Blood in the Water

You always hear the phrase blood in the water.  I think of shark movies, where the blood is one drop or many drops of red food coloring.  The dye quickly diffuses into a thousand lighter shades of red, now pink.  All the water is pink.  There is blood in the water and ruthless flashes of rear-pointed teeth and wild shrieks pre-empting amputation or death.  I hate shark movies. 

But what I see is not that type of blood in the water.  It is more like oil in water, with the oil keeping to itself in oblong loops.  There is no solubility, no pink.  But maybe not quite like oil in water because what I see sinks.  Heavier than water.  Mercury in the water.  But not quite like mercury either.  The not-oil and not-mercury flows to the bottom of the toilet, creating a long train as it heads towards the bowl siphon.  It wraps itself around the poo.  The poo that came out with the other sort of pushing.  The poo that only poked its head out from the bowl siphon.  That’s shitty, I think to myself.  The PUNisher strikes again, I think to myself.   Gramma wouldn’t find that joke funny, I think to myself. 

Really, the blood in the water is most like gelatinous jellies, silently sifting through the Pacific’s zooplankton.  The difference being that the gelatinous jellies are alive while the blood in the water is not. 

You can find anything on the internet.  At seven weeks hands and feet emerge from developing arms and legs.  At seven weeks there is a liver producing red blood cells and a pancreas that will soon produce hormone insulin (for digestion?).  At seven weeks it’s the size of a blueberry.  I squint.  More the size of an eraser on a number 2 pencil. 

For three days (has it really been three days?) I find pieces of cord, twisting strips of veins, a large flap of placenta wrapped around a tampon.  I actually take the piece of placenta off the tampon and lay it on a single square of double-ply toilet paper.  It is big.  The circumference of a plum.  Maybe an orange.  It looks just like the mantel of a squid. 

I taught squid dissection to seventh graders.  Usually the third day of summer camp.  My voice would be hoarse by then and I would be downing hot chamomile with a squirt of vanilla.   Place the squid with the dorsal side up, I would say.  Identify the beak, the fins, the mantel.  Note how the ventral beak overlaps the dorsal beak.  What makes this beak different than a parrot’s beak?

Somehow finding this very real, scientific evidence makes me feel better.  The deep upwelling of pain that unexpectedly tingles my nose and makes the corners of my mouth tremor is because of something, not because of nothing.  I think I need proof that I’m not just making it all up.  Something tangible so that the doctor won’t look over the top of her red wire-framed glasses with eyes that say, You came in for this?  I don’t know why I live in dread of that look.  Maybe because I need validation- what you feel, that ache in your side, is real.  Is worth my time. 

I gently lay the single square of double-ply toilet paper face up in the trashcan next to the toilet.  Just in case I want to check on it later, to remind myself that it was real.  Just in case someone else wanted to see, to know that I wasn’t making it up.  But who would want to see that?  


I shove the paper deep into the rubbish bin.