Hunger and life

In which our Hero is reminded that cold as he is, he’s still a warm person inside

I already know I need to eat. My fingers are cold, and I’m not barehanded in the snow, which means that my screwy runs-hot body is running in the biological equivalent to economy mode. It doesn’t surprise me that my body temperature is 36.2 degrees Celsius. I can feel the cold of the air conditioned space. In addition to my fingertips.

You ever stop to think about your fingers? Of when you’re aware of your fingers as opposed to just being aware of the larger you. You don’t think about body parts. You don’t think about construction.

But then I’m on the pallet, and the charmless phlebotomist is approaching with that disturbingly large needle that causes less pain than a plucked hair despite the gaping garden hose gauge. And she breaks the seal and blood, my blood, flows down the tube, neither fast, nor slow, but intently, as if for an appointment. But it’s not the crayon-dark waxy color of the blood from my veins that startles me. That fascinates, but is unremarkable on the grand scale.

No, what staggers me, almost out loud, is the ferocious heat of 36.2 degrees Celsius against the 22 degree skin. The radiance is so profound I might have flinched if I hadn’t known the cause. That terrible heat, that burning, it’s my life, the breath of air, the flex of muscle, the calories of food, all of that in the heat against my skin.

The machine sways soothingly, agitating the blood. Not stirring it, not mixing it, just, gently, agitating the bag blood. The machine rocks the little bag of extracted life like it were a baby in a cradle. The machine beeps. The phlebotomist obeys. The garden hose is extracted.

They give me a cookie for my troubles.

And I walk away, trying to remind myself to keep a measured pace, to not exert myself beyond the remaining life within me. And forgetting all that, later, I have a beer with my lunch.