Five Quarts_ A Personal and Natural History of Blood - Bill Hayes [15]
I pulled down my sweats, swiped a soaked cotton ball on my right cheek, pushed the needle in, pressed the plunger, and just as quickly pulled it out. There: a dewdrop of dark red blood, visual proof that the injection had dived through my white skin. I could almost see fizzy particles of B12 swimming to my heart, my eyes, my limbs, revitalizing me. I smiled at the imagined bursts of energy that would take me through the long day ahead. I slapped on a small bandage, restored the cap to the syringe, turned on the overhead light, and opened the kitchen cabinet.
And that’s when I looked closely at the box of needles. Inside were two open pouches, one with new syringes, one with used. I had reached in blindly, grabbing the first needle I’d felt—a dirty one, I was now sure.
Already, I pictured, a speck of Steve’s blood had entered my circulatory system. I shivered uncontrollably as it raced through my veins, pumped through my heart, seeped into my lungs, swept into my arteries, all the while multiplying, infecting every cell, flooding my body with HIV. What rose from the pit of my stomach and caught in my throat was not bile but blood, thick and sour. It tasted like fear.
I held my breath, as if to choke off all emotion. The moment I exhaled, fear filled the room. Had Steve walked in at that second, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he’d have been overcome, too. I was having a panic attack; heart thrumming, ears ringing, it took all my strength just to sink into a chair.
Adrenaline was not living up to its reputation. It wasn’t the superhuman jolt I’d have expected—that surge that allows a mother to lift a crumpled car off her injured child or that burst of mental clarity that lays out the world like precise moves on a chessboard. The reality was far from the fantasy, the latter owing heavily to the late-1970s TV show The Incredible Hulk, a guilty pleasure when I was in college. The transformation from scrawny scientist David Banner into the green behemoth was ignited by overpowering emotion. (“Don’t make me angry,” actor Bill Bixby would say, more warning than threat; “you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”) Muscles bulged, pants ripped, the shirt shredded, but the Hulk’s transformation was never complete till he smashed through a wall or two.
In my case, my energy imploded. Thoughts raced, getting nowhere. I’d latch on to one and it was irrational. I should suck out the HIV at the injection site, but how do I get my mouth to my hip? I should down a mouthful of Steve’s AIDS drugs, I told myself next. Wouldn’t that stomp out the infection? At some point my mind had ground down to nothing, and I was aware of my heartbeat shaking me awake from myself.
I thought perhaps calm could be restored by my going through the motions of everyday normalcy—showering, eating breakfast, getting dressed. Breathe, I coached myself. Breathe. In the weird fugue state of the guilt-ridden, I watched Steve get up and go through the same rituals I had. But then I couldn’t bear the pretense of ordinariness any longer. I told him I had something to tell him. I asked him to sit down.
Once I’d spilled all, Steve pushed back from the table, stood, and turned toward the kitchen cabinet. He didn’t say a word or, at least, none that I heard. I watched him pull the box of needles from the cabinet, place it on the table, and silently begin counting. He looked up.
“Needles come in bags of ten,” he said, cool and clear. “I opened this new bag yesterday and we used one for my shot. If you’d taken a used needle, I’d be able to find only nine in the bag.”
My mind was fuzz.
Steve was talking to me. I heard “ate.” Ate?
“There are eight in the bag, Bill. See?”
I was starting to understand, coming to ground.
“You used a new needle—you’re fine. Thank God. They’re all here, except the one you took. Where’d you put it?”
Now fear gave way to shame,