Blood Pump

A Story from Inside Richard Bean

I worked the drill bit through hardened plaque, finessing it until a chunk of yellow crud busted off. The arterial walls were lined with this shit.

"How's it coming along fellas?"

Nobody answered, only offering their tired expressions. We had been at it for weeks chipping away at this gunk to create extra blood flow to the right circumflex. Life in the cardiovascular section was hard, but the pay was good, and the ladies dug the muscles. Blood plumbers are what they called us. Our job was to keep Richard Bean's pumper thumping along, but he did us no favors, smoking a pack a day and inhaling fast food like he needed it to breathe. Some of us called him Dick Bean for short, adding a little humor to the gig.

"Manny! Where you been man?"

I turned and saw old Archie Mason, wearing his blue coveralls and his trademark Got Blood ball cap.

"I got caught up in the right circumflex for about a week. Someone needs to tell Dick Bean to take it easy on the Mickey D's or he's going to blow the whole joint."

Archie sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger.

"You know those pretentious divas up in neuro ain't going to listen to us, Manny. They got theories about messing with Bean’s routines. Count your blessings."

He was right. We were on the way out. The engineers figured we had about another year or two before Bean suffered the big one. It was anyone's guess. In the meantime, it was business as usual, clocking in and clearing the plaque as best we could. One of the newbies had found a weak point down in the aorta which added to the list of problems we were already monitoring.

"You ever think about just fucking off? Just saying screw the valves and taking a little vacay down to Gastro to ride the colon? I might even forget to hop off before the shuttle squeezes out the sphincter. Adios compadres."

"Come on, Manny. You know we can't. We gotta work the pipes."

"Sangre por la vida."

I grabbed my hard hat off the ground and slapped it on my head. Archie was right but that doesn't mean I couldn't enjoy a little healthy bitching. The job sheets detailing everyone's assigned positions were attached to the clipboards in the right atrium. As luck would have it, I was tasked with the one thing I absolutely didn't want to do. Aortic Watch. That job meant you were going to be running valves all day, and my old joints had put in their time.

"What the fuck Archie, the aorta?"

"I know, Manny, I know. Look I need you down there. You're my senior guy and you'll be with the kid, Wilson or whatever his name is. He's green but he's a damn hard worker."

I rolled my eyes, promising myself that when all this nonsense was over, I was going to take time off. Archie was right, Wilson was a hard worker. He showed a lot of promise and reminded me of myself in my younger years. At least I wasn't stuck with one of those tenured vets who were only good for five minutes of work before taking a snooze in the port-o-john. The kid was waiting on me, staring with those big stupid eyes of his.

"Aye, kid."

"Hey, Manny. I got the valves set. Mean arterial pressure is sitting at one-hundred-forty-three. Been like that all week."

That was a terrible number. The vessels inside Dick's ticker weren't meant to sustain pressures greater than one hundred to one-hundred-thirty millimeters of mercury. I walked back over to the aorta to put eyes on the aneurysm. It was bigger than I expected, ballooning like a giant pimple. It knocked the air out of me, and I had to grab onto the railing to keep from toppling over.

"We need to get some pressure off that thing. You know how to drop the load?"

He looked at me, a slight amount of confusion on his face and maybe some embarrassment.

"Nah, Manny they only showed me how to set the rig."

"Alright," I said, letting out a sigh. "You see those platforms? You got one through four. One is up top and four is on the bottom. Drop the pressure on one and then work your way down. Got it?"

He nodded and gave me a thumbs up, but I could see the nerves were getting the best of him. He looked pale and his hands kept fiddling with the buttons on his uniform.

"You got this. How's that wife of yours? She popping soon?"

"Yeah, she's in the last trimester. Little man should be here any day, Manny."

"Congrats. Being a dad is the best job in the world. Don't screw it up."

"I won't," The kid said, smiling and relaxing his shoulders.

