Читать книгу Acrobaddict - Joe Putignano - Страница 20

8

SKULL

THE HUMAN SKULL IS A COMPLEX STRUCTURE THAT HOUSES THE BRAIN. WITHIN THE BRAIN IS A SPECIFIC REGION RESPONSIBLE FOR RECOGNIZING FACES. IT IS SO ATTUNED TO FINDING THEM THAT IT CAN IDENTIFY FACES IN RANDOM PATTERNS, IN SYMBOLS, IN FOOD, AND IN NATURE. THE HUMAN BRAIN CANNOT SEPARATE THE IMAGE OF THE HUMAN SKULL FROM THE FAMILIAR HUMAN FACE. BECAUSE OF THIS, BOTH THE DEATH AND PAST LIFE OF THE SKULL ARE SYMBOLIZED, AND HUMAN SKULLS HAVE A GREATER VISUAL APPEAL THAN ANY OTHER HUMAN BONES IN THE SKELETON. THE SKULL FASCINATES EVEN AS IT REPELS.

A menacing shadow had been following me for two weeks, and I couldn’t shake it. It quietly lurked until I was desperately vulnerable. That shadow was Death, and I had been marked. I could feel the chill of its breath in the autumn breeze with its intoxicating, clove-like scent.

I had become a regular at the hospital due to my asthma. Even though I couldn’t breathe properly, I continued to show up for Saturday afternoon gymnastics practice. Endorphins released by exercising usually helped me breathe easier, but that natural chemical relief was no longer occurring. At the end of practice we raced each other up a giant hill. Running made my lungs vulnerable and frail, but I couldn’t tell my coach because I didn’t want to appear weak. He would have allowed me to rest, but I wouldn’t—I’d be giving up on myself. I wasn’t going to sit back and watch my teammates’ strength increase.

Chris was usually the fastest, but on one glorious Saturday I won the race three times in a row. At home after practice my breathing quickly disintegrated into a tight, wheezing gasp, making me sound like I had swallowed a whistle. I took my blue inhaler, showered, and watched my mom get ready for work.

Once my mom left, I searched the channels on TV for a good horror movie. As the daylight faded, my breathing began to decline quicker than ever. Usually attacks took time to increase in strength, but this was a sudden tidal wave roiling over my body. The dark shadow I feared sat next to me, holding my hand. It was not dark in color, but more an absence of light, and it chilled my skin. Its frigid hands touched my chest, feeling my heart beat, trying to memorize the sound so it could crack the code and stop it.

When my attacks got that bad, I would close the bathroom door, run a hot shower, and sit by the steam to loosen the thick phlegm’s black grip around my lungs. I would sit there for hours with the shower door cracked open, tilt my head back, and suck in the white mist. The steam and repeated shots of my inhaler weren’t making a difference that night. Each minute the tightness worsened, and I could feel my airway closing.

As my breath slowly waned, I saw the appearance of Death for the first time. I couldn’t tell if it was male or female, but it was exquisite, commanding, radiant, tranquil, and genuine. We sat face-to-face at a dinner table, and I looked deep into its bottomless eye sockets. Death, handsome, gorgeous, and composed, was dressed in a suit, and I wore a hospital gown. The room was empty except for us, but there was background chatter, as though we were dining in a crowded, fancy restaurant. A piano played in the background, a familiar song I couldn’t recall. I put my hand to my mouth and noticed it was gone. I tried to feel the outlines of my lips and teeth, but they had vanished, and all that remained was a smooth, gruesome patch of skin. I began to panic.

I looked down at the silverware that sparkled like stars in the sky, and the tablecloth resembled a giant galaxy. Death gestured with its hands, as if to say, “Bon appétit,” but there was nothing to eat on my side of the table. I looked across to see a large, sterling silver lid covering a platter. Death’s bony fingers reached down to grab the handle, and it said pleasantly, “You know how badly you’ve wanted me to come.” Its voice was ecstasy echoing through my life. It spoke graciously. “There are so many people imprisoned by their bodies, and I am the peace that lets them escape it. I know you’ve been waiting for me. I know about the teasing, the sleepless nights, the terrorizing dream you have of being an Olympian. I can make it all go away; I can help you become a star in the sky and you will eternally shine your light down on your family.”

Just then its bony fingers pulled back the silver lid, exposing a grisly set of raw lungs—my lungs. They were sitting on a bloody plate and still breathing, like two captured fish about to die. I looked down at my hospital gown and touched my chest, and there was a huge, open hole where my lungs used to be. I was empty, and if I stood naked, one could see right through me. Death grabbed the shiny silverware and began cutting into my lungs, slowly and evenly, and I felt the gnawing pain beneath my skin even though they were no longer in my body. I wanted to scream, to yell in pain, but I had no mouth, breath, or voice. Blood oozed out of my lungs as Death mindlessly cut into each slice, raised the piece to its mouth, and began to chew. I felt a sensation more agonizing than the cutting. I felt Death consuming my lungs, and the torture was unbearable. My blood dripped from the corners of its mouth, and still, Death looked attractive. It leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. I wiped the stain of the bloody kiss off my skin. Its seduction was paralyzing, and for a moment I had no pain. I felt free, sacred, and complete.

