A New Appetite

“You look like hell!” Clara glared at me like it was my fault. “Go home.”

“I’ve got to finish the MacGregor file or Rigel will have my hide.” My voice barely audible. If I looked like hell, I thought, then I looked exactly the way I felt, but these files weren’t going to finish themselves.

“Go home. I’ll get Sean to do it. He’s got nothing better to do, I’m sure. You’ll be no good to MacGregor or anyone else, if you croak on us. Besides, none of us want to get whatever it is you’ve got,” and she pulled the cowl neck of her sweater over her mouth as she said it.

I reluctantly agreed, and gathered my coat and hat and headed for the door. As I walked through the open office, someone called out, “Dead man walking,” followed by a few chuckles. At the front door, Sasha, the receptionist, said, “Get well, Anthony. I hope you feel better.” She was always a kind heart.

Everything after that is blurry in my memory — the walk to the subway, the ride home, the struggle up the hill to my apartment building, and the ride up the ancient lift to the 5th floor. Delirium set in, fever dreams, wild fancies, bizarre visitations, all the product, no doubt, of a very high temperature.

On what proved to be the fourth day, I was pulled from my bed, drenched in sweat, my clothes, the very ones I had worn to the office that day, clinging damply to my body. Someone was pounding on my door and yelling. At first it was part of my dream, the irregular beating of an overwrought heart, but slowly consciousness returned and I recognized the voices of Clara and Jamal, from work. They were calling my name.

“Anthony, if you don’t open the door, we’re going to call the police to break it down!” That was Clara. She probably would do that, too, knowing her.

I crossed through the living room, and slid back the deadbolt, and pulled the door open, stepping aside to let them enter.

“Oh my God, Anthony, you look terrible!” Clara said.

“Nice to see you, too, Clara,” I said, as grumpily as possible.

Jamal laughed. “We wanted to make sure you were still alive. You haven’t called in, or answered your phone. Some folks are wagering that you had died.”

“I hate to disappoint, but no, just sick as fuck.”

“You’re still wearing your clothes from Tuesday and you smell awful.”

“Clara, you are the most uplifting of souls, I swear.”

Jamal laughed at this. Clara scowled.

She reached out and put the back of her hand on my forehead, even though I attempted to avoid contact.

“Well, at least the fever’s gone. Why don’t you take a shower, and I’ll heat up some soup for you,” she said, indicating a brown paper to-go bag she held in her other hand.

“Nice place,” Jamal said. “I’ve never been here before.”

“No one’s ever been here before,” Clara said.

“That’s on purpose,” I responded as I crossed back towards my room. “I hate to keep house, as you can tell.”

And it was true. My apartment looked like the haunt of a bunch of frat boys, with weeks worth of old plates, and the debris of meals gone by, littered across the room, as well as unwashed laundry. The smell was exactly what you’d think it’d be for all that.

In the bathroom, I peeled out of my wet clothes and left them where they fell. Twenty minutes later, I emerged from my room in sweat pants and a T-shirt sporting AC/DC’s Australian tour of 1975.

The two of them had busied themselves straightening up my living room, having tossed the dirty clothes in the washer, thrown the food scraps into the trash, and stacked the plates for washing. Jamal had found the carpet sweeper and was running it across the floor, while Clara rinsed and transferred dishes into the dishwasher.

The blinds were open, and the sliding glass door onto the balcony, was thrown wide, allowing a rather chill breeze to freshen the stale air. These two were like Christmas elves, moving with a speed and efficiency not humanly possible, at least not by the human I knew best, myself.

“You guys really don’t need to do that,” I said, not ungratefully, but more from embarrassment.

“Someone has to do it, and it’s apparent that you can’t!” Clara called from the kitchen “There’s soup on the table. I imagine, by the look of you, that you haven’t eaten.”

“You’re right. I haven’t opened my eyes, shit or peed in… How many days has it been?”

“Today is Saturday. You know there’s no way Rigel would let any of us go to check on you. God forbid anyone show compassion.” That was Jamal, and he was right. Rigel ran a tight ship, a tight-assed ship.

I sat at the table in what was just a breakfast nook, there wasn’t a dining room in this tiny one-bedroom apartment. I was amazed to see the actual table, which had been buried in a year’s worth of junk mail and bills, which I always paid online and never opened.

“Where’d everything go that was on the table?” I asked, as I picked up the spoon beside the bowl.”

“I put it in a trash bag, it’s there in the corner. You probably need to go through it at some point.” Clara said.

