The Well

 

Content warning: blood, head trauma, invasive procedures.

 

There is a hole in the middle of my forehead. 

I woke up to see my pillow soaked with blood, right through to the core of its stuffing. A scream built within me while  I held the sopping thing up and the fabric sagged with the result of my wound. Blood coyly slid down, gathering in bloated spheres at my elbows. I felt the scream escape through the hole.

I stuffed my well with tissue paper, then toilet paper, then cotton balls, then gauze, but nothing could stop the blood from seeping through. It ran down my nose like a mountain river on an ancient course. My eyes watched it run, equally ancient witnesses. Tomorrow I would begin to make my bed with plastic sheets.

I went to work with a crimson stain across my chest, my face the worn stone of an old fountain. My managers did not see the frothing whites of my eyes. They did not see me at all. They asked me why I was slow today, and why I would likely be slow tomorrow.

“There is a hole in the middle of my forehead,” I said. They nodded.

“We just think it’s funny you have an excuse for everything,” they said in unison.

I stuffed the hole with broken paper towel in the bright green bathroom. 

I went to see the doctor. His office smelled like lilies and orange juice. Finger paintings littered the walls alongside the paper that whispered he knew more than I did.  My heart raced, rushing to empty my body of what red I had left. His eyes looked past the blood and lingered on my stomach. He asked me what he could help me with - it mustn't be anything too bad. Without the stains I looked fine, if a little fat.

My prescription was already on his desk when I came in, signed and dated and ready to fold. 

“There is a hole in the middle of my forehead,” I said.

“That’s fine, it should clear up in a few days,” he said. “Take this in the meantime.”

I stuffed the hole with a prescription for ibuprofen. 

I covered the hole with gauze, then spackle. I filled it like a hole in a wall, but the blood poured through, sliding down my face in thick, clotted globs of scarlet plaster. I gripped the walls to steady my legs. I went to work again. My co-workers asked me why I wasn’t laughing with them, why I looked pale.

“There is a hole in the middle of my forehead,” I said. 

“We have holes in our foreheads too,” they said.

I wondered if it was true.

I stuffed the hole with plastic bags and cardboard from the break room.

I went to another doctor, who offered to inspect me. I could have a blind and unreliable instrument blunder across my body. Or, he said, he could slide something cunning - something slick, shining and all knowing - inside me, exploring so deep that my eyes would seem like donut moons in the dark blue of his shadowed room. I licked the hot blood from my top lip, where it loved to gather, unprepared to choose.

“Where would you like to be assessed?” he said. 

Silence.

“There is a hole in the middle of my forehead,” I whispered.

Lovingly, giddily, he took the writhing, chromatic snake in his hands and fed it into my brain, his bloodied tube scraping against equally bloodied bone.

I stuffed the hole with hope.

In the dark, I held my mother’s hand and told her I was scared, that I was hurt, that I was losing blood. 

I told her that I had a hole in the middle of my forehead. 

She slid her hand across mine, the texture of smooth leather. She smiled, her mouth latticed in white. She said the doctor’s would fix it, they would find out what’s wrong with me. She said that doctors save everyone.

“They will find an answer. You just need to keep being useful,” she said.

“There is a hole in the middle of my forehead,” I said.

“I know. They will find an answer. You just need to keep being useful,” she said.

“There is a hole in the middle of my forehead!” I screamed. I felt my throat rip and fill with paper towel and cardboard, plastic bags, and prescriptions, toilet paper and prescriptions, and hope and spackle.

“I know,” she smiled, turning grey. 

“Don't be a waste of air,” she smiled, turning to dust.

I stuffed the hole with ghosts.

Now I lie on the floor and learn to love the colour red.