My organs are swelling, too large for my body. They aren’t mine sometimes. I hate going to the doctor. Afraid of the doors there, on either side of the waiting room. Outside, where everything happens, I can't see it. Swimming along in the surf unaware, beneath us, below the surface. Inside is worse, a mystery, and maybe if I don’t open up that door: the other side will give up knocking and just go away. Inside, in-between, here in the middle space, nothing place that’s not, not its own, un-owned. Toys to keep the kids busy, so maybe we don’t look under the sheet.
So fucking impenetrable, you’re not even listening to me!
We were having dinner, arguing, then arguing a lot, about living together.
We’re already inseparable, just for a while, test it out.
I don’t think it’s a good idea.
There wasn’t enough oxygen for two of us.
My stomach hurts Babe.
I’m listening, really.
Can we go outside, get some air?
Laying on the concrete bench. October now, just starting to get cold, smog isn’t so thick. I’d be looking up at stars, it fucking hurts, can’t see, rolling over, vomiting off the edge. The pain edged back, didn’t seem like I’d pop, started the car and drove us home. We didn’t live together but you spent five nights a week at my place. Straight shot east from the ocean through the oil field. At night none of that’s lit up, glow from the city silhouettes the rigging and Pump-jacks, pushing their tongues deeper in the dirt. Larger ones suck up thirty litres of crude oil, mud, and water with each thrust. The small ones, the kind they’ve got stuck between houses, they do about five litres at a time. Average adults have five litres of blood give or take, sometimes the pumps aren’t so precise.
Pumping, pumping, pumping, diving in and out, out and in that rhythm. Road riding east to west, in a perfect line. The 34th northern parallel. One single circlet passing right through me on that road, through the drill site, and on. If the 34th were my body; Los Angeles could be my heart, with concrete arteries, and as it moves through Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan perforating the rest of my organs. Ones that keep me moving, keep me feeling, feel more conflict swelling, pooling, away from my hands and feet. We go into hypothermia once we’ve dropped below 35° and here at thirty-four I can feel all my blood rushing in away from her hand. Filling me up.
It’s so hot. I need a pump-jack built on my back, at night it can lap up five litres and I’ll feel nothing wrong in the morning. Pump-jacks are driven by The Central Power. A single one pushing a dozen or more bodies. Thrusting at once. A cable made of steel, a bridle, connecting horse head to a polished rod, a piston that passes in and out of the stuffing box. All night in and out, my breathing, in and out of bed. We didn’t finish talking, the pain it’s throbbing. Sleep didn’t come to the stillness under the window, no wind blowing east from the shore.
It’s better now. Not so bad... Really!
If it’s like this tomorrow morning, I’ll go to the free clinic.
I’m lying to her. Nothing changed, endorphins took over and I’m getting used to it. Accustomed to the drilling.
She had work in the morning. Replanting native grasses and delta brush, ‘healing’ the land between bowing horse heads. I went to the clinic. It doesn’t have the equipment to deal with much. Might prescribe me low-grade painkillers or weak antibiotics. Trades more in gonorrhoea and gunshots. Different holes.
Worried my appendix is perforating, ripping inside me. Little thing swelled to the size of my finger if it’s true. Just that big. Not a well, well it’s okay to dig up the relationship around it, collapsing inwards. Maintained balance after everything around is ravaged. Wars of foreign invaders and the cells we recruit to fight.
I’m not sold, he wants to take a few vials of blood.
Just to make sure
Just one hole, a little poke -or two, missile strikes missed the first time. Punch in, pump it out!
One vial to Search for foreign bodies.
A second to scan for renegade cells. Cancerous behaviours.
A third marking overly aggressive native responses.
And the fourth looking for lacking structural integrities in local government.
Blood won’t tell daily readers much anyway. I’ll wait till she’s off work. Sweating and covered in dirt when she comes in. Ashamed to tell her how bad it hurts. Radio signals don’t reach that far, the bumper rattles as we drive back across the cracked pavement. Humming Central Power Systems fill the silence between us on the way to the hospital.
