What started as a relatively quiet week ended up with plenty of excitement. I just had a novella published through MLR Press, What Once Was Lost. About a year and a half ago, when my first novel came out, I wrote several short stories which I put up on my blog as part of launch week. WWOL is a stand-alone, but it’s actually a sequel to one of the shorts.
Meanwhile, my May release, An Act of Devotion, which you may remember from past WIPpets, is now available for pre-order.
On to this week’s WIPpet. As you might recall, last time we saw Cat, he was having a reaction of sorts to sex. This week, he’s dealing with it. (When Cat refers to school here, he means the community college where he and his boyfriend are taking classes. Cat’s father is a professor there.) For the very curious, Cat has hemophilia A (clotting factor VIII deficiency), severe form, which is the most common type. Sex is not a “dangerous” activity, but there are precautions people can take because breakage of small blood vessels is possible, as are other injuries. Most people nowadays use recombinant (basically genetically engineered) factor to infuse, but some, like Cat, have immune reactions to it and rely on donated plasma.
WIPmath: 3/16/16 = 16 – (1 + 6) = 9 paragraphs or 16 + (1 + 6) = 23 sentences.
Cat got up and began dragging his clothes back on.
“I gotta get home,” he said. “I need my meds.” He stumbled as he yanked up his jeans.
Bryce slid to the edge of the bed and swung his feet over. “Didn’t you bring them?”
“No,” Cat said quietly before pulling his shirt over his head. “We were at school. Dad has shit for me in his office.”
“But you brought your stuff to go to Zee’s.” Bryce’s expression reflected his bewilderment.
Cat turned around and stood by the door. He couldn’t explain to Bryce that it was just one night at Zee’s, and he’d wanted to pretend for a few hours he could leave the house and be normal for a change. It didn’t matter that his parents were a phone call away if anything happened or that he wasn’t likely to sustain life-threatening injuries from take-out Chinese food, birthday cake, and a few games of stripes and solids in Zee’s basement.
“I forgot,” he lied. “I have to go. My parents—”
“Are they home?” Bryce began putting himself back together.
“No, but they will be soon, and I don’t want them asking me why I need an infusion. Shit!”
Like what you read? Be sure to check out the other entries and add your own. Just post a bit of your WIP, connect it to the date, and link up with us. Many thanks to Emily Witt for giving us this space. Happy reading and writing!
Oh, Cat.
Also, may have done a happy dace when I saw An Act of Devotion. Can’t wait to read it.
Yes, Cat is his own special variety of stubborn.
And yay! I hope you enjoy Act of Devotion. 🙂
Oh, yikes. Poor Cat. I first learned what hemophilia is when I was very young (single-digits) and despite knowing that this is not how it works, I have been mildly terrified of somehow mysteriously developing it myself ever since.
My husband’s brother (who died about 8 years ago) had hemophilia. There’s a lot of misconceptions, not just about where it comes from and what it means to have it. For most people, even with the severe type, it’s not necessarily all that scary, at least not anymore. The recombinant factor is even more effective than donated plasma, and there are new meds which boost the effect. Plus, even for people who need donated plasma, the blood pool is tested and heat-treated, so it’s entirely safe. What’s incredibly sad is that we lost multiple generations of people in the ’80s and ’90s. My BIL was one of a handful of survivors left (like, fewer than 10 in the entire US) at the time he died.
I feel sorry for Cat. He has a disease that I know very little about but I can understand his wish to be like everybody else. I enjoyed reading this because I learned something about people with hemophilia.
Thanks.
Shalom,
Patricia
Thanks! I’m glad you enjoyed the snippet. 🙂
I’ve been fascinated by hemophilia since I was single-digits, too. I love the way you wove personal experience and knowledge into this narrative, and used it to really get into Cat’s head. While I don’t think he’s ever going to be normal, because, well – he’s CAT! – I do totally understand not wanting to have to explain that he needed an infusion because of a sex-induced vessel burst. I mean, by the time a guy’s college age, he ought to be able to keep his sex life to himself.
Bryce seems to have picked an odd time to try to work out the particulars of when and why Cat carries his meds. Makes me wonder if there’s some undercurrent of avoidance/mistrust between these two.
Beautifully written, as always. And now, if you’ll excuse me, Ineed to go preorder another dose of Cat. =)
Oh, dang! Not that I don’t like Adam and AJ…I just like Cat more!
LOL! Yeah, Cat is in edits. AJ and Adam are ready to go. 🙂
Yes, you picked up on two things—first, Cat’s parents never talked with him at all about sex, outside of his coming out to them. A lot of people with disabilities are desexualized by those around them. Second, yes, the relationship with Bryce has a sheen of innocence and sweetness, but Bryce is ill-equipped to be serious with someone like Cat. Meanwhile Cat isn’t prepared to fully give his heart to anyone. Their relationship isn’t entirely healthy.
Oh, man. I don’t blame him for not wanting to explain things to his folks, but the least he could do is try to explain it to Bryce. But then there would be no conflict and no story. I look forward to seeing what happens next week. Also, you can add me to the ‘I didn’t know that about hemophilia’ group.
Heh, yeah, I didn’t want to explain lots of things to my parents at that age. LOL! His lack of explaining to Bryce is definitely going to be a problem.
True hemophilia affects about 5,000 people world-wide, so it’s not surprising most people haven’t heard much about it. (There are other blood disorders which are similar, some of which are much more common.)
These enterprise ckntinuity plans should have completely different
approaches and be completely unique of each other
in order that they cope with potential as well as unforeseeable and extraordinary emergencies
strategically.