Wetlands

by Charlotte Roche

  I ask the anesthesiologist very quietly what exactly they are doing.

  He explains to me, as if I am six, that they have to use stitches now, which they normally try to avoid. During my first operation they cut away quite a lot but they were able to leave it open to heal. It’s much more pleasant for the patient. Now all of us—and first and foremost me—have had a bit of bad luck. They have to stitch up each and every bloody spot and afterward I’ll feel very uncomfortable from the tension. It’s really going to pinch. For a long time. And here I was thinking it couldn’t get any less comfortable. Oh, Helen, all the things you do for the sake of your parents. Heartwarming. Ha. As the anesthesiologist has been sketching out my painful future for me, I haven’t even been paying attention to my ass. Meaning I must be fully numb. I ask the anesthesiologist for the time. Twenty-five minutes past. Feeling gone, to the minute. Very precise with his work. He smiles happily. I do, too.

  Suddenly I’m very relaxed, as if nothing is happening.

  We can segue into small talk. I ask him inconsequential things that cross my mind. Whether he has to have lunch in the basement cafeteria, too. Whether he has a family. Or a garden. Whether the anesthesia has ever failed to work. Whether it’s true that it’s more difficult to anesthetize people who take drugs. During the pauses in conversation I picture my parents already waiting together in my empty room, sick with worry over me. Talking about me. About my pain. Nice.

  And soon they’re done with the stitches. I have feeling in my feet again. I ask the anesthesiologist whether that’s possible. He explains that his goal is to numb me just enough. He knows through experience how long these operations last, and numbed me only enough for this amount of time. It looks as if this makes him very proud. Soon I’ll feel everything again, including, unfortunately, the pain. For that he gives me a pill. He says it’s going to be tough to combat the pain of the tension in my anus with pills. I should prepare myself for serious pain. No comparison to the pain I’ve experienced up to now. What have I done? My legs are lowered from the ceiling. Feeling begins to trickle up my legs. I’m plugged up again down there, lifted onto another bed, tucked in, and wheeled back to my room. By some random nurse I don’t know and who can’t wheel beds very well. Worse than Robin earlier in his agitated state.

  She parks me in my big, lonely room and walks back out. If I need anything, I should buzz. I already know that. I’ve been here long enough to get that.

  And now? After nearly bleeding to death, lying around in bed is boring. There’s something I need to take care of. Get rid of the hemorrhoid pillow. I lift the covers and it’s no longer there. Where is it? Who has it? Oh man, Helen, are you out of it. Must be the medication. Of course they made up the bed with fresh linens after the explosion of blood. So where has the pillow gotten to now? I can’t ask, and don’t want to. Maybe some stupid nurse just threw it out without even thinking. That would be the best. If somebody else had already taken care of the pillow.

  I probably won’t feel any pain for a while. So I might as well do something now. But what? I’m sure I’m not allowed to walk around. I’d rather not anyway—don’t want everything to get ripped open again.

  A knock.

  Robin?

  No, it’s the candy striper. Something to keep me busy. This time I won’t be as snippy as last time.

  “Good day,” she says.

  I greet her back. Good start. I would love to keep her here for as long as possible, to stave off the boredom.

  She can solve the telephone riddle.

  “Do you guys pay to have the phone switched on for newly arrived patients?”

  “Yes, we did that for you. You were so out of sorts from the pain that we figured we’d take care of that. We pay out of our funds. The patients repay us.”

  Too bad. I thought Robin had done it.

  “Earlier this year I was here to be sterilized. Nobody did that for me then.”

  Come on, Helen, this information is of no concern to her.

  “It’s a new service we’re providing.”

  I ask her for a favor. I would like a coffee from the cafeteria. And as long as she’s down there, she could bring me some fresh grapes and a packet of trail mix. She can take the money for it out of the drawer in the metal nightstand. Along with whatever was advanced for the phone.

  She agrees and leaves with the money.

  While she’s gone, I fill my glass with mineral water from a bottle I took from the hospital supply. Bottoms up into my mouth and then I spit it back into the bottle. I hold my thumb over the top and shake it around. I repeat this process three times.

