Published:
January 14, 2025
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The pain is lava in my veins, a giant fist squeezing my entire body, a thousand knives stabbing my skin. It is constant and unrelenting, a vocal reminder of the evolutionary purpose of nerve endings. It fills my mind with a thick, crimson-red haze that makes it difficult to think clearly.
And yet, I don’t want it to go away, because as long as I feel the immense agony, they don’t have to. I don’t notice the nurse entering the room until she is standing right in front of me.
“Mr. Kvit?” she addresses me quietly.
I look up to meet her eyes. A sharp pang shoots up the back of my stiff neck, a somewhat refreshing change to the monochrome sensation.
“You need to take a break.”
I shake my head, or at least attempt to.
“I'm fine,” I mutter, my parched throat reminding me it’s been a while since I had anything to drink. I reach for the styrofoam cup on the table next to my chair and swallow its contents — the rest of the awful vending machine coffee long gone cold — in one go. The bitterness appears to dilute the pain just for a second, though it might be that I am simply imagining it.
“You’ve been here for almost four hours,” the nurse continues, undeterred. “You know the rules — you must take at least thirty minutes every two hours.”
She pauses.
“If you don’t go soon, they will make you leave the room.”
If I could laugh, I would. The best I manage is a half-incredulous, half-amused smirk that tugs at my facial muscles way more than it ought to. I nod at the door and the quiet corridor behind it.
“Where is my replacement?”
The somber expression that washes over her features tells me everything I need to know even before she answers: “There is no one available right now. I am... we are hoping that we will get some more volunteers in the morning. It’s the private clinics — most relievers prefer to go there.”
I am sure it’s supposed to sound neutral, matter-of-fact, but some judgment or perhaps exasperation seeps through. A part of me — the impulsive, emotional part that's currently riding searing-hot waves of agony — shares the sentiment, embraces it, and amplifies it to the point of rage, but on an intellectual level, I have nothing but understanding. Why would you suffer for free if you can get compensated? And what if you depend on that money?
It’s far too easy to disregard the circumstances and jump to conclusions, especially when they align with your worldview better than the alternative.
I nod again and look at the bed closest to me, at the tiny body resting on it. Alenka is almost two and her entire life has been a never-ending cycle of tests, experimental treatments, and surgeries, of hopeful expectations and crushed dreams. And pain.
At the moment, however, she and the three other residents of the small room — each afflicted with the same merciless illness that despite steady advancements, modern medicine still cannot defeat — experience none of it. Their peaceful faces, relaxed limbs, and steady breaths prevent me from even contemplating following the nurse’s order.
Well, that and the memory of Julie, my Julie, who was the same age as Alenka when...
“Look at them,” I tell the nurse, trying to blink away the soul-breaking image of my daughter in a similar white bed, surrounded by a similar assortment of quietly beeping machinery. “When was the last time they slept through the night? When they didn’t wake up crying?”
“I understand,” she says, and I can tell she truly believes she does. Yet she is also a professional, bound by the Hippocratic Oath, hospital regulations, and the employee hierarchy.
“No, you don’t understand,” I grit through my teeth.
Her features harden.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Kvit, but you need to go. For your own good. Get something to eat, take a walk. Then you can come right back here,” she says, then adds amicably: “I promise.”
“I can’t just leave her!”
Alenka stirs at the sound of my raised voice. Her eyelids flutter, and for a long second, I am certain that I have awoken her. Her eyes remain shut; however, as she turns to the other side, continuing her slumber, the past collides with the present, and I am looking at Julie’s tiny back, thin shoulders, and the back of her head completely devoid of hair. I don’t want anything more than for her to roll back to me and grin as she always did when she saw me, delight playing in her eyes despite the pain and disease ravaging her brittle body, but I know I will never get that and all I will forever be left with is her fading image and the bitter regret that I wasn’t there with her at the end.
“Please, just a little bit longer. Please!”
It must be the sudden change in my intonation, sheer desperation laid bare, that finally gets through. Her shoulders slumping, the nurse lets out a long sigh.
“Thirty minutes,” she says and raises her finger. “But after that, you will take that break.”
The relief is a footnote at the bottom of the continuous agony, an echo of a feeling long lost. I pay hardly any attention to it, intent on savoring every extra minute granted by the nurse. After she retreats into the corridor, I readjust the metallic collar on my left arm — the business end of the machine connecting my nervous system to those of the children — and lean toward Alenka.
“Don’t worry, little one,” I whisper. “I am right here.”
A faint, reassuring smile forms on my lips then, more of an instinct than a conscious effort, and for the briefest of moments, somewhere in the red haze of my mind, Julie smiles too.

Copyright 2024 - SFS Publishing LLC
Pain Vampires
Why would you suffer for free?
Martin Lochman

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