Bleeder Read Online Free PDF Page A

asks.
     
    “Fine.” I trace my finger along the white paper covering the examination table.
     
    “Okay. That’s good.” She writes some notes down. “Now, do you care to be more specific?”
     
    I feel she’s pressing for some confession, something about the unbearable weight of HIV, but what can she really do for me? What will I get from crying my infected heart out to her? “Okay . . . Well . . . I like school, college.”
     
    “Now where are you? UNCW, right?”
     
    “Yes.”
     
    “And have you felt adjusted there?”
     
    “Yes. Sure. It’s fine. Like I said.”
     
    She scribbles on her yellow memo pad, pauses, and looks at me with dark eyes that catch a flicker of sunlight from the window.
     
    “And what about your HIV? How does that make you feel?”
     
    Like a victim. Like a man before the firing squad.
     
    “I can’t imagine what that has done to you,” she says. “But you’ve got to know that you are not alone.”
     
    Yes I am.
     
    “We have groups here at the hospital that meet and help one another cope with this, and there are hemophiliacs just like you who come. Perhapsit would do you some good to talk about this with one of them. Have you talked to your family at all?”
     
    No. Not really.
     
    “What about a friend?” she continues. “I know it must be hard to open up, especially with the stigma attached to HIV, but do you have a friend that you’ve told?”
     
    I stay silent. I have nothing to say.
     
    She purses her lips, retrieves a card from her pocket, and passes it to me. “Here’s this if you change your mind and decide to come to a meeting. We have different ones, and I’m sure we could accommodate your schedule. We even have some that meet on Saturdays. I can’t make you come, but I do think it would help. You have a right to be upset, and this could be a forum for working through that. You shouldn’t go this alone. It’s too much for anybody and there are lots of people willing to help.”
     
    After the social worker leaves, I stretch out on the table and roll onto my side and gaze out the window to the parking lot below. From here, the cars remind me of the Matchbox toys I once played with. Then there was such simple joy in pushing a metal car across a linoleum floor or atop a bedspread or through a carpet of shag—just going from one side to another without a concern of why or what for.
     
    Overhead, the sun radiates feebly through the winter sky. A sphere of weak fire in a dome of cold blue, it hangs pendulant in an endless ceiling of pewter.
     
    Eventually, Dr. Trum enters. We shake hands and then assume our roles: he the doctor, me his patient.
     
    “It’s probably been a strange couple of months for you since we last met,” he says as a way of transition. “So, how have you been anyway?”
     
    “Okay, I guess.”
     
    He shines a light in my eyes to check my pupils. He lays a cold stethoscope against my chest to listen to my still-beating heart, my breathing lungs.
     
    “Sounds good here.” He removes his stethoscope and drapes it across his neck. He examines the scars on my knees. He presses softly with his thumb and index finger against the swelling in my ankles, both tender with blood.
     
    “You’ve had a few bleeds in these, I see. Probably due to all the walking you’re doing on campus.”
     
    “Yes. Nothing major, but kept me down for a day or two.”
     
    “That’s good. Just remember that rest is best when these things happen . . . I see that you’re visiting the orthopedist today,” he says as he flexes my ankles and measures their inability to bend. “He may recommend a walking aid for you. Something to reduce your bleeding into these joints. My worry is about your increased bleed episodes since starting college. I fear arthritis may soon set in. We want to slow that down as much as possible.” He sits down and opens my folder, the size of an “S” encyclopedia.
     
    “Are you tolerating the AZT? Had any side