What the Body Knows

As with every other day, today she says goodbye to her body. Her body – which aches and clicks with silent submission – is the definition of health. She hands another frothy pint to a crusty beard and smiling yellow teeth. And it is okay, she thinks, if in this instant a sarcoma is solidifying deep in the soft tissue of her left hand.

She checks dexterity. Incessantly, she taps each finger against her thumb; the pads enveloped in hoppy resin. There it is. That brief shudder. Tendons grind against bone as she taps her middle figure. Fear is a parasite in her gut. It anchors its scolex and drains – ever so slowly that she might not even notice – every trace of her security. Her stomach grinds and she gently doubles over.

“gie’s a pint of lager." Spit crumbles at the corner of chapped lips as the beard leans over the bar.

She dares to move her arm. Trembling digits grip the base of the glass and carefully she raises it to the tap. Foam tumbles into the jar. The foam blossoms and she stares. Momentarily, the bubbles dancing hold her in a trance: she recalls summers watching waves crashing at her toes. But she is embraced by reality and quickly fumbles to tip out the excess head and attempt a better pour.

Her hands betray her. The glass slips and fragments of glass spring to life, hopping across the floor.

***

As she turns the key, she sees gentle brown eyes under amber light through the window to the living room. They glisten under a mop of curls. Jasper dashes to greet her at the door and swaddles her in love. Jasper is wriggling and cocooning her in kisses. She convinces herself that Jasper’s smile is not meeting his eyes. Earthquakes rumble through her muscles as she reaches to hold him. Perhaps each muscle is rotting. It is not so impossible that this body will betray her today. But that is okay, she thinks, it must be okay…

Jasper meets her hesitation with concern.

“Are you okay, my love?” Creamy skin creases over his brow.

She almost screams at him. The words are thunderstorms in her mind. She wishes for today that he could read her mind and know the twinge in her left hand. Then he would understand what brought her to this moment — this moment where her raging storm churns the calm ocean of his love. Winds of fear, frustration, and fragility whip each kiss into crashing waves, overstimulating her senses.

He reaches for her hand. She flinches.

“Don’t touch me.” She spits.

“What is going on right now?” Jasper sounds like an angry mouse, squeaking and squirming.

***

In her sleep she dreams of those waves crashing at her toes. Each surge of frozen water slips the sand from under her feet. The tide is coming in. Her thighs are sinking. The beach predates upon her hips. It metabolises her torso. Only her brain is left perched on the sand: it weeps.

***

She awakes suddenly to the taste of salt. She thinks of the beach, of those waves devouring her. Her pillow is soaked; she realizes she is crying. She turns to see Jasper dreaming and drooling beside her. Crawling across the sweaty sheets, she squeezes into his arms. The warmth of his skin on hers frightens her. It is perfectly pleasant, but she thinks of the sensory neurons telling her brain about this embrace. She thinks of her brain telling her consciousness of the touch, and her consciousness deciding it is perfectly pleasant.

And that is, of course, why she is afraid. Her consciousness, which is her, drifts within this body and cannot exist apart from it. And her body is, of course, her, but her consciousness is not her body. And there is a twinge in her left hand. Her brain – which is her body but not her – knows. Her brain knows. It knows about this twinge, knows whether it signals death or a trivial fact of life, and yet, she knows nothing. It catalogues each pathogen, each mutated cell, each deficiency, each toxin, but sends no word to her consciousness. It dispatches its army of T cells in a silent march to quell the threat, while she panics and wonders. And then of course, there is a question: who, if not her brain, created the panic? Still, no word…

***

In the morning, she sits across from Evangeline: vanilla skin, honey eyes, chocolate-sprinkled cheeks, and a blueberry-drizzle of veins. Evangeline twists and talks about the day: I cooked dinner, I watched a film, I killed a spider. But there is that shudder in the soft tissue. On the table, she taps her fingers—thumb to pinky, thumb to ring, there it is again, thumb to pointer.

And of course, there is Evangeline. But it would be silly to share. Because, she thinks, it is okay. It just must be okay. Having a body means pain. She chatters to Evangeline: a new recipe to try, a film to watch, a gentle tease about squishing the spider. It is not the spider’s fault that she had 8 hairy, spindly legs on her body.

Evangeline can tell something is wrong. Honey eyes drift down to her fingers tapping, each tap a fleshy thud.

“Are you okay? You are fidgeting.” Evangeline’s voice is silk in the air.

“Oh. My left hand hurts a little. But, it is so silly.” Flem muffles the words in her throat.

“No, no, no, no, no, not silly. Have you made an appointment with the GP?” Evangeline rolls the words across the table.

“Oh. It is only a little twinge.” The words jingle in her consciousness. It is only a little twinge.

***

She sits on the crispy chair. The room is a freezer and there is a smell of isopropanol and latex. The doctor pretends to get to know her while he takes her blood pressure.

“What do you do for work?” He mumbles, his bushy brows wobbling up and down.

“I am a biologist.” She stutters. It is all so silly. So silly to worry about this little twinge. But this body is all she has, and still no word.

He takes her palm in his. Warm fingers make pale impressions on the back of her hand. She watches the colour drift back in with each poke. The little bump on her left hand wriggles around under his touch.

“We can take a closer look. But, you have nothing to worry about. My first impression is that this is likely a ganglion cyst, or a carpal boss. Nothing to worry about. Definitely not serious.” He chitters away about tests and those brows keep wobbling.

Her stomach sinks. She knew. She knew it would be nothing. But no word from her brain and it was this lump and, of course, it was nothing. But then there was this pain. And it was all so silly. And she has wasted his time. And the brows are asking “is there anything else, anything else at all?”, but its too hard to remember because it was always just this twinge.

***

She is sitting on the beach. She grips Jasper’s calloused digits in her left hand. With her right, she lets the sand drain from her fingers. The waves are washing over her toes – which are her, yet somehow not. Her consciousness knows about the waves. It knows because her toes told her brain, and her eyes told her brain, and her ears told her brain, and her brain was good, and sent word.

***

She is gazing across the bar at honey eyes and a sprinkle of freckles. Evangeline is chirping: A pint of pale ale, because it is on offer, and a basket of chips because I have earned them! Aching and clicking, she squats to grab a tulip glass. There it is — a pang on her right side, just under the rib.