Ask Your Doctor If Drinking Me Is Right for You

Ask Your Doctor If Drinking Me Is Right for You

Spinal Tap

The doctor cut something out of my head, but I still couldn’t figure out how to live. Maybe that’s why she suggested the spinal tap.

It always happens on the sixth of the month. I lie on my side in a scratchy hospital gown, back exposed, waiting for the zipping sound as Jessica, my nurse, pulls open a sealed pack of tools. “Relax,” she tells me, and I wince when the cold wet tongue of the iodine-lapped brush squeegees down my back, her fingers searching between my vertebrae for a secret keyhole.

The drip-drip of clear cerebrospinal fluid (shortened to CSF in the after-visit summary) comes out like sap tapped from an old maple tree. It takes a little over fifteen minutes to get it all out. The nurse tells me it’s a good color and pressure—cloudy yellow would mean there’s an infection and too fast would mean there was too much pressure in the brain. She pats me twice on the shoulder after it’s done, the way a farmer might pat a milk cow. Atta girl. She can’t remember how to pronounce my name or my current dosage of Prozac, but that doesn’t matter. The labeled tubes on the tray are evidence enough. Right now, I’m perfect. My color is perfect. No one can take that from me.

But I can’t stop thinking about it the whole trip home. A part of me, tucked away into a steel lab case, off to be swabbed, sloshed around, gawked at and then discarded by a stranger. It bothers me. I picture myself as a hawk, breaking through the glass windows and clawing out the eyes of the lab technicians. But what then? 

It takes a few late nights of online snooping for office floor plans and well-timed hovering when Jessica’s typing her password into the system. I find a small cupboard in the staff kitchen near the patient rooms where I can hide. It’s a bit cramped and smells like disinfectant, but it’s empty enough for me to curl my body inside with a keyhole big enough to peer outside. Feigning a trip to the bathroom after my sixth visit, I sneak into the cupboard and wait. People come and go, heating lunches, pulling green smoothies from the fridge, and making instant coffee. My legs and back start to ache, my nostrils filling with every kind of smell. I’m not sure how many hours pass. Eventually my whole body goes numb, but I try to think about other things. About clear pools of water on another planet and the three moons in its blood-red night sky, the feeling of extraterrestrial water on my punctured back, my spinal fluid leaking into the stream. It’s all in your mind. No one’s trying to hurt you. You just need to clear your head, the doctor had said, and she’s right.

Finally, I hear a different kind of shuffling: a saucepan being pulled from a cupboard, the flick of the stovetop lighter. I peer through the keyhole. My nurse, Jessica, in her calf-high boots and summery blouse, brings in a clinking tray. Rows of labeled test tubes like designer salts tagged with their place of origin. She pops open one of them and pours it into the pan. Then another, and another, until the whole tray is filled with empty tubes. She adds a few spoonfuls of granulated sugar and stirs the liquid with a wooden spoon, bringing it to a boil.

The smell of warm caramelized CSF fills in the air. It smells good. I smell good.

After a while, Jessica leaves, and I’m left alone with the sweetened spinal tap, steam rising out of the saucepan. “Are you okay?” I want to ask it, but that’s the thing about any part of the body—once it leaves you, you no longer speak the same language. 

The doctors gather in one of the meeting rooms afterwards. One of the nurses calls over the receptionist because it’s her birthday and who doesn’t feel bad leaving someone out on their birthday? They tell her to shut the door on her way in. She stands near a half-dead potted alocasia near the printer as if trying to camouflage herself. I get it. I’m in the locker now, so they can’t see me. The starched white coats chafe my neck, but I like the sugary smell of the soap. I like observing. I’m good at staying quiet when I’m seeing something I shouldn’t be—I did it for years from my mother’s closet when she thought I wasn’t home.

Jessica puts a small glass bottle on the conference table. It looks like that clear artisanal soy sauce they sell for fifteen dollars at the fancy Japanese supermarket. The receptionist distributes paper cups and pours out small shots of sugared spinal tap for everyone because even if it’s her birthday, she’s good at reading the room.

Kerry (or Dr. Seller as I call her after each lumbar puncture) makes a toast. She says it’s been a tough year, that the election’s been rough for everyone, that the federal cuts may start affecting their research funding, their headcount, but they’re doing vital work, they’re saving lives.

“To life!” she says, raising her cup.

“To life!” the rest of them echo. The receptionist smiles the way she smiles when a patient asks her a question she doesn’t know how to answer—like she’s already blissfully left the room in her head. 

They tap their paper cups to each other, nodding the way you see in old movies when the heroes are about to go to battle. When half of them don’t come back alive. This might be their last drink. They swallow me down in one gulp, eyes closed. I’m sweet and sticky on their lips. I travel down the wet tube of their esophagus, embraced in the dark warmth of their gut. I’ll be a part of them soon. 

It’s beautiful. It’s so beautiful, I have to wipe my tears on a white coat.

After the office closes for the day, I finally step out of the locker. The halls are dark and intoxicating with that new furniture smell. Outside, the sun hangs on in the horizon like unpicked fruit, and dusk light powders everything in a shimmering orange sheen. Street vendors fan skewered meats on grills, peeling and slicing succulent fruits, ladling sweetened horchata tea. Everything is alive. My knees wobble; my whole body aches. But I feel good, better than I have in months. I feel alive. 

When I get home, I dream about it. I picture myself in a Midwest forest, naked and still as a tree, a four-inch needle sticking out of my back, a metal bucket set behind my calves, catching the clear drip-off. The sky is on fire, and I am a life-giving god. The forest creatures are my children; they feast on my sweet life blood.

My back itches for days. 

The next time I’m at the oncologist’s office, the receptionist tells me Jessica’s on leave. Something about vandalized lockers and stolen equipment. 

“How awful,” I say. 

She smiles.

“Do you have an appointment?” she asks.

“I’m here for my monthly lumbar puncture.”

She taps something into her computer. 

“We don’t have you scheduled today.” 

“Oh, I must have gotten the dates confused,” I apologize.

She reaches for a clear candy on the dish next to the hand sanitizer. That crystal clear color. I lick my lips and watch her unwrap the plastic. I wait for her to put it into her mouth before letting out a deep, aching sigh.

How does it taste? I want to ask her. How do I taste?

“Are you okay?” she asks, catching me staring. 

I shake my head, apologizing again. She nods and then slides the tray in my direction as if finally understanding. 

“Help yourself.”

As I unwrap one of the translucent jewels, Dr. Seller comes up behind the receptionist. She glances up at me and smiles like she can’t remember my name. That’s okay. It doesn’t bother me anymore. As I drop the candy into my mouth, the sweetness spreads across my tongue, and I think about how a piece of me is inside her forever.