Bleeder: A Memoir

The Pine Cone Did It

83 the pine cone did it September . I pedal through dusk, my bike gliding swiftly along the campus’s flat sidewalk. Crickets chirp. Cicadas sing. The fall wind blows and puffs up my loose-fitting shirt. And the fading sun makes silhouettes of trees whose outlines I steer over as I coast. The evening sunbeams flicker through the longleaf pines as a strobe light, and I squint when my eyes water, loosening my grip on the handlebars to swipe a hand over my eyes; and when I can see again, it is too late. My front tire jams into a pine cone the size of my forearm. The wheel locks at ninety degrees and the bike jerks to a stop, throwing me from the seat. I fly over my handlebars and yell in pain when my right foot lodges between the wheel’s spokes and twists my knee. My body pounds on the ground, and the concussive force thrusts a gasp of air from my lungs and flattens my round heart against a hard mat of earth. Then for a moment, the world softens as if in a dream: the swaying trees and the freshly cut grass are chimeras of green, and the autumn air drifts with the perfume of fall wildflowers. I gulp a tentative breath. My heart fills again with blood and returns to beating. Then the pain comes piercing and unrelenting as if slivers of metal are stabbing at my knee from the inside out. I rest against my elbows, catch my breath, and slide myself backwards along the grass to dislodge my foot, still anchored to the bike tire, Shelby Smoak 84 and as it drops to listlessly rest upon the ground, an intense agony rises from my knee joint. Wrenching my mouth in anguish at the great pain, I labor to breathe as I cup my hands against my knee and feel the swelling. The skin stretches tight against my jeans and presses at the seams, the bloom of swelling restrained only by my patella—a cap upon a boiling radiator of blood. Turning onto my stomach, I place my palms into damp grass and attempt to lift myself, but a fiery spasm wracks my body, and I grit my teeth and practice slow breaths again. When I regain myself, I muster all my mettle to endure pain and push off from the ground with my arms. It is a great and fierce thrust that lifts me and lets me hoist myself up, where I shift my weight to my left leg to lessen the pain in the injured right one. But still the hurt rages. I bite my tongue and displace the pain to the roll of tasteless skin now gripped between my teeth. I hobble toward my bike and place a hand upon the frame and ease my injured leg over the seat as if slowly mounting a saddle, and when it dangles above the ground, I push forward with tentative kicks. The wheels move. My leg cries out. I clamp my teeth into my tongue. A whistle of painful air leaks out of the corners of my mouth. I kick again. When I arrive at my suite, I pull myself up to the second landing and drag my leg through the suite’s corridor using the furniture and walls as balances , and then I drop onto my bed, gripping both hands around my kneecap and crying out in pain. I rock back and forth; tears spill onto my shirt; and with my hands still locked around my joint, I try to summon those magical potions from my childhood. Abracadabra. Make it go away. Abracadabra. Make it go away. But it does not work. I phone Kaitlin, who arrives and quickly gets the Vicodin that most hemophiliacs keep handy. Then I show her my knee: the kneecap lost in a globe of expanding flesh. Her hazel eyes widen and then start to water. “Are you going to be okay?” she asks, marveling at my knee’s size. “Yes. But I need to go to the emergency room, and I need you to drive me there. Get Sean to help. He should be in his room.” She hurries away in silence and from the hallway I hear her fist laying into Sean’s wooden door. “Wake up,” she yells. “We need your help.” I hear his door fling open and then they return to my room. Bleeder 85 “Holy shit,” Sean exclaims when I...