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Emergent

by KARA VANDERBIJL

This morning in the emergency room, an elderly woman across the hall from me leaned out her doorway as she poked thin arms through the holes in the paper gown. She had left her own dress on, and her own shoes too; turquoise socks were pulled up over her ankles. She looked at me as if she were squinting through her sunglasses. 

“Hi, do you know how to turn on the television?” 

“I don’t, I’m sorry,” I told her. 

“Do you know, I collapsed on Friday because my ankles and feet were so swollen, and I told my friends to call an ambulance for me, but they just laughed!” 

“That’s awful,” I agreed. 

“Finally the security guard at CVS called one for me, and he carried my bags too, even though the nurse wouldn’t.” She looked me up and down, as if to ascertain what might be the matter with me. I straightened my back instinctively. 

“You don’t know how to turn on the TV, do you?” 

“No, I’m sorry.” 

I inspected my own wound - a deep gash, right at the tip of my thumb. It was the mandolin slicer that did it, in every other way a perfectly ingenious invention designed to make sure your potato slices lie in uniform piles at the bottom of a bowl while you sprinkle them liberally with olive oil and salt. I don’t remember what it felt like to put my finger through the porcelain blade, nor do I remember the sound I made, somewhere half between a groan and a chuckle. Half a roll of paper towels sat spotted red on the living room floor as I brought my thumb to new altitudes above my heart. There was very little pain.

It is a risk of the trade, you might say, an inevitable casualty when a particularly stubborn sort of girl has decided to spend more time in the kitchen cooking wholesome meals. Decisions rarely come without consequences. If you decide to do without convenience, choice made for you, some form of pain shows up punctually. 

I’ve often wondered, crazily, whether ridding your life of the extras - processed foods, sugar, caffeine, stress - any of the things that seem to preserve us in a state of placid complacency, of somewhat-awake mostly-asleep knots sitting not quite ergonomically in an office chair in an airless room - puts you at more risk. I feel more vulnerable with a clean body. I feel more exposed to danger, but danger in the way that it is dangerous to wear a skirt on a very windy day. 

I listened to the lady across the hall chat with one of the paramedics about how her bags were so heavy and her father had just been in surgery and could he bring more water and how could she change the channel and I just kept thinking that the hospital, like the sole possession of a friend’s listening ear or the arms of someone beloved, can make you feel safe and protected. It’s a little bit more expensive and it smells funky and they ask you personal questions about your bowel movements and when was the last time you took recreational drugs. But you can buy care, sort of like you can buy a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.

A few weeks ago I was riding a bike with very little brakes through a dark, warm night to the beach. At one point I miscalculated the width of a ramp and slammed into the curb; I knew it was coming, because the shadow of it became apparent approximately two seconds before my front wheel made contact, and I began to push myself backwards off the seat in anticipation of the pain. I managed to straddle the back wheel rather awkwardly, crotch lifted ceremoniously above the seat and bars that would do it harm, but then the left pedal slammed into my lower calf with a force. My eyes fogged over. I thought blood had been drawn, but when my hand touched the warm spot there was only a throbbing bulb. 

By the morning a bruise had blossomed there. 

It was the largest bruise I have ever had, and fascinating. Resembling a large, noxious flower or perhaps the quivering bacteria that we observe under microscopes (outer, dark membrane, lighter liquid inside), it hugged the bottom of my calf muscle. It was black, then green, then yellow, then black again. It was a bump, an extra surface. It’s mostly gone, now, except for some lingering tenderness and a dark border. The skin is shaded slightly blue. 

Once I have given a title to somebody, everything they do fits under the umbrella of their prescribed role. It allows me to be pleasantly and unpleasantly surprised by the flowering of their character, the variance of their colors. When a serf becomes a knight, both pride and envy wrestle inside of me. I have never been sure where I fit in this schematic, what rags cover this heart. I wonder, am I poorly cast for this part?

Kara VanderBijl is the senior editor of This Recording. She is a writer living in Chicago. She tumbls here and twitters here. She last wrote in these pages about Haruki Murakami. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here.

Photographs by the author.

"Unless You Speak From Your Heart" - Porcelain Raft (mp3)

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The latest album from Porcelain Raft, Strange Weekend, was released on January 24th.