The Gargoyle Read Online Free PDF Page B

to be shat upon. And if I am a snob for not participating in films that involve sex with animals, then so be it: I am a snob.
     

     
    I lay in my bed, intensely aware of the sensation of breathing. Compared with how I breathed before the accident, it was so…What
is
the best word? “Labored” is not quite right. “Oppressed” is better and is as close as I can come. My oppressed breathing was due in part to my damaged face, in part to the tubes twisting down my throat, and in part to my mask of bandages. Sometimes I imagined that the air was afraid to enter my body.
    I peeked under my body bandages, curious to see what was left of me. The birth scar that had spent its entire life above my heart was no longer lonely. In fact, I could hardly even find it anymore, so snugly was it nestled in the gnarled mess of my chest. Each day a procession of nurses, doctors, and therapists waltzed into my room to ply me with their ointments and salves, massaging the Pompeian red landslide of my skin. “Passive stretching,” they would tell me, “is extremely important.”
Passive stretching,
I would think,
hurts like hell.
    I buzzered the nurses relentlessly, begging for extra morphine to satiate the snake, only to be told that it was not yet time. I demanded, pleaded, bargained, and cried; they insisted that they—fuck them—had my best interests at heart. Too much medication would prevent my internal organs from working properly. Too much medication would make me dependent. Too much medication would, somehow, make things worse.
    A snake lived inside me. I was enclosed in a skeleton’s rib cage. The Vietnam War, apparently, had existed for my benefit. My fingers and toes had been lopped off, and I had recently learned that while doctors might be able to perform a phalloplasty, to build a new penis out of tissue taken from my arm or leg, I’d never be able to achieve an erection again.
    In what way,
I wondered,
could more morphine possibly make things worse?
     

     
    When the nurses got tired of my pleas for more dope, they told me they were sending in a psychiatrist. The blue gown he wore over his clothing, for the protection of the burn patients, did not quite fit properly and I could hear his corduroys rubbing at the thighs as he walked. He had a balding dome, wore an unkempt goatee in an unsuccessful effort to distract from his double chin, and sported the puffy cheeks of a man whose entire diet came from vending machines. His animal equivalent would have been a chipmunk with a glandular problem, and he extended his paw like he was my new best friend. “I’m Gregor Hnatiuk.”
    “No thanks.”
    Gregor smiled widely. “Not even going to give me a chance?”
    I told him to write down whatever he wanted on the evaluation form and we could pretend that we’d made an effort. Normally, I would have had some fun with him—told him that I’d breast-fed too long and missed my mommy, or that aliens had abducted me—but my throat couldn’t handle the strain of speaking so many words in a row. Still, I got the point across that I had little interest in whatever treatment he thought he could provide.
    Gregor sat down and settled his clipboard like a schoolboy trying to hide an erection. He assured me that he only wanted to help, then actually used his fingers to air-quote the fact that he was not there to “get inside” my head. When he was a child, the neighborhood bullies must have beaten him incessantly.
    I did manage to get a few final words out: “More painkillers.” He said he couldn’t give me them, so I told him to go away. He told me that I didn’t have to talk if I didn’t want to, but he would share some methods for creative visualization to cope with the pain. I took his suggestion to heart and creatively visualized that he’d left the room.
    “Close your eyes and think about a place you want to go,” he said. “This place can be a memory, or a destination that you want to visit in the future. Any place