Free Breathless by Anne Swärd

hours is deemed to be a medical emergency.”
    Lukas was no longer complaining; he nodded at me to read on.
    â€œFour hours, it says. How long did you say it’s been like this?”
    â€œDays, on and off.”
    â€œ
Days?
”
    â€œYes, for a while it seemed to be getting better, but then it got worse again.”
    â€œBut listen: the condition requires immediate medical attention, to prevent scar formation that could result in permanent inability to maintain an erection.” I looked at him as he stood in front of me, legs wide apart, with the face of a maniac.
    â€œImmediate medical attention, it says here. Doesn’t that mean . . . today?” I traced down the page with my finger, searching for the answer:
    â€œTreatment involves draining the blood by inserting a needle into the penis.”
    â€œAagh!” Lukas looked as though he were trying to cast off something that had scalded him, but his hands were empty and it was a pitiful, disembodied gesture.
    â€œThe area is numbed with local anesthetic and the blood is drawn off from—”
    â€œNo thanks!”
    â€œâ€”from the erectile tissue until the swelling goes down.”
    â€œCan you stop!”
    â€œWait. There’s an alternative: ice can be put on the perineum to reduce the swelling. Perineum? What’s that? Well, you can put ice on it anyway. Climbing stairs is sometimes effective, as the exercise can send the blood flow to other parts of the body.”
    â€œShut up now.” He groaned and sank to the floor, but I kept on reading:
    â€œIn serious cases prolonged accumulation of the blood can lead to necrosis, spontaneous tissue death, gangrene. Fully developed gangrene cannot be cured. In cases of dry gangrene the affected tissue falls off of its own accord. In cases of wet gangrene the affected area must be amputated, i.e., a surgical removal of the penis, known as penectomy.”
    Lukas’s face turned pale green, and with his hands at his crotch he stood up and backed out of the room, moaning.
    Stairs and ice—he had no choice.

    Lukas was not welcome in our home, preferably not to be seen at all in my vicinity. But there were no stairs at his house and no freezer with ice either, so we had to get into my house unseen. While I made sure it was safe, he started to race up and down the steep stairs between the cellar and the floor above.
    â€œThis feels like”—he looked as though he would be prepared to have it amputated after all—“a sadistic joke,” I caught him saying on the way down.
    â€œBut is it working?” I asked impatiently.
    No one trusted him before, and now he was running up and down our stairs half naked and could be discovered at any moment. Still, it was this or a needle in his penis—that was the choice. I saw his lean suntanned back disappear up the stairs. A back I knew so well, and yet it often seemed so unfamiliar, as changeable as his face. When his height increased, out of control, last spring, his body had not managed to adjust its proportions. He was in disharmony with everything, as if there were no longer enough room in his body, as if he had stretched out rather than grown. Become a tall thin shadow of himself, almost worse than Papa the summer before he left.
    â€”
    â€œHow does it feel?”
    â€œSore.”
    â€œBut has it gotten softer?” I asked next time he passed me as I stood on guard on the landing. He thrust his hand down to see.
    â€œHas it hell.”
    Ice was now his only hope. If the stairs were hard work, the ice was humiliating. Lukas was doubtful, but in the absence of ice cubes I had already fetched two bags of frozen mushrooms and stood in the food cellar with them dangling from my hands. He took off his trousers, but I told him to put them on again, that it would be cold enough without putting them directly on his skin. It would be no consolation if he brought it down and it suffered