Attached Chp. 1-3

Chapter 1

It was all she could do to keep from moving, to keep from thinking about what had just happened. And to top it all off, the pains began again. Starting at the top of her nose and spreading like the break of an ocean’s tide as it glides over the shore. First moving into her forehead, then to the tip top of her cranium, to the sides and back of her head where it came to a sustained but abrupt halt at her ears. Searing pains again, pains that felt as if someone had taken an axe to her skull. But despite the pain she chuckled to herself because with the shape she was in, the broken bones and all the blood, she was lucky that he hadn’t taken an axe to her skull. That was one mistake that she would one day make him regret. The pain, the broken bones, the blood, all of that was nothing. She could forgive him for all that, but the one thing she wouldn’t and couldn’t ever forgive him for was for not killing her when he had had the chance. She had even begged him to as she lay in a puddle of her own blood. A melted ice cream cone of a mess on the side of interstate sixty five begging and pleading, and he just stood there smiling. He knew that making her suffer would be so much harder on her. “Stop,” she yelled, breaking away from the vengeful thoughts that plagued her mind by thumbing the sheets that covered the lower half of her torso. Two thin white sheets with a sickly repetitive pattern of blue diamonds that strolled along in diagonal lines as far as the eye could see or until they reached the end of the bed where they were neatly tucked under. “Typical hospital shit,” she thought to herself and she began to violently wiggle until the neatly tucked sheets came out on top of the bed in a tangled wrinkled mess, as if the mattress had just regurgitated tacky hospital leftovers. As she stared at the mess of sheets on the top of her bed her mind began to wander. It’s sick that these same sheets have seen countless past patients, many of whom have gotten shit or vomit or blood or puss or whatever on them. But no, what does the hospital do. They wash them with some cheap antibacterial detergent and put them back on the beds at the end of the day for the next person to use, to leave behind some part of themselves after they’ve died or left. After you’re gone you may never remember the hospital room or the name of the nurse who cared for you during your stay but your bodily stain whatever it may be will forever be imprinted upon the sheets that are washed, reused, washed and reused every day until the cycle is broken. But even then, when new bedding is bought there will always be that stupid young kid who tries to do a skateboard grind on the stair rail outside the public library. The one that explicitly states no skateboarding within 75 feet of the library and that the library cannot be held liable for any injuries incurred on the property. Yeah that rebel who is trying to further himself up the rungs of the social ladder by trying a trick that he knows he’s not ready for while all of his peers watch in excitement. But that rebel is now the cripple who landed the wrong way on a jagged edge of the rail and got tetanus which developed into gang green. His story ends here in this same bed with new sheets where he will now be known as the one legged freak who had to get his leg amputated after contracting gang green. Yes his puss and the drool spooling out of his mouth due to too many pain killers will be the future of this bed, but that’s a story for another day.

