“Pain!” she screeched. Her voice the chalk on the board. I glued myself to the bed and hoped to disappear. Not happening.
I caught a glimpse of her between the curtain that they strung up to divide the room and protect our privacy. She was pretty, a very similar shade of brown to mine, medium warm sassy brown skin, a little plump, juicy looking. Her phone blurted, “Hey Gorgeous, you got a message!” Every few minutes… she had the t.v. on to a surgery show, close-up of the insides of people, being operated upon. She returned calls, explaining how she’d landed in the hospital, again.
“The Pain!” Her wail deepened. I felt pain with her. I felt my own pain and I felt embarrassed for her feeling such acute pain. Pain is private. Isn’t it? Her Doctor offered her more morphine. “No.” She said. “If I do too much I get diarrhea for three days, that happened to me last time I was in the hospital.”
Just then, I fixed my gaze out on the bleak industrial moonscape. A squat box of concrete with shutter windows and turbines, the lobby of a hotel on the moon, an interplanetary loading station… a boy on a skate board pierces my moon fantasy, just as he is overtaken by a sudden jogging blond, with dark sunglasses. Surely, a spy. Exactly then, the sun flowers arrive. Sunflowers. Blazing yellow. Zinging bright. How appropriate! How Van Gogh! Inspired and SO KIND! FLOWERS! And the smile the pretty girl who delivered the flowers gave me, as she zipped into the room and put them down on the windowsill blocking the view of the moon, is something special, too… this moment sparkles.
Here I am in the hospital, again. How did it happen that a part of my story became about being really ill? The idea seems foreign odd to me. I’m so healthy! I’m upbeat. I’m optimistic. I’m not the cancer type. Yet, I’m deep in treatment. Sometimes, I feel like I’m facing a tsunami with nothing but a rubber ducky for protection. This is scary and yeah, it hurts. Ouch! I’m tired of being here. This stupid machine. Beeping. I have to take it with me to the bathroom, where they measure my urine.
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Great little piece. Very intensely focused and as intensely revealing.
Now I want to read everything – vicariously attempting to ease your pain – magical thinking.
Thank you, Grace!
That really means a lot to me! Writing about personal experience is healing.
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