The Surgery
The night before the surgery was surreal. I couldn’t sleep. I wasn’t afraid, I was something else. I knew there was a fair chance I would die on the operating table. I wanted to rest, but my eyes refused to go to sleep. Walking into my bathroom, I disrobed, and stepped into the shower. It felt good to feel the hot water splash against my chest and watch the dancing shadows on the wall.
I picked up the black bottle of the stuff I was supposed to clean myself with the night before the surgery. I opened it slowly, I could feel a burn behind my eyes as I poured the red liquid onto my palms. Standing silently I stared. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. The ease I had known slipped away from my heart and I sighed. I could feel my tears begin to well up and then stream down my cheeks. Slowly I began massaging the liquid against my skin. I opened my eyes and watched the crimson tinge drip down my legs and encircle the drain. I turned off the shower and my watery eyes dried. Leaving the bathroom I sat under my clean sheets waiting, as soon as I fell asleep I heard a knock at the door. It was Jamie, she was there to take me to my date with destiny.
At the hospital Jamie sat beside me. I laid on the thin hospital mattress in my flimsy gown under a roughly textured sheet.
“Would you like a hot blanket?” The nurse inquired.
I knew the cover was meant to mute my anxiety. I nodded and she placed two warm blankets on top of me. It felt good and it reminded me of a welcoming massage.
Off and on people would come and go, entering the room to ask me this or stick me with that. After some time, a man walked in and asked me if I wanted an epidural, I was hesitant at first, but I acquiesced. They injected something into my IV, easing me into euphoria and releasing my anxiety.
It wasn’t so bad I thought, until people began to move fast and stand all about. They leaned me forward and I felt frightened. They spoke with urgency telling me everything was going to be alright. I felt a terrible pain, followed by a wet warmth across my back and then nothing. I didn’t even notice laying back down as I felt a sterile-steel fog cover everything. The bed vibrated like it was being wheeled somewhere and then I was lifted into the air and set onto a cold table. People were talking but I couldn’t see them.
“Mr. White?” I heard a woman’s voice.
“Yes…” I groggily replied.
“Mr. White what are we doing today?” She asked.
“You’re here to cut a tumor out of my lung.”
“Which lung Mr. White?”
“My right lung.”
I could hear movement and the clatter of metal things.
“Alright Mr. White I want you to start counting backwards from ten.” This time a man spoke.
“10… 9… 8…” My world disappeared.
I found myself in a deep sleep.
I was falling, yet no wind washed over me. A soft rhythmic pulse echoed through a liquid-like something around me. The surface of my flesh felt frigid and slimy with sweat. My eyes were swollen and heavy, at first all I could see was an eerie grey light slide into my eyes.
My weight shifted as I fell. I watched the sterile-steel fog disappear against an endless sea beneath me. It was darker and deeper than any ocean, and it radiated a nothingness that chewed away the chill. It moved in unnatural ways, crawling like tenebrous waves of wax. Occasionally I would hear a pop or click behind me, but it was not enough to draw me from the terror below. My face neared the leeching void, the closer I came the less cold I became. My deep dark parts told me this darkness was the end and to taste it would mean oblivion.
A ribbon of silvery light laced around my sight. It was shivering cold, and my teeth chattered against something put in my mouth while I was asleep. There was a thickness in my throat, but I could breathe. The air was salty but smooth. Oh my god I could breathe!
I started to hear voices. “Mr. White… Mr. White…” They were saying so much it felt busy and confusing. The light increased in intensity and so did my disorientation.
“I can breathe better.” I remember saying to the doctor as they wheeled me somewhere and I fell asleep.
I woke from the twilight of my medicine induced sleep. My shoulders shook, and my body quaked under the pressure of so much pain. With each breath I sipped the sterile, stale air of my hospital lair. I was caked in scary sorrow and weary wonder as my loved ones feared I would take my final number.
It was dark, shadowy, and strangely still, my insides felt oddly ill. Though afraid there was a soft, soothing voice warning me what was to come. She said, “Feel the pain, but not if it drives you insane, with too much medicine your healing will never begin.”
She tried to tie my mind to a silver string able to set me free. She disappeared into the darkness as my mind sunk away into a soft empty sleep.
Hours later I awoke to an incessant beep and an angry nurse treating me like dirty feet.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Nothing don’t worry about it.” The nurse replied, she sounded like she was in a hurry. Her words were rushed and angry.
It was a different nurse, she did not possess the soft, soothing voice, instead it was sharp, strong, and furiously inflamed. She walked with force, jutting this way then that like bolts of lightning in a trap. Her movements lacked the gentle glide of my first nurse guide and spoke like she was looking for a fight.
The beeps continued till there was a change in my soft empty sea. The tide turned as I began to feel a throb begin to burn. It was hot and glowed with bright light, it started on the point of a speck then sliced through my insides. I clenched and gasped for air as my insides screamed. It was already too much, and I begged to be set free.
My world became dark and grim like inside the reaper’s grin. I felt my body dissolve into a pool of milky meat leaving only my squirming nerves. The throbbing burn in my chest spread into my brachial plexus becoming a nexus of searing flame. The pain became a light, it was the only luminescence I could see. It moved through me like tentacles of molten stone melting and burning my insides away. Slowly my mind began to fray as I knew there was no way I could escape. I wanted to die as I realized my crying and pleading fell on deaf ears. I feared it would never end, seconds felt like minutes in this horror that lasted a half-hour.
Someone came and saved the day, bringing the gift of the painkiller I desperately needed. I learned to fear that beep, it was a warning my epidural was about to be emptied completely. With the nice numbness in my nerves I floated back into the soft, empty sea of peace.
Hours passed as I slept and slowly my ears opened my eyes to the sound of that distant beep. My body felt like gooey glue starting to harden. Waking from my dreamscape the beeps and bleeps grew louder and my heart began to hurry with worry. I felt a thundering boom in my blood and the air began to shake. My eyes stared with fear as I neared the whirlpool of tremendous torture.
“No. No. No.” I muttered a plea begging to be given a reprieve from the coming insanity. “Oh.” My fingers twisted the sheets. “It’s running out. Please help me!” I begged the nurse to refill the medicine masking the pain.
At first it felt like a warm blot of water sitting on the inside of my chest. Then I could feel it boil and spread as the pain began to swell. In anticipation I stiffened and clenched my teeth.
Darkness crawled in and my lung emptied with a scream. My legs kicked, and arms thrashed assaulting the invisible enemy within me. There was a monster inside my chest, and it was eating me alive. It was more than a nagging nibble; its maw was chomping hard, and the pain was making me insane.
My existence became a thick brush stroke of horror. My epidural had emptied twice within the first ten hours after surgery, but the madness was not over. Once again, it would empty leaving me to indulge the insanity of never-ending agony.
