25 April 2000
I truly hate hospitals. Funny how everyone I have ever loved never even had the chance to see the inside of one before they died. The stench is enough to make me sick. Some describe it as clean. If this is what clean smells like then I want to be as dirty as possible.
Quatre squirms in the hospital bed, arms clutching his stomach and mouth open wide in a silent scream. I look at the clock. Five minutes. It's been five fucking minutes since we got here and all they've done is taken his blood pressure and temperature. He's crying out again. Ouch, pain, hurt, mindlessly, over and over again until I want to scream.
But I don't. I hold his hand instead and rub his pale back. I want, I need to tell him that everything is going to be ok, but I can't because I don't know that.
Ten minutes.
Where the fuck is everyone? This is an emergency room, not the geriatrics ward! Maybe I'm just a big city boy in a small back water town or maybe I've just been forced to watch one too many of Duo's damned emergency room drama shows, but damn it they are taking way the fuck too long.
This time he cries out so loud I wince. A nurse comes running in, followed closely by a doctor. Somehow I can't count the nurse as an improvement. I just can't bring myself to trust a fifty-something woman with frosty purple hair.
My angel is crying out again, and the doctor moves up beside the bed, trapping me in the corner to watch everything in this harsh florescent light. I watch the nurses try to start an IV, and I watch the blood run down two of Quatre's pale fingers. I listen to him cry out in pain, and I listen to him dry heave over a metal basin, vomiting for the sixth time in four hours. I watch the nurses fuck around with the IV pump for a good minute or two until a jolly biddy comes in and shows them how it is suppose to be done.
She makes a joke, and they all laugh as they walk out of our little corner of hell.
My blood boils.
He's crying out again, breathless whispers of pain mingle with the ventilation system's white noise. Another nurse comes in and my angel starts to shake.
"Cold?" I ask him.
"No" he replies.
"Inside," he replies.
His shaking gets worse. I raise my eyes to the small town nurse for comfort. I need to see the years of medical schooling behind her eyes. I see jack shit. I see panic in her ever widening eyes.
"I'll go get the doctor."
"Why don't you do that," I reply coldly, but she doesn't hear me, she's already scuttled out of the room with a dramatic swish of the hospital curtain.
Ten minuets later the doctor comes in.
I hate him.
I hate him because he reeks of unsureness and ignorance. The balding fool hands me a badly Xeroxed booklet on food poisoning and quickly injects another vial of some clear liquid into my angel, who immediately cries out in pain and tries to rip the IV out of his flesh. I reach over the hospital bed and grip one of Quatre's arms in each of my hands.
"NO Quatre." The two words are low an carry in the small tiled room as I lock eyes with my love.
Glazed over sea blue.
"Your eyes are pretty. So pretty. You should use one of my sisters' hair clips to hold back your hair," he pauses as his pink tongue sloppily wets pale lips,"but I don't want to be buried alive." Everything inside of me freezes only to turn to stone by the doctors nervous laugh.
"To control the nausea we've given him four different medications. The interaction must be making him delusional," the pudgy man fidgets under my stare. He's lucky the frosty purple haired shrew decides to reenter the room.
"Mr?" her voice is brutal to my ears as she raises the last syllable up an octave.
"Barton." She blinks as if I slapped her, and I vaguely wonder if I had.
No, she would be on the floor if I had.
"Well Mr. Bar-ton, why don't you sit." I stare blankly at her. Surprisingly however the idea doesn't sound that bad, so I let myself slide to the floor and lean against he ugly grey cabinets next to my angel's bed.
"I could..."
"No." I don't want anything from her. Offended she waddles off and I let out a deep breath, fatigue biting at every one of my nerves.
"Trowa?" his voice is softer than normal. I open my burning eyes as his free hand reaches out to push away my bangs.
"The Manguanacs like June and blue lace baskets," the words are so slurred I can barely make them out, and when I do, I wish I hadn't. I close my eyes again and reach up to the pale fingers weaving through my hair. I bring them to my lips and kiss their tips softly, whispering a prayer to his god.
I pray that these morons heal him, and I pray that my angel remembers nothing of this fucking place.
Erin Johnson
Please send comments to: johnsoel@purdue.edu