Love Finds Its Pocket

by Mary Scarpelli

  “You’re in the city, right? Good, so then if need be, you’ll be able to get to me quickly.

  “Your follow-up appointments will be with me, and I’ll be the one to remove your drains and fill the expander.

  “If all goes well, we’ll do the second surgery in about two months. Trust me, you’re going to look fabulous once I’m through with you. Until then, with this expander in place – well, it’s a functional device meant to stretch your muscles. It wasn’t designed to be aesthetically pleasing so just reconcile yourself that you’re in transition, a work-in-progress if you will. No need to dwell on something that’s only temporary, right?

  “Okay, having said that, I’m going to demonstrate how to clear these drains. Your nurse already knows how and unless you plan on keeping her on for the entire week, I’ll need you, both of you, to pay close attention while I instruct you on how to empty the fluid from, then collapse these drainage bulbs. No, no - no need to look so alarmed Toni. It’s not quite as gruesome or difficult or painful as you may think. You can always wear a pair of Nitrile gloves when you’re emptying and cleaning them. No, no, not because it’s considered toxic waste. Yes, I can see that you’re squeamish. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you’re going to get over that.”

  Three teardrop shaped catch basins, aka drainage bulbs, had been affixed to Kat’s hospital gown by large, plastic-coated safety pins. Inserted into the bottom of each bulb was flexible plastic tubing, extending several feet then wending its way back into her body through incisions that had been made adjacent to one another at the intersection of two ribs, currently held in place by frail-looking stitches.

  The drainage tubes were designed to allow the residual, post-surgical lymphatic fluids to flow out of her so that the gunk didn’t accumulate in her body or arm, which would have caused her pain, swelling and potential complications in the form of the dreaded lymphedema. Dr. Echeverria strongly recommended that they exercise caution when clasping the safety pins to whatever clothing she would be wearing once she was released from the hospital with special consideration given to ensuring that an adequate amount of play remained between tubing, body and clothing.

  “You certainly don’t want either too much or too little play in the distance between the bulbs’ attachment to your clothing and the tubing. Oh, this may be obvious, but over the next week or so, you should wear loose-fitting clothing that you don’t have to pull on over your head. You would be terribly displeased if you were to make a sudden movement or roll over on a bulb and have it pull away from the stitch that’s holding it in place so try sleeping exclusively on your back over the next few weeks.” Dr. Echeverria pointed to the stitch as he spoke.

  “And for the record, sudden movements of your arm in general are not recommended,” he added with a smile.

  In fear that she might lose consciousness, Toni decided to pull up a chair next to Kat’s bedside. She let go of Kat’s hand so that she could start taking notes. She needed to treat this as dispassionately as possible so Kat became her subject and she a medical student needing to absorb this information as it would most assuredly be on the final exam. She made the notation: to create suction, collapse bulb before closing. She had a much easier time dealing with her own physical maladies but when it came to Kat, especially so with Kat, she fell to pieces with the first drop of blood. She wasn’t that way with anyone else, only Kat.

  ******

  Toni had been provided with plenty of opportunities to hone her rudimentary medic skills, patching up an athletic yet accident prone Giovanni every time he ran into the house bleeding, swaths of skin suspiciously missing from whichever joint had been unlucky enough to have become a sacrifice to the gods of the city playground’s unyielding pavement. His knees and elbows suffered a constant cycle of dermal loss, barely having sufficient time to scab and heal before succumbing once again to an unforgiving gravitational force. His numerous injuries resulted primarily from falls off of his skateboard with a stunt gone horribly awry or from inadvisably sliding into home plate arms stretched out, head first – on cement.

