Blood Makes Noise

In the examining room, it was worse. Dwight was feeling lately like it was always worse, but there was a pitch to it in here. Maybe because the room was so quiet. The crinkling under his legs was at least something he could control, so he shifted how he sat on the crepe paper, just to put some other noises into the space.

This doctor wasn’t in a rush. Last month’s specialist was out of town, supposedly, so this one was going to be new, and Dwight would have to explain himself again, as if he didn’t have a chart. On his first visit, they gave him a test and the result they came back with was “insignificant”. A whole morning out of his life spent on a test that told you nothing. They suggested some expensive thing from some fancy web site, so he bought what they told him to buy and tried it and it just drove everything deeper into his head, so now it seemed worse than before.

It really had a richness to it right now. It was getting harder to even sleep. Change had to happen. Today. These people had to deliver some kind of relief, something, it had to happen. Not like other visits where it was enough to talk and test and hope but not actually affect anything. Was he supposed to give up? These medical professionals didn’t care if he did, you could tell that by how long they kept him waiting. And waiting.

It was almost twenty minutes before she opened the door.

“I’m so sorry.” Perfunctory smile. “You’ve got a ringing, huh?”

And Dwight said, “I guess it feels a little different than ringing. But if you need to reduce it to that, then yeah.”

She flexed her eyebrows. “Okay, let’s see what we can do about it. What does it sound like?”

“Mmh --” Dwight started. “You don’t have it in my file?”

“I’d like to hear it from you.”

“Well,” he said. “It’s not a thing where there’s just one sustained note, like a bell. I had that before. This is more like a series of – something.”

“Can I just confirm your date of birth?”

Jesus H Christ. How many times? He confirmed it. Male. 44. Unmarried. Prefer not to list race, but then there were two other questions that made you say you were white. High blood pressure, treating it. Melanoma, not treating it, leave me alone.

“Okay,” she said. “You’ve had a ringing before?”

“The ringing was different.”

“How long have you had that?”

“That was probably four or five years ago. But now I’m noticing something else. It’s not ringing.”

“Interesting.” She’d been looking at him when she first came into the room, but now she was typing on her laptop. He stared, waiting for her to look at him, and she just wouldn’t. She was older than he was, probably, with a vague Eastern European accent that had some authority to it but the jury was still out.

So he went on. “Like, there are all of these individual tiny parts to the sound,” Dwight said. “It’s almost – it’s like I’m hearing something far away. If that makes sense. It’s like a murmur.”

“How long have you noticed this?”

“Since the beginning of November, I guess. So three months.”

“A murmur, that’s interesting. Are you sure it’s not more of a sustained ringing? Like a high-pitched bell?”

“It’s not a ringing.”

“And it’s not a thumping sound?”

“It’s not a thumping.”

“A lot of people hear a thumping sound, like you’re hearing your own pulse, is it like that?”

“No, it’s not tied to my heartbeat.” She kept typing. “I read about that. It’s sustained but it’s not --” He stopped. He didn’t finish his sentence. He waited for the doctor to look at him. It took a count of ten, but she finally did.

“It’s different,” Dwight said with emphasis.

“It’s a murmur.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you hearing it now?”

“Yes.”

“Are there times when you don’t hear it?”

“No.”

“Does it disturb you?” That was a strange question. He made a face while thinking how to answer it, and she went on. “Is it disturbing you now?”

“Yeah, it’s disturbing me,” Dwight said. “Here’s what it’s like, I’ll describe it. It’s like, picture yourself on a beach, you’re alone on a beach. Quiet beach. And you’re right at the edge of the water, and there’s that sound when the wave comes in, and then it slips back and you stand there and it recedes back into the ocean. And that sound of the sand settling back as the water leaves it alone.”

“That’s kind of calming, actually,” the doctor said.

