Doug Cost writing exercise 2

B-rad shuffles into the bathroom to admire the growing, glowing volcano of puss gathering to a blowhole under his armpit. The volcano is a blood gushy pink-running-red. The mantle of his skin-earth runs dead skin up it from crusty white to yellow. He pokes it from the south, “OWWWWWWW.” He pokes it from the east, “Uuuuunnnnnhhhh.” The once miniscule bump has become tender, painful, and engorged. “What the hell happened?” he asks, peaking through his armpit as if the volcano or his armpit had any kind of answer besides their complimentary stenches. He eyes the Speed Stick and recalls his live-in saucer-sized spider who he one day found cruising the sheets before bed and another day the spider was running stationary surveillance on the wall. Deodorant, arachnid, or was it his dirty fingernails pinching and poking the minor zit it used to be? He walked back into the main room of his bungalow. He puts on sky-blue, loose-fitting, cotton fisherman’s pants, a semi-white T-shirt, and black Teva adventure Velcro sandals and heads down the hill from his bungalow. Brad kicks the engine over on the motorbike, rocks it off the stand, and the rear wheel sprays rocks and dirt as he heads down the rain-washed path to the main road. There was something overtly dangerous about this free ride to town with no helmet, no shoes, and gauze-thin pants, but the way the wind washes skin and mindlessly musses hair made Brad live, even as his volcano pricked with every stretch over bump and curve in the road. Over the last twelve hours, it had begun a nasty habit of oozing white, snot-yellow spoiled milk, at will, no prodding required. It leaves wet spots on the sun-hardened, washing-water-stained T-shirt flicking around his torso as he speeds down the island mountain road to the dock where the ferry leaves for the big island. As he approaches the main town of the island, he backs off the throttle and prepares to encounter the locals who drive the roads like they live on an island. The police post out in the town center or in the party-central tourist enclave on the other edge of the island. He parks the motorbike in front of the open restaurant canopy which rents motorbikes, Internet minutes, and homemade vittles. At the entrance to the office, he removes his sandals and soaks in the startlingly yet artificially refreshing air-conditioned office to purchase a ticket on the next ferry. “Hello Brad. How are you?” Sunee pronounces her typical flirtatiousness. Since arriving on the island, Brad had always used this place as his hub. Sunee rewards him with roll-back prices, uncounted minutes, and smiles. “Not so great Sunee. I’m growing a volcano.” “A volcano. What you mean?” Brad, never one to not show off his muscular physique, hesitates for a minute knowing the grotesque growing and realizing it is probably a cultural faux pas to bear that much skin; he still wants somebody to acknowledge its increased real estate. He urges her to the back of the shop and pulls up the left side of his spotty T-shirt. She takes one disgusted glance and says, “Brad, you go to the hospital.” “That’s why I need a ferry ticket. I want to go to the big island hospital.” “Okay. You need return?” “Yes. I hope.” “300.” “Thanks Sunee. I will see you later” Brad buys an ice cold bottle of water, enters sweltering heat, replaces his sun-hot sandals and walks down the dusty main road to the dock. The longer journey is forestalling the inevitable. Brad has been to his share of non-English speaking hospitals and they have never been experiences he relished or even considered health enabling. As Brad shuffles down the pier, he spies the ferry approaching on the horizon. He sits on the curb with feet kicked out. Between the heat of the beating sun on his skin and the heat beating in the volcano his resolves are squeezed between tautologies. He climbs the stairs starboard and finds a shady deck section with plastic lawn chairs casually assembled. He finds two and plops his butt in one and his feet in the other. The scene is serene looking back at the island and over the sea, despite the cacophonous engine and thick black smoke emanating from the stack. He ponders how he ended up in this place as the ferry backs away from the dock at 12:15 pm, sharply fifteen minutes late according to the ship’s clock. As the ferry lodges up against the dock of the big island, Brad recognizes the bustle of the streets on the big island, a pineapple vs. guava. He wonders if he is up to the rough-edge, prickly-hatted, tangy tasting of a big island interchange. He avoids the peddlers of goods, services, and transportation and approaches a motorbike taxi with its driver lounging on the seat with feet on the handlebars. He comes to attention as Brad approaches. “How much to the hospital?” Brad assumes he knows English. “One hundred.” Brad throws his leg over the motorbike and the driver takes off. Not knowing where to grab on and quickly losing balance, Brad grabs the bar behind the seat of the bike with his wound seeping arm and grabs the driver’s short shoulder with the other. They speed through traffic taking the middle of the road and the shoulder of the road. The driver honks at passing motorbike cabs and Brad struggles to remain upright, feeling faint from the oppressive sun, the sweat, and the centered heat of his volcano. They arrive at the hospital; Brad pulls a crumpled bill from the pocket of his pants, pays the driver and heads inside the building. After finding the foreigner window, Brad fills out all the requisite paperwork. He sits in the waiting room with other ailing patients and waiting family members. The shade from the sun provides a cool breeze on his sweat-drenched body, but his strength continues to subside with the effort to stay conscious and calm. His name is finally called, but he is not sure it is really his name. The accent and the mangled PA system make it sound foreign but it sounds foreign enough from the other names that he assumes it is him and heads to the desk with his paperwork. He follows the nurse behind a tri-fold screen. She takes his blood-pressure and temperature, and then takes him over to the scale to weigh him. “What is problem?” she asks. Brad lifts up his shirt and displays the two-pronged Vesuvius, still leaking its milky puss mixing with the inordinate amount of sweat from his armpit. Heat rages from within his core. She reacts with wide-eyes and scrunches up nose. Brad knows this reaction, by now, but this time he could not tell if it is the rancid smell or the geography of the sore. The nurse looks closer as if surveying it for life. She then gets up, grabs Brad’s arm and ushers him down the well-lit hall to a room. The room has the swinging doors of a diner or of the operating room of a M.A.S.H. unit. He wonders what a cheeseburger with fries and a patient with a seeping wound have in common. He closes his eyes and imagines an In n’Out burger with fries and a shake. It was the first time he craved home. The new nurse speaks no English. She communicates with body movements and her eyes. This was always the act of the hospital experiment B-rad hated. It seems the deeper one gets into the inner workings of a foreign hospital, the less English is spoken; not so much from the lack of knowledge but from a lack of making a connection to the patient knowing what is about to go down and its ensuing pain, he believes. She points to a stainless-steel table on wheels and pats to him to climb on board. His new nurse and his old nurse converse in hurried, hushed tones of which Brad understands nothing. The steel is cold. His body is enflamed. His volcano is seething. The only thing crossing his feverish mind now is that whatever they are talking about is probably going to hurt.