All tagged illness

“I was a drummer,” he insisted, drawing my attention from his bulging belly, skin taut like a snare but less tympanic. My first solo paracentesis had history, jangling my nerves.

I sit on the idling school bus, knitting a scarf and waiting for the other students to board so we can all go home, but the head that appears at the front of the bus belongs to my father, not a fellow student.

I’m staring at your hands. You’re using them to clarify medical words; to make shapes; to draw diagrams to help me understand what my brain can’t make sense of …

My right thumb pressed the button again to release more morphine. Covered in tubes and needles, surrounded by sounds generating persistent resonant vibration in the head, I shifted between states of consciousness …