“But the difference is, instead of a million little soothing pops or swishes in the sand, I’m hearing a million little human voices with parts of words, like “tack” or “tick” or “cob” or “dow”, all together, just syllables, just enough to know they’re coming from people. Faint, but you can hear them. You can just hear enough so you start to picture who’s speaking. I hear that – that wash of bits of voices –I hear it all day, every day.”

“That’s descriptive,” the doctor said. She didn’t smile. Dwight watched her. It seemed to him like she was trying, anyway.

Dwight didn’t know what she would say if he described the rest of it. The way he’d noticed it in morning meetings at work. When someone would sit very near him and he could hear the ticks and tacks get more specific, when he could hear whole words. When he heard Michelle say that awful thing about Luis, that ugly thing she said, but maybe she hadn’t said it at all because nobody else seemed to have heard a word and the meeting went on like it always did. And the way he’d noticed it when he was kissing Lisa goodnight and she said what she said about his smell, but he could’ve been just imagining it because she seemed not to realize. And the guy on the LIRR, yelling about knifing someone, maybe knifing Dwight. He said it loud but it was so fleeting, and the guy just went on rubbing his eyes like nothing had happened.

Dwight didn’t know what the doctor would say if he told her all that. So he didn’t say anything.

Sometimes Tylenol muted this kind of day, but he’d taken three and it was so much louder.

“Can you open your mouth, please? Say ‘ah’.”

The doctor flashed a light into his mouth and then moved around to his right side, bent to shine it in that ear. “Have you been exposed to any loud noises lately?”

“I would tell you if I had,” he said. That was a bush-league question. Come on. “I do a lot of audio on headphones. I’m on a project right now, sound editing, I listen to a lot of news audio. But nothing loud. Nothing I can think of.”

“News audio,” she repeated.

“Yeah. I can’t think of an incident where it got really loud.”

“Well,” the doctor said. “I never like hearing the news.” She put her hand on his shoulder and pivoted him a little to the left, like a barber getting a better angle.

Dwight crinkled sideways and she lowered the table so her head was level with his own. “I’m just going to see if I can clear out your canal a little bit,” she said.

“You think that’s it? Just a build-up?” He couldn’t keep the judgement out of his voice.

The doctor whispered something nasty after that, but it was so hoarse he might have misheard, because when he turned to look at her she smiled and tipped his face away again. “There’s a blood hollow,” she said. “Near the cochlea, thin membrane right where your pulse can really pound, and it’s hard to clear out depending on what you’ve got there.”

“Okay,” Dwight said.

She spun out a tray from behind her and Dwight looked at the stainless-steel instruments on it. Each tool was precisely laid out with a q-tip next to it, a soft companion for every sharp need. A few of the picks had curved ends. One had a built-up tip with a light – maybe a camera, he thought.

Now that she’d swiveled his head like this, he could just catch their dull shapes in the reflection on the paper towel dispenser. He saw that she’d put on a visor, and seemed to have lowered a pair of glasses over her eyes as she leaned forward until he could feel the cold tip of metal and the heat of her breathing on the side of his neck.

“That’s close, you’re kind of close.” Dwight had to say it.

“I’ll be quick,” the doctor said, and laughed. Kind of a mocking laugh.

The room was thick with quiet now, which meant that the mesh of murmurs and grunts and consonants were building, maybe even louder than when he’d walked in. Or maybe he was just thinking about it more.

He felt the metal scratch lightly past the entrance to his ear, and then tap against either side of his ear canal. Deeper than he would ever be able to go himself. It wasn’t a dull instrument. He could feel it had a purpose in there, a mission. He tried not to flinch but – was this too deep to insert a device like this? He felt it shift and turn and the thing inched a little further inside, surely it would hit a wall if it went any deeper, an ear drum or something, goddamn. A light clicked on from her visor. Dwight could see the bright point of it on the front of the paper towel dispenser. The doctor adjusted her body and slightly shifted the pick and the cold radiated into his bone. He could hear the tip of it. He shouldn’t move. But he might have to.