  I wait for her to return. I notice how tired I am. Close my eyes. Despite the pills and the fact that the anesthesia is probably still working a bit, I can feel the pain. It feels as if they are still sewing up skin in my colon with metal needles. They pull the thread tight and cut the end with their teeth. Just the way mom always does it when she’s sewing. She does a lot of things with her mouth. Dangerous things, too. I remember as a kid watching her hang pictures with tacks. She would always put all the tacks in her mouth and balance herself on a chair, taking one tack after the other out of her mouth as she needed them. I close my eyes with pain. Hold them closed for a long time.

  I’m awoken by a knock as the candy striper returns. That was fast. Of course she was faster than I was—she’s not an ass patient. It seemed like a long way to me.

  I thank her for bringing me the things. And then I ask her whether she would mind my asking her a few questions. It’s tough for me to maintain a normal conversation. Something’s really brewing down inside me. The more painful it gets the more normal I try to come across. She says go ahead. I offer her some mineral water and she gratefully accepts. She goes to the nurses’ station to get a clean glass. Stripers are allowed in there. And yet they can’t give you a shot.

  She comes back with a glass. She fills it to the brim and gulps it down. It makes me happy. It’s as if we’ve already kissed. Without her even knowing, of course. Against her will even. As if she had been unconscious and I kissed her. That’s how I’d describe our relationship. Kissing to dull the pain. It doesn’t do much.

  I feel close to her and smile at her. Suddenly I notice how nicely she’s made-up. She’s drawn a thin, light-blue line along the very edge of her bottom eyelids. It takes years of practice to be able to do that so well. She must have been making herself up for years. Probably started doing it back in school. Very good.

  I ask her everything I can think of about her duties as a candy striper. How do you become one? Where do you apply? Are there many applicants? Are you allowed to pick which department you’ll work in?

  I think I must be talking funny. I wrench the questions out of myself. I’m almost too weak to talk. But with this feeling down there, I don’t want to be alone. Now I know the most important aspects of the field of duty I’ll join as soon as I am released.

  I thank her sincerely. She understands and leaves.

  “Thanks for your generous offer of water.” She titters. She thinks it’s funny because she has emphasized the word “generous” for comedic value, since it’s just the hospital’s own mineral water. I find it funny, too. But for other reasons.

  As soon as she’s gone, I’m filled with nasty thoughts. Where are my parents? For fucks sake! This is not happening. They’ve abandoned me here. I figured after Robin’s call they’d be worried and come straight here. Nothing. Nobody here. A gaping abyss. I think much more about them than they do about me. Maybe I should stop thinking about them so much. They don’t want me to take care of them. And I should finally give up on expecting anything from them. It doesn’t get any clearer than this. I’m lying here having gone through an emergency operation and nobody turns up. That’s the way it goes in our family. I know that if one of them had something like what I have, I wouldn’t leave their side. That’s the big difference. I’m more their parents than they are mine. I’ve got to stop that. Give it up, Helen. You’re an adult n
ow. You have to make your own way. Wake up to the fact that you’re not going to change them. I can only change myself. Exactly. I want to live without them. Change of plan. It’s just, in what way am I going to change my plan? What next? I need something to do. So I can think more clearly. When your hands are working, you brain works better, too.

  Not to mention that I get sad when I have nothing to do.

  I take the grapes and lay them in my lap on top of the sheet. Then I lean over to the metal nightstand and grab the bag of trail mix. I rip it open with my teeth. With my long thumbnail I slit open a grape along one side. Just the way you would a bread roll with a knife. I root around in the bag for a cashew nut, pull it out, and separate its two halves. It’s easier than I thought it would be. As if they were already partially separated. I find a raisin in the bag and put it between the cashew halves. This stuffed cashew I push into the cut-open grape until it’s in the middle. Now I just have to squeeze the grape back together so you can hardly see the cut. As if nothing’s been done to it. Stuffed without a trace. My little masterpiece is finished. The truffle of poor students. The idea came to me the second I saw the candy striper. I knew I had to give her something to do for me—that’s why they’re here. These candy non-nurses in their odd-colored uniforms. And I wanted whatever she did for me to give me something to do later. It worked perfectly. I’m proud.

