I don't like how the red one tastes" is about my memory of blood transfusions in the hospital. The one clear thought back then was how, whenever the blood bag was connected and flowing into my mediport, I could taste copper at the back of my mouth and I did not like "how the red one tastes."
The calamondin fruit tree is not only the medicine tree, but also the frame of my hospital bed. I embedded pine needles into fabric paste for the bark to accentuate its roughness and stand in for the pine trees I grew up playing under in Florida parks. This tree, with its thorns and white flowers, references my mother's Filipino heritage (as she was my constant companion in the hospital), and the multiple times I was pricked by needles to draw and test my blood during the course of treatment. I added the pearlescent ink flowers and droplets of the tree to show the medicine tree as life-giving as it holds the saline and blood bags.
Because my mom was a trained tailor, and the growing medical bills impacted our limited income, she made dresses for me as a kid to save money. I am drawn with soft pastels, and wearing a butterfly dress of paper, trimmed with lace fabric. Butterflies fly across my mediport in my chest, embodying my physical change, and our hope for the future, from those treatments.