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613526362 · 7 years

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A Life and a Lie

Maybe if I just get this out It will help I'm lying in bed And I can't get out It's been two or three hours Since a phone call from someone calling about [redacted] courses woke me up. She wanted to complain about the prices a lot. I should have told her that I paid about six thousand dollars of my own money so that she can receive classes at this price. I mean I paid sixteen grand, but at least eight grand or so has been paid back to me. That doesn't add up but whatever And I just want to go to [redacted] next month and tell them, no, I'm not going to do your expansion to The Big City, because I don't make any money off this. I'm not trying to make even more not making money. I'm actually going to apply for other jobs just so I have a valid excuse to say no to them. When I drove up to work last night, there was police tape all around the ER. I guess a kid got shot in a car or something, and the car parked outside the ER was evidence or something. When I got in, that kid was gone, but there was another child who was stabbed. The way he screamed was haunting. Jesus we don't even take pediatric trauma anymore. But if EMS knows we don't, people out in the jungle still don't. They'll come forever. So many flashes of terror in mind. The resident wearing a "banned" shirt with two pistols on the front and "MOG TRAUMA" printed across them in stylized font. It's so cool for these twenty something doctors to see so many poor and black people shot. It's a fucking sport to them, and all that cool violence just soaks right into their walk, and clothes, and aura. They're so fucking cool for all this misery they walk past. The cockroach scurrying about of the box of IV flush that I grab. I'm told there's a room upstairs with tons of children's clothes in it, and there are just cockroaches scurrying everywhere. The beautiful medical and PA students. I try to teach one of them to insert IVs. She can't advance the catheter far enough. I take it, and twirl it in, showing her one technique to save the attempt. A nurse watches. The IV doesn't work, and when I pull it out, it's all distorted and twisted around. The nurse steps in to show her the "right" way to do it, humiliating me. I've used that technique a million times successfully, but of course the one time I'm showing a beautiful student who looked up to me how to do it, it fails terribly. I want to write her real name, it's such a beautiful name. She was Croatian. She was tall, and pretty, and I felt nervous next to her. I looked in the mirror shortly after I first talked to her. When I did, I saw my lips were terribly chapped, and I saw something black on my neck. I thought it was a scab from cutting myself while shaving (I also had a cut on my chin from that), but when I grabbed at it, it was actually a flea. It had just bit me and left a red mark. I killed it,and inspected it more closely. I wondered if she had seen the flea on my neck when we were taking. I wondered if the flea had jumped off a patient, or i f I just have fleas now. If they're in my bed. If they're in my hair. If I'm just living in fleas now. One of the five gunshot victims of the night had his sister with him. They were joking around while I was preparing the cast to keep his leg still until an orthopedic clinic could see the next day, and I caught something she said. "Wait, what did you say?" "Morgue Mog" "What's that?" "That's what they call it here, because everyone who comes here dies." I can just see poor black people, on street corners and in homes, talking about family members that I touch and I stick needles into and put blankets on. I can just see them casually referring to the place I spend 40 hours a week as "Morgue Mog." I work in a morgue. I find a library open the third floor, and that saves the night. I'm so excited to start using the library to study, but there's a passcode on the door. When I email the "library administrator" the next morning, she calls and says that the library is just for medical students, and my medical school isn't a medical school that's affiliated with the hospital. Crazy that I work here and get patients blood on my skin every single time I come to work and it's the students who are allowed to use the library and not me. They do nothing while they're here. Nothing. Nothing. So I'll either bribe the janitor to get me the code, or I'll send emails and harass uppers administrators to get permission to use it. Or I won't do either, because I'm just so tired of everything being a fight. I'm so tired of fighting. I just barely paid rent, but more bills are coming. I don't have the will to do any other things I need to do right now. When I got home I swatted at a mosquito ont he wall in the shower, and it caused the curtain rod to fall down and hit me on the head. It was a heavy metal one. It hurts now. I want to fast, and I want to sit in my room and pray. I want to study for the exam, or see my father. I just want to touch my fathers hand. I just want to hug my best friend's daughter. But I am alone here. I joined a Christian dating app. I just wanted someone to talk to. I purposefully avoided Tinder and Bumble because it's too romantic, too sexual. I just wanted