Novel Extract p.28

It's hard keeping up, I now write a novel and work 8 hours a day in work, I'm getting exhausted and I'm still doing the MA Writing. Not written any poems in a while but still on my novel. I've written over 22,000 words so far. Here is another extract:


I woke up on a hospital bed, my left arm wrapped up in a bandage with dots of red like a polka dot dress. There was a dark red/crimson colour in a triangular pointing-down arrow of the cubital fossa on my arm where the needle had intravenous access and burst through the tissue, and had kept on bleeding down to my hand. It was very warm, I remember. I'd woken up very tired and cold, my lips felt swollen and raw; the abscess under my tooth had taken ground after the lack of blood, and I wondered how much infection I'd succumb to after this escapade. It was dark in the room only because there was a heavy sky about to rain (it was afternoon). Melissa was sitting on a chair. She had a slightly miserable face, which I'd done, this having me feel the muddy effects of guilt. I thought of apologising to her, but thought against it. I didn't say anything, though I did look at her for as long as she looked at me without talking, her eyes on mine very cold like icy water – I began to shiver, breathing heavily through my nose, hoping that this headache was only from the vacuous space left in the superficial vein that was now a long dead worm that stretched up to my armpit where it ached – the skin all bruisy and tender, skin paraffin-white, skin very porous, cold and dry. Melissa looked away, glancing out of the window, now becoming the only light available, shining on my sister's face, a poor pathetic thing less pathetic than me – I looked at her for minutes longer, knowing she knew I was looking at her, could not find words with which to express whatever it was I wanted to express to my little sister, who, by now, had crossed a leg and her arms, sighed once and clenched her jaw. I looked away.