Flesh Wounds (excerpt)

"It’s about an hour before someone remembers I’m there. I’m not mad. It’s a hospital..."

My hands cramp around the steel edges of a medical exam table, trying to keep myself from sliding off headfirst in the dark.  Through the thin walls I can hear nurses talking, thuds of equipment and people, someone’s low sobbing, the rattle and judder of a gurney.  Over the PA speakers, a code blue, and a split second’s silence before someone runs down the hallway. 

The nurse who showed me into this room told me I’d be laying quietly in darkened, unstressful place, head lower than my feet.  My nose itches and I wonder whether I can scratch it without gravity demanding a sacrifice.  Could I manage to flip myself around enough not to land on the hard tile floor on the back of my head if I started to slide down? I do not trust the people here in this tiny hospital in central Ohio to be able to deal with a brain injury, or at least not one involving my own personal brain. Besides, we’re already pretty sure there’s something wrong with my brain.  That’s why I’m there.  

I am fifty years old and I’ve been suicidal, more or less, for most of them.  Finally someone with the right cluster of consonants after their name has had the bright idea to test my neurotransmitter levels.  My psychiatrist has reassured me that the overburdened, underfunded county hospital near where I live will do fine for them to get the blood they need for it.

It is important, the nurse emphasized before turning out the light and closing the door behind her, that I not think about difficult things while I wait.