Pools
At 5.54am on a Friday in early spring, I decided that using the phrase “pool of blood” is a pretty good tell for someone who’s never actually seen a pool of blood. Mostly because it doesn’t do that. Blood on the floor sticks to soles and walks patterns around a room, soaks in tendrils up scrub pants like a perverse plant, and, most of all, it doesn’t pool; it coagulates. Even once unwillingly and dangerously liberated from the body it belongs in, blood keeps on trying to save you, turning into a deep red thinly gelatinous mass, holding itself into arteries and veins that aren’t there anymore.
Maybe it’s meant to be obvious, but no one tells you that the inside of a bleeding belly is going to be sticky and smooth and warm. No one tells you that an open artery will paint the front of the blue plastic gown you’ve got on. I don’t know when you learn how to know that a knife to pale, vulnerable skin is the choice that will cause the least possible harm.
Eventually, maybe, I’ll learn. But not now. Not on this Friday morning that is now closer to 8.00. Even as he grows cold to the touch, you sew the patient/the person/the body back up. These stitches matter maybe more than any others you’ll ever do because, with time, those ones will heal. But, if the religious people got it right, he’s going to take this nylon and vicryl to meet his maker. Or maybe they, too, like the sticky masses of blood on the floor, will fall out and get lost along the way.
There’s no instruction manual, no textbook chapter, and no test that will tell you how you’ll clean your shoes and how to sit on the floor of your tiny bathtub, washing the red from your feet where it has soaked through your socks. The only path to follow is a stray set of footprints tracking down the white, artificially lit hallway that fade out as they turn towards an unmarked door.
Eventually, in a way that aches deep between your lungs and crawls across your heart, the large, bright room is once again silent. My back is sliding down the wall, knees bent, fists to my forehead. The only sound is irregular, broken breaths and the soft sounds of people gathering stained sheets, soaked towels, and clearing away the piles of unbelievable amounts of gelatinous blood.
No monitors, no crowds. No running in and out. No more biological ultimatums. Just red on red on red on white tile and the still and the deathly quiet. Outside, far above this operating room, it’s 9.00 am on a cool spring morning. Over my head, the sidewalk has grown noisy and crowded with tired and hurried commuters, concerned about their upcoming deadlines and chilled to the bone as they splash through growing pools of clear, cold rain.
