Mother tells me I can’t possibly fall in love with a red blood cell. We are the suicide bombers of our civilisation; we are summoned at the eleventh hour. Yesterday, when the host had developed a puncture on the skin around the ankle, the older ones were summoned with immediate effect. I have witnessed my siblings emerging out of the bone marrows at night; pulling the drapes of red tissues apart, they all rafted through the treacherous bends of arteries to reach the site of destruction. Once there, the fattest ones laid the foundation by resting their backs against the rupture. Exposure to air outside imploded their curved backs and stitched them flat together to make a wall; the younger ones stepped over the shoulders of the dead corpses that were now stitched together; and so on, the wall was built of corpses. We, platelets have been living a life of inevitable death; like the scales of fish we align ourselves together to die; walls are stitched out of our corpses.
On the day I was born, a red cheeked blood cell was born in the adjoining tissue. My infatuation to the RBC grew leaps and bounds in the days that followed. Every day, she rose up at dawn, bathed herself naked in the pool of the red tissue of our bone marrow; brushed her cheeks with red rouge, doused her hair wet in red plasma, and stepped out of the tissue with a tumbler full of oxygen on her shoulder. A titillating spark of electric current flew through my nucleus-less pit as she walked past me; her mincing steps I arrested in my eyes, and relished in fantastical pursuits through the night. RBCs are the cleaner lot; they squeeze themselves through the capillaries and empty their tumblers of oxygen on the way.
Our host’s lungs, a sacred place, are home to priestly, saintly and pristine RBCs; ones that are recruited to work at the temple of lungs owe their virginity to the cause and never return. This young and nubile beauty, my darling RBC was summoned yesterday by the pantheon; she was offered a chalice. It is of common knowledge that a refusal at the temple of lungs was not taken easily in the past; my darling accepted. Through the humble siblings, I have learnt that she now looks into the proceedings of rationing oxygen to the common RBCs. Seated behind the altar, she pours out oxygen from her chalice with an accurate measuring; I am told, she is often seen agitatedly scribbling with the golden quilt on the leafs before her. I sent her notes of love for the past couple of days; I even indicated to my imminent death; on an average, platelets live for about a week. Our time was short and legal coitus seemed impossible.
Then it happened, I ran into a young white blood cell who was chasing down a malarial virus in the neighbourhood. I approached him with my case; he patiently nodded throughout and in the end, acceded to aid me in my quest for love. The idea was simple; our host was a chain smoker; the temple of lungs was metamorphosing into a breeding ground of cancer cells; RBCs – virginal or otherwise – stay away from cancer cells. The youthful WBC was to approach the RBC deserted area of the temple; in the pretence of studying the effects of cancer. From there he was to gain access and present himself before my darling RBC. In his analysis, he must present, among other things, a very unconventional method of fighting the cancer
“The cells can be resuscitated with the oxygen offered in chalice by a rare child” the youth proposed.
“What on earth do you mean; you WBCs have never been straight with us” my darling hung her coat to the muscle tendril and was about to retreat into her parlour.
“Wait mam! Communion between a platelet and a virginal RBC, my analysis suggests will result in a rare child” clutching a thick folder under his arm, the youth spoke with great trepidation “if you don’t perform coitus with the platelet, our host will die very soon. Progeny will have lived an aimless life”
My darling declined the offer. It was unwise to pursue the course of an untested and unconventional remedy. However, the next morning our host spoke and a crackled voice emanated. The sirens imploded our ears; we stood in attention, some in bare feet and still some in drooping eyes. The crack of dawn was to be our last one; I was well into my sixth day of life; an artery was burst open and the host coughed out blood. In his spit, lives were lost; I only hoped that my darling was still alive.
At the site, the construction of wall was underway; river of blood flew out carrying in its deluge, many RBCs and WBCs. i was standing in the line way far away from the front; judging by the length of it, I calculated that I might not get my turn at all. But halfway through the construction, a loud cough washed up the wall and resulted in a torrent of precious lives. Some predicted that the host was dying in a day or two, cancer had spread all over the temple; it was only a matter of time, how did it matter at all if the bridge was constructed.
“Let us all die volitionally. Now!” sang platelets in chorus; soon the rows to my right had caught up in the conflagration of the vociferous demand to die. Although our pits lacked a nucleus with DNA, we somehow felt that we were still programmed to die - it was in our inherent nature to die, be it for the wall or otherwise. However, the devilish beauty of my darling RBC had stirred up a desire to live in me. It was antithetical to a platelet’s philosophy to live. Did I disown my brothers in their tryst? Was my love transforming me into an escapist? The sound of chorus was deafening; by now every platelet had joined the chorus.
Meanwhile, the bloodshed continued; thousands of RBCs and WBCs were dying around the open artery. They begged for us to restore peace and harmony; unmoved by the cries, all the platelets sang in unison. Futile attempts were made by some of the WBCs to build a wall themselves, poor things! Their backs were hard and not flexible for a stitch as ours were. A sullen youth WBC approached me; it did not occur to me that it was the youth I befriended in tryst with my darling. He was pale and his shoulders hunched; he had lost all his teeth in a vain attempt to eat away the cancer cells.
“Your darling sends a message. She wishes to see you” I never saw the youth later.
She had grown old too; her skin had lost the red glow that I had arrested in my memory three days prior to now. The stream of blood under our feet had lost depth; it was shallow now. The shorelines receded and the stream escaped in a gushing outpour. The host had succumbed to the bouts of incessant coughing; with all the RBCs washed out, lack of oxygen to the cells had asphyxiated him. The devilish cancer left no room in the temple for the virginal RBCs; where we stood now in a long timeless embrace; cancer had already cracked its knuckles. Walls around us were ashen, cold; leftover blood beneath our feet settled in pools; pounding cough had ceased, the host was dead.
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