Good Blood, Under the Bed & In the Bathtub
When my little sister was in the hospital with some rare blood disorder I still can’t pronounce, I cried in the McDonald’s drive-thru while my dad ordered her a happy meal. I was in fourth grade, and I had never had a sister in the hospital before, and I was terrified. She was dragged to the emergency room from the pediatrician, speckled in fuschia freckles and unjustifiable bruises. Her body had started destroying its own blood cells, for no reason at all, and it wouldn’t stop. She spent three nights there in a hot pink, rhinestone-ridden hoodie with her favorite teddy bear. Her first grade class made her a card of glitter and construction paper and got her a barking, animatronic dog. She missed a few dance classes, ballet, hip-hop, jazz.
I wondered if I could just give her some of my blood—blood her immune system would surely approve of—but I never asked if I could, or why not. When we visited her, we would play Mario Kart on the Wii in the hospital playroom, and I remember getting annoyed when she wanted to watch a movie on VHS from her bed instead—I hated that room. Its sterility, its blatancy, all that harsh white and steel gray. The cold, clinical tiles, the incessant beeping machine, and the unwavering, thieving needle in my sister’s pale arm.
I thought about saving some of my blood for her, just in case. I pictured tiny glass vials of vibrant red liquid stuffed under my bed, hidden behind baby blue cotton sheets and a teal, polka-dotted quilt. After she was in the hospital, her blood had to be monitored, drawn and tested for anything spiteful—every month, then every two months, then every six months, then none at all. I imagined a doctor in latex gloves pouring her blood over a sift, panning for little evils, finding nothing. She wailed and kicked and screamed every single time. My youngest sister and I would come to the appointments too to try and comfort her, help her “be brave,” as my dad would say. We’d stand at her side, hold her hands; I don’t know how much we really helped. I remember thinking, as she sat in a diner booth after, waiting for waffles, cheeks cherry red and puffy, eyes still damp, a fresh bandaid on the soft inner skin of her elbow: why couldn’t it have been me? I could’ve handled it. Watching her get poked and prodded at, tears streaming down her face, cured any fears I might’ve had of needles or doctors or sickness. I could handle anything if it meant she wouldn’t have to. I wanted to swat the nurse’s hands away, pick my sister up in both arms and run.
Some years later, she cut her heel open on a mussel shell. My aunt carried her into her little cottage across the street from the beach, blood dripping from her tiny foot onto the sand, the hot asphalt, the tiny stones in the driveway, and the tall grass. My youngest sister and I followed, trying to keep up and reaching for shirt hems. It was summer, the air was salty and scented by low tide and the ripe juniper bushes that lined the road, the sky turning all shades of lavender and peach, silent except for my sister’s sobs. The screen door slammed shut behind us as her dog circled us in the kitchen, panting, tail-wagging, her paws sliding on the smooth tile.
In the bathroom, I begged her not to be taken to urgent care.
“She doesn’t need to go to the doctor’s,” I said, “she just needs a band-aid.”
Her blood—good, unscathed blood—seeped into the bathtub, swirling in antibacterial soap, peroxide, and warm water, as my aunt cleaned the smiling gash on her heel.
“Emma, I will decide what she needs.” My aunt was a nurse herself once, and is a good one still. I admired her so much, she was always so sure, and I knew she was right. Nonetheless, I pleaded not to take her away until a lump formed in my throat, and I was shooed into the living room as she picked up the phone.
I watched Spongebob on the couch while my aunt carried her to the backseat of her SUV and drove off. I sat uncomfortably in my denim shorts—still in my bathing suit, leaving a wet splotch on the seat cushion—and imagined my sister back on the examination table, alone, sniffling, her face sticky and pink, the white paper crinkling underneath her. I stared at my knees. Knees with no scrapes or gashes, my skin perfectly intact. I inspected my arms, no violet bruises or crimson blotches where needles once were. I blinked back stinging tears. What a silly thing to cry about, I thought, that I am completely fine.
Emma Rowan is a writer from Long Island and a recent graduate of Stony Brook University, where she studied English and Creative Writing. She has had a personal essay previously published in Gandy Dancer Literary Magazine. She loves Boygenius, bubble tea, and Joan Didion. Find her on Twitter @emma_rowan322.
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