Never mind, there's always another way, said my mother, another way to achieve what you were meant to achieve, another way to finish what you were meant to finish. This is true, I think. But it's also true that you can wait too long, that it can be too late. That maybe it was always too late for you. In the days immediately after, my nose would not stop bleeding. It bled constantly all over the nurses and the hospital sheets and the kind faces in my memory, splashed with oxygen-rich red. This seems important, though it probably isn't.
I park in front of the shrink's office with my usual flagrant disregard for traffic conventions. Nosed up onto the curb, the injured blue car's door squeaks as I open it and begin to get out. Glancing up, I think I see a curtain twitch. Is he watching me? Well, then he might be prepared by the time I get up there. When people first realize, their faces always freeze slightly. Maybe this time I'll be spared that. I make my way into the building and wait for the elevator. On the way up, there is a loud shrieking sound that lasts for seconds, like the elevator squished something to death against the walls of the shaft. The side of my mouth turns up at the thought. I'm not sure why.
I disembark. Everything is blue. A nice calming color, I think approvingly. I move up to the receptionist. She stands, lovely, auburn-haired, whole. Hayes will see you in a few minutes, she says. Her eyes look at my palazzo pants. They are distractingly bright, both her eyes and the pants. I chose them on purpose. I also wore sandals on purpose. I want him to see. I even considered leaving it off.
I don't like the word stump. People in novels always describe it that way. Jimmy's severed stump, they say. Or, the stump of her arm gleams white against the blackness of her dress. Or something equally silly and trite. Also, stumps are rooted in the ground. They are stronger than what is left of my leg. Cut off unevenly above the knee, it is, I guess, rooted in my hip. But it is not a stump. It is a shattered spar, a shriek remembered in winter, headlights glaring through my windshield. Today, the prosthetic feels worse than usual, as though it chafes against my internal organs, instead of the thigh, strangely plumper than the other. Shouldn't it be wasted from lack of use? I, I can't even be slender and artistic-looking in my illness. Still a bit of a brute, as my mother would say when I was a very bad girl. I should wear a peg, then I would be piratical enough, maybe, to dissuade pity. I think this is funny, and my mouth turns up again at the corner. Goodness, twice in one day. I should start a comedy show.
Lost in my musing, I don't see the receptionist standing there patiently above me. Hayes will see you now, she says. I stand and shuffle in her even-keeled wake.
YOU ARE READING
The Bowl of Scars and Other Stories
Short StoryThis is a story about a psychiatrist and a patient. It has some dark matter and is not necessarily for the faint of heart. Don't say I didn't warn you.
