electric bubble
She tried not to think, just listen. The man with the long greasy hair had looked so nervous. He was still, but his eyes paced, and his energy knocked its elbows on every hard surface in the room. She did not grimace when he described his neck surgery, the video he watched, the surgeons peeling him back like double doors on the front of a church, esophagus a center aisle surrounded by muscle pews.
The nurse could not get blood, poked at both arms. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry.” another. “I’m sorry.” Again. “Oh, I’m so sorry.” He shook his head at the marks in his arms: some hers, most his, and said it used to be easier. He grimaced at that; she felt sick and blinked 20 times at the smudgy blot on the metal clip of the clipboard in her lap.
Every needle poke, before, now and since, tiny perforations in his electric bubble. How could a soul be so damaged?
The nurse tsked her tongue against her teeth, sat back on her haunches and shrugged. “I don’t want to make you my pincushion. Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“I can’t really feel it anymore,” he told her and shrugged. Regret regret regret spilled from his pockets like loose change and lip balm. It rolled across the linoleum and bumped her toe, the heat of it pierced her shoe and traveled until it settled in her right wrist. She drew a circle on his record and scribbled it in.
