I watched the glowing light from the board across the room as the nurse leaves, cables flouting behind her. Sphygmomanometer and stethoscope falling off the cart that contains half my body fluid. Urine, venous and arterial blood, pretty sure there is some saliva there too. And I sit there, waiting.
The door slides open and I look up. House walks in and I look away, towards the windows on the opposite side of the room. He doesn't say anything, just sits down on the stool near the bed and the only sound in the room are the wheels rolling on the hard, tiled floor. There is a moment of silence when I hear latex snap and my heart skips a beat. The reaction is quite evident on the monitor behind my bed. He laughs, a deep chuckle that makes me turn.
"Relax." He said and I simply look at him, slightly horrified at the suggestion. I raise my eye brows, unwilling to say a word. He makes a motion with his hand and I lean forward, my spine curving.
Goodpasture's syndrome.
Screw lupus, this was so much better, and worse. My lungs were shredded and my kidneys failing. Oh happy day. No more pudding, no more mint green scrubs, and yet, I'm still starving. What's up with that?
Cold metal presses against my bare back and I gasp automatically eliciting the correct response that a deep breath would cause. I cough and I feel the metal being pulled back. "Try not to deafen me," House says, smiling ever so slightly, wrinkling his brow. I smiled and rolled my eyes. The O2 monitor bleeped and fell another point and I sighed, another point. I heard the wheels on the stool roll slightly and then the smell of plastic before I even realized that he had placed a mask on my face. I struggled for a moment, confused at the sudden claustrophobia. He pushed a hand against my chest and I instantly tensed and then relaxed as I felt the cold metal on my back again. A couple of moments of silence and deep breathing made me dizzy as the O2 flowed in.
"Turn on your side," House said motioning towards the opposite wall. My back hurt and I didn't want to move. A protest was close at hand, but I didn't say a word. Couldn't say a word. "Going to say something?" I just roll my eyes again and put my left hand to my lips. The American Sign Language sign for 'mute'. Yes, I was mute, not deaf, not dumb, not simple or strange, not shy, I was mute.
"Come on, come on," he says and I shift slightly, wincing at the ache in my back. Kidney failure will do that to you. I stare at the wall as I feel pressure on my back, wandering hands pushing against mush, dead and dying tissue. Like his leg: there, but gone. Alive, but out to lunch… oh god more food references. I grimace as his hands fall beneath my ribs and land in the depression otherwise known as my right kidney. A shift from behind and the pressure is gone. I heard a metallic clink that sends my external abdominal oblique into a tight mass at the sound, the front of my gown suddenly tight against my chest. The monitor next to the bed glowed as the Q-RS-T waves increased with intensity.
"Relax," the voice said from behind me, tensing against the gloved hand on my back as the litacane numbed the skin and burned my insides. I closed my eyes and watched the red glow as the overhead light blazed. After a moment, the pressure was gone, but the burning remained. I was suddenly cold, with the warmth of House's hands gone, I was suddenly empty, absent. Then, like a distant memory, the hands were back, thumbs spreading the liquid through the muscle, dissolving the burn. I opened my eyes and looked at the wall. The man behind me was quiet and so the room was quiet. A pressure and then a pinch and I winced again, but House said nothing. I stared at the wall and traced the bumps with my eyes, counting the white bricks, shadows and strokes of paint against the wall, ignoring the pain in my back, ignoring the man biopsying my kidney. My lungs burned and the room spun slightly as I reached over to take off the mask that covered most of my face.
"Put that back on," House said without moving from his position. I felt his hands on my back again as he placed a place of gauze and tape over the hole. I laid there for a moment and when he didn't move, didn't say a word, I turned slightly, bed sheets rumbling. I looked at him expectantly.
The door slide opened and I looked over, breaking eye contact with the six foot tall man. It was Wilson, my original doctor. He looked at me and winked. I smiled inwardly, it was funny how people treated the mute, like I was deaf as well, like it was pointless to talk to me, because I couldn't talk back. I looked at House from the corner of my eye. That was probably why the man stuck around as much as he did, I didn't speak, couldn't ask questions, could talk back, couldn't lie. Of course, I could sign, so then all that wasn't true. My back hurt and I shifted to sit and rubbed it absently. House looked down at my discomfort and stood up with the sample.