  He was a cute tyke, but not terribly bright. Toni sometimes wondered if perhaps her little brother was touched-in-the-head, as he never seemed to learn his lesson and reduce his risk appetite. Rather than being concerned about getting hurt, he sought only to hide his injuries from his mother, knowing that if she were to see them, she would refuse to allow him to go back out and play, insisting that he remain in the house like a good boy and vegetate, bored senseless. To him, the suggestion that he waste a perfectly sunny day inside the house reading a book was absurd. That little action-oriented tyke believed reading to be an option only of interest to his sisters. He knew he could count on both of his big sisters to patch him up and keep his confidence, Toni even more so, a trust bond they would share well into adulthood – lessened of course, only after he made those inexcusably tasteless passes at Monica.

  One summer day, when the sun was relentlessly pounding down on the heads of the kids who weren’t quite swift enough to seek out shade, the aggregate effect of several consecutive hours of an angry sun beating down on them, coupled with insufficient hydration, created within them a budding rage that they were too young to have identified, not smart enough to have prevented, yet restless enough to have acted upon, would always be remembered by Toni as a particularly gruesome day.

  She was finishing her house-cleaning duties when she turned to see the blur of Giovanni pass by her as he ran into the house from the garage entrance, his left hand holding up his right arm at the elbow joint. His ulna was practically poking through his skin, which was the result of an impact by some neighborhood chucklehead who insisted on demonstrating the depth of his idiocy by recklessly swinging his nunchucks too close to an awestruck Giovanni.

  He fled directly to the half bath in the hallway where he proceeded to vomit profusely. Toni ran in after him, washed him up as quickly and quietly as possible through a steady stream of tears then stole a quick look at the wound to see how critical it was. Her initial assessment was that he wasn’t in imminent danger of dying – his bout of vomiting had been dehydration and fear-based rather than one borne of concussion as he said he had only been hit on the arm, plus he was lucid and correctly counted the number of fingers she held in front of him. She decided right then that the best course of action was to get him to the emergency room, asap.

  Only Nonno had been home at the time as everyone else was either at work, out playing or shopping and since he did not possess a drivers license, and Toni was only fourteen and not at all comfortable with the prospect of calling 911, she scooped him up, not waiting for her Nonno to change into his street clothes so he could accompany them to the hospital on foot, and flung open the garage door, quickly removing her bicycle.

  She gingerly picked up her little brother and placed him on the bike, balancing him on its bar, begging him to hold onto her as tightly as possible with his one good arm. Her heart almost broke when he looked up at her, wide-eyed, with his scared little face. The weight of the trust he was giving to her crushed against her heart. She felt an infusion of energy course through her body, too young to realize that she was experiencing a massive adrenaline rush. She peddled as quickly as she possibly could the entire two miles to the neighborhood hospital, one arm locked tightly around him, all while steering, braking and gear changing with the other. His mop-topped head blocked her view of his near-protruding bone as otherwise she would have lost her strength to the vagaries of empathy, immobilized as she would have been by fear and panic. They arrived at the emergency services entrance seven minutes later.

  She loved her little brother fiercely, but was also angry that he had gotten hurt on her watch. She feared that her parents would blame her for being inattentive as she had been assigned to babysit the boys until Antonia, Marcella and Nonna returned from the store and she had been the one to sanction his request to hang out with the neighborhood kids. She was relieved when the emergency room agreed to reset his bone
as Toni offered up her father’s insurance card, begging them to accept it as payment, saying that if they didn’t, and made Giovanni wait until he got home from work, her father would beat them both senseless – that certainly wasn’t true but she didn’t care as her performance was convincing enough to get the job done. With the greater good in mind, rules were routinely broken by the more adventurous, individualistic members of society.

  Toni was underage and not his legal guardian but there they were, alone without benefit of parental accompaniment, cell phones not yet having transformed into ubiquitous accessories in those technologically prehistoric days, which made people far less than immediately accessible. Toni lied again saying that her mother was dead and that her father was a sanitation worker whose route was in Brooklyn, hence nowhere near a phone so there would be no way in which to contact him.

