on your fibula.”
The doctor supports your hand by the palm with three of her powerful fingers.
“We’ll have to put it in a cast.”
She lays your arm on your thigh and it jumps up across your knee. She watches this and then turns to a cabinet. She pulls a gauze sleeve over your wrist and your fingers catch on the fibre, each one snapping out independently. She stops. You can tell that she’s looking at your face, your self-portrait. You don’t look up. You hold it as still as you can.
“You’re going to have some trouble with this. I’m going to get a Valium for you, maybe two.”
When she leaves you hold your forearm up. A long, white glove. You let a falcon land on it and draw it closer, allowing its hooked beak to close on your lips. The bird flits a tiny brown tongue along the rip of your bottom lip. By the time the doctor returns you have an erection. You fold your wrists in your lap and as she unties the swollen arm from the thin one she sees your cock standing against the filthy fabric of your crotch. It’s confusing to you. Clear to her. She places two powder blue pills in your good hand and you pop them across your mouth and down your throat. She leaves again;
to let the benzodiazapine have its effect,
you think.
Your arm softens in your lap, your erection subsides, and you feel the emotional catchbasin of interrupted withdrawal back up, clogging your pores, drying your forehead. More of a wreck for the abating anxiety. There is an opiate drizzling weakly across the agony in your back.
The doctor comes back.
“Do you drink?”
You smile.
Well, isn’t it a shame?
“I notice you have track marks on your arms.”
You make a face like Buster Keaton, tilting your jaw.
Yes, the problem is huge, altogether too far gone, I think.
“I’ve been talking to another physician and he’s calling a detox for you now.”
You look up. No,
you don’t have to do that for me, but thank you so very much. Do you think it will help? Doctor?
You can tell she likes you, which is such a strong feeling that you are already looking forward to saying goodbye. A man appears in the door and they look at each other. A sweet history of desire links them and you believe, as you watch them, you see her panties tugging upward and the jelly mould of his cock melting down his leg. You believe that they are becoming linked through you.
“Uh … I contacted a detox and, well, you’ve been banned from there for thirty days.”
The female doctor drags four spears of black hair from her forehead with the plaster-speckled back of her hand.
“Well, there’s more than one detox in the city.”
You think they will take you home.
“Yeah, I know doctor, I’ve tried a few actually, and there’s a …” He nods to you, too late to say serious things, it’s time to load the bier. “There’s a province-wide ban on the fella.”
The doctor looks at you. The worse you are, the more you matter to her. She would do anything not to insult you now. Now that you are what these two have alwaysshared, the patient still living who will be lost. She pauses dramatically over the wounds on your face, and you turn your head slightly, so the light catches the medical rainbow that bends across your left cheek.
“I can’t believe that. What are we supposed to do with him?”
With him,
you think.
She didn’t say for him.
You feel a light whip turn over inside your arm.
We all love each other, that is obvious now.
The emergency ward has wide windows that slide open at the prompting of ocean air, warm air that moves in across the sunlit desk. There is a white grit of beach sand on the floor emptied out from the sneakers of hundreds of children who pass the same foot wound back and forth around a giant log in English Bay. You are standing halfway to the sliding door, with a white cast and dark smelling clothes. She is upset, standing behind the desk. She looks to him,
we can’t just let him go.
He looks back.
We have to. We can’t kill
The doctor supports your hand by the palm with three of her powerful fingers.
“We’ll have to put it in a cast.”
She lays your arm on your thigh and it jumps up across your knee. She watches this and then turns to a cabinet. She pulls a gauze sleeve over your wrist and your fingers catch on the fibre, each one snapping out independently. She stops. You can tell that she’s looking at your face, your self-portrait. You don’t look up. You hold it as still as you can.
“You’re going to have some trouble with this. I’m going to get a Valium for you, maybe two.”
When she leaves you hold your forearm up. A long, white glove. You let a falcon land on it and draw it closer, allowing its hooked beak to close on your lips. The bird flits a tiny brown tongue along the rip of your bottom lip. By the time the doctor returns you have an erection. You fold your wrists in your lap and as she unties the swollen arm from the thin one she sees your cock standing against the filthy fabric of your crotch. It’s confusing to you. Clear to her. She places two powder blue pills in your good hand and you pop them across your mouth and down your throat. She leaves again;
to let the benzodiazapine have its effect,
you think.
Your arm softens in your lap, your erection subsides, and you feel the emotional catchbasin of interrupted withdrawal back up, clogging your pores, drying your forehead. More of a wreck for the abating anxiety. There is an opiate drizzling weakly across the agony in your back.
The doctor comes back.
“Do you drink?”
You smile.
Well, isn’t it a shame?
“I notice you have track marks on your arms.”
You make a face like Buster Keaton, tilting your jaw.
Yes, the problem is huge, altogether too far gone, I think.
“I’ve been talking to another physician and he’s calling a detox for you now.”
You look up. No,
you don’t have to do that for me, but thank you so very much. Do you think it will help? Doctor?
You can tell she likes you, which is such a strong feeling that you are already looking forward to saying goodbye. A man appears in the door and they look at each other. A sweet history of desire links them and you believe, as you watch them, you see her panties tugging upward and the jelly mould of his cock melting down his leg. You believe that they are becoming linked through you.
“Uh … I contacted a detox and, well, you’ve been banned from there for thirty days.”
The female doctor drags four spears of black hair from her forehead with the plaster-speckled back of her hand.
“Well, there’s more than one detox in the city.”
You think they will take you home.
“Yeah, I know doctor, I’ve tried a few actually, and there’s a …” He nods to you, too late to say serious things, it’s time to load the bier. “There’s a province-wide ban on the fella.”
The doctor looks at you. The worse you are, the more you matter to her. She would do anything not to insult you now. Now that you are what these two have alwaysshared, the patient still living who will be lost. She pauses dramatically over the wounds on your face, and you turn your head slightly, so the light catches the medical rainbow that bends across your left cheek.
“I can’t believe that. What are we supposed to do with him?”
With him,
you think.
She didn’t say for him.
You feel a light whip turn over inside your arm.
We all love each other, that is obvious now.
The emergency ward has wide windows that slide open at the prompting of ocean air, warm air that moves in across the sunlit desk. There is a white grit of beach sand on the floor emptied out from the sneakers of hundreds of children who pass the same foot wound back and forth around a giant log in English Bay. You are standing halfway to the sliding door, with a white cast and dark smelling clothes. She is upset, standing behind the desk. She looks to him,
we can’t just let him go.
He looks back.
We have to. We can’t kill
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