand is still jiggling.

  They have to wait five more minutes. No. Don’t. I can still feel everything. Please don’t start, I think. But don’t say. Your own fault, Helen. You wanted to bleed and this is what you got yourself into. I think I might throw up. I don’t say that either. If it happens, they’ll see it anyway. Nothing matters at this point.

  “I’m scared, Robin.”

  “Me too, for you.”

  Understood. He loves me. I didn’t know. Sometimes it happens that quickly. I put my other hand on his, holding his hand tightly between both of mine. I look him in the eyes and try to smile. Then I let go.

  They wheel me in. Lift me onto another bed. The nurses each take one of my legs and loop them in straps hanging from the ceiling. They are fastened at the ankle and then pulled tightly upward. Some kind of pulley. My legs are sticking straight up. Like an extreme version of a gynecological position. So everyone can crawl up my ass. I see long lashes above a surgical mask. Dr. Notz. Robin’s gone. Probably too nervous to watch. The anesthesiologist sets up next to my head. He says they have to start now because I’m losing so much blood. He says it only seems as if I can feel everything because there’s a miniscule amount of feeling left. In reality, he says, I’ll only feel a tiny fraction of what’s being done. They’ve hung a light-green drape between my head and my ass. Obviously so my ass can’t see my horror-stricken face.