  The emergency room resident agreed to set Giovanni’s bone only after Toni agreed to tell her father as soon as he came home from work. He placed the broken arm in a cast and gave him a very mild pain killer which made the ride home an interesting feat of balance as he quickly became mentally loopy and physically loose to the extent that he kept sliding off of the bar. Less than halfway home, Toni abandoned the possibility of a tandem ride and propped her brother up on the seat as she walked alongside the bike, her arm around his waist, with Giovanni leaning against her head and shoulder, the rest of the way home. Massimo Jr. and Nonno were nervously waiting at the front door when they returned home two hours later, Nonno exclaiming, ‘dio mio, dio mio, che catso hai fatto!’ as he carried Giovanni to the couch and told him in Italian to try and get some sleep. Toni waited for Giovanni to fall asleep and Nonno to leave the room before she wrote, ‘I’m a little numb-nut’, in black marker, on the underbelly of his cast.

  ******

  “Not that I’m a prima donna or anything, but will it be possible to use your private surgical suite for my second surgery?” Kat asked while Dr. Echeverria continued his diligent examination of the surgical site.

  “Of course it’s possible. It’s my preference as well. I maintain a fully accredited surgical suite in my office. There is a fee of course, but we can discuss the details at your next visit. I think you’ll be far more comfortable having the second procedure performed in a less hectic setting. Not only will it afford you much more privacy, but there will be less risk of infection. I also have a recovery room so you’ll be able to rest as your fluids are being replenished.

  “Well, everything looks very good for now. I see that Dr. Eclatant has signed your release papers. Have you met with the physical therapist yet? No? No problem. Once you meet with her, you’ll be free to go. If you need to schedule transportation, it’s a safe bet that you’ll be released by eleven o’clock at the latest.”

  Dr. Echeverria placed a hand on Kat’s shoulder, solemnly requesting that she focus entirely on healing as no medical benefit could be had by engaging in needless worry. He handed two prescriptions to Toni for pain medication, advising her to fill them forthwith and not wait until the pain became unbearable as then it would be too late to stem its progress. Toni shook his hand, thanking him for taking such meticulous care of Kat.

  Full Disclosure

  “You have got to be kidding me!! You decided that now would be the best time to broach this topic with me? Un-fucking-believable. Why tell me at all? What made you think I needed to know that little nugget of historical fact! Christ, Toni. I’m in the process of convalescing, needing to direct my entire energy stream toward positive thinking and you have chosen this moment, of all the moments we’ve had since getting back together, nearly a year’s worth of co-habitation and for some strange reason, as I lay here, prone, vulnerable, near-death – oh fuck you Toni, don’t give me that incredulous face; I’m allowed to engage in a bit of emotive histrionics given my situation. I’ve just had a cancerous lesion, not to mention my beautiful breast, removed from my body.

  “Where was I? Oh yes. Here I am, doing my best to maintain my center so I can heal, my guard completely down, vulnerability in spades and now is when you decide to lay this shit on me? You did it now because I’m not in the physical position to slap you senseless, right? Catch me when I’m at my weakest and maybe I’ll just let it slide or be so understanding and sympathetic that your confession won’t be met with hard feelings or residual animosity?

  “So tell me Toni, how was it? Was he the love of your life? Did you feel as if you’d found ‘the one’ and that you could finally be normal and bring him home to meet your parents, sit back with smug satisfaction as they proudly paraded you around to friends and neighbors, so grateful they would no longer have to defend you and your lifestyle, secretly pleased that you had come to your senses and gone straight? Is that what happened? Why aren’t you saying anything?” Kat was doing her best to remain calm as even though two-weeks had passed since her surgery, the slightest activity brought on extreme fatigue and this argument was beginning to exhaust her.

  “He didn’t mean anything to me. Like I said, I was just trying to make myself feel better – feel wanted, maybe. My heart was broken; you broke it! I just wanted to erase my past, start over again. I don’t know.” Toni was unceremoniously stopped dead by a howling sound, the timbre of which was just short of human.

