14 Stories by Stephen Dixon

Author:Stephen Dixon [Dixon, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary, 14 STORIES, Fiction
ISBN: 9780801824456
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 1980-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

CUT

They want to take my leg away. Cut it off just a little below the hip. Gangrene’s set in around the ankle. Spread to the heel and now shoots of it to the skin. Not much blood circulates down there because the aorta’s clogged at the knee and calf. Black tissue they call the cancerous stuff. My wife said to me what else can you do? I said anything better than that. She said the only alternative was the implant but it just wouldn’t take. A fibrous artery to bypass the blocked spots and get some more blood flowing to the foot so the gangrene would dry up. I’m seventy-five. The real arteries weren’t strong enough to stretch far enough to meet the implanted tube, the vascular surgeon said. Or something like that. And that or your life. Plain as that. Horrible as that must sound to you both. Sorry as I am to be so frank. Well I’ll at least walk some more before I go. You won’t walk for more than a month and probably less. The gangrene’s spreading too fast. You mean the black tissue, I said. Call it what you want, he said. Endless trouble’s what I’m calling it, though the worst part of the worst dream I’m now waking up from is what I’d like to call that rot. They all agree. Vascular man, internist, urologist who operated on me to have my prostate removed. That’s what I originally came in here for. I was fine after that operation. Learning to urinate like I used to. Three days away from home. When my wife noticed two ulcers from the friction burns caused by the postoperative surgical stockings they’d bound around my feet but too tight so I wouldn’t shoot an embolism in bed. They said complications like the embolisms they prevented and ulcers they weren’t smart enough to avoid by simply removing my stockings at night often happen to men of my age. And because I’m diabetic and my arteries are crummy, the ulcers wouldn’t heal. Gangrene set in and spread. But I’ve been over that route. Those murderous black shoots. And they only gave my wife fifty-fifty I’ll survive the operation and nobody’s promising my condition won’t get worse and worse if I do. I stick my wrist with the vascular man’s scissors, then the other. Then the blood flows. Better than getting a leg sliced off. Then my head flows. Better than dying like a what? Sitting outside in front. Trouser leg pinned to my behind by two extra-safe diaper safety pins. In time the surviving leg sliced off. Till I’m sitting in front like a what? Like a what? That’s my wife standing by the bed. Comes in every day at noon and here she is at ten. Tough luck, lady, I try to say. She’s ringing, screaming. Running, in the corridor screaming. A nurse comes. Tough luck, I want to say. Runs outside the room and yells call the resident. Too late, I say.

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