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slept nude.
    "Annie.  I'm bleeding."
    She had always departed sleep like a drunk with one last shot left inside the bottle.
    " Whaaaa ?"
    "Bleeding.   Help ."  It was hard to talk with the stuff gliding down his throat and the towel pressed over his face.  She rolled over squinting at him, the sheet pulled up to cover her breasts.
    "What'd you do to yourself?"
    "Nosebleed.  Bad."  He spoke softly.  He didn't want to wake her son David in the next room.  There was no point in disturbing the sleep of a fourteen-year-old.
    She sat up.  "Pinch it."
    "I'm pinching it.  Won't stop."
    He turned and went back to the bathroom so she could get out of bed and put on a robe.  He was not allowed to see her naked anymore.  He leaned over the sink and took away the towel and watched it slide out of him bright red against the porcelain and swirl down the drain.
    "Ice," she said behind him and then saw the extent of what was happening to him and said jesus while he pinched his nose and tilted back his head and swallowed and then she said ice again.  "I'll get some."
    He tried blowing out into his closed nostrils the way you did to pop the pressure in your ears in a descending plane and all he succeeded in doing was to fog up his glasses.  Huh?  He took them off and looked at them.  The lenses were clear.  He looked in the mirror.  There were beads of red at each of his tear-ducts.
    He was bleeding from the eyes.
    It was the eyes that were fogged, not his goddamn glasses.  She came back with ice wrapped in a dishtowel.
    "I'm bleeding from the eyes," he told her.  "If it's the ebola virus, just shoot me."
    "Eyes and nose are connected."  She hadn't grown up a nurse's daughter for nothing.  "Here."
    He took the icepack and arranged it over his nose, tucked the corners of the dishtowel beneath.  Within moments the towel was red.  The ice felt good but it wasn't helping either.
    "Here."
    She'd taken some tissues and wrapped them thick around a pair of Q-tips.
    "Put these up inside.  Then pinch again."
    He did as he was told.  He liked the way she was rushing to his aid.  It was the closest he'd felt to her for quite some time.  He managed a goofy smile into her wide dark eyes and worried face.  Ain't this something?   He pinched his nose till it hurt.
    The makeshift packs soaked through.  He was dripping all over his tee-shirt.  She handed him some tissues.
    "Jesus, Alan.  Should I call 911?"
    He nodded.  "You better."
    *****
    The ambulance attendants were both half his age, somewhere in their twenties and the one with the short curly hair suggested placing a penny in the center of his mouth between his teeth and upper lip and then pressing down hard on the lip, a remedy that apparently had worked for his grandmother but which did not do a thing for him and left him with the taste of filthy copper in his mouth, a darker version of the taste of blood.  Annie asked if she should go with him and he said no, stay with David, get some sleep, I'll call if I need you.  She had to write down their number because at the moment he couldn't for the life of him remember.
    Inside the ambulance he began to bleed heavily and the attendant sitting inside across from him couldn't seem to find any tissues nor anything for him to bleed into. Eventually he came up with a long plastic bag that looked like a heavier-grade of Zip-loc which he had to hold open with one hand while dealing with his leaking nose with the other.  A small box of tissues was located and placed in his lap.  When one wad of tissues filled with blood he would hurriedly shove it into the bag and pull more from the box, his nose held low into the bag to prevent him from bleeding all over his khaki shorts.  The attendant did nothing further to help him after finding him the bag and tissues.  This was not the way it happened on ER or Chicago Hope.
    The emergency room was reassuringly clean and, at five in the morning, nearly deserted but for him and a skeleton