It Thins the Blood

“Ya know, those things’ll kill ya.”

I pause, holding the four little white pills just below my lower lip, setting my glass of water back down on the smooth, blue tabletop. I hear a horn honk just outside the diner, and then a man’s hoarse voice screams out some angry obscenity, probably at another driver. Sometimes, traffic can make people downright dangerous.

“My shoulder’s killing me,” I reply.

I tore a ligament on the job last year. Workers Comp. never quite replaced my construction worker’s salary, and any number of doctor visits on my company’s insurance never quite stopped the pain.

“I saw ya take three o‘ those an hour ago,” Desiree continues in her shrill New York accent.

“So? I’ve taken so much aspirin in the past year that I must be immune.”

She laughs lightly and leans back in the booth, her arms crossed. “Ya’ve taken so much that yer stomach lining’s gotta be gone by now.”

For no particular reason, I suddenly remember how much I hated her voice at first. For a time, when she laughed or even spoke excitedly, a blade seemed to travel from my eardrums to the core of my brain. But I got used to her voice in time, just like I learned to live with the dull, stiff ache which I’m just beginning to realize I’ll probably feel for the rest of my life.

I pause for another second, and then throw the pills into my mouth and quickly down the glass of water behind them. “Aspirin’s good for you,” I say, taking a bite of my buttered toast in an attempt to wash away the light acrid residue on the back of my tongue.

“How do you figure?” she asks, digging into her pancakes.

“It thins the blood, Babe. I’m forty-two—not getting any younger—and I’ve heard that aspirin can save you in the beginning stages of a heart attack.”

“You have heart problems, Tom?” Her big, brown eyes are inquisitive, innocent. She’s only thirty-four, and already looks older than she did when I met her five years ago. The signs are most prominent around those pretty eyes.

I shrug, sipping my coffee. “I’ve got high blood pressure.”

She laughs again. “Who doesn’t?”

- - -

When we finish our meal, the sun has risen almost completely in the sky. This was another early breakfast. We’ve had quite a few since we took off from Jersey just under a week ago, on our fifth anniversary trip. We’ve hitchhiked, taken buses, cabs, and anything else that was available to us at the time, all for the sake of feeling like a couple of reckless college students ready to see the world. The actual anniversary is tomorrow, and by then we plan to be living it up in California.

“You alright, Babe?” she asks me as we open the diner’s front door, the high chime of the little bell signaling our exit. Instantly we are surrounded by the dense, square atmosphere of the city streets.

I rub my shoulder, which feels cold and sore despite the rising heat of the Nevada morning. “I’m fine,” I say.

“Ya gonna be OK walkin‘, Tom?”

“Fine,” I repeat, trying to take my mind off the pain.

“Ya don’t look it…”

For the first time in a while, her voice begins to annoy me. I want her to stop talking. I figure that if I keep my eyes pointed forward and do not respond, she might take the hint.

No such luck.

“Tom, yer sweatin‘…” The way she says my name, it’s more like Tam, or Taam—long and over-pronounced and utterly infuriating. If she doesn’t shut up soon, I’ll turn around and stop that grating voice of hers for goo—.

A man bumps into me before I see him coming. It’s not good to mess with a guy like me on a day like today. Nevertheless, I’m exhausted enough to let it go.

“Watch where yer goin‘, buddy!” he yells in a voice that almost definitely originated in the great state of New York, or perhaps the upper-most part of my home state New Jersey, where the accents can be almost as horrible.

And that’s the final straw.

I spin on my heal and yell something obscene in his direction.

“Stop it, Tom…” Desiree pleads, attempting to pull me away by my good arm. I shove her off without so much as glancing in her direction.

“Wanna say that again?” the fuming man, who has now also turned from his path, says as he approaches me.

I say it again.

He reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out something black, something shiny…

Apparently, in this area, road rage isn’t limited to the drivers.

He fires. The shot misses but it gets the message across. Before I’ve completely realized what’s going on around me, I have grabbed Desiree by the wrist and begun pulling her, at amazing speed for a forty-two-year-old man on Worker’s Comp., through the crowd, sprinting even. Shots continue to sound behind us.

I wonder how fast he’s moving—am I losing him or is he catching up?—but if I turn to check, I will almost definitely either lose my footing or get shot for moving too slow. I keep running. The gun keeps firing.

My lungs burn. My eyes go in and out of focus. I hold tight to Desiree’s hand.

My heart palpitates, seems to stop, and then it pushes extra hard once and keeps on beating. I think I may be smiling, though I’m too exhausted to be sure.

Told you it thins the blood, Babe.

Another shot fires. I feel a hot, sharp pain explode in my left shoulder—my injured shoulder. And this, finally, is pain. Not the dull throb of my aspirin’s juice running out before I’ve had the chance to pop four or five more; not the cold, stiff ache of waking up on a winter morning; not even odd, horrible snap-and-rip of that muscle reacting the wrong way when I lifted that just-slightly-too-heavy-for-a-forty-one-year-old crate of bricks a year ago under the hot New Jersey sun. No, this is fire, this is agony, instant and complete.

I fall onto the sidewalk, landing flat on my back and desperately clutching my injured shoulder, which was never truly injured until today, feeling warm liquid gush over my fingers along with the rhythm of my beating heart.

“Ya know, those things’ll kill ya.”

“Tam?” Desiree says from somewhere far away. “Taam!”

“Call an ambulance,” I’m almost sure I say, but I could be silent for all the perception I possess at the moment. “I need to get this stitched up.”

I hear sirens, and I turn my head to see the man with the gun being handcuffed and lead into the back of a police car. He doesn’t resist, but stares at the ground and looks overcome with guilt. Then my vision goes black again and I let my eyes close.

Sometimes, city traffic—even if it’s just sidewalk traffic—can make even a logical man lose it for a few seconds. And what logical man wouldn’t carry a gun in a city as dangerous as this?

It thins the blood.

I feel freezing, nauseous, and helplessly weak, but on the bright side, the pain seems to be subsiding. I have a feeling that my torn ligament won’t be bothering me for the rest of my life after all.

I know that I’m close to falling asleep, and I decide to take a nap until the ambulance arrives to bring me to the hospital, to get me fixed up. Shoulder-shots are hardly ever fatal, and I’m sure that all the aspirin in my system is doing a fine job of protecting my heart.

After all, it thins the blood.