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IV
- Monthly Issue Contributor
- Jul 25
- 4 min read
Updated: Aug 31
By: Peter J. Stavros
JULY 2025 ISSUE
Short Fiction
Editor: Kylie Catena
You sit there and manage not to grimace as the nurse pierces your skin and slides the slender silver needle into your vein, purplish and puckered after she ties it off with a rubber cord. You watch as she gets it to wake, sleepy, like you, at this early hour.
“Just relax, dear,” she says in a singsong manner as if this is an everyday occurrence for you, but it’s easier said than done. How can you when you’re not sure what they’re dumping into your blood—only that it’s supposed to be a cure—and you believe it’s about damn time that you start to get well? All you can do is trust that everyone knows what the hell they’re doing.
You roll your eyes and nod your head in response. You say to yourself, Yeah sure, okay, fine, why didn’t I think of that?
She connects the IV and routinely taps a few buttons. What would be poison in any other circumstance begins to race inside the circuitous route of the tube dangling from a plastic bag suspended above your head by a shiny metal stand, and then into you. It feels unnervingly cold as you trace its path up your arm before vanishing deeper.
You try to relax, and you have been trying to relax ever since the doctor informed you, hunting and pecking on his laptop, that you needed this treatment. There you were, all alone in that stark white examining room, the odor of antiseptic in the air, sitting on a sheet of paper on the examining table.
“There really is no other viable option,” he told you, still focused on his laptop. You were tempted to take the keyboard from him and type in his notes as he dictated them to you, if it meant it would move the appointment along faster.
“Sure, I know,” you replied, even though you knew nothing.
Now, you sigh and slip on your headphones and hit shuffle on the Spotify app. You let chance, or the mystical satellite radio algorithm, decide what you’re in the mood to listen to. Leaning back in the rigid olive green vinyl-covered chair with the worn footrest, you close your eyes. Your mind wanders, and you think about everything and nothing at the same time. You can’t help but wonder how you’re going to die. It could be from this disease, or it could be due to something different, something completely random and unexpected. It’s going to happen regardless. It is the one certainty because you’re no longer young and indestructible. It causes you to consider if you’ve done enough with your life, and you’re convinced you haven’t. Not this time, you swear, this time it will be different, this time you will be different, as you drift off to sleep.
You have that dream again, that dream you have during periods of distress. You’re trapped inside a haunted house, and you’re being attacked by the ghosts that have overtaken the place. You never really see them, these shapeless, shifting spirits. You can only sense their presence, and you’re quite aware they mean you harm. So, you fight them off, a battle royale, with everything you have—every bit of energy and effort, an exertion, even in your dream, like nothing you’ve ever experienced.
You fight, and you fight, and you fight. And you’re tired, and you’re beat, and you’re scared as shit of these ghosts, a near paralyzing terror. Yet, you keep fighting. Something pushes you to persist, to keep going no matter what. There’s no alternative. You swing your arms wildly, and you kick your legs. You yell, and you scream, and you curse. You struggle to exorcise these ghosts from this house, whatever house this might be, before you awaken with a startle and a gasp.
You’re back in that stark white hospital room, that suffocating smell of antiseptic. The nurse returns with a subtle smile that you can’t tell if it’s meant for you or if she is thinking about something else, something pleasant.
“How was your nap, sleepyhead?” she asks as she slides the slender silver needle from your vein with a splattering of crimson drops as the spiky tip emerges. She presses a cotton ball at the point of insertion.
“Fine,” you respond, even though it wasn’t—even though you weren’t aware that you were napping. You just considered it another extension of this ordeal.
“Hold it in place, dear.” She tapes it down. “All set,” she says nonchalantly as if she’s making small talk about the weather or the price of eggs.
It instantly strikes you that this phrase has never been more inaccurately applied than as applied to you at this moment. You’re anything but “all set” with a bagful of poison lurking beneath your surface.
The nurse hands you an appointment card for the next dose, as if you could forget these sessions.
“Feel better,” the nurse says with a smile as if that’s in your control.
She eases you from that awful chair that left you with a crick in your neck and an ache in your back and leads you across the scuffed linoleum floor into the hectic hallway. You pause to acclimate to an upright position, lightheaded and stumbling to regain your balance. Once you’re able, you walk down the hall past the other rooms of everyone else in their attempts to get well too, resisting the urge to peek in on any of them.
You exit out of the building and into the harsh, unforgiving sunlight of just another day as far as the rest of the world is concerned.
Peter J. Stavros
Peter J. Stavros is a writer and playwright in Louisville, Kentucky, and the author of the debut novel, The Thing About My Uncle (BHC Press). His work has appeared in literary journals, anthologies, newspapers and magazines.
For more information:
House of Grief