It's Just Pain, It's only Blood

IT’S JUST PAIN, IT’S ONLY BLOOD

(Love Must Have Been in the Air)

By

J. C. Miller

He was working as a picture framer in his early years before he became a teacher. On weekends he liked to hike and climb rocks in the mountains. He was used to the usual scuffs and scrapes that came with climbing.

But he was surprised one afternoon when he was careless with the molding chopper, an old affair with two large razor-sharp blades mounted at a wicked right angle to chop out narrow molding pieces to be mitered, glued and nailed. While steadying an eight foot strip of molding on the narrow measuring bench with his right hand, he unwisely reached across with his left hand to adjust the height on the right hand clamp and slid his middle finger along the edge of the right hand blade, severing its tip and part of the finger nail away from the bone.

It did not hurt.The blade had made a clean cut that only half-a-minute later began to bleed. His immediate concern was the bell, signaling the arrival of another customer at the front of the store. He could not ignore the arrival of a customer. The store owner had stepped out for a quick errand.

Hastily, he centered the severed tip onto the finger, wrapped the digit in a blue paper towel from the glass cleaning station. He wound the towel around his throbbing digit and coiled around it with masking tape.

The bleeding stopped.

He inhaled deeply.

The finger throbbed.

But he was alive.“Just pain”, he told himself.

The red drops on the chopper table would clean away easily. “It is only blood,” he whispered to himself.

#

“How may I help you?” He smiled, as he held his left arm behind his back.

“I need this frame repaired. I’m having guests this afternoon. The mirror hangs in the foyer. Important that guests are able to see themselves, straighten hair and so on before they come in.” The lady smiled.

“Can you leave it with me for a while? The owner will be back shortly and my relief comes in an hour later. She can probably tend to the separated corners and have it ready for you by closing.”

“Young man, I’m a paying customer and I have never been put off in this way before. Please take care of this now! I’ll wait. By the way, what is your name?” The lady in the speckled blue dress and old-fashioned feathered hat frowned, turned slightly crimson and tensed visibly.

“Bob, Ma’am. Bob Reinier.”

“Well, Bob Rainer,” she mispronounced, “I’m the only customer in the store right now, so please get busy!”

Bob tried to comply.He was able to hoist the large framed mirror onto the fitting table without flexing his injured finger. He began removing old brown paper, brads and cardboard from its back. He detached the wire and rusty screw eyes. He raised the edge of the frame, placed his left hand under the mirror to steady it, and pulled the frame out from under the glass. He pushed the mirror away and began to inspect the frame.

At this time, he noticed his finger had bled through the makeshift bandage. Blood dripped onto the carpeted top of the table. He had probably smeared the face of the mirror.He dared not lift the glass to look.

And then, the bloodied digit began to weep profusely. Bob stopped, a bit perplexed as to what to do next. He reached for another blue towel to renew the wrap. He turned, smiled and apologized for “momentary problem”. He sprayed his hand vigorously with the ammoniated glass cleaner and reached for another towel.

But the customer, a lady named Havah Oston, had fainted onto the floor, hitting her head on the corner of an art supply cabinet as she fell. Her own blood now spilled out onto the floor.

A moment later, the store owner walked in.

“Oh God! Oh God! What has happened?”

The man stood shaking, suddenly sweating and shaking his head.

Bob remembered that his boss, a man named Lemel, had been a soldier who had been honorably discharged following a combat stint in the Far East. The PTSD kicked in at the sight of all the blood.

“It’s just blood, boss!”Bob tried to soothe the man.“It’s just blood!”

He ran across the store to retrieve a stool Lemel used whenever he sat working at the cash register on totals.But the sight of dripping blood from the finger sent Lemel into an enhanced paroxysm of nerves and shaking.He too slipped onto the floor.

#

It was at this moment, Bob began to feel a strange sense of weightlessness. The fluorescent lights in the ceiling fixtures seemed to turn purple, and infuse the shop with a soft but eerie light.

Bob’s feet left the floor and he floated up. Perhaps it was unreal, just a weird sensation.

But he felt his head touch the ceiling and heard fluorescent ballasts humming and crackling in his ears. And when he turned his head to the right toward the back of the shop, he saw children running and a meeting among adults, who talked of after-school plans and new places to eat and….

And then he looked into the mirrored back of the main display cabinet across the store. He could not see his face, just the back of his head. He waved his arms. The image in the mirror waved in sync. He turned his head. No trick mirror—he saw his profiled head.

#

Bob seemed to be remembering the future. He wondered if he was regressing and that his life was, of a sudden, running backwards.Perhaps he was only remembering the incident with the finger. Perhaps he would become a child again, go into the house after unplaying in the yard, become ever smaller over days, forget all he had learned, and finally—he gasped—be unborn!

