004. Blood Disease

Colin hadn’t been able to feel the shortage of red cells in his blood, but when the doctor handed him the anaemia fact-sheet and told him to peruse it while he stitched up some kid’s knee, everything made sense. 

Symptoms of anaemia may include:

• Tiredness or weakness
• Increased thirst
• Faintness or dizziness
• Sweating

“Well I’ll be damned,” he muttered, as he thought about how hard it was to get out of bed each day to drive his cab and all the times he hadn’t stood up for that girl with a leg brace in the school playground.  The tiredness and weakness – that wasn’t him. It was his blood.

It was his blood that made him drink too much, and his blood was the reason he woke tangled in damp sheets every morning. He could blame his blood for the faintness, too – living in muted greys while everyone else rushed around in technicolour.

He flipped to brochure over and the list continued. All his life problems, in one neat, shaded textbox.

• Weak and rapid pulse, rapid breathing
• Shortness of breath
• Lower leg cramps
• Pale or yellowish skin

It explained everything. The way his breath and life felt shallow, and the fact there was never enough of it. The weight he seemed to carry in his walk, and his cowardliness. He thought about all the times he had stayed in dead-end jobs and let people push in front of him in the supermarket lines. The way he turned his back on Eddie Mac when he came out in the first week of Year 11, and the lies he had told to protect people who didn’t matter. He’d been lying awake thinking about his poor choices for years. But they weren’t his fault.

He came to the last symptom. His shortness of breath flared up when he read it.

• Heart-related symptoms (abnormal heart rhythms, heart murmur, enlarged heart, heart failure)

It explained everything. The way his heart refused to beat in sync with other people’s and the way it whispered advice too quietly, so it was easy to ignore. How large it had felt during his 20s and 30s – big enough to house dozens of girls whose ticket in was a pretty smile or a flaw he’d never fix. Gambling addicts and burlesque dancers and quiet mousy girls who crumbled for no reason. He’d loved all of them, until – sometime during his marriage – his heart finally failed. All because of his red blood cells.

Eventually, the doctor returned with a dietary plan and some iron supplements. Colin smiled, for the first time in years. Everything was going to get better.