Forsythe.
In the few minutes before I’d first met my new girlfriend I’d cut myself in the hand, really quite badly. I’d slipped in my narrow kitchen with a sharp knife that I’d be warned about before, and really I should have been more careful.
It didn’t bleed at first, my hand; instead it just kind of looked up at me. Gaping and alien, I wondered if that’s what everyone looked like inside.
So anyway, there I was, stood there and staring deeply into my own body, and it wasn’t until I looked down on my wipe clean tiled floor and saw a sort of quivering mass of jellied up blood that I realised something would have to be done. My cat, which I kept for the company, had sauntered along in the way that she does, probably to see what all the fuss was about.
“Hello,” I said. “I’ve cut myself. See?”
I showed my cat my hand. She looked up at me all ambivalently before she started to lap at my blood, and then I didn’t know which was worse. My wounded hand, through which I think I could see my bone, as white as you’d really only ever imagine, or my cat consuming me.
Eating up a part of me with a nonchalant purr, it reminded me to be thankful that she wasn’t bigger and less domesticated.
I picked up a towel to slow down the pumping flow and kicked my cat until she stopped eating that small piece of me. We both went outside and headed our separate ways.
“Bye-bye,” I said to my cat.
I really should have given her a name.

Luckily for me, when I’d first been released they’d put me in a flat near the local hospital. They never said anything at the time but I think that they’d looked at my history and probably done it on purpose. I was there in minutes, showing my wound to the receptionist.
“There’s no need for that, sir,” she said. “You’re a red; someone will be with you shortly. Sit over there.”
She was pointing with her hand and so I followed it to a seat where it wasn’t long before I was called through to somewhere else. I got to see a serious looking doctor who had hidden his face behind a large, brown, beard.
The doctor’s badge announced to me that his name was Forsythe. He poked around in my hand with some instruments that I hoped were clean, and then he told me that I would need some stitches. He pointed me off to another area, where I sat on a bed with my legs dangling over the edge. A blue plastic-looking curtain would hide me from the rest of the accidents and I was told that I was waiting for a nurse to come and see to me.

My new girlfriend stitched me up neatly and professionally, and I doubt I‘ll even be left with a scar. She is a nurse and, at the time, was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Even her long, ill-fitting, uniform couldn’t hide her tight, toned stomach and pretty, heart-shaped face.
I really tried to control myself but each time her rubber-encased hand brushed against my own bare and blood covered skin, the speed of my heart beat increased. It seemed to make her job a lot more difficult but as I said, she was very professional. As she told me about my aftercare options I listened intently, then I asked her out. She seemed to think about things for a while and made a sort of crooked shape with her mouth and face. Even this I now think makes her look beautiful, though I doubt you’d really ever agree with me.
“Sure,” she said. “You look alright.”

The thing is, she’s right in saying that. I am only ‘alright’, and this worries me. You see, why would she waste her valuable time on me? She could do a lot better and I don’t think I’m ever going to tire of telling her so. Every morning I look into her sleep ridden eyes and tell her she’s probably wasting her time with such an average looking person.
“You could do so much better than me,” I tell her. “Look at my face. You’re so much prettier than me. You’ll leave me, I know it. I know you will.”
To be honest she never actually disagrees with me when I say such things. She just nods her pretty face, or strokes one of her long, thin breasts and looks intently at me. Her skirts, away from work, are very, very, short and I know that if I take just one look at her in one of those I won’t really care what she does in the future.
“You know,” she’ll say, before taking one those deliciously long drags on one of her menthol cigarettes.
“I don’t ever doubt it.”