Hospital Arms

Hospital arms are pale.

Five days of the sun not kissing that skin does much.

And yet these hospital arms are still a variety of colors.

There are a smattering of purple-black bruises. And some even faded to the sickly green-yellow of age.

Most hover on the inside of this girl’s elbow

Someone who was unfamiliar with the way lab tests and IVs affect this girl would ask upsetting questions regarding illicit drug use.

They would hiss heroin.

There is the red of stress and the red of fresh pricks that sapped the girl’s life blood.
They need so many vials for tests that never show any results.

Though the tape they use to staunch the pricks doesn’t remain long, the sticky grey glue residue remains for days.

Standard soap does not help.

It is only when the girl scratches and claws at her skin desperately that stringy gray webs of the glue lift from her skin.

Five days in a hospital and these arms are covered in the evidence and signs of all that has been done to try and determine any solution.

To no avail.

There are no answers. Only ideas. Only theories. All of them whiplashes of terror-words.

Lacunar infarct
Infection
Lymphoma

MRIs and CT scans fly by and dance about but provide nothing magical.

And no surgery in sight. The idea of surgery is clamped down hard and fast. This girl is not a candidate for surgery. She is not normal. Surgery will kill her.

Yet they also say no surgery may kill her.

This girl distantly wonders what would happen if she just stopped taking the piles upon piles of meds the doctors say are barely keeping her from stroke or heart attack.

Her hospital arms tremble. They are tired. They not longer desire to push or carry or pull or reach or lift.

They are hospital arms only.

They will never be healthy arms again.