to make a friend, but I couldn't find an app for friends that anyone actually uses. I guess everyone wants more than that in life. That's all I want. All of the girls whose profiles I like don't like me back. There aren't many people in my area, so I had to expand the geographical region I was searching in more and more. To make a long and cruel story short, I wound up accidentally talking to the cousin of someone I wrote about when I was on the island. When she found out who I was, she started worshipping me. Her "favorite cousin" had already told her all about me, how great I was, my work in Africa. And then, when we finally talked on the phone, she was so disappointed to find out that I care more about peoples bodies than their souls. She told me a story about bringing someone to Christ, and then she said, "I'm so sorry you've never had that feeling before." I informed her that I've treated over 60,000 patients in the last ten years, and worked as an advocate for abused and neglected children, and worked with communities in schools, and so on and so on, and I have that feeling every week. But that's not true. There's no gratification in anything I do. In her eyes I'm not even a Christian. It jarred me to have that conversation with her. To see myself as so wrong in her eyes. And it made it worse that she's actually done more more medical work in Africa than I have. She's just an EMT, and at 22, she's done more of what I base my whole life on that I have. A week ago I was in the closet at a wedding making out with the maid of honor. When she came to my hotel that night, I noticed she'd been drinking. I think sometimes women do that. I think they expect that they're about to have sex, and they just want to relax. Maybe the guy will be bad at it, maybe he'll rush it, maybe he'll do things she's not comfortable with. Best to drink a bit before it gets started, and then it won't hurt as much. But as Finding Dory played on my hotel TV in the background (I own the movie since I used to play it off my iPad for pediatric patients on my ambulance, but I've never actually watched more than five monitors of it), she was shocked. She was shocked how comfortable she was with me, she was shocked that I wanted to hear about her life, and was actually, genuinely interested in it. She was shocked that I didn't come closer to her. When we did finally kiss, and things got heated, I said, "We need to stop, or else we might wind up having sex." And she said, "No that won't happen." Oh it won't? It won't? You're right it won't. Because ten hours later, I had cuddled you and held you and showed you what love is really like. You woke up in my arms to kisses on your neck, I make you cum using just my fingers in the morning. And you beg me to miss my flight, you beg me to move to South Carolina, you beg me to get a condom and put myself inside of you. But you're right. We won't have sex. I just needed someone to hold I just wanted to not be alone. I just didn't want to want, for a minute. So I kept my underwear on, even though she pulled my dick out of them and put it in her mouth. I try to turn over,a get out of bed. She grabs me, pulls me back in. I tried to walk away from bed. She follows me and tries to push me back into bed. She's trying to rape me, but eventually she gives up. And I'm in another state for two days, to attend my assistants wedding. While people in the state where I was last year cry out for help from a hurricane. The exact city where I used to work 911 needs people urgently to come help. It's a state of crisis. It's what as a kid I always dreamed of happening. Hurricane Katrina. I wanted nothing more than to go and help. And now, when it happens, in the exact city where I worked last year, it doesn't. even. fucking. occur to me to go. I'm literally making out with some girl I'm not attracted to in a closet while people post on Facebook that medical workers are urgently needed in [redacted]. Boats are needed to save people. I pin her up against the door and kiss her, I slip down her dress and touch her breast. My soul is dead. I need to get out of bed and prep paperwork and equipment for my CPR clases tomorrow morning. Jesus, being a fake version of you is shit. I tell myself I'm trying to be like you, but I'm not trying hard enough for it not to be a lie. I am the biggest lie ever. I convince women of me the lie, my father believes in me the lie. Promise me you'll take me quickly someday. Promise me I won't have to deal with all the debilitating shit that I see patients slowly suffering and dying from each day. Or just don't hold it against me if I take myself. I can't do this for more than 20 more years God. I don't deserve that. I don't deserve a quick way out. But as I see how much a lie I am more and more, I just don't know what to do. Do I go back to church Do I settle down and give up on Africa Do I get more radical What the fuck Do I do Let me have a dog some day, God. Let it be a sweet dog, who sleeps in my bed with me and cuddles me, and runs with me, and loves me like I love it. And don't let it die God, don't let it die ever We do get more selfish with age We do forget about others and care more about ourselves Forgive me for what I have become god I am a life and a lie I love you God

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