She shifted even closer, breath warm. “Red like a little rash,” she said with a bitter edge. “Just rub and rub, fingers and nails, filthy.”

Dwight made a question out of a stiff grunt, but she just said, “A little pressure” and warm water pushed in now, inside and then running out, collecting on a Kleenex she held under his ear.

The water was squeezing on some cask in there, a bladder growing, a bloat taking up more space than before, and then it really was pressure, one thing leaning hard on another until a cluck from the doctor, snapping her tongue just as she pivoted the pick to one side and he felt a thick pop and a flow, let loose like honey coming forward now and he winced and she gripped his shoulder to steady him and he felt liquid metal snake down, something stung deep, irritated by this leaking mercury, why was it so hot? Hotter than the rest of it and he groaned and cursed but he heard, “You deserve it” and as she moved, he felt whatever the crooked metal tip had torn, a thick chuffing sound, a ripping like the seam of a shirt. It would stop when she stopped tugging, then rip again as she adjusted. And when her arm moved back, something moved with it, and all the liquid had swept down, too. She’d wiped it almost dry. And now it all opened up in that one ear, he felt the room getting in.

She came all the way out.

There was a difference to the tone of everything. The cold sensation deep inside, something open now, a space for air that hadn’t been there before.

Even the doctor seemed surprised by it. “You don’t want to see,” she said. But she held up the tissue, heavy and stained. Inside it was dark like a fruit, an heirloom kidney bean. Dwight was sure there were millipede legs retracting back into it, or maybe that was a trick of the light but it looked like those stiff hairs had held on to the insides of his ear for dear life, and now this larval caramel had been ripped free.

“Jesus,” he said, opening and closing his jaw to feel the new freedom.

“Like a pig,” the doctor said, and Dwight snapped his head around to look at her.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“I asked if you wanted to see.”

“You said something.”

“Are you all right?” the doctor asked. “Need a break? As if this isn’t already taking my whole morning?”

He’d only looked away for a moment, but he’d heard her more clearly than ever. The doctor’s voice was a new kind of loud.

She rolled back. “Okay,” she took a breath. “Let’s take a look in the other one.”

Dwight felt a little chill up his back now, at the same time as there was new sweat on his neck. Okay. It was okay. This was progress. And it was happening today.

The doctor pulled her tray around to Dwight’s other side, and he could feel the latex gloves pressing on the outside of the other ear now, giving her the view she needed.

The doctor leaned close and took up the hollow-tipped tool and there was a glow inside his head. “Is that a camera?”

“Shut it.” She dug deeper. Water filled this other ear now and soaked the tissue. She put another stained wad on the tray and replaced it with a clean one under his ear, which was still dripping. “Wow.”

This time the bean she extracted was smaller, but blacker, and it clattered like a bullet into a dish. She pulled out a second kernel. Then a third.

She had a hold of something. She pulled and his head came with it, toward her, he tried to force his head the other way but it was strong. Something scraped a little. It felt almost good. The color of the sound changed. She stopped.

“Whoa,” she said.

“Keep going, you’ll get it,” he said. He felt a flush of panic that she was finished, that she’d say this was all they could do today.

“I don’t think it’s loose enough yet,” she said.

“I felt it, it’s getting there,” he said.

She looked in again and tugged once more and he felt the air rush past the edge of whatever she had, like a menthol breeze.

“Repulsive,” was what he heard, but he knew this time she hadn’t said it out loud.

“Come on.”

“I’m going to stop.”

“Let me.”

“It won’t come.”

“Give the thing to me.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Just let go.”

He could tell she was about to really change her tone, get all strident with him and set some new kind of boundary but it wasn’t time for that. He reached around and took the pick and she let go and instantly he knew he was going to be able to solve this. She’d gotten that thing deeper than he could have on his own, and now he could feel there was a way forward.

