The old white man who shares the inpatient room with me tells the white nurse that he doesn’t think Blacks have it as bad as they say they do & her silence swells the room to usher my fears about death out the door along with every monitor beep & even the newscast in tow & I think I might yank back the curtain between us & the newscast slides back into the room & again says this pandemic is disproportionately killing Black folk & damn George Floyd been dead nearly a year already & the white nurse swishes out the room without saying a damn thing to the old white man & her scrubs billow with her silence & he hacks & he coughs & I had to get tested for COVID again before they moved me from the ED & I had to use a designated bathroom downstairs until the test came back negative & that few more steps feels like a few more steps when you’re clenching your asshole to stop blood spilling from your rectum & the wait feels like more of a wait when the one toilet you can use is occupied & I have to talk to surgeons again about what they could cut from me to heal me & where they can place a stoma & America gave Ahmaud Arbery & Botham Jean new holes & wants me to at least appreciate the flowers that will grow there & the old white man hacks & coughs & he’s leaving tonight for a halfway house & this morning laughed & told the Haitian PCA that it wasn’t apple juice in the cup she held & he needs another bedpan now that his bowels are moving again & at 6 a.m. tomorrow the attending GI fellow will ask how many bowel movements I’ve had in the past 24 hours & this is the longest the old white man has gone without calling me brother & this is the longest he’s been silent & it’s just the news that rattles the room & my family can’t visit me because of COVID protocols & I need to tell my daughter about the old white man, not him specifically but his kind & what oxygen they’ll rob even in a pandemic that robs oxygen & my gut giggles then grinds as gas swells against my insides & I know the blood is coming & I know the blood is coming if I must look the old white man in the eye on my way past him to the bathroom & on my way past him from the bathroom & doesn’t he know that I carry enough shame having to carry each bowel movement in a mental ledger to recount to the fellow daily & the old white man needs another bed-pan & the nurses’ station stopped responding & I move the tray table & it has a bad wheel & takes a minute to move but I move it & then scrape the curtain along its rail & try not to hold my belly because I can’t let the old white man see me weak & shuffle my slipper socks past his TV as it blares the weather & I would ask him to turn it down but I can’t let the old white man see me weak & in the bathroom I note the bowel movement time & count & then return to ostomy & IBD forums on Reddit & they all say I’ll get used to it if the surgeons have to cut out my colon & some name their new holes funny names & I’ll get used to the new hole & I’ll get used to carrying my shit on the outside & ain’t that some shit, some shit you get used to & that silence sprawls across the room when the old white man shuts off his TV & the news & all the death outside this room & in the hospital’s COVID ward & in the same streets where a cop shot Jacob Blake in the back & that silence stays stretched from one corner to the other until I flush & wash my hands & sigh & sigh & sigh & sigh & sigh & sigh & sigh & sigh & open the door & the old white man unfurls his eyelids in my direction to say & how you doing, brother?

To read more from Obsidian, please link to our Subscribe page