Day Four on the Bathroom Floor

The pain shrieks through my innards like an amoebic rampage, each infected cell with its own machete violently hacking at the walls of my tender intestines until it reaches such an intensity that I can no longer breathe. My mind is no longer capable of processing thought. My spirit is considering passing into another world to escape the agony. The degradation of uncontrollable diarrhea is soul-crushing. Finally, the cramp subsides. Tears drip from my face to be absorbed into the hard cement floor, where I am lying, to become a living part of the house. The unfinished bathroom floor is not the most comfortable place to spend five days. Right now, in this wretched state, it’s the most convenient.

Someone was with me when I became ill. I’d invited him to dinner that night. The grilled fish was done, the salad ready, the juice made. Feeling queasy, I decided I wouldn’t eat, even though my favorite fish, robarlo a.k.a snook, was on the menu. Not long after that decision, I found myself heaving violently into a bucket. A fever rushed over me. Cramps began. Within an hour, I could barely move. My supposed friend – a whacky, emotionally unstable type who claims to be one of those specially targeted individuals of special interest to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and who harbors all kinds of outlandish conspiracy theories – ate my fish without blinking. Then, fully aware that I was very unwell, and not even bothering to wash the dishes, he vanished for a week.

Robarlo / Snook

The first two horrible days I wallow in bed, barely conscious. Whatever vicious amoeba has attacked me this time has me laid out for cremation like an undertaker, knowing I am ready to die. At one point, realizing I could dehydrate, I drag a five gallon bottle of water to my bedside, with a jug and a glass. The last thing I want to do is put anything into my convulsing stomach. That my stomach is empty doesn’t seem to matter to whatever it is that is purging me volcanically from every orifice until I have run out of clean clothes to change into. So slick with rioting bacteria are my insides that even water doesn’t stick.

Another futile inspection of my pre-paid cellphone reveals once again that I have no minutes; not even the three cents required to send a message to save my own life.

“Please help me,” I call weakly from the bathroom floor on the third afternoon after a particularly harrowing few hours of severe cramps.

No one answers. I have shed all my clothes, shoving them into a stinking filthy pile to be washed at some point when I’m able. A thin towel protects me from the cool cement of the floor. A rolled up sweater serves as a pillow. In this state, I’m too weak to get one from the bed. Drifting in and out of consciousness, time passes. I try to drink water. The longest it stays inside my body is thirty seconds. I keep trying to drink. Exhausted, I sleep again.

The cats hover nearby, meowing occasionally for food. I can’t feed them. Boss wraps herself around my head, massaging my hair. I cry at my inability to care for my pets, and myself. Tears drip onto Boss’s fur. She licks them off energetically, the only sustenance she’s had in several days. Fortunately there is a small container of rainwater for them to drink. They hunt insects during the night.

“Please help me,” I croak again sometime during the next day. No one responds.
All those lectures from Doña Sara about being unacceptably single come to mind. If I wasn’t single, I wouldn’t be dying, naked and alone – the same way I was born – on my own bathroom floor. Maybe there is something to be said for having a partner after all. To amuse myself during a lull in pain and sleep, I try to imagine how one of these local intellectually-challenged Neanderthals would handle this situation. He wouldn’t. He would send his mother to whip me with branches of wild herbs picked from the jungle and rub whole eggs all over my body to cleanse me of disease.

To chase away the fever, every inch of my skin would be doused in lime juice, including my hair. My skin would be pinched and pummeled until bruises appeared. Incense would be burned to smoke out the devils. And those nasty little amoebas would remain undetected and continue to grow until they finally killed me, and everyone would say how sad that the devils had claimed me in the end and that I must have had that evil inside me all along. They would hold a night-long drumming vigil, chanting and singing to chase the demons from the village and then bury me on The Point the following day, incorrectly spelling my name when it came time to engrave the brass plaque for my hurriedly slapped together cement block grave.