I woke up on the couch with sweat stinging my eyes and fear closing my throat. All the agony on Earth was concentrated in the center of my chest. My small, clasped hands turned to fists, fighting and drawing breath from beneath the Earth. I gasped and struggled, but nothing happened. Eventually that intense pain would become unbearable as Death waited patiently for me to beg. It wasn’t going to take my life unless I willingly gave it away. However, along with that discomfort came the greatest desire to hold on and fight to keep breathing with every fiber of my being. I should have called an ambulance, but I waited for my mom to come home. The hours fell into the night and the sun would come up again, releasing her from the underworld. She would help me breathe again, ridding Death from my body, but morning was far away and I was losing the battle.

I couldn’t hold on much longer. As I went in and out of consciousness, Death spoke to me, whispering its quiet intentions. It told me I could lie down and surrender as it naturally plucked me from the Earth the way I thoughtlessly picked flowers. It told me the transformation would be quick and all my struggles would be over. I wanted to give in; I wanted to lie down and relinquish, but I couldn’t. To this day I don’t know what kept me going. My life force refused to hear the solemn sounds of Death, and fought every second for survival. This was proof that the body, of its own accord, wants to live; but Death wasn’t leaving without a fight, tempting me with heaven and its sweet, watery bliss—a place where I could go to avoid all conflict that preceded that moment.

As my spirit began to dim, the lights from my mother’s car rolled across the ceiling like a chariot of horses from the stars. I immediately ran to the door, and when she saw me, she knew I was in bad shape. She seemed angry, not with me or herself, but with my asthma and how frequently I kept getting sick. She couldn’t understand why the hospital kept discharging me when I kept having attacks. I wasn’t embarrassed, as my pride had left and all that remained was my fight for breath. All things mundane and usual were drowned out by the seriousness of my sickness. My mom put me in the car and drove me to my primary care physician. When we got in the examination room he took one look at me and called an ambulance.

I don’t remember what happened next, but when I woke up I was in a room surrounded by machines and nurses. The nurse at my right had a warm smile for me, but had a large needle in her hand; she said she was going to draw blood. I wasn’t afraid of needles, but she was going to draw blood from an artery near my wrist for a blood gas test, an extremely painful procedure where the blood is taken from the radial artery to check the oxygen levels. It felt like a hot poker plunged into my bloodstream. There were multiple injections of medications, oxygen tubes up my nose, and a heparin lock. Still, I couldn’t breathe and wasn’t in a safe zone yet, as the constrictions in my lungs continued.

A week went by, but it felt like a month. Separately, my parents came to visit, and my mom brought my teddy bear Oatmeal to keep me company. I was still very weak. For an athlete, being sick or injured is one of the worst things that can happen. We work so hard to be strong and healthy that when we are not at our optimum level we feel “less than.” Even though I was dreadfully sick, I still had the compulsion to exercise. I knew the other athletes on the team weren’t taking this week off. I kept thinking, What if they learn a harder trick while I’m stuck in this hospital bed? Just thinking about it made my breathing worse, but I had to figure out a way to exercise in bed. Several tests continued to check my lung functions, and the results weren’t good. Every other day I was wheeled down to a room to breathe into a huge fish tank-like machine to check my lung capacity. The oxygen levels in my blood were still below average, and the tests showed lung damage and scar tissue from my asthma.

Another week went by and I was still lying in a hospital bed. The eggshell-white walls and hospital gowns began to drive me crazy. I attempted to do some leg lifts, but got caught by a nurse who yelled at me, saying I was sick in a hospital bed and shouldn’t exercise. I believed exercise would heal me quicker, so I continued the leg lifts after she left the room.

Tara brought me all my missed schoolwork and I did as much as I could, but it was difficult to concentrate. Instead I lay in bed watching daytime TV. Yet another week went by, and I slowly began to recover. The doctors tapered off my nebulizer treatments and promised I could go home in a few days. I was on a chemist’s cocktail of powerful medications when they finally released me from the hospital.

As soon as I got home, I returned to gymnastics. Every move was a struggle; I was extremely out of shape, and I thought my body would never get back to the condition I had previously achieved. To rekindle the fire, I tried to remember the warrior I once was. I thought about all my hard work over the years, trying to reconnect to the boy inside me, the boy who would never quit or give up, and the spark reignited—something telepathically demanded me to keep going. I doubled my workouts and conditioned my body as often as I could. My physical return was much slower than I anticipated, but my soul wouldn’t allow me to quit the fight.

After I was back in competition shape, I thought about Death. I thought about its beauty and power, and knew that beyond the stars and beyond the clouds, it was there, waiting for the end of our fleeting lives.