  I’m going to transform all the grapes and trail mix into student truffles to give to my favorites. Lovely task you’ve found for yourself, Helen. The finished creations I place on the metal nightstand.

  I love to stuff things into other things. What made me think of stuffing things when I looked at the candy striper I don’t know. Sometimes I only realize after the fact, when someone has turned me on. Maybe that’s what’s going to happen in this case.

  Back when we were still a cohesive family, mom would make stuffed birds on Christmas. She’d stuff a quail into a small chicken, the chicken into a duck, the duck into a small goose, and the goose into a turkey. The anus of each fowl would have to be widened with a few snips for the next one to fit through it. And then she’d roast the whole thing in the extra-large oven we had just so she could do this. A professional stove. A lot of gas comes out of those if you want it to. Between each set of birds mom would put strips of bacon because otherwise it would all dry out since it had to roast for so long for the heat to penetrate all the layers.

  When it was done, we kids loved to watch it be sliced open.

  The pain is practically knocking me out. I can’t take it anymore. Helen, keep thinking about Christmas dinner. Keep your thoughts away from your butt. Back to your family. Think of something nice. Don’t give in to the pain.

  With the help of some big, sharp kitchen shears, the whole thing would be cut right down the middle so you’d get a perfect cross section of all the birds. It looked as if each one were pregnant with the next smaller one. The turkey was pregnant with the goose, the goose had a duck in its belly, the duck was pregnant with a chicken, and the chicken with a quail. It was hilarious. A parade of pregnant fetuses. And parsnips from the field next to our house roasted along with them. Delicious.

  Once, a long time ago, I overheard my father late at night in the living room telling a friend of his that it was pretty awful for him to have to watch my birth. They had to give mom an episiotomy or else she would have torn from her pussy to her asshole. He said it had sounded as if they were cutting a stringy chicken down the middle with kitchen shears, through cartilage and other gristly parts. He imitated the sound several times that night. Sniiip. He was good at it. Each time the friend laughed loudly. You always laugh loudest at the things that scare you the most.

  Just before I’ve used up all my student-truffle supplies, I go to put another finished work on the nightstand. With this motion, the stem with the last of the grapes attached to it falls to the floor.

  I can’t get out of bed now to pick it up. With the stitches in my ass, I don’t want to move at all. With nothing more to do and my thoughts brought to a halt, I notice the pain getting worse and worse. I need a distraction and some stronger painkillers. I hit the buzzer. A nurse should be able to take care of it for me. While I’m waiting for help, I do nothing, for a change. I sit there and stare at the wall. Light light light green. What a subtle shade. I hate it when I can’t take care of myself. It bugs me that I can’t just hop down there and pick everything up. I don’t like to depend on others. Doing things yourself is the best way. I trust myself the most. When it comes to applying sunscreen, for instance. But in all other matters in life, too.

  She floats in. Pretty quick. Must not be too much buzzer action in the unit at the moment.

  “Can you do me a favor and hand me those grapes?”

  She crawls under the bed and collects them.

  Instead of giving them back to me she takes them over to the sink. What does she think she’s doing?

  “I’ll just rinse them off. They were on the floor, after all.”

  These hygiene fanatics would never think to ask: Do you want me to wash your grapes for you since they were on the disgustingly filthy hospital floor that’s mopped twice a day? They just do it because they think everyone is as afraid of bacteria as they are. But that’s not the case. In fact, in my case, it’s just the opposite.

  She rinses the grapes for quite some time in running water.

  As she’s rinsing them she says that she has the feeling they haven’t been washed anyway, that they might still have toxic pesticides on them. They’re still covered with that fuzzy, white film. A sure sign of having not been washed. Oh, please!