Fast forward to the next day when I realize no one is going to help me. Judging by the evil witchcraft messages they put in my yard, most of my neighbors have long wished me dead. Most people in town would feel joyous at my demise, however gruesome. Because of the distance from the beach front, and the slick muddy street, few friends ever stop by the house. I’m barely conscious at this moment. I can feel the life draining from my body. My stomach feels like a million scorpions have nested inside it, all competing for the job of top sting. The pain is relentless. Water goes in one end and out the other immediately. Dehydrated and starving, I drift into unconsciousness again.

Towards evening, the Canadian shows up, all smiles and cheer. So full of himself and his latest conspiracies, he barely notices I am naked and trembling on a thin towel on the cement bathroom floor.

“Please, I need medical attention,” I groan. “Please find the doctor.”

Under normal circumstances, I have to be gagged and hog-tied to be dragged into a doctor’s office. Literally at death’s door, I am afraid, and now believe the only thing that can save me is medical intervention. There is a public health clinic in town, attended two or three days a week by a medic. Kelsie, the bubbly nurse, is usually always there during the week. She has saved my life before and I’d have called her days ago if my phone had credit. I beg the Canadian to go find the doctor, or the nurse. Anyone. At this point, the gardener at the clinic will do.

There is a container of dry cat food in the kitchen. It’s a long way from the usual diet of fresh fish. The Canadian throws some granules on the floor. Before he leaves, he fills the bowl with fresh water. At my bidding, he leaves the gate unlocked and the front door open so that the doctor can come in. The cats hungrily pounce on the meager offering. When they’re sated, they come to lay next to me, warming me with their fur as I shiver in and out of fever. Red continually licks my forehead. She ignores my weak protests. At times, her sandpaper tongue feels like a cheese grater ripping across my skin, but sometimes it helps to cool me down. On second thought, she may be so hungry that she’s test-tasting to see if I’m edible.

Another day lopes slowly by. No one comes. I’m so dehydrated I can’t even cry. I desperately need a bath. Medication. Food. Water. Help.

At some point, I hear the women passing my house to go and do their laundry in the river. I don’t have to see them to know that Sonja carries her huge pink tub on her head, overloaded with the family’s washing. Marie’s tub is blue. Carmen’s is green. Francisca has two, a red one and a blue one. She closes one over the other and balances it carefully on her head as she makes her way out of town. Others join them, escaping the tedium of their rough outdoor kitchens and taking all the kids to cool off in the river for the rest of the day. Piled high with the week’s clothing and all the bed linen, they’ll spend the afternoon on the riverbank, washing and gossiping under the bridge, pounding their husband’s jeans and their daughter’s school socks on the rocks until they’re spotless.

“Please help me.”

My lips are dry. My throat is sore from dry-retching. My voice is barely a whisper. There is a dirty sarong hanging over the unfinished window frame. Stretching out full length, I still can’t reach it with my feet. The effort sends shooting pains through my stomach and makes my head spin. I break into a hot-cold fever. Shivering uncontrollably, I maneuver my body around on the floor, inch by inch, grazing my hip while sliding over the uneven cement, until I can reach the sarong. The effort makes me dizzy and nauseous. The slant of sunlight tells me there is still an hour or so of daylight. The women are gradually returning from the river. Roughly wrapping the sarong around my torso, I crawl on hands and knees to the balcony. Progress is slow. Pain explodes inside me like fireworks. My skin is so sensitive that the wooden floorboards feel like needles digging into my hands and knees. Vahşi accompanies me to the edge as I wade through a mortuary of uneaten cat-kills; cockroaches, frogs, geckos, butterflies and cicadas. As the sun dips lower over The Point, I gasp and groan, finally reaching the edge of my balcony. Once there, I lean against a post and wait. After a few minutes, a local woman passes. I try to call out.

“Please help me.”

