by Holly Lorka
WHAT?!?
She pointed her finger at me the way she did when she was really pissed. I stood there in the kitchen, looking at the floor, and was covered in shame, like it had steamed out of the vent hood and wafted all over me. Even though I had actually done the right thing without thinking about it because I really liked Rena, I was ashamed that my mom now thought that her own child would actually keep her across-the-street neighbor from signing her yearbook. I was also ashamed that I wanted my mother’s approval so much that I would lie and brag about something like that. I had betrayed myself in two different ways, and I was disgusted with myself.
I avoided Rena after that. I couldn’t look at her without thinking about what I’d done. When Gilbert eventually moved in with his family, he put candles in paper bags along the driveway instead of hanging Christmas lights. We were all thrilled.
the benefits of being tall and creepy
Near the end of my senior year of high school, I was named Athlete of the Month. I don’t think my high school had ever given that award to a girl before. My school was all about football, baseball, and wrestling. Nobody had given a shit about girls’ basketball until I made them pay attention.
I had a great year. I high-scored nearly every game, had a free-throw percentage in the 90s, and captured rebounds like I was the only one on the court. I made the newspaper. Colleges took notice (okay, just Yavapai Community College, to be honest). And I did it all for a girl.
The girl was the varsity girls’ basketball coach. She was new to our school. She was twenty-two and I was seventeen. She was cute and funny, and during tryouts for the team I saw her and burst into flames, and I made up my mind that not only was I going to make the team, but I was also going to make her love me.
I hadn’t even acknowledged yet that I was gay, that every single one of my crushes was on a girl, that I had dreams about kissing girls, that boys grossed me out. It was 1987, and being gay wasn’t cool yet. No one was admitting anything.
I made the team, perhaps because I was tall. I certainly wasn’t a great basketball player at the start of that season, but I was driven. I had a mission. I was going to be so good that the coach would lose her shit over me.
I ran my suicide drills until my lungs screeched and my legs were about to blow up. I did layups from the right and then from the left like someone possessed. I practiced post shots and free throws until I could make them with my hands tied behind my back. I even learned how to dribble with my left hand. After practice I went home to run and shoot some more, until the driveway went dark. Then I went to bed to construct elaborate fantasies about meeting my coach in the locker room after practice. You’d be surprised how great making out with a basketball coach in a nasty locker room could be in my head.
Surprisingly, I wasn’t the only gaybo on the basketball team. It seems you could swing a cat in that locker room and hit seven of us, with our short fingernails and fake purses full of denial. I would only realize how many of us there were when, at the age of twenty-three, I came out and went to the lezzie country bar and systematically ran into nearly every one of my old teammates. Oh. Hey there …
One of the girls on the team had a mom who was openly gay. Kelly had team parties at her house when her mom was at work. We’d always want to drink and hang out in her mom’s bedroom, maybe because there was a poster of a giant sweaty half naked female construction worker hanging above the bed. Maybe. We’d all lie around in there, talking about our fake boyfriends, staring intently at the bead of sweat that would never make it all the way down that poster’s cleavage.
Kelly and I became good friends. Not just because I wanted to look at that poster a lot more, but also because we had a few more things in common. She was one of the lezzies, and she, too, was in love with our coach. Neither of us ever admitted it, but we didn’t have to. We’d fawn over her together, find reasons to need her help, and get all dopey-faced when talking about her.
Kelly drove a 1976 Trans Am. She’d pick me up and we’d drive that thing all over the city. One night she pulled into a condo complex, parked, and pointed to a second-story window and announced, “That’s where the coach lives.” Oh, my God. We were at her house! How did she get this information? Who cared—we were here! We sat out there in the dark listening to Billy Idol while looking at her window and talking about everything except why we were there. What a couple of idiots.
I continued to bust my ass at basketball during the day and at night found reasons to drive my shitty Maverick by her complex and pull in and park to watch her window. My locker room fantasies became more elaborate, growing to include a soapy shower and an MVP award that had nothing to do with basketball. I imagined that one night she’d walk out of her condo, see me parked there, and invite me in to use that shower with her. Why the hell wouldn’t she? I was out of control and still not admitting to myself that perhaps I was a big homo who was also now a creepy stalker.
My feelings for her were taking over my life. The only outlet for my angst was on the court, where I began to dominate. I poured myself into basketball, and even my dad was surprised at how well I did. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you decide to win someone over with layups. I quickly became the star player, and I knew this would make her love me. Kelly couldn’t rebound for shit. Didn’t she see? We could have the perfect life together of basketball and soapy showers and home renovation. We could get a dog.
The season passed and we lost some crucial games. We entered the playoffs in poor position and were quickly eliminated. I fouled out of my last game and just like that, it was over. Time was up. The coach and I weren’t a couple, she never accidentally took a shower with me in the locker room, hadn’t winked at me knowingly, hadn’t even patted my bottom the way a coach is supposed to. The season was over, then school was over, and I was out of reasons to be around her. Except at night in my car, which went on for most of that summer until I left for college. (And then a few more times during spring break.)
