Vein Fire

by Adams, Lucia

  The nurse left and Hannah took inventory of what she’d have to hide as she undressed. There were scars on her thighs, her arms and her stomach. They were blades of grass compared to the tree-like scars from her leg surgeries. It will have to do. She will have to do.

  Waiting naked, wearing a too-small gown, and being covered in a large napkin was humiliating. Hannah alternated between shivering and worrying about the sweat accumulating in her crevices.

  The doctor knocked and opened the door without waiting for a response. She was engrossed in reading Hannah’s chart. As she stepped closer, Hannah could see she was looking at the page where the secretary liberally stroked the questions with yellow highlighter. She was a short woman with a blonde pixie cut and masculine shoes. She shook Hannah’s hand briefly, “Hi, Hannah, I’m Dr. Malvern.”

  “Hi.” Hannah inhaled, but did not exhale.

  The doctor sat on a stool and wheeled in closer to her. “So this is your first examination?”

  Hannah responded quietly, “Yes.”

  “Well, don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt and before I do anything, I’ll explain it to you.” The doctor plunged her face back into the file. “What do you take the Percocet for?”

  “Um…I’ve had a lot of surgeries on my legs and they hurt from time to time.” Hannah began pinching her fingers into one another as a way to stop from crying nervous tears.

  “And why did you have the surgeries? Were you in an accident or something?”

  Hannah swallowed. “Yes, I had an accident.”

  The doctor was losing patience. “What kind of accident? A car accident? Did you fall?”

  Hannah pinched her fingers harder. “Someone smashed my legs with a cinder block when I was thirteen.”

  The doctor looked at her with disbelief. “Someone smashed your legs with a cinder block? Who did that?”

  “A boy who lived on my street.” The doctor’s look of surprise wasn’t unfamiliar—it was the same look she’d been given before by many different people in her life.

  The doctor glanced at the file again. “And you’ve been raped recently? This past weekend?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you seen at the hospital?”

  “No.”

  “Did you file a police report?”

  “No.”

  The doctor exhaled. “I’d like to use a rape kit on you. It’s not much more than a normal exam.

  Hannah paled and bit her lip as she pinched harder. “No police.”

  “It’s just taking a few samples, and we’d be taking most of them anyway for your standard exam. It doesn’t mean you have to file a police report or anything; we take samples, and pictures if necessary. Will that be okay with you?”

  “Okay.”

  “Alright then. I’ll get a nurse to assist me while I do your examination.” The doctor stood up, stuck her head out of the door, and spoke, “Patty, can you come here for an assist?”

  The gummy smiling nurse re-entered the room, but she was no longer smiling. Hannah didn’t appreciate an additional witness to her humiliation, nor the extra pair of eyes scanning her scars and cuts. She didn’t say no; she just cooperated with whatever the doctor did.

  Dr. Malvern explained everything before she did it—the hand inside of her, the lubricant, the pressure, the cold metal speculum ratcheting her open, and all of the swabbing. She asked questions and marked down the answers as she went. The pictures were the worst—the thought of an image of her with her legs spread open mortified her. Hannah wondered what there was to photograph. She flinched with each snap of the camera.

  When it was done, Hannah took her legs out of the stirrups and lay flat as the doctor unpeeled the napkin and gown to give her a breast exam. Her eyes darted across the cuts on Hannah’s stomach, and then flashed to her arm, as the scars she had seen on her thighs must have suddenly made sense. Hannah concentrated on the divots in the ceiling tiles. She considered slowing her breathing down, but didn’t want to do anything obvious. She could feel the lubricant melting out of her, onto the examination table. The fluorescent lights were yellow, running in sunny tubes above her. If she floated above the table and rose to the ceiling, she could press against the lights. She imagined them burning her skin. These were the things she tried to concentrate on.

  The doctor finished the breast exam and helped Hannah to cover herself.

  “We’ll give you a few minutes to get dressed and then we can talk in my office about the exam.” Dr. Malvern was business-like as she excused herself and frowning-Patty.

