The woman regains consciousness but the pain is so brilliant she blacks out again. Sometime later, she opens her eyes and this time is able to stay awake. She sits up slowly, her skull cracking. Puke rushes up her throat and she staggers to the toilet. How much did she drink last night? Was she drinking last night? Trying to remember hurts. Thinking hurts.
She splashes water on her face. Leans her head on the cold sink. Against the dirty tile floor, her toes are scraped and speckled with dried blood. Stretched underwear sags on her hips, pushed down by a giant bandage and surgical tape. Dark bruises on her waist. She looks under the gauze and gags again. Someone did a serious butcher job on her. She shakes out a handful of Tylenol pills from a bottle on the sink—PMs, but if she goes back to sleep, it won’t be the worst thing.
She looks in the mirror and vaguely recognizes the face staring back at her—a gaunt-faced woman with cracked lips and bloodshot eyes. Hair fried from too much processing, not quite long enough to be contained in the ponytail. Faded pockmarks cover her forehead. Scars from acne? Chickenpox?
She lurches back to the bedroom in search of a wallet, bills, anything with a name on it. Would she know her name if she saw it? Faded flower-patterned sheets are duct-taped over the windows.
Nondescript cardboard boxes are stacked haphazardly with clothes and belongings spilling out. She knows this room. She’s been here before. It’s in an apartment complex with a grey stucco facade. She knows that behind the door there’s a hall that stinks of mildew and baby diapers.
She’s going to puke again. She doesn’t bother with the toilet, just lets the bile and pills pour onto the worn carpet. Blood leaks through the bandage, down her stomach, into her pubic hair. She needs help.
Outside, dressed in boxers and a giant Mickey Mouse T-shirt she found in one of the boxes, she staggers across the parking lot, the pavement burning her feet. Turning the corner, she plays chicken on the sidewalk with a man in a motorized wheelchair.
‘Please, I’m fucking dying,’ she tells him.
‘Me, too, sister. Me, too.’
An empty cop car sits outside a CVS and she heads towards it then stops. In the corner of the parking lot sits a dumpster. Someone’s spray-painted on it:
Angela, a black hypnotist + terrorist targets poor w/out healthcare!! She erases
memory of illegal surgery for money!!!
No. Her hand goes to her stomach and she fights against dizziness.
At the Goodwill on the other side of the dumpster, a man in a green workman’s vest sits on the loading dock near the drop-offs door. He’s smoking a cigarette and watching her. He whistles.
‘What happened to you?’ he calls.
‘Do you know me?’
He looks confused.
She walks over to him. ‘Someone drugged me and did surgery on me.’
‘Wouldn’t you want to be drugged for that?’
‘I need help.’
‘Why don’t you ask that guy you hang with?’
‘What guy?’
‘The white dude. The doctor.’
She strains to find something, anything, in her empty memory. ‘You’ve seen me with a doctor? I’ve come here with him?’
‘Nah, he works over there.’ He points his chin at a beige block building across the street: St. Mark’s Rehabilitation Center. He tosses his cigarette and disappears behind the tinted automatic doors.
The cold air inside the rehab center is a relief but it makes the now blood-soaked shirt stick to her body. A receptionist talks on the phone, her head down. In a rack on the counter are rows of pamphlets with something for everyone—people with eating disorders, depression, drug addiction. Offers for medical loans, hospice service, life insurance.
‘I don’t believe it.’ The receptionist is looking at her.
‘You know me?’
The receptionist squints at her. ‘Are you fucking with me?’
‘I’m looking for a doctor who works here. A white guy. Have you seen me with him?’
The receptionist leans over the counter, looks her up and down and shakes her head. ‘So someone finally decided to give you a taste of your own medicine.’
‘What? Someone fucking did this to me! Is he here? Can you get him?’
‘Angela, Jerry’s been dead two days. He killed himself after he got out on bail. His mom found him in his truck in the garage.’
What did she just call her?
‘I need help,’ she says, but the receptionist just leans back and pulls out a stick of gum.
‘Wish I could say I feel sorry for you. Cops are looking for you, too, you know.’
‘For me?’
‘They find you, they’ll be more than happy to help.’ The receptionist snorts.
‘What’s wrong with you? Look at me! Someone did this to me!’
The phone rings and the receptionist answers it, dismissing her. She stumbles back down the hall and out the door. Blood spatters on the pavement. Her legs buckle and she drops to the curb.
‘Someone did this to me,’ she says, again, and passes out.
Maya Perez’s short stories and essays have been published in American Short Fiction, Joyland, Electric Lit, Misadventures, The Masters Review, and more. Her screenplays have been recognized by fellowships from SFFILM/Westridge, Sundance Institute, and NY Stage & Film. Maya lives in Austin, Texas. Find Maya on Twitter at @thismaya.
Photo by Jake Heidecker on Unsplash.