It’s a labyrinth, Member’s-Only private club, and if you believe the yelp reviews a damn good one. I’m lucky, working for a company that does health insurance through them. One with TV adverts and billboards on the freeway.
Because we care. Together. For more tomorrows. One for all. Oorah!
In the waiting room. She helped me fill out the basic information. Can’t focus on the
Clipboard. Closed captions on silenced news, Black bars highlighting white text. There’s been a shooting in Athens Georgia, parking lot of the Goodwill. Words don’t fit in the reporter’s mouth and the banner across the bottom: NEW BRIDGE COMPLETE/PROTESTS IN AKSAI/NO ATTENDEES/UNINHABITABLE LAND. Floating over her left shoulder, Naft Shahar oil field. Common-wealth of the Iraq/Iran border. 1931 when the English first found oil here. Never had much in the way of safety measures or emergency aid equipment.
Waiting on that edge waiting for an eruption, waiting, waiting, waiting here in this room.
Mr Roe? Jacob Roe?
Babe, c’mon they’re calling you in.
Here, we’re here!
Following her and the nurse. KTLA on the mint green wall. Mint green upholstery, every single chair. It’s supposed to be relaxing/refreshing/clean/to soothe you. Looks like it’s never been clean. A little sickly, scrubbed so many times but it’s always going to be infected. Never fully painted over. Security desk, mint green stretching around the corner, mint green through swinging double doors. To a small room, spare, maybe, full of equipment I don’t need, a storage room. Different kinds of waiting.
They’ve taken my measures. My pulse. My hair and eye colour. Blood type, name. Given a bracelet, I can’t remove, got a number and a barcode. That’s it. Just a scan: every single trip through I’ve ever taken is recorded. Except for one, death stats aren’t reported accurately. I could probably take this number anywhere. As long as I’m visible to the system, no need to remember history or injury.
Rustling curtains, a man in blue comes through the doorway, white coat on his shoulders.
I’m going to need to take some blood.
Again.
Pump-jack nods, surgical latitude band tightens, my body is smaller, my distant hand more isolated than ever. Easier to push the needle in installing a well for the vials as they fill. A thick wave splashing glass. The whole time he’s nodding. One. Two. Three. Four more vials to answer the same questions, buzzing lights and chirping heart monitor. He leaves us alone again.
Should I call anyone else?
An hour later. Everything looks normal, we’re not too sure. I’m going to need to take a little more, It’s important to us that we know you’re safe. Another well gets installed an inch further down my arm. Three more vials. News stories on repeat. The rooms around me empty. Good to go, you’ll receive a call in a few days, with target and location orders of care for the discharged.
A few nods and two more vials, tests keep coming up negative but damnit he’s gonna find something. I’m up to nine today, eleven hours starting to feel it, a bit. Lightheaded compliance. It’s quiet outside the room. The sun is rising over the oil field now, workers are shaking sand out of their boots.
The Curtain shifts. Mint green camouflage and a buzz-cut, tall, gaunt, gliding in.
They’re going to prep you for surgery, we want to remove your appendix.
How do you know?
What’d the blood say?
The tests were clear, but we’d feel better if we just took it all out now. Better for everyone. We don’t like risking insurrection, and we’d prefer your consent.
Can you double-check?
Well.
He leans onto the bed rail, one hand by my neck, the other near my thigh. One shove he shakes the bed like an earthquake. So much fucking pain.
See? We’re taking it out.
Yeah. Ok.
We’ll have you prepped and in surgery tonight.
More papers signed. Phone calls, made. My barcode is scanned. Said goodbye, see you soon.
Loaded into a wheelchair, one nurse pushes me out alone through the underground concrete hallways.
Whatcha havin’ done?
Extraction.
Doctor Green?
Yeah, I think so.
She laughs ooh boy it’d be him that man works fast I tell ya. Loves to get his hands dirty.
The lights are dimmed here, probably to save energy, I haven’t actually seen another patient in a long time now that I think about it, and maybe it’s just me? Nah, the place is too big for something like that.
In my new bed with the mask on.
Breathing in.
Breathing Out.
Count down from 40, please?
And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors!
39. 38. 37. 36. 35....