The morning sun beat down on his bed as if attached to a fire
house siren inside a continuous thunder clap. Gooey throbs of pain pulsed at
his temples in different intervals allowing no girding; only wincing ex post
facto. His barren mouth yenned for liquid but that would require movement and
movement increased the pain –everywhere. His pulse could be found in his throat
driving straight up and out of his skull bending his brain and shoving it out
of the way for escape. He was stuck in the fetal position as this seemed to be
the safest position, something about going back to how you were in the womb was
obvious. Here he would stay for another 6 hours, motionless but fiercely battling
alcohol poisoning.
After six hours he could move and he needed to as now the
vomiting commenced. A white hot retch after retch above a cold, calculating
orifice was his price. While the old pains waved and beat in his body like a
flag in a storm, a new more physical, structural, in-the-bones pain surfaced,
burning his throat and punching his abdomen and back retch after retch, heave
after heave. Blood began to show in the vomit, at first droplets, followed by
splotches, puddling into half cups in the desecrated water. He’d been sick
before but never this much blood before. At last retch, only blood spewed from
his mouth leaving a heinous blood film on his teeth, the taste there, in his
mouth, like some horrible infinite regress.
He could have called 911. He probably should have called
911. Didn’t they say that time heals all wounds or was it that time wounds all
heals? This tautology, this axiom, this objective truth melding into a nihilism
in his body, born from fermentation, from rotting, from time (there it is
again) could not be outstripped. He could not fallacy his way out of it, there
was no cognitive dissonance, and there was no forced dichotomy to appeal to,
for help. There was death from the poison or there was recovery, then death.
The variable was time.
