The world twisted around me, the meaning of everything changed. I left my body, or at least convinced myself that I had. Floating through the world, tethered to my body by a thread.
The universe compressed into the size of a small hospital room, and my pain became a billion supernovas. My mouth became a black hole, swallowing my screams before they could leave me.
I don’t know how long I lay there, curled up in the comfort of madness, it could have been hours, or days.
Eventually I returned to myself. Though when the next morning came and another series of injections coursed through my veins, I regretted my sanity.
It didn’t take me long to start hating the nurses. I knew they didn’t know what they were doing, but it was hard to care about that when I was suffering such agonies at their hands. But as much as I hated them, I hated the doctor a thousand times more. And I feared him with equal measure.
If I’d known what was still in store for me, I would have feared him more.
The chalky taste fades in about an hour, and as soon as it’s gone I try to convince myself that it wasn’t there at all. That I was mistaken. I don’t believe it. I never believe it. I just want to.
My first year in the hospital, I passed the time by counting the holes in the tile over my head. I named them. I made up stories about them, lineages and relationships, affairs and wars, treaties and betrayals. I calculated a rough estimate of the number of holes in all of the tiles in my room. I named them. I made up songs about them and sang them over and over again.
My second year in the hospital, I decided to relive my life. All the parts I could remember, in as vivid of detail as I could manage. Sadly, I hadn’t paid much attention to my life, and the alcohol and drugs had wiped away a lot, I could only come up with enough memories for eight and a half months.
After that, I switched to the Zen approach. I try to live in the moment as completely as I can. I try to focus on each second, each ticking of the clock, and see that instant as an eternity to itself. Actually, I’m not sure if that’s Zen or not; I didn’t learn much about eastern philosophy before I got turned into a vegetable, and I can’t exactly go looking it up now. Anyhow, sometimes it works.
Sometimes it doesn’t.
They wait until night to come. I don’t know if it takes that long for the chalky tasting medicine to take effect, or if the night nurse is the only one who’s in on it, but they always wait until night. Then they come. Two of them. The doctor and his assistant.
Both smell odd, and both are bald.
They unplug me from my machines and take me down the hall to the elevator. I try to focus on the sounds from the rooms that we pass. Mostly there are snores. Sometimes I hear patients muttering. Sometimes moaning.
Then we’re in the elevator, descending. Descending. I swear, it gets hotter as we go, like we’re falling into the bowels of hell. Actually, it isn’t heat, it’s fear. Terror.
Eventually we stop, and they pull me out of the elevator and down the hall. The heat disappears as they drag me into the operating room.
Actually, it’s the morgue. I know because of the smell. And the cold. And because once, after they pulled the lamp over me, but just before they turned it on, I could see bodies reflected in it.
They strip off my clothes and lay me on an icy table.
Then they begin.
Cutting.
They cut into me. Into my stomach. Precise cuts, always in the same place, they slice me open, and I try to scream. Try to throw myself off the cold metal square. I feel the knives slicing into me, cold, hard, invasive things, violating the core of my being.
It goes on. And on. And when I think it cannot possibly go on any longer, that they must have sliced every nerve, and severed every part of me an inch at a time, they cut some more.
I wish I could pass out from the pain. I wish I could block it out, or meditate my way to some kind of peaceful