She yelled, “You can’t do that!” and he yelled back, “You’re not doing it!” and put up his elbow to keep her away from him. She put her hands on his arms and said something in some foreign language, so he stood up, stepped back, threw an elbow again, and it knocked her glasses off-kilter on her face. He couldn’t open his jaw wide enough for another yell, that was too painful, but he could growl. She didn’t like the growl.

He waved her off as he got used to this instrument. He guided it around the next turn inside.

The doctor’s face finally matched what he could hear. Grimacing.

“You fucking idiot,” she didn’t say out loud, and he smiled at that. “You’re going to kill yourself and you’re gonna get blood all over the floor of my nice office like a privileged dirsa.” She gritted her teeth, watching him work, that’s all she was doing. “And it’s all because you grew up thinking you were rich enough or man enough or smart enough that you don’t have to listen to anybody else if you don’t want to, because you’ve got some innate knowledge of what’s best for yourself, and for me, I bet, and somebody’s probably still telling you that, look at you, pathetic little sack of shit mulkis. All the facts are what you want them to be, screw what the doctor says, especially the female doctor, what the fuck does she know?” That’s what Dwight heard her say. Or something to that effect.

But when Dwight hooked this nodule, or whatever it was, and yanked sideways, her voice was drowned out by a searing feeling, deep, shooting in a line from the outside flesh of his ear all the way to the tingle of gooseflesh making the hairs stand up on the back of his head, right through the center, and a hissing sound like a hundred people crammed in a tiny bathroom sucking in their breath before they scream for their lives.

He pulled his hand away and felt the gush of blood but when he turned to look at the doctor he could only hear a bit of her yelling from his other ear. In this one, he couldn’t make out a bit of it. He looked at the end of the pick he’d brought out and the tissue that hung from it was ringed with a dry layer, a whiter color than he expected, and it made the red stand out.

One more time, the doctor tried to grab for his arms but Dwight kicked at her and backed against the cabinet and wiped the mess on his shirt and stuck the hook into the other ear now, the one she’d started but she’d been too tentative to really fix. Glaring at her. Daring her to try and grab him again.

She turned and ran from the room. Dwight swiveled the desk in front of the door, the desk with the laptop on it, and he couldn’t hear what was being said out in the corridor but he felt them pushing on the door even though it wouldn’t open with him leaning on it.

He dug the hook in and felt something catch, some ripping cartilage that tightened when he clenched his jaw.

He had it.

When the next piece came free, he lost his legs under him, that was probably to be expected. He sank to the floor. The blood was like a warm rag down onto his shoulder and he only did a quick wipe of the instrument before driving it back in.

The voices were wasting their time saying terrible things about him and about what he probably wanted, and he yanked on the other side and all this new material came free.

And then, after that, he was trying to decide if he could hear anything. Maybe this was silence, was this the sound of nothing?

Where were those other tools? He propped himself up so he could see the tray and scrabbled around for the camera. He got it, figured out how to work the light on it. Flicked a switch and he could see the video pop up on the laptop, it matched the movements he was making with that tool, so he telescoped it into his right ear again.

He turned the laptop toward him, tried to hold his hand still and concentrated, focused on the video. He could see the recesses of that canal in black and white, open and deep, like a hallway that just went on and on into blackness.

This was definitely quiet.

There was nobody down at the end of that hallway. He kind of thought there wouldn’t be, but how was he going to know for sure if he didn’t see for himself?

People get so focused on how much blood ends up on things. It’s just blood, get over it. Clean it. Or not. Later. There seemed even to be blood in his vision, that was going to be inevitable, he’d deal with all that.

When the door swung open again it was yet another new face in the lead, a big guy with a few others behind him, some med student who’d probably ask for Dwight’s whole medical history again.

The doctor was at the back of the group, a stupid stricken look on her face, yelling, yelling. He hoped he was smiling at her. He was trying to. “I was right,” was what he was trying to say, but it probably didn’t even come out. They all had the same question, over and over. Thank god he couldn’t hear a word of it.

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