Story #1 What He Did to Me (Class Workshop)

Danielle Orner
Story # 1
02/20/07
What He Did to Me
At first, I didn’t know how badly it had affected me. The relationship had only lasted a few months, after all. I waited tensely and silently for a few days after the end like a person awaiting the results of a biopsy. I moved as little as possible so as to be keenly aware of every twitch or irregularity in my body or psyche. Yet, no cravings for full cartons of double fudge ice cream, or desires to burn all the articles of clothing and the love notes he had left behind, or urges to spend the afternoon sobbing over coke advertisements in my pajamas occurred. I thought I was in the clear.
The morning after I let my guard down, I awoke to find something wet and warm beneath my left forearm. Groggily, I registered the damp sensation and sat up rubbing my eyes. There was a smudge of red liquid drying quickly on the light skin of my inner forearm. I was wiping the spot with the palm of my hand when I looked down at the wet, warm something. It was small, the size of an infant bird whose eyes have not yet opened and whose body is naked without even the beginnings of feathers. I know what a baby bird looks like because my best friend, Morgan, brought one to class in the third grade. It had fallen out of a tree by her bus stop. Even though we wrapped it in towels and fed it wet pieces of dog food like the animal control people told us to, the baby bird died before the end of the school day. The something wet and warm reminded me of that sightless infant bird in more ways than just its size. It was raw red and moved with a weak pulsing flutter. There was a purple vein quivering across the top of it which reminded me of the translucent skin of the bird and delicate veins visible beneath it. All around the something, a pool of velvet crimson liquid soaked into my white bed sheets. The pool wasn’t still; it grew the tiniest fraction in diameter as the something continued to bleed. I scooped the something up and cradled it in my palms. I could feel its shivering movements and the warmth leaving it in tiny spurts. When I glanced down at its clumsy red spot on the sheets, I noticed another slightly smaller something near my pillow. With slow realization, I moved one hand to my chest and felt a tear in my nightgown below the curve of my left breast. Tenderly working my fingers beneath it, I traced the edges of a gaping hole between my ribs. My fingertips came away stained with red.
I climbed out of bed and placed my bare feet on the carpet. Pulling back the sheets, I found five fragments of quivering, scarlet somethings each lying in their own damp dot. I pilled them in my cupped palms and carried them to the kitchen. Taking the towel from the refrigerator door and balancing the miniature heap, I managed to spread out a soft resting place on the counter to leave them. With my hands freed, I searched for the plastic Ziploc bags. I found two sizes: freezer and sandwich. I held them up side by side and tried to determine which to use. The sandwich bag seemed like it would work but the fragments would have to be squished together. The thought of their pulsing bodies squeezed against plastic made me shiver. Yet, the freezer bag seemed so large and the excess plastic would have to be wrapped around the tiny bundle to keep it from bouncing all around. I thought for a moment that I could divide the pieces and place them in separate sandwich bags. The thought passed quickly. I finally settled on the freezer bag and gently situated the fragments in a corner before zipping and wrapping. Carrying the package with me, I returned to the bedroom and dressed in a t-shirt, jeans, and a jacket. I was afraid to put on a bra since the under wire would intersect my wound. Placing the plastic bag at the bottom of my large canvas purse, I cupped my hand around the small bulge it made in the side of the purse to keep it from shifting. I head for the door but at the last moment turned back to the bedroom. I stripped the sheets off the bed and stuffed them into the hamper. The mattress was dotted with splotches of blood that had soaked through the sheets. I sprayed some foamy stain remover on each dot.
I took the subway to the hospital downtown. I sat with my canvas purse on my lap, still clutching the bag through the fabric. Pulling my jacket tightly around my body to hide the fact that I was braless, I studied the other passengers’ faces to see if the suspected anything was wrong. One black lady with kind eyes and colorful beads tied in at the bottoms of her thousand braids gave me a sympathetic smile but that could’ve been because I was scrutinizing her. The car shuttered on and on through the endless tunnels to the rhythm of shifting lights. Passengers changed around me until finally my platform appeared magically out of the moving cement wall. I struggled off the train trying not to be bumped or jostled by too many people. Gratefully, I reached the street and walked two blocks to the nondescript hospital named Mercy something. Inside the sliding doors, I filled out several clipboards worth of paperwork before choosing a chair in the corner next to the magazine rack.
I waited three and a half hours while more urgent cases, like poisoned children and auto wreck victims, were ushered in. Finally, the frazzled nurse called my name. She walked me to another room and instructed me to sit on the crinkly paper-covered bed. I took out my plastic bag and gingerly laid it on a metal tray next to the bed. A doctor with a glasses and a bald spot glanced at me and flipped through my chart before leaving the mundane task of healing me to the nurse. She chatted like a hairdresser while deftly stitching the fragments together. She paused for a moment in the middle of her monologue on her husband’s (or was it her son’s) brief flirtation with a career in dentistry to tell me to lie back and relax. Before she could finish her story, she had reinserted the stitched-up fragments and bandaged my wound. I had to sit on the table for several more minutes, while she explained what her son does for a living now, before she told me how to find my way back to the waiting room. Then I was out in the street, on the platform, on the train, on another street, and in my living room. During the entire trip, my canvas purse felt light and empty.
I washed my sheets and, while they tumbled in the dryer, I scrubbed the mattress. I made the bed, fluffed the pillows, and smoothed the comforter. Once everything was clean, I crawled into the fresh-linen scented cave of white. With one hand over my bandage, I held my body very still and concentrated on healing.