  These were the times when Hannah most regretted cutting herself—as long as it was a secret, she appreciated the dive into her bloody serenity, but when others found out, she was angry. She dressed and exited the room. Nurse Patty directed her to Dr. Malvern’s office, who sat at a large desk, waiting for her.

  Once they were alone, the doctor spoke. “We’re testing for all STD’s as well as checking for the presence of semen and hair. It will take a few days to get the results back. You can call the office on Friday and see if they have come in yet. Here’s a pamphlet explaining everything we’re testing for.” Dr. Malvern handed Hannah a yellow pamphlet and a white pamphlet. “You have bruising on your thighs and some slight tearing at your rectum. This is what I took pictures of. The tears don’t need stitches, but you should watch for any signs of infection—redness, swelling or if the area starts to feel hot. I’ll give you a pamphlet on that as well.”

  The doctor dug in her desk as Hannah arched an eyebrow— monitor a red, swollen, warm spot for redness, swelling, and heat? She almost rolled her eyes. The doctor handed her another pamphlet.

  “We have tested you for pregnancy—it was negative, but if you miss your next period, you should come in and be retested. We’ll need some blood work from you, and we can draw it here…if you’d like?” Dr. Malvern locked eyes with Hannah.

  “Sure, here is fine.”

  “Now, what about birth control?”

  Hannah shrugged.

  “Are you interested in it?”

  “I—I thought about getting on the pill.”

  “Okay, I can write you a prescription for that as well.” Dr. Malvern started scribbling on a prescription pad. “Now, about your cuts…”

  Hannah could almost feel her spine flinch. She stared at the carpet—variegated strands of green and tan in no particular pattern.

  “Do you see a counselor or a psychiatrist?”

  Hannah started counting the carpet loops. She shook her head.

  “I see you take an anti-depressant and medication for anxiety. Who prescribes them for you? Your family doctor?”

  Hannah continued to count the carpet loops, but nodded her head.

  “Hannah, after all you’ve been through, I’d like to suggest you see a counselor. We have one in-house here who specializes in working with rape victims. Her name is Iris. Would you like to set up an appointment to speak with her? She’s in her office on Thursdays.”

  Hannah nodded again.

  Hannah took the papers and followed the doctor to the room where she was to get her blood drawn. Dr. Malvern patted her arm and said, “Good luck,” before scurrying away.

  The blood work was quick, and the nurse was content to use Hannah’s left arm instead of her butchered right arm. Hannah scheduled her appointment to see Iris, paid her co-pay, and left with eager steps. Once in her car, she started crying and shaking, swallowing two pain killers for the ride home.

  CHAPTER 21

  Lunch

  Matt did the shit labor at his job. He carried the shingles up to the roof, loaded and unloaded the tools, and if something needed dug, he was the one to do it. He liked the crew he worked with, and most of them were his customers as well. Bob treated him like a younger brother, and gave him rides to work most days, so it was convenient.

  Matt never bothered to wash the dirt off of his hands before he ate lunch. He sat on a bucket of joint compound and unwrapped his sandwich, leaving black fingerprints on
the white bread. His soda was warm, but it was another thing he didn’t care about. One by one, he popped cheese crackers into his mouth and thought about Hannah—the real Hannah. He missed her. Despite all she’d lived through, despite all of the angry cuts on her skin, she helped him. If he could bottle her essence, he’d drink it. It would be swirled with dysfunction, but it would only make it easier for him to digest. He simply thirsted for her.

  Hannah number two stopped by the work site with a hot lunch for him. She stood before him, offering it to him like some sort of Stepford wife with a plastic smile and vacant eyes.

  “What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?”

  “I brought you lunch.” She smiled.

  “Lunch is over, princess.”

  She walked over to the garbage dumpster and tossed the food in.

  “Hey!” Bob yelled, “I would have eaten that.”

  She ignored him and stood in front of Matt again, smoothing down her skirt. “How about dessert?”

