yellow layer of fat, splintered bone shining in the crisp sunlight.
Niska swims slowly past. My leg hangs from her jaws, loosely flexed at the knee. Flashbulbs pop in the stands and I think, Thatâs not what they came to see, but then maybe it is. My wetsuitâs torn to the breastbone, peeled back in flaps to reveal tanned flesh, gym-sculpted abs, clean-shaven groin, my painfully erect cock. Brachial veins running like river systems under the elastic flesh, its sizeâ6 3 â4 inches: Iâd measured, digging the ruler into my crotch for an added quarter-inchâ grossly amplified, monstrous and hemorrhaging blood.
The cute trainerâs lips move but no sound comes out. âIâm okay,â I tell her, and smile. âItâs o-o-kay, Iâm ⦠fine.â Sheâs crying, sheâs shaking her head. Overhead, a big pale sun burns without heat. I wish everyone would go away and leave me alone, wish I were somewhere dark and quiet and cool. My gaze drawn to a gap between the topmost seats and the amphitheater roof: calm ongoing sky reaching off to the horizon, remotely beautiful, all things in alignment.
Jesus, do something, do somethingâ¦Paramedics, move, move â¦
The leg, whereâs the fucking leg â¦
Quit pumping the plasma expander, his bloodâs thin as Kool-Aid â¦
These voices, even in the haze.
FIVE MONTHS LATER Iâm in a VW Beetle driving down the QEW. Snow piled along the highway-side and Lake Ontario a frozen white stretch off to the north. I can just make out the slender spike of the CN Tower rising beyond the Toronto harbor. Over the guardrails and down the snow-covered shoreline, two muffled figures sit round a hole drilled through the ice.
I sit in the passenger seat, cheek pressed to the window glass. My right leg rests against the padded doorframe. My left leg is mostly gone: a rude stump two inches below my crotch. The surgeons did a fine job, considering: high-gauge stitches left a ring of baby-pink dimples, a balloon knot of puckered flesh at the stub. I nearly died, or so Iâm told. The sacral, varicose, basilic, and femoral arteries merge in the upper thigh, pumping a pint of blood a minute. I lost over a gallon before the medics transfused me. From Niagara Falls, I was airlifted to the Hotel Dieu in St. Catharines, where a team of surgeons operated for two hours. Battleground surgery: a hundred years ago, some meatball medic wouldâve jammed a rum-soaked leather thong between my teeth and slathered the stump with boiling tar. Thanks to todayâs wonder drugs, I donât recall a damn thing.
I awoke two days later. The hospital roomâs every ledge festooned with flowers in frosted glass vases, plush white teddy bears, balloon bouquets bump-bumping in the AC flow. Condolences: family and friends and co-workers, old high-school acquaintances, ex-girlfriends softened by my pathetic state, a War Amps rep, the morbidly curious. A summer intern conducted a brief interview for the Standard .
âTell me what happened, in your own words.â
âIn my own words? A whale bit my leg off.â
âI see.â Scribbles on a notepad. âDid you see this coming?â
âWhat?â
âWas there, well, any ⦠hostility ⦠between the two of you?â
âYes. I was envious of the whaleâs career.â
âIs that so?â
âInsanely jealous, yes.â
âWill you be suing?â
âWhoâthe whale?â
âIs that possible?â
âGet out of here.â
Animal rights protesters held a rally on the hospitalâs front lawn. They toted placards bearing slogans: FREE NISKA and CAPTIVITY + MISTREATMENT = MURDER. They had a boombox playing âFreedom Callingâ and a huge inflatable whale with shackles over its pectoral fins. My father got into a fistfight with the ringleader, a dreadlocked grad student from the local university. They rolled across the grass
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