"Make sure she doesn't take that thing off," House said, pointing to the mask and stood with a grunt, shifting weight in a balance between keeping his right leg light and holding the medical equipment. Wilson nodded and sat down in House's absence as the door slid closed. The room was silent again.
"You want to watch tv?" the oncologist asked. Great, a babysitter. I looked over at the wall made of glass, passed Wilson's shoulder. Nodding, I couldn't do much else. Yes or no questions were fine after a period of adjustment. At first, people would take a step back, not sure what to say when they found that I was mute. "I'm sorry" never quite worked out. After a while, they would catch on. That yes or no stage was the worst. It held only two possibilities, limiting. House had been different, no "I'm sorry" stage, Yes or No stage, no "could you write that down" stage, there was just House. He asked a question, I signed and he understood. Simple.
Wilson turned on the TV, flipping through a couple of channels that looked boring until he got to an old episode of Project Runway. Yeah, that wasn't obvious. Wilson wasn't gay, he did it for my benefit. Right.
I smiled, which he took as approval and put the remote down. The room was quiet for a moment and I listened to the beeping monitors behind me. The IV stand shook as I moved and the liquid shushed around. The door opened and I looked up. House was back with more medical equipment.
He called it plasmapheresis, I called it torture.
I shook my head, tried to look sad, innocent, defiant, anything. But it wasn't enough. Wilson stood and I watched as House took his place.
"No," I signed and struggled against the EEG wires connected to my chest, the IV line conveniently taped down to my left hand and the various tubes that controlled my ins and outs, especially the outs. Kidney failure is an invitation to be cathed. An experience that I did not want to repeat, consequently my upper half struggled to a higher degree, thrashing that didn't last very long. House grabbed my chest with one hand and my left wrist with the other, causing the cannula in my hand to dig deeper into the muscle and veins on my hand. I screamed, a silent, ugly scream with open mouth and tearing eyes. Deaf people screamed, despite not being able to hear, but I wasn't deaf. I was mute. Vocal cords atrophied, existing only in the memory of a hopeful, absent mother. I cried, but I couldn't scream. Admitting defeat, I fell forward in an attempt to capture my hand and went limp. House's grip loosened until he realized that I would double over. Gently, he pushed me back into the rough cotton pillow. I sighed, even that was silent, as if some one had pressed a button and then lost the remote.
My eyes closed, I tried to focus on the silence, on anything but the snap of latex and the shifting of paper and cloth. My arms wrapped tightly against my chest, tensed with the feel of House's hand and pulled slightly to the opposite side. There was a beat of total silence, one that is filled with communication. Before I could open my eyes to find out what was being said, I felt two more hands on my chest and arms and since I didn't remember House having three hands, I could only assume that Wilson was still in the room. I fought for an imperceptible moment before I was restrained by soft restraints, cuffs pulling my wrists and forearms. I closed my eyes, in too much pain to fight, to scream, to grimace. I simply sank deeper into the sheets, into the pillow.
The smell of alcohol, of betadine, sweet, sour smell of medicine and pain. House, producing a bright green tunicate, wrapped it around my right arm, as Wilson, finishing with the restraints, wrapped a second tunicate around my left.
The heart monitor flickered my concern, no, my worry, no, my anxiety. Children under the age of 6 months often get their ears pierced. Not of their own free will of course, but never the less, they grow up thinking that they were born with pierced ears. What nobody tells you, and what the parents most certainly don't tell their child is that they are not pieced in the usual fashion. Two professional ear piercers, who on their sixteenth birthday, two days ago, decided to get their very first jobs, pierce your child's ears at the same time. They say it's to relieve the anxiety of the child. In reality, it's to relieve the anxiety of the parent.
This very thought ran through my mind as House and Wilson attack the veins on the arms at the very same moment. My eyelids tightened, pulling my head back and forth, I couldn't look away, couldn't find a side to get away from the pain. I'm not six months old and this clearly isn't relieving anything.