  I don’t say anything. I’m screaming inside, though. This idiotic notion of washing pesticides off fruit and vegetables is the biggest joke there is. My dad taught me. These days you learn it in school, too. In chemistry. The chemicals that are sprayed on produce to keep away vermin and fungus are so strong that they penetrate the skin of tomatoes and grapes. You can wash them until your fingers shrivel. Nothing comes off. If you don’t want to eat pesticides with your fruit and vegetables, you shouldn’t buy them at all. You’re not going to cheat the poison industry with a few seconds of running water. I never wash fruit and vegetables. I don’t think it removes any of the poisons.

  The other reason the nurse feels the urgent need to wash my property is that people like her always think the floor is extremely filthy because people walk on it. In the imagination of these people, there must be a tiny particle of dog shit every few inches. That’s the worst contaminant a hygiene fanatic can imagine. If kids pick things up from the ground and put them in their mouths they’re always told: Be careful, there could be dog crap on that. Even though it’s highly unlikely there’s dog crap anywhere on it. And what if there is? What would be so bad about that? Dogs eat canned meat. The canned meat is turned into canned-meat-crap in their intestines and then lands on the street. Even if I ate spoonfuls from a pile of dog crap, I’m sure nothing would happen to me. So if a whiff of a trace of an unlikely particle of dog crap that somehow made its way into my hospital room sticks to a grape there beneath my bed and winds up in my mouth, nothing’s going to happen.

  She’s finally finished with her nonsense.

  I have my work materials back, washed against my will. I don’t thank her.

  “Could you please ask whether I can have some stronger pills or can take two at a time? What I’ve got isn’t stopping the pain.”

  She nods and leaves.

  I’m pissed off as I finish up my work. These stupid hygiene freaks drive me crazy. They are so unscientifically superstitious about bacteria. This pain is also driving me crazy. But I’ve hit upon my next good idea.

  I know what I’m going to do now. I’m going to have a bowel movement. I can’t stand up. I’ll force myself. I need to make sure I can take care of myself. Which I normally don’t have to worry about. Better to try to take my first bowel movement after emergency surgery here in a controlled environment near doctors than wherever I’ll
end up doing it if I’m discharged. I’m all out of sorts. I’m dizzy.

  I’ll make myself do it. It can’t be that difficult. Maybe I’m still numb from the operation. It’s possible that the pain will just keep getting worse from now on. In which case I’d rather try now. Now or never. Bite the bullet, Helen, and do it. And given what I’ve eaten in the last few days—granola as hard as wood chips—I should be ready to drop one. Off to the bathroom. First I need to get rid of the plug. What they manage to stuff up there is very long. I position myself in the reliable spread-legged stance above the bowl and think of the pain I felt when I ripped myself open. This is nothing by comparison. It works. I manage it. I do it well. In a death-defying feat, I push everything past the stitches and I’m home free. I don’t need to tell anyone I was able to do this. But it’s good for me to know. I’m one step closer to recovery. If I do end up abandoning my plan for my parents, this will have been a big waste of strength and suffering. We’ll see. I rinse myself off and pat myself dry. Robin was right. It’s a lot better than wiping with toilet paper. All the things he knows. We’re a good match.

  I go back over to the bed and stand next to it.

  I have to do something. Have to. Doesn’t matter what. The main thing is not to think about my parents or the pain in my asshole. My hands are shaking. I’m all tense. I wipe cold sweat from my brow. Cold sweat is creepy. The only other time you experience it is right before you faint. Little death. Aren’t men’s orgasms called that, too? Or is it something you say about animals? Which ones? I can’t think straight. Not an enjoyable experience. This. Everything. I climb back into bed. I put all the trail-mix sculptures in my lap. I twist around so I can reach the back edge of the metal nightstand. I carefully lift up the bottle cap of tears and move it gingerly across the surface of the nightstand. I put it down on the edge closest to me, so I can easily reach it, and dunk the tip of my pointer finger in the salty water. I let a drop fall from my finger into the cut in each stuffed grape. I work carefully, as if my finger were an eyedropper. I have to conserve my tears so there’s enough to go around. I already know to whom I’ll offer them. I manage not to notice my pain for several minutes thanks to this tedious task. Once each grape has a drop in it, I put them all back in the trail mix bag.