NINETEEN

“GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS,” announced a woman in navy-blue scrubs upon entering the room. “Bad news, you have a lacerated liver. Good news, it’s a mild laceration. We’ll watch you closely for a couple days, so we can make sure your bleeding doesn’t increase, and you’ll be sore for several weeks, but I’m ordering you pain medication now so you’ll be comfortable. Questions.”

“She’s going to be okay?” my mom asked.

“Yes. If the bleeding worsens, surgery will be necessary, but based on the radiologist’s report, I think that’s very unlikely. As liver lacerations go, this is about as good as they get. Your daughter is really quite lucky, in the scheme of things.”

“She’s going to be okay,” my mom said again.

“As I said, we’ll keep a close eye on her for a couple days, and then she’ll have about a week of bed rest. Within six or so weeks, she should be her old self.”

My mother dissolved into tears of gratitude as I turned over that phrase, her old self. “Do I need antibiotics?” I asked.

“You shouldn’t. If we had to do surgery, you would, but as of now, no.” A shiver of relief rolled through me. No antibiotics. No increased risk of C. diff. Just needed to get the hell out of here, then.

The doctor asked me about my medications, and I told her. She made some notes in the chart and then said, “Someone will be by shortly to take you upstairs, and we’ll get you something for the pain before that.”

“Wait,” I said. “What do you mean upstairs?”

“As I said, you’ll need to spend a couple nights here so that you can—”

“Wait, no no no no. I can’t stay in the hospital.”

“Baby,” my mom said. “You have to.”

“No, I really can’t. I really, this is, like, the one place I absolutely cannot stay tonight. Please. Just let us go home.”

“That would be inadvisable.”

Oh no. Listen, it’s okay. Most people admitted to the hospital go home healthier than they left it. Almost everyone, really. C. diff infections are only common in postsurgical patients. You won’t even be on antibiotics. Oh no no no no no no no.

—

Of all the places to end up in the tightening gyre, here we were, on the fourth floor of a hospital in Carmel, Indiana.

Daisy left once I’d gotten upstairs but Mom stayed, lying on her side in the reclining chair next to my hospital bed, facing me.

I could feel her breath on me that night as she slept, her lips parted, smudged eyes closed, the microbes from her lungs floating across my cheek. I couldn’t roll over onto my side because even with the medication the pain was paralyzing, and when I turned my head, her breath just blew my hair across my face, so I lived with it.

She stirred, her eyes locked to mine. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Does it hurt?” I nodded. “You know Sekou Sundiata, in a poem, he said the most important part of the body ‘ain’t the heart or the lungs or the brain. The biggest, most important part of the body is the part that hurts.’” Mom put her hand on my wrist and fell back asleep.

Even though I was pretty high on morphine or whatever, I couldn’t sleep. I could hear beeping in the rooms next to mine, and it wasn’t particularly dark, and well-meaning strangers kept showing up to pull blood out of my body and/or check my blood pressure, and most of all, I knew: I knew that C. diff was invading my body, that it was floating in the air. On my phone, I paged through patients’ stories of how they went into the hospital for a gallbladder surgery or a kidney stone, and they’d come out destroyed.

The thing about C. diff is that it’s inside of everyone. We all have it, lurking there; it’s just that sometimes it grows out of control and takes over and begins attacking your insides. Sometimes it just happens. Sometimes it happens because you ingest someone else’s C. diff, which is slightly different from your own, and it starts mixing with yours, and boom.

I felt these little jolts through my arms and legs as my brain whirred through thoughts, trying to figure out how to make this okay. My IV line beeping. Couldn’t even say when I last changed the Band-Aid on my finger. The C. diff both inside me and around me. It could survive months outside a body, waiting for a new host. The combined weight of all large animals in the world—human, cow, penguin, shark—is around 1.1 billion tons. The combined weight of the earth’s bacteria is 400 billion tons. They overwhelm us.

For some reason, I started hearing that song “Can’t Stop Thinking About You” in my head. The more I thought about that song, the weirder it got. Like, the chorus—can’t stop can’t stop can’t stop thinking about you—imagines that it is somehow sweet or romantic to be unable to turn your thoughts away from someone, but there’s nothing romantic or pretty about a boy thinking about you the way you think about C. diff. Can’t stop thinking. Trying to find something solid to hold on to in this rolling sea of thought. The spiral painting. Daisy hates you and she should. Davis’s microbe-soaked tongue on your neck. Your mom’s warm breaths. Hospital gown clinging to your back soaked with sweat. And in the way-down deep, some me screaming, get me out of here get me out of here get me out please I’ll do anything, but the thoughts just keep spinning, the tightening gyre, the jogger’s mouth, the stupidity of Ayala, Aza, and Holmesy and all my irreconcilable selves, my self-absorption, the filth in my gut, think about anything other than yourself you disgusting narcissist.