"I'll be right back, I need to make a phone call to those yuppies upstairs. Don't go dying on me."

He grabbed his lucky wrench and walked off to the platforms.

The phone call went just as expected. Too much pressure on the brain risked shutting down the whole system, so they suggested diverting the excess to the kidneys. They gave me the same run around downstairs, saying they were already having problems with too much protein in the urine.

"You're a mess, Dick," I muttered.

A blaring siren startled me. The retinal monitors displayed and gave me a front-row seat to the world through Dick's eyes. He fingered a small blue pill in the shape of a football and chucked it into his mouth. The valves hissed, showing one-hundred-eighty millimeters of mercury on the indicator. I watched the weak point in the artery swell to four times its original size. It was a viagra. The stupid prick had swallowed a goddamn boner pill and set everything into a frenzy.

Another plumber ran by, heading toward the left ventricle. I looked out and saw the kid climbing the rungs from the fourth platform. He was never going to make it. My legs screamed as I broke out into a full-on sprint, tearing up the stairs. I made it to platform one and threw the emergency line down, telling him to tie himself off. The pressure was so immense, I couldn't hear a thing.

He screamed and I saw him mouth my name, Manny. His eyes went wide, and a look of pleading painted his features. It broke me. The aneurysm ruptured, blowing him clean off the ladder. Blood poured out by the gallon, drowning everything below. That was the last time I saw him. My mind went blank, and I felt like I was outside myself, watching the events unfold in slow motion.

Things went dark for a while, but it turns out Richard Bean was one of the luckiest men on earth. He’d scheduled a date with a local escort who found him lying on the floor a few moments after the rupture. She called the paramedics, and they stabilized old Dick, pumping him full of drugs. It was a full shut down. Operations were stopped and the white shirts from the External Pharmacy Division halted all activities until his blood pressure was back to normal.

The desk jockeys from pharmaceuticals showed up later, wearing their fancy suits and scraping their pens across their pristine clipboards. They passed their judgments on us common folk, berating the bastards up in neuro for not exerting their influence over Dick's daily habits. Neuro put it on the rest of us. As they say, shit rolls downhill. Even though none of us had force-fed Richard the pill that did him in, we were still guilty by association.

Dick underwent surgery a few weeks later. They reinforced his aorta with a titanium sleeve, and he was given a laundry list of new medications. New buildings popped up in the industrial sector, with the names Metoprolol and Lisinopril. The buildings were shaped like giant steeples adding to the irony. I hated having those pretentious asshats from the pharmacy ward around, but it beat having to deal with another rupture. After a hard-fought battle to recovery, the lives of those living inside Mr. Bean went back to normal. The names of those lost in the vascular explosion were carved into the sleeve, acting as a memorial. I ran my fingers over their names, settling on the one that read Wilson Campbell.

"Sorry, Kid. You deserved better."

I left the memorial and headed up to the atrium to get the day's assignment.

"Hey, Manny. You mind coming into my office?"

Archie sat waiting behind his desk, sweat staining the collar of his shirt. He was nervous.

"Look, brother, I-"

"I ain't your brother, Archie."

"You're right. I am your friend though, Manny. Take a few days off, go ride the colon down in Gastro or something. It's too soon."

"So that's it huh? Aorta blows and Wilson dies and the best you can come up with is go ride the turd express. Fuck you, Archie."

I slammed my hard hat down on the desk and walked out the door. Guilt welled up inside me. I know Archie didn't deserve the tongue-lashing. The man was just trying to do his job. Coals rose in my throat, and I tried to force back the tears, but it was no use. For the first time in a long while, I cried.

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Author’s Note: This story was written for the

SUM FLUX

open call. The prompt is plumbers and I wanted to take that prompt in a unique direction. Inner Space (1987) was a major influence along with Armageddon (1998). Thank you

Sandolore Sykes

and the rest of the SUM FLUX peeps for the opportunity and the inspiration to put together this story. It was a blast. Happy reading!