what's for lunch?

It’s two days later.

An interruption. Spell your name? D-A-V-I-D G-A-U-M-O-N-T hyphen G-U-A-Y. Birthdate? Septembertenthnineteenseventytwo. Ok.

One nurse leaves and the I glance over to watch the other attach a bag of what I think looks like orange juice –orange juice with pulp- to David’s plastic and metal tree of medical equipment . The tree of life? I guess so, kind of. Plump bags are hung like ripe fruit for the picking. A mysterious blend of nectar draining perpetually into his veins to be distributed by his heart. The orange juice obviously isn’t juice, but instead the sticky bits of the blood. I glace up at the write on run off calendar on the wall and notice today’s numbers. The platelets were at 7 this morning. So he needs them



Finally the nosebleed stops.

 I flash back to a month ago when he endured a 6 hour nosebleed. They transfused platlets into him for 4 hours before the bleeding finally stopped and the garbage bin full of bloody soaked gauze and Kleenex stopped increasing in size. That was the first time in my life that I thought I might pass out. The blood just wouldn’t stop and the second David released the latest gauze from his nose a stream of blood would escape making it’s way efficiently down his chin, chasing gravity.




One of many uneaten hospital dinners

A few minutes ago I set off on a journey to select something for lunch that my stomach would accept. I toured around the cafeteria, poked at a few of the sandwiches and debated the option of a tuna salad sandwich with grapes and walnuts. I scanned the ingredients. Tuna, grapes, cherry tomatoes, hard boiled eggs. Wait a second, hard boiled eggs? In a tuna sandwich, with grapes and tomatoes. Um, I don’t think so. Notice I didn’t even comment on the walnuts. Some things just aren’t worth the effort to try and decipher. I continued my search cringing at the idea biting into a sandwich with such ingredients. I stopped briefly at the pre-packaged sushi wondering if the trend towards using brown rice instead of white would catch on. Come on, really, if brown rice sushi makes you feel better about yourself you’ve got bigger issues in life that you should probably be dealing with.

So my options are limited. I walked briskly past the pad thai – only denying it because it was too big, too much food, and I liked it so much I’s eat it all and feel sick for the rest of the day. The Chinese stir fry received the same pass for the same reason and the grill special looked greasy and unappetizing as usual. So, in mid-stride I did an about face. Pushed the up button on the elevator and escaped back into the room. I had a triscuit and consider eating cheesecake that Paul dropped off yesterday for lunch. But I won’t. Bet it would taste great though.