I took my phone and texted Daisy: I’m so sorry I haven’t been a good friend. I can’t stop thinking about it.

She wrote back immediately: It’s fine. How are you?

Me: I do care about your life and I’m sorry I haven’t shown it.

Daisy: Holmesy calm down everything is fine I’m sorry we fought we’ll make up it will be fine.

Me: I’m just really sorry. I can’t think straight.

Daisy: Stop apologizing. Are you on sweet pain meds?

I didn’t reply, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Daisy, about Ayala, and most of all about the bugs inside and outside of me, and I knew I was being selfish by even making a big deal out of it, making other people’s real C. diff infections about my hypothetical one. Reprehensible. Pinched my finger with my thumbnail to attest to this moment’s reality, but can’t escape myself. Can’t kiss anyone, can’t drive a car, can’t function in the actual sensate populated world. How could I even fantasize about going to some school far away where you pay a fortune to live in dorms full of strangers, with communal bathrooms and cafeterias and no private spaces to be crazy in? I’d be stuck here for college, if I could ever get my thinking straightened enough to attend. I’d live in my house with Mom, and then afterward, too. I could never become a functioning grown-up like this; it was inconceivable that I’d ever have a career. In job interviews they’d ask me, What’s your greatest weakness? and I’d explain that I’ll probably spend a good portion of the workday terrorized by thoughts I’m forced to think, possessed by a nameless and formless demon, so if that’s going to be an issue, you might not want to hire me.

Thoughts are just a different kind of bacteria, colonizing you. I thought about the gut-brain information axis. Maybe you’re already gone. The prisoners run the jail now. Not a person so much as a swarm. Not a bee, but the hive.

I couldn’t stand my mother’s breath on my face. My palms were sweating. I felt my self slipping away. You know how to deal with this. “Can you turn over?” I whispered, but she responded only with breath. You just need to stand up.

I picked up my phone to text Daisy, but now the letters blurred out on the screen, and the full panic gripped me. See the hand sanitizer mounted on the wall near the door. It’s the only way that’s stupid if it worked alcoholics would be the healthiest people in the world you’re just going to sanitize your hands and your mouth please fucking think about something else stand up I HATE BEING STUCK INSIDE YOU you are me I am not you are we I am not you want to feel better you know how to feel better it’ll just make me barf you’ll be clean you can be sure I can never be sure stand up not even a person just a deeply flawed line of reasoning you want to stand up the doctor said stay in bed and the last thing needed is a surgery you will get up and wheel your IV cart let me up out of this wheel your IV cart to the front of the room please and you will pump the hand sanitizer foam into your hands, clean them carefully, and then you will pump more foam into your hands and you will put that foam in your mouth, swish it around your filthy teeth and gums. But that stuff has alcohol in it that my damaged liver will have to process DO YOU WANT TO DIE OF C. DIFF no but this is not rational THEN GET UP AND WHEEL YOUR IV CART TO THE CONTAINER OF HAND SANITIZER MOUNTED ON THE GODDAMNED WALL YOU IDIOT. Please let me go. I’ll do anything. I’ll stand down. You can have this body. I don’t want it anymore. You will stand up. I will not. I am my way not my will. You will stand up. Please. You will go to the hand sanitizer. Cogito, ergo non sum. Sweating you already have it nothing hurts like this you’ve already got it stop please God stop you’ll never be free of this you’ll never be free of this you’ll never get your self back you’ll never get your self back do you want to die of this do you want to die of this because you will you will you will you will you will you will.

I pulled myself to standing. For a moment, I thought I might faint as the pain blazed through me. I grabbed hold of the IV pole and took a few shuffling steps. I heard my mom stirring. I didn’t care. Pressed the dispenser, rubbed the foam all through my hands. Pressed it again, and shoved a scoop of it into my mouth.

“Aza, what are you doing?” my mom asked. I was so fucking embarrassed, but I did it again, because I had to. “Aza, stop it!”

I heard my mom getting up, and knew my window was closing, so I took a third shot of the foam and stuffed it into my mouth, gagging. A spasm of nausea lurched through me, and I vomited, the pain in my ribs blinding, as Mom grabbed me by the arm. There was yellow bile all over my pale blue hospital gown.

A voice came from inside a speaker somewhere behind me. “This is Nurse Wallace.”

“My daughter is vomiting. I think she drank hand sanitizer.”

I knew how disgusting I was. I knew. I knew now for sure. I wasn’t possessed by a demon. I was the demon.