I watched her over the bar that separated the kitchen from the breakfast nook. She had her blonde hair tied back, the brown roots showing. She was okay looking, but by my standards, her face was too narrow, her ears stood out a bit more than I liked, and yet despite her direct manner, she was a caring person, and could be funny, when she wanted to be. The fact that she was here registered with me, and I contemplated what it meant.

Jamal, who passed by to put the sweeper up in the laundry closet, was new at work, and a nice person. He stood a bit shorter than average, his dark, curly hair shaved on the sides, and a perpetual smile on his face. His presence here and his willingness to deal with my mess, proved that, as it did for Clara, too. I wasn’t sure I'd do the same. I never had.

Now I turned my attention to the soup, a chicken noodle soup from a nearby deli. I knew some people put great stock in the power of a good chicken soup to heal the sick. The smell of it did nothing for me. My stomach churned. Might as well give it a go.

Dipping the spoon in, I took a sip. It wasn’t too hot, so I began to put it away at a reasonable pace. For some reason, it seemed flavorless to me. That, and before I was halfway through the bowl, my stomach began to feel very unsettled, until I could not put another spoonful in my mouth. I pushed the bowl away and clutched my stomach.

“Are you going to throw up?” Clara asked from the kitchen. She looked at me with concern.

In answer, I leapt from the chair and ran for the bathroom as quickly as I could, just making it to the toilet before everything I’d just eaten erupted from my mouth like a geyser. Afterwards, I clung to the ceramic bowl and dry-heaved for a few minutes, before wiping my mouth with the back of my hand and leaning back against the sink.

As far as I knew, that was the first meal I’d had since sometime Monday, maybe lunch time? I couldn’t remember eating Monday night, and I knew I’d felt too bad Tuesday to tackle breakfast. It was also, the first time I’d thrown up since being sick. I felt suddenly weak, rung out and trembly.

Jamal and Clara stood at the door of the bathroom.

“I think we need to get you to the hospital, Anthony. You can’t go on like this. People die from less.” Clara’s optimism was endless.

“Come on, man, let us take you to St. Elizabeth’s. It’s not 5 minutes from here. I’ve got my car parked outside.” Jamal held out his hand, offering assistance.

Too weak and sick to resist, I took his hand and let them trundle me off to the Emergency Room, which was, as usual, packed with people who have no insurance. We checked in, and Clara filled out the paperwork, asking me the questions and writing down my answers. Jamal managed to rearrange some folks and consolidate three chairs beside each other. The seats were at the end of a row, and right against the wall. I leaned my head against the yellowing wallpaper and closed my eyes.

As we waited in silence, listening to the conversations around us, I began to feel a pang of hunger. I smelled something in the air, something that made my heart quicken, and my mouth salivate. Opening my eyes, I scanned the room to find the source. The soup had done nothing for me — not its look, not its smell and definitely not its taste. But this, whatever it was, had me leaning forward eagerly, sniffing out the cause.

Then I saw it. To my horror, a kid had come in, carried by his father. His mother stood beside them, with two other children in tow. The boy had a terrible gash on his forehead, which was wrapped in a bloody towel. He looked pasty from the loss of blood, which had soaked the front of his shirt, and much of his father’s, as well.

The ferrous smell of blood acted in me like the smell of bacon frying had done in the past. I found myself ravenous. What the hell? What was happening to me? I literally wanted nothing more than to cross the room and take a rather large bite of this kid, sucking in as much of the luscious red juice as I could.

“Anthony? Are you going to be sick again?” Clara asked, touching me on the arm.

I hadn’t realized that in my struggle against this newfound appetite, I had begun shaking and rocking back and forth, with my arms wrapped around myself, as though I were trying to give myself a hug.

I managed to shake my head no, but I could get no words out. I was losing this battle, and I dreaded what I would do, once lost. Would I rush across the room and rip this kid from his fathers arms and sink my teeth into his throat? I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to find out.

There was only one thing to do, and that was to get the hell out of there while the will remained to resist. I jumped from my seat, startling both Clara and Jamal, and ran past the boy and his family, out the door, and into the chill air of a winter day, not knowing where I was going, or what I would do next. I only knew that I would not be this thing that I found myself becoming. With no clear answers, but a strong desire to choose my own destiny, I fled the scene in search of an alternative.

I hope to God there is one. If there’s not, I am loathe to live. Pray for me, please, I beg you! Otherwise, I am doomed.