The Bruise

I regained consciousness on the floor of a subway car. I tried to pick my head up but it felt awfully heavy and as I peeked out of what I could see through a very puffy right eye of mine (the other seemed lost in a fog), I could see a large puddle of fresh blood flowing away from me and growing in size; was it from me? My right cheek felt sticky and cool laying against the subway floor. I could see a ring of people round me; they seemed to be subway riders and then they are backing away.

A policeman is breaking through the people and then he backed away and I could tell now I was the center of attention and this wasn’t good. I slowly scooted my legs up under me in preparation of getting up but the policeman stepped forward placing a strong hand on my shoulder telling me to stay down –

“Don’t move.”

Much as I don’t like cops bossing me around, it seemed a reasonable order. I ran my tongue along the inside of my teeth, everything tasted of blood but evidently I had all my teeth. I groggily tried to make sense of how I ending up down on the floor, vaguely recalling a huge black fist crashing into my face. Everything smelled of blood, that’s all I could smell, and taste, then the cop is clearing a hole in the platform, everyone seemed to be out of the subway car and I thought I heard an announcement crackling, the train is out of service, and then a guy in blue and green scrubs and a woman following behind rushing in through the hole then everything smelled like alcohol, hospital alcohol, and then I could taste the alcohol stinging my tongue as the man in scrubs is roughly wiping my face with a cold wet cloth and pinching my nose and Jesus that hurts and I let out a shaky groan and he says it is going to hurt and we have to stop the bleeding and then I thought I gasped OK but I can’t be sure and then I forget what happened.

The next thing I realize I am in a bed, a hospital bed as I slowly, cautiously glance around me, realizing my lonely surroundings and I know I have to go to the bathroom and sure as hell I am not going to add insult to obvious injury and piss myself and who knows what else in this bed.

I tentatively edged my legs over to the side of the bed – ok – they worked. Dropping them to the floor, slowly lifting my heavy head, letting the dizzy light headiness fall away and with some cautious intention shuffled over to where I figured, hoped, the bathroom might be. I passed through the door, shakily flipping the light switch and found myself facing a mirror reflecting back at me. My head so swollen, bloody, so big; blue black orange streaks and bruised violet, an ugly distended basketball facing me. The rosy blooming lumpy knot on the ridge of my big nose is pulsing and throbbing, framed by two red black blue angry crescents, each sliver topping each cheek giving me the mark of a raccoon, except for my two nostrils, which had flared in size and expanded in openings now resembling the snout of a black horse or a mean angry hog. Even as I turned away from the ugly vision of my bruised face, and the growing awareness of my aching bruised ribs, I was more concerned of the future, of my growing and perhaps more long lasting bruise to my delicate metallic manly ego and that I could now already taste that resentful scourge of fear mixing with the blood still dripping into the back of my mouth. I could smell the sour bitter scent of fright and anxiety rising off my body, off my bruised face, powerful vapors inundating, clearing for a moment my blood clogged nostrils – would I ever be free of it; riding the subway?

I lay in this hospital bed for two weeks watching my black blue bruised ballooned face slowly subside, turning yellow, then turning a more familiar rosy pastel surprisingly free of dark bruises – the body is an amazing place; I had lost a lot of blood, one step from transfusion they told me – this ain’t war – is it?

Gratefully laying in my hospital bed watching Law & Order day after day, and every time the nurse coming in complimenting me on my growing handsomeness and complaining

“Not Law & Order again! Law & Order again?!”

I suggested, perhaps we could do with a bit more of it.