Pink

This story is by Philip J Palmieri and was part of our 2024 Fall Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.

Goddamn this pain. I came to this crap hole of a hospital to get some relief, but these asshole doctors aren’t doing anything. This dump isn’t any better than the Med Center. Before Kyle got me out of there, they kept telling me, “Honey, if you leave, you’ll die. You have endocarditis. Your heart is infected.” I was in so much pain, I didn’t care. You know how many times I could have died?

Kyle turned me onto it. He’d say, “Babe, I’ll get you so close to death, you can touch it. It’s the ultimate high.” And it has been. Most of the time. It sure takes the pain away. 

Death. Sometimes I’d even welcome it. 

All these doctors and nurses running around pretending they’re living. Saving lives. They don’t understand. I could check out any time I want. So could that old bitch in the bed next to mine, moaning and groaning. I want to cover her head with a pillow and say, “What the hell are you hanging on for? You don’t know Monday from Tuesday. Just let go.”

Now here comes a winner. This fat, sweaty hospitalist, asking me all kinds of questions. Why are you here? Where’s it hurt? Why did you leave the Med Center? Ask all you want. I am going to just lay here with my eyes closed. Groan a little and then let this prick have it.

“My fucking chest hurts. Can’t you do something for me?! My goddamn chest is killing me. Get me some pain meds!” I say, spring up from the bed.

He jumps back. “Ms Harrigan, it’s ordered. You just need to ask for it,” he says with a quiver in his voice.

I push the call button. A woman answers, “Can I help you?”

“Ya, can you get a nurse in here with something for the pain?”

Almost a lifetime later, this perky blonde, all smiles and bouncing ponytail comes in with a syringe. She asks my pain level 1 out of 10, but I ignore this moronic question. I used to say 100. Now I don’t bother. When I’m bitchy to them, they just make me wait that much longer. Better I say nothing.

She tears the top off an alcohol pad and wipes the hub of my iv before injecting the med. My eyes are drawn to the glossy pink polish on her flawless fingernails and the large diamond ring on her left finger. She notices my leering at her hands and says, “We’re not supposed to wear nail polish, but I just got back from my honeymoon.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Hawaii. Have you ever been? It’s amazing.”

“Me, Hawaii? Nah, I’ve never been outside of New York.”

“Well, if you get the chance, go. It’s so beautiful.”

“Ya, I’ll do that,” I say. Stupid bitch doesn’t realize I can barely pay for my phone.

I can’t take my eyes off her nails. Those nails. Like my Aunt Nan’s. I loved her fingers. So long and delicate. They would bundle me up, keeping me warm and safe. She always seemed to know when to come get me, showing up right after my mother left on some bender. We’d lie in her big bed. All white and clean and soft. Nothing could ever hurt me there. She would place a book over a pillow and file our nails. She would smooth the rough ridges and then ever so gently glide the small brush, painting our nails pink. After they dried, she made chocolate chip cookies, and we’d dance in our underwear to Carole King and Diana Ross.

 

Startling me, a doctor knocks on my door and rolls into my room on a knee scooter like a circus clown. I close my eyes, hoping he’ll go away. He doesn’t. Instead, he rocks me with his hand on my shoulder.

 “I’m from infectious diseases.”

I turn over away from him and say, “Leave me alone. I wanna get some sleep.”

“Ah, so you are in there. You got a pretty serious infection, you know. One that could kill you if you keep leaving the hospital.”

He listens to my heart and lungs, telling me to breathe deep and asks about the pain. I ignore him.

He sits on his scooter and peers straight into my eyes and says, “Drugs rewire your brain. But I have to believe somewhere in there you are listening. You’re young. You got your whole life ahead of you. Promise you’ll stay in the hospital this time. It will only be a few short weeks. Leave early, and you could die, and that-death is forever.”

“Yah sure, I’ll stay. Please, just get the nurse. I need somethin’ for pain.”

After he leaves, my mind wanders back to Aunt Nan. Why did she leave me? No, that’s not right. They took me from her. All those people at those agencies. Why did they think my mother, who could barely take care of herself, would be better for me? They were supposed to protect kids. But not me. I wanted to finish high school and maybe even go to college. Get a real job like Aunt Nan, instead of cleaning houses. Then Kyle picked me up after school one day. Says he loves me and will always take my pain away. Deep down, I know it’s a lie that I want to believe.

I text him.

Come and get me outta here They’re not doing shit

 

 Almost three hours later, the jackass strolls into my room.

“Hey babe,” Kyle says and kisses my forehead.

“I’m in so much pain. You gotta take care of me.”

He pulls out a syringe, and without wiping the hub, injects me with magic.

My body tingles. Everything is warm, and the pain is gone. Kyle and I can’t stop laughing. Even the walls giggle, swirling orange and yellow and pink. 

Let’s dance. Sing. 

“You’re so far away…doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore…” 

Aunt Nan is lying in bed next to me. She knows the words.

“Why didn’t you come looking for me?” I ask her.

“I never left you,” she says. “I’m here every time you shoot up.”

I take comfort in her words, but then something changes. This time is different.

Her beautiful face morphs into a hideous, distorted one of the old lady in the bed next to me. She screams, “Death’s forever.” 

Stop, you’re frightening me! She shouts back, “What are you hanging on for?”, cackles and bleeds into the blackness. The void terrifies me. I don’t even know if I exist anymore.

 

Not sure if I’m dead or alive, I open my eyes. The doctor on the scooter is beside my bed. Hazy, ethereal, almost dream-like.

“You really want to kill yourself. What is it going to take?” he asks. 

The outline of his weary face comes into focus. 

“Have you been to rehab?” he asks.

“Six times,” I say.

“Do a seventh and an eighth and a ninety eighth. Whatever it takes to beat this. And rethink the boyfriend.”

“Kyle loves me.”

He lifts my scarred arm up and says, “This is not love. This is control.”

The track marks run the length of my limbs like gnarled roots of a tree, leading to my filthy, worn nails. I know he’s right. Kyle has left uglier bruises than these on me. I felt love once, but now I am no longer sure what it is. Perhaps it died with my mother. Disappeared with my aunt.

He raises his voice and says, “Walk out that door, keep using and you’ll be dead before you’re 30, or stay until the antibiotics are done and then wake up every day, fighting the cravings but knowing you’re alive with a future.”

I look down and notice for the first time the cast on his leg.

“What’s with the scooter?”

“Blew out my Achilles playing pickleball.”

Surprising myself, I let out a laugh and say, “Pickleball?! Christ, how old are you? Gonna keep playing?”

“No, when I get off of this, I’m taking up golf.”

I gaze beyond him and out the window. The sun shines on the treetops. Tender green buds on the tips of bare branches. In the distance, the pinks and purples of the Heldeberg escarpment. I can almost smell the air on the long walks through those hills with my mother before she became ill. Her hand soft in mine. I yearn for that feeling again. I don’t want to die. Not yet. But can I beat this? 

“You make it all sound so easy,” I say.

“It’s not. Life isn’t.”

I look down at the pink flesh of my damaged hands, across to the empty bed that had held my roommate, who had let go during the night, and back up at him.

“I have an aunt. She lives near a golf course in North Carolina. Maybe when I’m done here, I’ll go down and see her.”