She doesn’t even look up. My voice is weak. I need to shout, but can’t. Another woman comes by. I call out again. She doesn’t hear me. I can feel consciousness slipping away. Vahşi crawls into my lap. The warmth and movement wakes me up a little. Just then, a neighbor comes out to her balcony to water her plants.

“Hey! Are you okay?” she calls, seeing me slumped against the post.

I can barely speak. I shake my head. “No.”

“Wait, I’ll be right there.”

From somewhere deep inside my body, tears appear and roll down my pale sunken cheeks. I collapse into a sobbing heap on the floor. Not long afterwards, a gaggle of chattering local women appear in my house. At first, most of them are more curious to explore the open-plan house than to take care of me. They take advantage of the opportunity to participate in a spontaneous open-house. I don’t care, and I don’t care that they don’t really care about me. Finally, someone is there, and they don’t care that I’m naked and resemble a plucked chicken with my pallid face, pasty white skin and trembling bony body.

One of the kids is sent to find Kelsie. The nurse shows up with a medical kit and immediately pumps an injection into my butt. The pile of soiled clothes is taken downstairs and put into tubs to soak. The sheets on my bed are changed and the dirty linen whisked away. After a rough dousing in painfully cold water, two women help me pull an old t-shirt over my head and slide between the clean sheets. Someone is cleaning the kitchen. Another woman sweeps the floor. Giggles erupt from the balcony. Kelsie wipes my forehead with a cool damp cloth.

“Why didn’t you call me?” she chides as she inserts a thermometer under my arm.
Exhausted, I have no words left. I can’t tell her that I did call her, many many times, and that somewhere between my house and the clinic the telepathic signals were intercepted. I can’t explain why the Canadian left me on the bathroom floor to die and didn’t go for help as he’d promised. My relief is so great that I drift into sleep. I’m not sure for how long. Kelsie wakes me gently. My bed is surrounded by curious faces.

“You have to eat something. What do you want?”

Potatoes. Maybe it’s my Irish ancestry, or maybe because they’re starchy and seem to absorb belly-devils really well, I don’t know, but whenever I suffer a bout of diarrhea, I feel the need to eat potatoes. When I’m healthy, a common garden variety potato won’t even make it past the gate at my place. I hate them. A kid is dispatched to buy potatoes. I ask him to buy some eggs, milk and bread to feed my starving felines. Soon, a bowl piled high with steaming plain mashed potatoes appears, accompanied by a jug of suero – home-made rehydration fluid flavored with fresh limes. This meal is supervised by some giggling ladies who make themselves at home on my bed, while others go home to tend to their families. Another mash of bread, eggs and milk is mixed for the hungry critters. Barely making a dent in the mountain of mash, I’m stuffed to bursting after eating a couple of spoonfuls. The rest of the cooked potatoes are stored to be reheated for the next meal. Kelsie orders me to drink the fluid, as much of it as possible.

Over the next eighteen days, still struggling with diarrhea for most of that time, I gradually recover from the near-lethal bacterial infection. By day three of eating pure mash, I am over potatoes. Even though I have no appetite, I eat something every day, feeding my amoebas like little internal pets. As soon as I can get out of bed and move around the house, the cats are joyous. When I can walk down the street without getting dizzy, I stop by the clinic every few days to be weighed and checked out. Occasionally someone stops by the house with a bucket of fresh fish, in exchange for the ripening passionfruits, badea (giant granadilla) and chilies in my garden. The cats are delighted.

Daily, my health improves, but I’m still weak, and very thin and drawn, with my clothes hanging off my skeletal frame. Finally, after several weeks, I begin to gain weight again and come back to my normal chunky self, with a big round butt and robust cheeks.

“You’re fat!” says Nerih happily when I go to the boats to get fish for the cats.

“Thank you,” I reply, understanding that it’s a complement.

After three months, I’m ready to take on the world again, just as long as there are no more microscopic amoeba ninjas lurking in the wings to take me out.