  Matt chewed his last cheese cracker and took a drink of his soda. He didn’t answer her; he stood up and pulled her between the two work trucks.

  “You wanna fuck? I didn’t wear panties,” she said, lifting her little pink skirt up a few inches.

  “Nah, I’m tired, just suck me off.”

  She hesitated before getting on her knees, and even more so when she saw how sweaty he was. Matt’s face was partially shaded from the sun. A shadow from one of the trucks cast a rectangle over his left eye while the right side of his face reflected the high noon sun. He closed both eyes and lost himself in memories, like flickering through pages in a magazine—colorful pictures and stark typesetter articles about the night skies he had slept under and the shooting stars that arched over him. Something kept startling him—pictures were out of place—a girl with bloody legs and eviscerated kneecaps.

  Matt pushed Hannah number two off of him and returned to the joint compound bucket next to Bob.

  Bob laughed. “I only saw one head sticking up over the bed of the pickup, so I figure someone needs to brush their teeth, huh?”

  Matt didn’t answer. He stared ahead, waiting for Hannah to leave. She did so without even approaching him, and he knew why—animals can smell fear and she sensed she had made a momentary slip down the food chain to ‘prey’ instead of equal. He could hurt her, and he wanted to. He chose not to.

  Some things never left Matt. As he returned to the ditch he was sketching into the soil, he abandoned the shovel for a pick axe, and drove the end into the earth with his thoughts.

  Four different men had raised children with his mother, so it made no difference to her which one was around. When Matt was six, she settled in with the one who raised him until he was arrested—Vince.

  Vince had a minion which helped him raise the children—a three-foot piece of a broken shovel handle with the words “Board of Education” scrawled on it with permanent black marker. The Board of Education’s wood grain was imbedded with Matt’s genetic code via blood, skin, hair, and body pulp matter.

  There were scratches rutted into the painted walls of the hallway. Vince would run his stick along the wall as he made his way back to Matt’s bedroom. The first bump-slide was the stick sliding across the bathroom door. The second bump-slide was the laundry room door. Next was a long slide to Matt’s room. It would stop at his door before Vince’s boot found the familiar spot on the bottom right hand corner to kick.

  Matt knew not to fight it. Fighting meant extra swings, kicks, broken ribs, black eyes, and bloody knots on his skull. Whatever was wrong with Vince, The Board of Education tried to exercise out of Matt. There were other tortures. Talking back meant digesting a bar of soap and subsequent days of vomiting. A missed curfew equaled two days of no food.

  Soap-induced vomiting spells and weeks of welted faces were days off of school for Matt to avoid questions. Whenever the school counselor did asked questions, he lied. When Children and Youth Services came, he lied to them, too. He knew none of the people would rescue him from Vince, so he made the best of it by lying to them. He hated them anyway—the concerned outsiders who had all of the evidence but never acted. Even with a silent witness, they had to know. Matt was a product of an abusive home and a system which failed him.

  Vince thought of alternative punishments that didn’t leave evidence. Once Matt forgot to shovel the dog shit out of the back yard and Vince produced two slices of white bread with week old dog shit between them. Matt was forced to eat the dog shit sandwich. The second bite made him vomit on the kitchen table. He was told he would have to eat that too, but his vomiting became so violent, Vince gave up on the ill-planned torture. Matt was pushed out the back door, into the yard, where he finished his puking into the grass, bent in half, while he learned from The Board of Education anyway. It was one of the lowest moments of his life, and he looked across the street and saw Hannah standing at the edge of her yard, watching dumbly with her blossom mouth perched into an ‘o’ shape. She ran inside after she had witnessed enough of his humiliation.

  Matt shit psychologists and ran Everglade circles around counselors. He was the danger lurking in the tall grasses, and they knew it. They couldn’t break what needed to be fixed and they couldn’t fix what was broken. He lived on an infinitely looping drive belt of abuse and consequences. If he hadn’t been so intelligent, he would have spent his life being examined. The system wasn’t equipped to handle a “probably”. Matt would never be caught again. With this satisfaction, he left the work site without a word and walked towards the nearest bus stop.

