4. You Have No Faith In Medicine
FOUR
YOU HAVE NO FAITH IN MEDICINE
HARKINS
Sterile white.
My least favorite shade of despair.
It’s almost blue, it’s so bright, so clean, as if people aren’t shitting their brains out or bleeding from their asses day in and out in these rooms.
The bed beneath me has dark brown stains from the last time someone bled on it.
The monitor beeps with my blood pressure, an annoying reminder that this is my own doing.
I try to lick the cracks marring my bottom lip, but my tongue feels like sandpaper against them.
I cough instead in an attempt to clear something imaginary lodged in my throat.
Lifting my hand to cover my mouth, I’m weighed down by the heaviness of my wrist. My hand doesn’t feel like it belongs on me. As I shift my gaze to the bloody bandages, the memory of the previous night floods my mind.
My own doing.
The only solution.
“Good morning, Mister Harkins.” A far too cheery nurse holds up a clipboard as she makes her way toward my beeping monitor.
“Camila.” The only thing I want makes itself known before I can think coherently.
“We’ve met before, I’m Ferreira, but folks around here call me Ferra.” She gives a big smile, the nickname surely supposed to be some way to soothe those desperate for miracles.
“Where is Camila?” I manage a full sentence without having to clear my throat.
“Who?” She furrows her eyebrows in confusion before flipping through some papers on the clipboard.
“I don’t believe you’ve had any family calling yet.
Doctor Valerian will have to clear you for visitors, but we’re still quite some time away from that, my dear.
It’s time to focus on you first, okay? We’ll have time to call Camila and let her know everything. First, you.”
I shake my head, panic already building in my chest, tightening every muscle around my ribcage and constricting like a boa wrapping its way around me.
It threatens to break me from the pressure, to shatter me from the inside out until all I am is a flesh-bag of pulverized bones waiting to cough out dust on my final breath.
“She’s here.” I drag out the words like they themselves scratch the soft tissue of my throat.
The nurse looks around uncomfortably, giving me an awkward but professional smile. “We’ll get you all squared away. You’ll be feeling better in no time, okay…” she looks at the clipboard once more before meeting my eyes, “Demetri.”
I turn my head to the side, focusing my gaze on the window and the outside world. Or rather, I turn my focus from inward to outward, where there’s no world left for me anymore.
Not out there, and maybe not in here.
The charge nurse’s voice is losing its kindness.
“You have to eat something.”
I don’t answer.
“It’s been two days, Demetri. We can’t release you from treatment if you cannot care for yourself.
” Her nostrils flare, but all I can do is blink between the spaces of my breaths.
“Take your medicine, or the doctor will likely find an alternative,” Nurse Ferreira warns.
It isn’t the first time she’s threatened it.
I inhale, my thoughts becoming a bit too clear for my liking with fresh oxygen to feed my brain cells. “Camila.” I say the only name I’ve spoken in nearly forty-eight hours, the only word I seem to be able to create with my tongue.
“She’d want you to take your medicine, so you can go see her.”
I don’t know what one thing has to do with the other, why she’s kept away from me when we’re in the same goddamn building, or if she even knows I’ve come for her.
“Can I call her?” I finally muster more than a single word response.
“No, the doctor has to approve you for calls, and that won’t happen until…” She draws out the final syllables as she flips the papers on her clipboard in a dramatic flourish to conjure up some sort of anticipation. “Ah, here it is. Until you take your medicine, Mr. Harkins.”
“I don’t need it.” I turn my gaze to the window to signify the conversation is done, the small opening of light serving as my only form of entertainment the last two days.
There’s a little junco who visits me a few times a day, fluttering on a nearby tree branch, his dark, beady eyes a promise of hope I cannot find within myself.
The nurse sighs, exhausted by my depressive mannerisms and my lack of enthusiasm for existing. None of it’s new, none of it’s foreign, all parts of me that lay the foundation for who I am now resurfacing with the absence of the only thing that urges my heart to beat.
“Try to eat. Please, Mr. Harkins. You don’t belong here, and I’d hate to see what too much time in this place might do to you.” She sounds different than before, her tone laced with dread and her voice quieter.
“What?” I ask.
“Take your medications. After that, we can pray, and maybe tomorrow, we can visit the chapel on the main floor.” She plants a protein shake next to the food tray, some bright blue bottle that looks less like food and more like medicine.
I scrunch my nose at it, returning to my dark-feathered friend singing his morning song. I should hate him. Little fucker has kept me awake at all hours of the day and night. He has no bedtime, no schedule. The little junco comes to warn me. I know this.
His song is a message.
His call is a caution.
I want to plug my ears so as not to listen, but I don’t turn away.
“Demetri.” Ferreira’s tone is devoid of kindness or empathy now, her well of patience running dry. “You’ll never get better if you don’t get better.”
It’s a stupid fucking thing to say, despite the faux positivity lined behind it. I don’t acknowledge her, my desire for anything aside from Camila keeping me locked within myself.
“Your fiancée is focusing on her healing. She doesn’t want to see you.” Her words are glass shards, ripping the sutures on my wrist, bleeding me out again all over the hospital’s white sheets.
I swallow their jagged pieces, hoping they’ll rip my insides to shreds on their way down.
But I don’t give her the satisfaction. I don’t acknowledge the heaviness of it all.
Not in front of her.