Meanwhile, a fire rescue vehicle pulled up at the front. Its red lights flashed. Its diesel engine thrummed loudly, vibrating the plate glass windows. EMT’s in voluminous yellow rubber pants emerged with a collapsible stretcher and a defibrillation kit. They came into the store. Choking fumes from their truck wafted in after them.

“Clear! Clear! Clear!”

The EMT sighed. “Too late. She’s gone, guys!”

The crew gathered the woman onto the stretcher, raised the contraption and exited with their bags and paraphernalia, as a police car rolled up and an officer came in to interview everyone, and Lemel put up the closed sign on the front window before returning to hover on his stool and shake his head from side to side.

Bob wanted to say something. No one seemed to be noticing him at the moment. “It’s just a little blood, for cryin’ out loud!” That’s what he thought he shouted. But no one looked up at his figure floating around the fluorescent fixtures.

#

Things then seemed to flash forward for Bob. He was at a school, watching children run around on the playground. He was seated at an outdoor picnic table. Children ran screaming by. A coworker, who also had grounds duty during recesses, sat next to him.He knew he was attracted to her.Her name was Hanah Kuruk. He was shy. He didn’t know what to say at first.

He finally remarked about her palindromic first and last names. “Funny, isn’t it that the word ‘palindrome’ doesn’t read the same backwards and forwards?Perhaps we need a compensatory new word: “emordnilap’.” Then he smiled.

Hannah stared at him strangely. She did not laugh.

Maybe, he thought, that’s why they were not destined to become an “item”. Maybe he should be content to be gradually un-living his life. Maybe he was happier as a baby. Perhaps he had a previous life.

He remembered thinking he was to be dating the woman sometime the following year, in spite of this awkward moment. He wondered if, since the school term only recently begun and he seemed only to have met her recently that, time had indeed been mirroring itself and he was momentarily stuck in an unwinding future. Would he, indeed, regress, become a child, and then become a baby, eventually never to be born? He remembered his future relationship with present regret—and terrible pain! This just was not right!

“So, what if there had been no blood?” he asked, as he thought about the earlier problem injuring himself. “Maybe if Mrs. Oston would never have died and I would be living a normal life.” And he thought again about the mirror frame he left on the framing table. He wondered if it had blood on the front.

#

Bob had hovered above the framing table for who-knows-how-long. He decided it was time to come down off the ceiling. It was at this moment the relief framer, a girl named Eevee Habibah came in. She smiled, winced and ask why all the blood on the floor.

He always found Eevee attractive and fun to talk with, but was afraid to ask her out.

Eevee saw his bloody finger and gasped. “I’ll get the kit!”

She ran to the back of the store and into the restroom. She returned with the kit, removed the red-stained blue towel and masking tape. She very expertly pressed the severed fingertip back into place. She applied some sterile ointment and wrapped the finger with gauze and clean white adhesive tape.

Bob finally screwed up his courage and asked her to go for a pizza after closing.

She laughed, as she looked at his finger, but said yes.

Bob then got a mop bucket and some ammonia from the back and mopped up the blood on the floor.

“Thank you. I’m glad you took care of that,” Eevee commented. She had not been a bit squeamish tending to his wound.

“Aaa—it’s only blood,” Bob responded, as he wrung out the mop.

Lemel eventually got hold of himself, admonished Bob and Eevee to be sure to put the alarm on and lock up at nine. Then he left for the night.

Bob finally picked up the upside-down frame and mirror from the fitting table. He decided the least he could do was fix the frame corners, clean the mirror and reinstall it with a fresh board and paper in the back. Maybe a relative would come in to pick it up one day.

Odd thing is when he turned the mirror over and looked at himself in the blood-stained glass, he could only see the back of his head and his shoulders.

Bob shrugged, reached for the glass cleaner and thought, “It’s only blood, but I better clean it off.”

Another hour went by. Time to sweep up and close the place. Bob looked forward to Pizza with Eevee.

#

As a post-script, Bob and Eevee announced their marriage the following summer. They both enrolled in a teacher education programs at the university. They would become teachers. They would work part time jobs until graduation. They would go on to raise two children, whose names would not be palindromes. Family life would have a few pains, fortunately very little blood. Nothing serious, at least.

Bob sometimes thought about Mrs. Oston—poor, poor Mrs. Oston. He even wondered if she had been real. Her first name was a palindrome. Her last name was not, but backward it did spell, “not so”.

He still dropped by to see Lemel from time to time, a kind and good man.

He would smile when he remembered his experience floating up to the ceiling in the framing store. “Love must have been in the air,” he found himself thinking.

END