Caitlin Bush - Earth Train Panama
Week 8

Hesitation 

I hesitate unconsciously, later to realize that I had become someone, that in the back of my mind had been there all along.  We arrive at the hospital at lets say 8:30-9:00 ish in the morning.  My mind drags behind my heavy feet, feeling like one of those bendable magnetic men, but instead of bending, about to break.  My body didn’t just ache, but swelled with pain, almost like infected pus was inside all of my bones, deeply irritating from the deepest and densest parts, to the fractions hinging on the outer edges of each bone.  This pain could have been infesting off of the idea that it could possibly be the deadly disease of Dengue, but at the moment, my mind was blank, and in too much pain to discuss what could had been a false actualization.  

            “Como se llama?” A woman with blue braces and drawn on eyebrows asks me.

            “C A I T L I N B U S H” I spell out the letters in Spanish, slowly.

            “Como?” She responds, unwilling to comprehend my slow spelling.

            “CAITLIN bush” This time I pronounce my name, loud and clear for Caitlin, and softly slur Bush, not because I was uncomfortable with my name, but merely ashamed of what it indirectly related to. The American president everyone in this country resented, I resented, and wanted nothing more than the American I already was, to show up as a relative, implementing a symbol of hate. I could just imagine them injecting me with poison, simply through fear, rooted from the possibility that I was in affiliation with that “terrorist”. 

            I had been barely breathing on my own. The air conditioning had been forcefully stuffing every hole on my face with a brisk breeze. I wanted out! I take a seat in a large sitting area and focus on fighting the air that consistently circulated through my nose, mouth, eyes and ears.  I attempted blowing out of my nose, closing my mouth and eyes, and I thought about covering my ears, but I was too weak to move anything as heavy as my huge arms.  In nearly a second, I gave up, and stared at the white wall.  Why was the wall so white? It was too white. I became uncomfortable and considered running away, I wasn’t entirely sure why, but attempted, and remembered I was too weak to even walk out those automatic sliding doors. 

            As they inject the needle into my arm, I remain for the pain to paralyze my current flashbacks, but to my inconvenience, this prick could not out due these images.   A man curled up in an old storage area used for fruit, or perhaps precisely large enough for simply, small cashews.  His eyes were shut, and from where I had been standing, I could see the hollowness of his sleeping eyes. Was he sleeping? Or was he dead? I will never know.  A flash back into the eyes of that boy with nothing other than an expression.  It was the expression of his fate, of his future.  I had secretly scanned his petite body, and tried to control my curiosity, but eyes kept going back to the sufficient amount of large bumps stuck on his tight skin.  And then I am thinking of my friend who instead of going to school, works to keep his family alive. Who sends every check from this program to his family, and while thinking this, I am torn between this needle and that rusty one right down the street. 

            In the background I listen to what seemed to be America, speaking aimlessly, through oblivion.  In reality, it wasn’t America, but it was those derived from the same power that has stole all of our sanity. These people, in this hospital, are at home, and I was not.  Not anymore.  Mentally, I had stolen that wheelchair and carried that man and that boy to where I was. Inside I had run away, and afterward, sleeping in that small area that carried that fruit, only to retrieve a split moment of privilege.