An Excess Of Gore

By: Karen Pollchik

The arachnid, black and rough-coated, emerged from under the sofa into the shadow it cast from the single table lamp lighting that area of the living room. It was only quarter-sized, but it unceasingly walked toward the loveseat where she sat, alone in the room with an ice cream bucket on her lap slowly filling with her own blood as it dripped intermittently from her mouth.

She had just pulled out a fresh tissue ready for the next need to dab the blood from her lips. A waste of a new Kleenex, she thought. The spider seemed to saunter nonchalantly under the power cord of her laptop, which was stationed on the nearby marble top of the coffee table. It continued determinedly in the direction of her feet. When it passed the toe of her left foot, she crouched over, tissue in readiness, and as it neared her right foot and passed into another shadow on the carpet, she struck. Not quite a direct hit; the spider jumped away about two inches, and she struck again, trapping it in the tissue, wrapping it in the tissue, and dropping it into the bloody bucket with the pile of bloody tissues.

In passing the time in these wee morning hours, she briefly had thought of her German immigrant great-grandfather, a printer in Cincinnati, who, along with nearly every businessman in the city, had been conscripted into the Union army. General Lew Wallace had been tasked with defending that area from the approaching Confederates. The general had been successful—the recruits had been whipped into a formidable defense army, and the South thought better of their plan to take the city and had turned away.

And here I sit, she mused, defending my little territory from an insect. I hope it doesn’t have a spouse come looking for it.

Drip, and dab some more. The extraction of her #30 tooth had gone according to plan on Wednesday afternoon. But after a bleeding problem developed Thursday night, her dentist—call him Dr. D—examined her on Friday morning. His assistant had deftly removed a blood clot as big as her pinky finger. Dr. D assured himself, and her, that nothing had come loose and she returned home with further instructions to help staunch the insistent and continuing seepage of blood. It seemed to abate…until midnight.

The pieces of gauze began to fill with blood again. She folded them into fourths as the dentist had demonstrated, placing them in the gap between the remaining companion teeth. One after another, they absorbed her body’s life fluid. She tried the teabag technique, folding one small enough to cram into the hole. No noticeable improvement. Even filling a piece of gauze with loose tea was of no avail.

What more can I do? She remembered the times in her childhood and youth, when she suffered from horrendous nosebleeds. A cauterization of the offending vessel had finally stopped that affliction. But prior to that procedure, she had found that exposing the bleed to the air sometimes helped it to stop.

So here she sat, leaning over the bucket, dripping into it for hours. She could feel another large clot forming, enlarging, snaking along between her jaw and her cheek. It’s clotting…why doesn’t the bleeding stop?

Her husband—call him H—checked on her several times; same old same old. No improvement noted. She let him get the sleep he needed, biding the time when he would be fully awake to send an email to Dr. D. Yes, she was capable of writing an email and hitting “send”, but under the circumstances, she waited for H to author it. It was the only option for reaching the dental office on Saturday.

Several times she left her seat to use the necessary facilities down the hall, and as she washed her hands, she observed her reflection in the mirror in the dim illumination of the nightlight. Her teeth were an awful off color, outlined in her blood. Yuck. I’ll need to visit the hygienist for another cleaning when this is all over. Assuming I survive….

Bless Dr. D for interrupting his family time, preparing for his child’s birthday celebration! His response to the email was immediate: meet him at the office and we will get this under control! Clean, snip, re-suture; add a piece of collagen, suture; top it with a small absorbent sponge, suture. Done.

And she survived to tell this tale.