I ran into her a few years ago. We walked past each other during halftime at a WNBA game. She looked at me and said, “Oh. Hey there.” I was immediately back in high school again. I felt my face flush red, my mouth dried up, I lost the ability to speak. I waved and went straight to the bathroom to throw up.
harvest
I arrive at the hospital morgue at 2 a.m. to find the security guard waiting for me as I had requested. In his hands is a large ring of keys. He is already prepared with the key to the morgue grasped between his thumb and forefinger. He quickly unlocks the unmarked metal door, reaches inside to flip on the light, and lets me walk past him to enter the room.
“Do you need anything else?” he asks me, hoping I don’t, because he’s nervous. He’s doing his best to not actually look into the room. In fact, I can tell that he’s holding his breath, trying hard not to inhale any of the air that may have escaped when the door opened.
I tell him no, that I’m okay. He nods and closes the door, shuts me in there. I hear his footsteps fading into the hall, and I count them as I look around the room. One, two: the room is small and cold. Three, four: it’s very bright, and the fluorescent light bounces off several steel tables. Five, six, seven: there’s a sink in one corner, a few cabinets against the walls, a trash can on wheels. Eight: the footsteps fade to nothing as my vision settles on a white plastic shroud lying on top of a gurney in the center of the room. This is why I am here.
The air is still and the room is soundless. As I settle in for my task, I find that every noise I make shatters the silence, reflected and magnified by the steel and the tile. My briefcase peals against the table as I set it down, the clasps bang when I open them, the latex snaps against my skin when I put on gloves. I unzip the plastic shroud and am grateful that the metal whizzes smoothly, without sharpness or echo.
The smell of the body hits me and begins to fill the room as I open the bag. At three hours after death, the odor is not yet sharp or strong. It’s dull and sour and creeps in and out of my n
ose as I work to pull the plastic away from the chest and arms, exposing the ID band that encircles one of the wrists. I verify the name on the bracelet and, satisfied that I have the correct body, proceed.
My parents don’t really understand what I do. To be honest, I don’t think they want to understand. When I explain that it’s better if I can get permission to take out the whole eyeball instead of just the cornea, because then I can excise the cornea in the lab under more controlled conditions, they suddenly become very interested in the evening news. It’s okay. I don’t really understand why I do it either, except I somehow feel like I’m contributing to society.
I take the instruments from my briefcase and lay them out on one of the steel tables that I’ve moved next to the gurney. I have a well-rehearsed ritual for arranging the scissors, hemostats, and retractors. Meticulously, almost obsessively, I line them up on the table in the order that they will be used. I don’t want to prolong my task with poor preparation, and I feel I owe this person my precision.
I clean the body’s face with brown iodine. I start on the lid of each eye and wipe outward in circles of increasing size. The iodine’s antiseptic smell is strong, and I use more than is necessary to help disguise the other odors in the room. When I’m through cleaning the skin, I drape the entire face with several blue surgical towels, leaving only the eyes exposed. I pull apart the wet lashes as I raise the lid of each eye, wash the surface with saline, and insert the small retractors to keep them open. I’m trying hard not to think about that scene in A Clockwork Orange, which is always what I try not to think of during this part of the procedure. The idea of forcing each brown iris and black pupil to watch what I’m about to do is worse than any scene from a horror film I’ve ever seen, and I don’t even like horror films. I blink my own eyes hard against the thought and do my best to remember that I’m contributing to society.
I maneuver my instruments deftly and remove the clear membrane that covers each eye. I insert my hemostats over the top of one eye, take hold of the muscle that is attached there, and expose it enough to cut it with my scissors. I reach under the eye and grasp it and clip it as I did the other muscle. The eye now floats more freely in the socket, and I can cut the remaining muscles away from the top, the bottom, and the sides. With the eye now released from the muscles that held it in its socket, I have room to reach around behind it with the special long, curved scissors to sever the tough optic nerve. The eye is now completely free, and I carefully lift it out and place it in a clear glass jar for transport back to the lab. I repeat the same procedure with the other eye and hope I don’t get pulled over and searched on my way back to the lab, because there would be a lot of uncomfortable explaining.
At this point I could remove the blue drapes, but I don’t, because I would most likely run screaming from the room. The gaping sockets are easier to handle with the drapes on, when it isn’t quite a face. The smells drift in and out of my nose, I can hear myself breathing, and I’m looking into the empty eye sockets of a dead person. In the morgue. Alone. In the middle of the night. This is the birthplace of ghosts and hauntings. This is when I’m really scared.
There was a time when I was able to harvest a person’s eyes while he was still up in the ICU, which I was incredibly relieved about because there’d be other alive people and activity around me. Then the nurse put the head of the patient’s bed down after I’d taken out his eyes, and the deceased let out a giant exhale. You know that feeling you get when you accidentally run over a baby in your car? Well, I felt about a million times worse than that until the nurse laughed at me and told me it was just from the change in lung pressure when she put the bed down. “Don’t worry, honey. He’s dead.”