For now it’s just Mary who has moved onto her new rant which involves the fact that every bed in the hospital comes with two sheets. Her nurse came in with the intent of checking her vitals but was distracted by the mangled mess of bedding at the end of her patient’s bed. “Let me fix this hunny,” she said. “Don’t. Don’t touch that. I like it like that you fat saggy beast of a woman. I don’t want those nasty recycled shit sheets touching me. Get me a new one,” snapped Mary. “Today’s just not your day is it hunny. Well I can assure you that I will do everything that I can to make you feel right at home,” said the nurse. “Ok. Well, Peggy, you can start by getting me a new sheet. Not just any sheet but one that is still in its package. I wanna see you take it out and unfold it,” she said with a tinge of sarcasm and one eyebrow arched. “Yes ma’am. I will be right back. Just hold tight.” Everything would have been fine except that Peggy had returned with two sheets instead of one and had insisted on putting them both on the bed. “I’ll be fine with one sheet, don’t bother putting them both on,” Mary said as Nurse Peggy unfolded both sheets and began to put them both on the bed. “Didn’t you hear me you sagging sack of shit I only want one,” said Mary, whose anger was now beginning to escalate. “I’m sorry hunny but it’s hospital procedure to put two sheets on the bed. If the health department was to make an appearance today and saw that you weren’t sufficiently covered, then I could get in big trouble,” Nurse Peggy clarified matter-of-factly. “Listen hear you incoherent bitch. I said I wanted one sheet. You are taking care of me, which means you do as I say. I don’t have to tell you how to do your job do I?” Nurse Peggy just continued to tuck the two sheets under the mattress as if Mary had not even said a word. As Peggy fixed the last corner at the foot of the bed, bent over so as to make the process more efficient Mary accumulated every last bit of strength that was left in her body and kicked Peggy as hard as she could in the face. “What the fuck?” Nurse Peggy screamed as her nose began to violently bleed down the front of her face dripping off of her chin onto her starched white nurse’s outfit and onto the new, clean sheets. “Is something wrong Peggy?” Letting her polished nurse’s persona slip off, Peggy jeered , “What do you think is wrong you deformed piece of shit. You’ll regret that.” She grabbed a tissue to clench her nose while trying to resist the flood of tears that had welled up in her eyes, just another New Orleans’s flood waiting to happen. Breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth Nurse What’s-Her- Face walked towards the door and turned to say, “And my name isn’t Peggy, it’s Miranda you illiterate cunt.” Another long giggle slipped out until she noticed the fresh spots of blood on her new pair of sheets. “Fuck,” she yelled and yanked on the sheets until they came untucked once again. She lifted the first sheet and examined the second to see that the blood hadn’t soaked through. “I guess these sheets aren’t as thin as I thought,” she stated as she separated the two. Taking the marred sheet in her hands she ripped the large bandage off of her arm. “Good,” she said aloud. The gun wound hadn’t stopped bleeding yet and she pressed a clean, unmaimed part of the fabric to her wound. Now when people came to the hospital and laid in this bed they would see her blood and maybe they would think of her, wonder who she was and how she had ended up there. Just another way of preserving yourself immortally or until the next batch of sheets that is.



Chapter 3

That night Mary lay in her bed pensively reflecting on how she had gotten into this mess. Mustering up energy from depths of her soul that she didn’t know were in existence she wiggled herself, her massive cumbersome self to the edge of the bed and placed one foot and the other onto the cold linoleum hospital floor. Leaning on the bed for support she stretched her bended knees until she was standing upright. One foot then the other she sauntered over to the mirror on the wall. Starring at her reflection, her hideously fucked up reflection, she touched the mirror with the pads of four fingers. She touched the scratched and swollen reflection of her face but recoiled her hand to cover her face and looked down at her feet to avoid meeting her own eyes in the unforgiving image of the mirror. Glancing once more at the image she could see four vague ovals with countless lines in them, her fingerprint. Those four ovals reminded her of a time, a time that seemed so long ago, when she had painstakingly tried to give someone her identity, but no one had wanted it. She had so desperately wanted to enter one of those identity theft centers to report that hers had been one more of the many that had been stolen. Then the identity theft people would comfort her and she would feel satisfied knowing that they knew that she was wanted, even if they thought it was for her money. Unfortunately no one would take her I.D. or her credit cards mainly because, let’s face it, she couldn’t approach anyone without them wincing, laughing, or feeling overly sympathetic and she had no money to offer. No one wanted her, not even when she offered to pay someone to steal her identity. What was the use of having an identity if no one knew you or cared to know you? She slowly walked back to her bed and flopped onto it desperately.

“Where do I go from here? I’m royally fucked. I have nothing, I have no one,” said Mary on the verge of tears and clenching the bed sheets so hard that she half expected to see a row of diagonal diamonds trailing across her palm when she relinquished her grip. “You’re alright Mary, you are alright. Do what you always do when you are upset. Reflect upon our life, we always find the answer when you reflect on our life.” She felt mildly relaxed by the voice within her head but not really in her head at all. She knew that the voice was laying in the flesh right next to her, connected to her. It had never been a secret to her why she hated objects that came in twos, but the idea had never crossed her mind until now. She hated the pair of sheets and everything else that came in twos because nineteen years ago when she had been born she had arrived with a second half. A second half which she hated to love and loved to hate. That second half which had inadvertently gotten her into this mess. Closing her eyes Mary began to drift into the darkness of her past. The fucked up black hole of heart ache and sadness that was her past. The twisted past that was both literally and figuratively a part of her.