Blackeyes

by Ron Mace

“I’m sure you have already been told this,” the guy in the hospital greens was saying to me.

“48 hours ago you suffered a stroke that left you unable to move anything but your eyes.”

The face that was spewing these fun facts was adorned with the thickest coke bottle glasses I had ever seen.

“I am here to change your I.V. Mr.,” with this he paused and pulled my chart so close to his face that I was sure the curved thick glass was touching it.

“Mr. Macey,” he finished.  Of course as you already know, the effects are short term and you should be up and around in a week.”

He had pulled the plastic tubing to within inches of the glasses for at least the third time when I saw it.  I had just convinced myself that it was a black lint ball when it moved. 

“These damn things never seem to have all of the parts that there supposed to,” he said as he set my hand back down on the sheet.

“I’ll be right back don’t go anywhere,” he said adding a laugh that if I could have moved, would have made me slap him hard one way or the other.                  

He was still jabbering away as he looked through this drawer and that one, looking for what had so far eluded him.

I would have jumped if I could have felt it, but I saw it instead.  The moving thing turned out to be the blackest cockroach I had ever seen.  As if attracted to candy it hurried to the spot where my uncapped I.V. line sat resting on the sheet.

I tried to make my eyes reveal my panic to the idiot that was supposed to be helping me, but his back was turned and he had moved even further away in his search. 

Glancing back down I was horrified to see the cockroach was pushing into the open tube with its pointed rear body.

“Right there,” the idiot called.

At first I was sure I wasn’t seeing the small back dots moving up the tube, then all at once the roach’s body convulsed and a steam of black specks emerged and then disappeared through the blue plastic spot where it met my skin.

“I promise when I find what I am looking for you won’t feel a thing.”                                               

(Editing Workshop)