The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories by Charles Bukowski

Author:Charles Bukowski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: City Lights Books

LIFE AND DEATH IN THE CHARITY WARD

The ambulance was full but they found me a place on top and away we went. I had been vomiting blood from the mouth in large quantities and I was worried that I might vomit upon the people below me. We rode along listening to the siren. It sounded far off, it sounded as if the sound weren’t coming from our ambulance. We were on the way to the county hospital, all of us. The poor. The charity cases. There was something different wrong with all of us and many of us would not be coming back. The one thing we had in common was that we were all poor and didn’t have much of a chance. We were packed in there. I never realized that an ambulance could hold so many people.

“Good Lord, oh good Lord,” I heard the voice of a black woman below me, “I never thought this would happen to ME! I never thought nothing like this would Lord …”

I didn’t feel that way about it. I had been playing with death for some time. I can’t say we were the best of friends but we were well acquainted. He had moved a little close a little fast on me that night. There had been warnings: pains like swords stuck in my stomach but I had ignored them. I had thought I was a tough guy and pain to me was just like bad luck: I ignored it. I just poured whiskey on top of the pain and went about my business. My business was getting drunk. The whiskey had done it; I should have stayed on the wine.

Blood that comes from the inside is not the bright red color that comes, say, from a cut on the finger. The blood from inside is dark, a purple, almost black, and it stinks, it stinks worse than shit. All that life giving fluid, it smelled worse than a beer shit.

I felt another vomiting spasm coming on. It was the same feeling as throwing up food and when the blood came out, one felt better. But it was only an illusion ... each mouthful out brought one closer to Pappa Death.

“O good Lord God, I never thought…”

The blood came up and I held it in my mouth. I didn’t know what to do. Up there on the upper tier I would have wetted my friends down quite good. I held the blood in my mouth trying to think about what to do. The ambulance turned a corner and the blood began to dribble out the corners of my mouth. Well, a man had to maintain decencies even while he was dying. I got myself together, closed my eyes and swallowed my blood back down. I was sickened. But I had solved the problem. I only hoped we got someplace soon where I could let the next one go.

Really, there wasn’t any thought of dying; the only thoughts I had were (was) one: this is a terrible inconvenience, I am no longer in control of what is happening.

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