  “Oh, bravo, Toni! Where’d you get that nonsense from? Ladies and Gentlemen, ripped directly from a really bad B-rate romance novel, The Life and Times of Toni Mangiarmi, The Straight Years. Try again and this time, no bullshit please.” Kat stopped clapping and gave Toni one of Antonia’s patented squinty stares.

  Toni made a mental note to mention to Kat how much her mother seemed to have rubbed off on her. Under better circumstances it would have been hilarious. She was amazed that Kat hadn’t also given her the mid-rise threat of a bitch-slap. Then it hit her - Oh my god, I’m in a relationship with my mother!, she thought, smiling at the absurdity of it.

  “Seriously, you’re smiling? Mind sharing the joke with me? I really could use the endorphin release right about now.” Kat’s gaze was steady and continued to create a pervasive disquiet. Such a beautiful woman, so chilling a glare – the incongruity was disturbing.

  “Look, I went to the party ready to beg your forgiveness and not leave until you agreed to take me back. I never thought in a million years that my world was about to be torn apart. You don’t know how awful it was for me over those next couple of days. I was catatonic. I just wanted to die. I spoke with Gene; he said I needed to get over myself, that life was too short to lament the loss of something over which I had no control.

  “The problem was, not only was I hurt, but I was angry as well – really angry at myself, at you, at the world, at everything for being so unfair and that’s what prompted me to call this guy who’d been pestering me to go out with him since before I broke up with Monica. I told him that I was willing to give it a shot.

  “Needless to say, I was more miserable with him than I was being alone with my misery. We had sex only a handful of times over the few months that we dated. I could barely bring myself to touch him after the first few times and I hated the way it felt when he touched me – so clumsy and stilted. He was boring and so full of himself – sex with him was a fucking chore. I mean he was so self conscious, always expecting me to validate how good he was, when he should have known damn well he was barely mediocre.”

  “Well, imagine how horrible it must have been for him to have his woman lying underneath him, immobile, disinterested, counting the minutes until he came, wishing she were anywhere else doing almost anything else.” Kat’s mood lightened considerably as soon as she conjured an image of the sexually frustrated couple, Toni trying so hard but being unsuccessful in her quest to be simultaneously normal and spiteful, her boyfriend sulking over having dead wood in his bed.

  “Don’t take his side, all right? Geeze – not cool at all.”

  “Fine, Toni. Just tell your story, already!” Kat feigned exasperation but in truth she was beginning to enjoy her
self immensely, content with the knowledge that Toni had such a lousy sexual experience.

  “That wasn’t even the worst part of the relationship. I was sick to death of his tacit demands that I buy into this whole role-playing thing, like I was expected to defer to him, to be demure, to be less competent, to feign interest in his boring stories, to let him win at everything, to let him be the only one who was interesting or funny.

  “It’s like I was there to make him feel good about himself – to make him feel like a man and if I didn’t then he’d sulk and get spiteful - passive-aggressively spiteful, you know? Like I really gave a shit about his stupid feelings. I didn’t lose one night’s sleep when he tried to lay those guilt trips on me about how selfish he thought I was and how I wasn’t trying hard enough to make the relationship work – to be his submissive little bitch was more like it, though.

  “What he didn’t realize was that I was keeping myself in check so that I didn’t lay into him and let him know what I really thought about him. The whole experience left me dazed and disgusted. When I realized that I was starting to hate myself as well, that’s when I planned my exit strategy.”

  “Wait. Hold up a minute. Did you do overnights together?” Kat asked in amazement.

  “Not many – in the beginning, like during the first two months, I spent a few weekend nights at his place, but things turned sour very quickly. I didn’t want to cuddle with him so I slept at the edge of the bed. I started to feel physically revolted by his touch; it was so utilitarian, so mechanical – no skill, you know? When we were lying down, he would rest his hand on top of my head. To me, it felt like the physical manifestation of a metaphor for trying to keep me down. No sensitivity, no passion, no sparks!