Five Quarts_ A Personal and Natural History of Blood - Bill Hayes [3]
Returning to the myth I’d known so well as a kid, I of course remembered the basics: To free his captive mother, the hero Perseus had to deliver the severed head of the Gorgon Medusa, who was as deadly to look at as she was ugly. I was struck, though, by the myriad details I’d forgotten. The goddess Athena joined Perseus as his battle adviser, for instance, and others in the pantheon offered their aid. Winged sandals and a helmet of invisibility were gifts of the Nymphs. A sword made of adamantine, a material as hard as diamond, was bestowed by Hermes.
Perseus with the severed head of Medusa
With Athena by his side, Perseus flew to the Gorgon’s domain, landing amid a gruesome rock garden of men the monster had turned to stone. Each statue, a failed slayer forever frozen in horror, spoke to the utter hopelessness of Perseus’s task. A cold chill passed through him; for a moment he, too, was frozen, but he pressed on. Carefully, quietly, he made his way into Medusa’s lair. Fortune smiled upon him—the monster was sleeping! To protect Perseus should she awaken, Athena covered Medusa’s face with her shield. And with a single stroke of his blade, off came the snake-haired head.
A crimson puddle formed at Perseus’s feet. As Athena set to work collecting the magical blood she’d later give to her nephew, Asclepius, the pool spread. Laying down his sword and helmet, Perseus reached for the severed head, being careful not to look at it, and stuffed it into a magic satchel. In the blood below him, Perseus saw his own reflection, the face of a man who’d done the impossible and survived.
It is this conquering of one’s worst fears that I’ve always found satisfying, in tales spun on a grand scale and, more so, in those played out on the mortal plane. I’ve certainly known times when I’ve been paralyzed by fear or self-doubt but was still able to dig down and push through. These kinds of struggles almost always have unexpected results, as Perseus also discovered. Before his weary eyes, the thin layer of Gorgon’s blood began to ripple and, suddenly, an immaculate, white-and-gold creature leapt out, the winged horse Pegasus. It spread its magnificent wings and flew off to join the Muses, where it would come to serve as the spirit of poetic inspiration. But the pool of blood held one last surprise. Out crawled a foul giant brandishing a sword, the warrior Chrysaor, who’d go on to sire a three-headed monster and a man-eating daughter. The story of Perseus and the Gorgon has thus inspired mine, a personal odyssey through the history of hematology, from the classical age to the modern and, along the way, into my own past. With blood as the mirror, I look at my life and see what emerges.
TWO
Vital Spirits
AT THE GYM, TWENTY-FOUR MINUTES INTO A RUN, THE speed set at 7.1, incline at 5 percent, my feet barely tap the treadmill as I hit mile three. I am in the silence between songs on my Walkman, then Björk’s “Enjoy” begins. Shoulders thrown back, heart pounding, a shiver runs up my spine as I push against the resistance. All five quarts of blood pulse and churn and, without being able to pinpoint the exact moment, I transcend, riding a wave of endorphins. Outer and inner rhythms merge and I turn up the volume. I enter a kind of cardiovascular nirvana where my soul seems to burst from my chest. Music and breath, blood and sweat, this is the closest I come to God.
Even after stepping off the machine, I am six inches above ground, as clear and weightless as the