“Not many people will second guess a
bandaged wrist, Della. They’ll know
it was a suicide attempt in a minute.”
Rain in my hair, rain in my eyes, rain in the
trees, rain in little rivers running to my toes. What was taking her so long? I loved Jenny, but walking her in the rain
wasn’t my favorite thing to do.
Thunder. Lighting. Never mind.
If I knew one thing about Jenny it was that she refused to do anything
when the gods were crashing about over her head.
Lots of blood in the sink. Mixed with rainwater, it looked terribly gory. Mom looked sick. Her face betrayed her horror, she could
barely bring her eyes to my wrist.
Jenny looked up at me with sad eyes, and
blinked out the rain from them. “Alright
fine,” I said to her, “we can go inside.”
Mom and Dad sat down and decided what
things were, and what things were not important to replace right away in the old
fixer-upper of a house. The hole in the
kitchen floor? That needed to be fixed right away. The windows out front could
wait.
No tears from me. I was too busy trying to make sure the blood
didn’t run onto the leather seats.
Hospital was only a few blocks away now.
The towel was white. Not any more
it wasn’t.
I dropped Jenny’s leash when the glass
broke. She stayed right beside me
though. Good dog. The door wouldn’t be forced open. Had the summer humidity swelled it shut? The wood wouldn’t move, but the glass behind
my hand gave way too willingly.
Adrenaline canceled out my pain, and I searched
my mind. Not ice, pressure. Elevation too, but I didn’t think of
that. No tourniquets unless you want to
lose the hand. Just pressure. The blood was slimy so I grabbed a towel.
No, I didn’t want to lie down. Suturing was too riveting to lie down
for. I wanted to watch. The needle pricked my skin, but that didn’t
hurt. Nope, the hurt came earlier when
they pumped my wrist full of numbing fluid.
The wrist was white and whole an hour ago. Now it was cold, and bloated, and gross.
Write your grafs on a deck of cards, shuffle, and deal!
ReplyDelete:)
No no, John--that's unfair! There is a definite method here. And your question will be: is it effective? Well, the method forced me to read it twice to settle and untangle everything. I wouldn't say that reading it twice was hard labor or punishment. I wanted to solve the puzzle and reading it twice allowed that.
Let me put it this way: confusion that will not yield and that stays confusing despite a reader's best efforts and good will--is bad. But confusion that is artfully planned to insist that the reader dig deep and deeper into the material and that does yield its secrets in the end--is good.
The artist's job is to make something out of nothing. This piece reduces to: 'After walking the dog in the rain, I cut my wrist on the glass in a sticky door and nearly bled out.' Which of course amounts to nothing for a reader. But you've artfully woven it into something.
Thank you, I hoped this would come off alright. I thought about adding a final graf to tie everything in, but that seemed to take some of the point out of it.
ReplyDeleteEnded satisfactorily for the teacher and satisifyingly for the reader.
ReplyDeleteMission accomplished, everybody's happy. :)
ReplyDelete