[1488]
My ear fell off Wednesday morning.
I was in my bathroom, stretching my cheek for a closer shave, when I noticed something fall into the sink. I found with some astonishment that it was my left ear, perfectly detached. Its appearance and feel were perfectly auricular. Turning it over, I observed that my ear’s innards were quite as I expected – blood vessels coursing through tissue, held by an intricate cartilage scaffold. I leaned into the mirror, gazing wide-eyed at the red hole of my ear’s former abode. The lack of blood was curious; it was neither seeping from this open wound nor staining my hand holding the ear. I turned my head to examine my other ear, still perfectly poised where it had always been. I gave it a tug, but felt no give. Another surprise was the total lack of pain; I would have imagined losing my ear would hurt a good deal, but, curiously, this seemed not to be the case.
With a heavy sigh, I retrieved a needle and brown thread and set about reattaching my wayward ear. Eighteen sutures and a few mistakes later, my ear was again perched happily on the left side of my head. Satisfied with my sewing performance, I considered the matter closed. I dressed, made coffee, ate breakfast and went to work. Oddly, no one at work seemed to notice.
That night and the following morning, I checked how the healing was progressing. The sutures held tight and the ear remained unchanged. By the following Tuesday, I trusted enough time had passed to allow the ear to adhere, but decided to leave the sutures in place for a few more days, just to make sure. I could all too well imagine the reproachful looks and disgusted gasps from my colleagues were I to lose an ear during a meeting. Besides, I had become rather accustomed to the look. I was not a vain man by nature but tidy appearances, proper and prim, remained a point of pride.
Shaving my neck the following morning, head tilted back, I spied bouquets of wily hairs sprouting in my nostrils and, determined to make an example of them, reached for my grooming scissors. As I pushed back the tip of my nose until it was more porcine than aquiline, it suddenly gave way and broke free of my face, falling with a wet plop into the sink below. Lamentably, momentum carried my finger into my left eye, which dislodged entirely from its socket and dangled tenuously by a white, spindly nerve.
I took in my reflection with no small amount of interest. My once middle-aged visage now more closely resembled that of a freshly buried corpse, emerging from an open grave.
I felt a headache approaching, undoubtedly from taxing my unpracticed mind attempting to accommodate two different views at once. If I looked down at the sink with my right eye as well, I largely regained my stereo vision and the headache subsided. Gingerly cradling my errant left eye with three fingers, I returned to my reflection and eased my eyeball back into place.
Briefly relishing that small victory, I studied my nasal cavity in the mirror and peered into myself, to the meat and mechanism, heretofore safely hidden behind a rather undistinguished proboscis. It was, as before, bloodless and painless. I struggled for angles to better observe my cavernous sinus abysses. Finally, I retrieved the needle and thread from the medicine cabinet and secured my nose tightly with over three dozen small, neat sutures. I nodded at the mirror, dressed, made coffee, ate breakfast, and left for work. The rest of the week passed without further incident, and, as with my ear, no one at work mentioned my increasingly patchwork head.
Wednesday morning, awaking with a chuckle, I wondered what new anatomical calamity might befall me. I sat up in bed, swung my feet to the floor and stood. Without my right arm. It remained in bed, half covered in downy quilt, quite cozy and soundly slumbering. I could almost hear it snoring.
I grunted, annoyed. I wrinkled my forehead with effort, trying telepathically to coax a fist from my right hand. I failed, which further annoyed me, and it occurred to me that my delicate needle and thread were wholly inadequate to this daunting new task and could never support the bulk of an arm, not even with three hundred sutures. Heaving a sigh, I carried the arm to the dining room and began to scour the cupboards for a larger needle and heavy twine. I sat down at the table, hunched awkwardly toward my inanimate appendage. Being less adept at the intricate work of binding flesh to flesh with my left hand, I accomplished the job in just over one hour. I found gripping the larger needle simpler than the small, but decidedly more difficult to pass through my skin. Stab upon stab, back and forth, I harpooned my pinched flesh into a crimson-crusted ridge, like a tremendous range of mountains marring a relief globe. As I pulled the final suture tight and tied off the twine with a double knot, I absently brought my right hand up to my cheek to satisfy an itch. I was delighted to have once more the full use of my favorite arm. Donning my undershirt and dress shirt made me less self-conscious about the awkward needlework ringing my right shoulder and armpit. The day then passed as most others did.
That evening while readying for bed, a troubling thought occurred to me: what if another cherished body part decided to abandon ship? Not that I had used it much lately, but I was rather fond of my poor member. I imagined the sound as it hit the shower floor and cringed, seeing it there—a lump, desperately distant and useless. Or what if both arms fell off at once? How could I possibly hope to reaffix them? Could I even manage to dial a phone for help? I wiped a sheen of sweat from my brow. Try as I might to quell that mild anxiety, it got the better of me for several hours and cheated me of sleep.
When my right leg deserted me mid-stride the following Wednesday morning, it sent me sprawling headfirst into the bedroom wall. Greatly irritated and head smarting, I took small solace in the fact that I was prepared. After a bit of shamefully awkward hopping, I took a seat at the dining room table and surveyed the variety of needles, threads and twines in a panoply of colors and textures, meticulously arranged. I once again chose a heavy twine (red this time, to add some spice) and a needle so large it was more appropriately termed a spear. Hundreds of sutures and three hours later, my fingertips numb and mashed, I slumped back in my chair and sighed, thoroughly exhausted.
I certainly hope this marks the end of my odd little adventure, I thought. Except for my other eye, ear, arm and leg, I had no more parts to donate to this experiment.
One week later, I awoke, stretched, and sat on the side of my bed about to begin the day, when I felt the oddest sensation, like falling without falling. I tumbled, hit the carpeted floor with a dull thud, rolled several feet and eventually came to rest staring back at my bed. I blinked to clear my vision, convinced I must be mistaken.
My headless body sat upright, perched on the bed’s edge, quite statuesque. I recognized my pajamas at once, but the sight was dissonant, as I had never observed my own body from such a distance.
And here I’ve been, somewhat disembodied, stranded, for weeks now. I can blink and move my face. I can also breathe, though my lungs are many feet away. My scenery is, unfortunately, rather boring, but I’m making the best of it. My bedside nightstand and bookmarked novel sit nearby. My final glass of water is there as well, evaporating slowly but surely. I’ve become quite familiar with the view under my bed, where a stoic spider who flits between her several webs tends shoe boxes and sundry forgotten things. A thing such as I have become.
I stopped counting at seven months, and even that seems like forever ago now. My arachnid companion stays with me and I find solace in her silent industry. Perhaps a tender mercy, my right eye remains mostly unobscured by her masterful tapestries, which gifts me a continuous view of my bed. My body toppled to the floor one night of its own accord, finally unbalanced, I surmised, by organs shifting from internal erosion. It rests, most undignified, in a crumple on the floor not far away.
I know now that no one will come.
And I’ve come to realize that this rather remarkable end is actually no ending at all.
When not immersed in the biotech industry, AJ Ryland lives quietly in northern New Jersey. He enjoys reading, aquarium gazing, and sharing laughs with his wife and children.