He’s dead. So, empty eye sockets alone in the middle of the night in the morgue or not, I resolve to continue. I reach for the small green rubber balls that I have with me and place one in each empty socket before removing the retractors and closing the lids. I’ve traded my counterfeits for what were once bright brown eyes, and when I’m through, when the lids are once again closed, I finally remove the drapes to view the face. I make sure the prosthetics are positioned properly to give the lids a natural appearance. When I’m satisfied they are, I wash off the iodine and leave the face as it was before I arrived. He looks serene and forgiving, so I reciprocate by sticking a giant needle into this man’s chest where I know his heart is. I need a blood sample to test for infectious diseases back at the lab, and the heart is the only place you can draw blood from someone who is dead. What the hell kind of job is this anyway? For someone who is twenty-one and hopeful and sensitive and doesn’t like horror films because they’re too scary? I wish they’d told me this part of it before I accepted the job. It might’ve been what made me say, “Nah, thanks anyway.”
I do the “in the heart” blood draw as reluctantly as I would run over another baby in my car, and I am officially done.
Relieved, I silently thank this man for donating his corneas and zip the shroud closed. I pack up my things, wash my hands, open the door to the rest of the hospital, and turn off the light and leave.
I took this job at the eye bank harvesting corneas while I was in nursing school. Being on call at night worked well with my classes. I didn’t realize how many people died in the middle of the night or how horrifying they’d look without their eyes. I managed to do it for six months before the smell of my lab coat and the act of driving the city streets of Phoenix at night with eyeballs in my Toyota pickup became too much. I quit to go wait tables at a Mexican restaurant. Serving chips and queso to hungry people is contributing plenty to society, okay?
what i didn’t consider when i went to nursing school
Janet Sinclair had the loudest laugh that anyone around her had ever heard. Her husband said she could go from zero to full-out screaming laugher in nothing flat and it would scare the crap out of you if you weren’t expecting it. He said that was his favorite thing about her.
She liked to watch softball games and would go to see her niece play and holler from the stands. She listened to country music, had every George Strait album, and liked to two-step. That’s how she met Jeff: he asked her to dance at Toolie’s. They got married a year later, and now she was pregnant with their first baby.
At twenty-five, Janet was just one year older than I was. Under normal circumstances, we might have hung out, drank beer, and screamed at softball games together. We might have been friends. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have had to put her into a body bag and then go home to get drunk at 7 a.m.
The night I met Janet, I was just six months into my nursing career. I worked in a busy cardiovascular ICU, where many of the patients were elderly folks who had open-heart surgery. Most did very well. They’d pat my hand and eat Jell-O when they healed, and I’d get to smile and hang up my stethoscope proudly before I punched out each morning. Sure, I had taken care of a few people with serious problems, but I was generally assigned the more stable cases. By nursing standards, I was still just a rookie.
That all changed when I met Janet. It was one of those nights when no one sat down, when every patient on the unit had significant problems, when there was a full moon shouting “DANGER” through every window. There was a loud beep-beep from the computer, two exclamation points of sound while it spit out an admit slip: a young pregnant woman was in surgery having an emergency C-section. She’d be coming to us with a severe case of sepsis. She was crashing, and I was the only one free enough to take her. The charge nurse told me this as she handed me the slip with more than a little concern on her face. I smelled the sweat of pure fear erupt under my new blue scrubs. No one would be eating Jell-O tonight.
Janet hadn’t been feeling well for a few days. She thought it was just fatigue from being pregnant for so long and believed that her cough was from allergies. She was at a softball game that night, sitting in the bleachers hollering her fool head off when her back started to hurt. It got so bad Jeff forced her to come to the hospital.
&n
bsp; She had pneumonia, and by the time she came to the hospital the infection had spread to her blood. Her baby was delivered and doing fine, but Janet was in trouble. She rolled into our unit with a breathing tube and very little blood pressure, so we had to start her on high doses of IV medications to raise it to a viable level. I was busier and more challenged than I ever had been, helping to place a central line, drawing labs, trying to keep Janet stable, trying to keep myself from crashing under all of the pressure. Somehow, we both made it through the night.
I worked four nights in a row after admitting Janet and was assigned to her each night. Though she remained on the ventilator, she improved dramatically. We stopped her sedation after the second night and allowed her to wake up. The first question she mouthed to me around her breathing tube was, “How is my baby?”
Her baby was fine. Jeff brought their daughter into the unit. Since we couldn’t allow him to bring her into Janet’s room because of the risk of infection, he would stand holding her outside the window. Janet could see her from there and would wave, reaching her hand out, trying to touch her baby through the glass. For those of us used to caring for elderly patients, having a baby on the unit was alien. That little girl’s presence was magic; it pulled all of us out of our sometimes mechanical roles as nurses and turned us into people. Janet and Jeff and their daughter became our temporary family.
By my third night with her Janet seemed like she was out of the woods. Her pneumonia was still bad enough to necessitate the breathing tube, but her body was responding well to the antibiotics. We weaned her off all the blood pressure medication, and she was mouthing words around her tube and writing notes to us when she needed to.