Best of Miami Portfolios 2001 - Units.muohio.edu

Help comes in the form of a bulky science teacher who begins to pump Al’s chest. It is a
curious thing, but our science department is rather bulky, they having been recruited to coach one
sport or another. Even more deplorable than this practice is the fact that I actually think this while
Al’s blood is coming out of his mouth in spurts, rhythmically correlating to the pumping of his
chest. He spits blood in my eye. It stings slightly. I have to blink.
The seizure subsides, and all is still. Slowly I slide my blood slickened hands out from
between the cold floor and Al’s fevered head. His eyes pop open for an instant, wild-eyed and
panicky, like an animal’s until they rest on me, the lone familiar face in the crowd. And out of my
mouth come the words, “It’s okay Al, you just get to lie down for a while, you get to rest here,”
stated in that patronizingly mothering tone. Finally I tear my gaze from Al’s prone figure to see—
no one. The sterile walls of the cafeteria stare back at me.
Feeling, not heroic, but disgusting, my first thought is to cleanse myself. Running to the
bathroom, the antiseptic soap and hygienic water distill my memory. Normally I faint at the sight
of blood, funny, but that had occurred to me too during Al’s seizure. I continue on to Chemistry
class.
Sitting there taking down electron arrangements, it perversely occurs to me that I could use
this episode as a topic for my personal essay, after all, aren’t personal traumas the common fodder
for moving essays? A friend slaps me on the back, congratulating me on my “heroism.” Inwardly,
a coward contemplates the bulky science teacher.
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