  Thirteen stops until the bus deposited Matt in Prospect. Three blocks to Marcus’s cousin’s house. Two knocks until they let him in. Each person who fought Matt had a line they wouldn’t cross. Matt’s lines were non-existent. There were only two of them, including Marcus, and no one pulled a gun. If Matt’s gun was with him, he would have shot them clean and quick. He won the fight because he tried to kill them with his hands and he failed. Rage gave him the advantage.

  His knuckles were split and his left eye swelled shut. He was glad he didn’t have a broken nose because the blood would have been hard to hide as he walked home. He held his ribs—several knees had met with his right side during the fight. It made breathing difficult. A few miles down the hill, he stopped and sat on a curb. Across the street was a pay phone. Even though it was the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, he called City Hall and asked to speak to Hannah.

  *

  Hannah left work and drove to meet Matt. She pulled up by the sidewalk near the pay phone from which he had called her.

  “What happened to you?”

  “Fuck, Hannah. I got into a fight. What does it look like?” Matt did not have patience for her questions; he felt hot and was in pain.

  “I’m sorry.” Matt thought she apologized too much. Hannah dug in her purse with one hand while she drove and emerged with a pill bottle in her hand. “Take these.”

  “What are they?” Matt reached for the bottle with one hand while the other arm was still wrapped around his waist, holding his ribs.

  “Percocets. Do you want me to take you to the hospital?”

  “Fuck, no. I’ll be fine.” Matt swallowed the pills without anything to drink, making a face as they disappeared. “I’ve looked worse than this before.”

  “What happened? Weren’t you at work today?”

  Matt’s head drooped back against the seat and he looked at Hannah with swelling eyes. “I was in Prospect.”

  Hannah glanced at Matt, and then looked ahead. She drew the back of her wrist up against her mouth and grimaced as she fought back tears. She inhaled in steps, like a ratchet clicking. Her arm lowered and she sighed deeply. Matt realized Hannah did not know he knew about her rape.

  They arrived at Matt’s house after a few minutes. Neither one spoke. Hannah stayed in the car as Matt went inside. From the small window at the top of his door, he watched as her head bobbed against the steering wheel—her sobs hysterical, b
ut silent due to the distance between them.

  CHAPTER 22

  Locks

  There was freedom and there was free dumb. The group home had little of the first and an excess of the second. The time Jared spent there was not by his choice. He either wanted to be with Hannah, or to be sorting through her belongings. That wasn’t possible at the moment. He was sitting on the couch, waiting for the mandatory weekly house meeting to begin. On the cushion to his right, he placed his backpack so none of the other residents would sit next to him. There was a giant pear-shaped woman named Dana who often sat too close to him. She was in her sixties, sported a grayish-white flat-top hairstyle, and she wore a diaper for a ‘nervous bowel’. The first time Jared heard her empty herself into her diaper with splurts and sighs, he screamed at her for being too lazy to get up and run to the bathroom. Her only reply was an emotionless, “Hehheh.”

  Dana was a disgusting housemate, but the rest were of the same variety which he grew up with in the state hospital. Many of their fingers were stained yellow from excessive chain smoking. They gathered on the front porch, sitting in plastic chairs, going through a constant rotation of cigarettes. Davey looked like a Bolshevik. His staunch face and curled moustache only needed a fur hat with earflaps to complete the look. Davey never had money for cigarettes, so he smoked other people’s butts out of the ashtray.

  The other female residents were middle-aged women with severe depression. They avoided everyone, as if they were busy planning their next suicide attempt. At least once a week, one would agree to do Jared’s chore so he could be away from the house longer. The residents were expected to take turns cooking the dinner each night and to keep the house clean. The older women didn’t trust someone as young as Jared to cook anything edible and were happy to take on his cooking chore. No one had the extra money to spend on food, so they made sure whatever was cooked would be something they’d eat.