7:24 p.m. - 2004-03-12
All This & No Fucking Scissors.
Alex cut his ring finger on a glass at work yesterday and was driven to the hospital, where they deemed that the tooth-sized gouge was not hospitable for stitches, then cleaned the digit, wrapped it up tight and gave him a tetanus shot. He then went home.

Thursdays are typically social nights for us anyway, so he phoned morosely to confirm, and I came over to watch television. And to cut his hospital tags off.

He was going to cut them off himself with a kitchen knife, but I thought this was a bad idea.

"That would be ironic, wouldn't it?" he said grinning as I carefully sliced. "Sending me to the hospital again so soon...and then when I got home the next time...I could cut them off again! It's an endless cycle of violence."

"You're disgusting."

Around midnight, he became upset that the wound began to ache, seemingly without provocation. The only painkiller I had on me was ibuprofen, which thins the blood and makes clotting difficult, so we went on a foot expedition to the all-night grocery, stepping lively between surprised prairie-dogging stock boys, immense packing crates, and a foul-smelling floor-buffing machine. Alex bought Tylenol.

We hoofed it back, aiming to make it in time for Conan and succeeding--which passes for significant success in our humdrum pre-Spring existences. He popped 3 extra-strength caplets and we watched Conan in bed. Elijah Wood was a cute guest, and his clip from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was completely impenetrable. We didn't know what the hell was going on--which is fine, because we're both probably going to see the movie anyway, and would rather be surprised.

We went to sleep.

At around 2am I was vaguely aware of him stirring next to me, and then suddenly, sharply aware of his voice in pain at a greater distance, calling my name. I sleep lightly now--something changed in early adulthood, a sense of the capacity for chaos infected me, and didn't go away. I don't really know.

I scrambled out of bed, naked and half blind without my contact lenses, and pushed open the bathroom door, almost connecting with his back. He was sitting cross-legged on the bathroom rug, also naked, holding his left wrist in his right hand. His finger was unwrapped, and I could see the snowy white of gauze and the redness of blood. I was violently scared in my inability to see precisely what was amiss, because he sounded so frightened.

"What's wrong?"

"I had to undo the bandage," he said miserably. "It was too tight. It felt like it was...dying under there."

If the circulation had decreased enough, such a wording was very apt.

It must have been very painful.

He slumped forward then, to put his head on level with his heart and get more blood to the area, then straightened up slowly as the need passed.

I considered very briefly putting in my contact lenses, but this was vetoed by him remarking suddenly "Why did this have to happen?" The pitch of his voice rose, and I could see that I would have to bandage him quickly, because the combination of blood pressure change and the sight of blood was taking him somewhere else.

I groped on the countertop for the gauze the doctor had given him, and it was then that he suddenly, wordlessly slumped forward over his crossed legs, and dropped his forehead on the tile with a dull smack.

"Alex!"

I grabbed him by his slab of a shoulder, and hauled him into a sitting position, in which he slumped unresponsive. Please not now, I thought. Not at 2am, not with us blind and naked. Please.

"Wake up, Alex, please. Wake up wake up wake up."

He is a stubborn man, and even when so vulnerable there is a stubborn quality to it, as though he has seen what's going on, doesn't like it, and will be back later. Fuck all y'all.

He is the only man I know who could bring a such attitude to unconsciousness.

I shook him again and noticed that I did not hear him breathing. See him breathing. Anything. His square chin rested firmly on his chest.

No, no, no.

I jumped up and stood behind him, put a hand under each side of his jaw and lifted directly up, opening his airway.

There was a horrible, bubbling, splitting sound almost immediately, beginning in his chest and rising up through his throat, his reflexes kicking mercifully in as his mouth opened and drew a gasping breath like a skin diver surfacing after a long ascent. I was too frightened to be relieved.

"Alex, can you hear me? Hey. Hey hey hey. C'mon." I shook him, and his eyes fluttered unknowingly as he heaved a few more breaths.

Finally he said that he heard me. I almost cried.

"Alex. You passed out. Stay awake, do you hear me?"

"...My head hurts."

"I know. You passed out on the floor and scared the hell out of me. Throw that dirty square of gauze away."

He did, childlike in wooziness, and I got the new square I'd been aiming for and told him to place it how he wanted it, since I couldn't see that well and didn't want to hurt him. Then I wrapped the gauze gently, but not too tightly. I was terrified something else would happen and operating on quick autopilot...yet with a kneejerk and hilarious craving for universal precautions--latex gloves, et al--before remembering that we have shared bodily fluids many a time for two-&-a-half years.

"You do another layer of adhesive gauze, how you want it." He did.

"Do you have any scissors?" he asked. "I need scissors."

It somehow seemed very important at the time and I despaired of it as I rummaged through his medicine cabinet, mentally cataloguing the contents of my gym bag in the other room--and feeling like a failure for not having or finding scissors.

Who doesn't have scissors in the house? Really.

But he bit off the winding gauze like a momma cat bites a cord, and this was settled.

Then he asked for his privacy and I gave it to him, although I threatened him with the humiliation of an ambulance if I heard "anything funny."

I went back to bed and lay flat on my back, crying my adrenaline into my own ears, and wondering what would have happened if I hadn't been there. Calculating that I wouldn't have expected to hear from him until Saturday afternoon, and that I was the only one of his friends with a door key...and what it would have been like to see his magnificent marble body rendered in blue, dead on his own bathroom floor.

He got out of the shower and went right to sleep holding my hand, then pressed the snooze alarm about 6 times, 5 hours later.

(Since he didn't die, I could have just killed him for it).

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