Frankenstein's Monster
I've started to believe now might be the time for me to talk about what happened the other day. Weeks ago, now. The first of all my confusions, the launching point for my series of complete and utter incomprehensible situations. It's funny to put it that way, because in truth ever since I felt the sand on the tops of my feet, I was doomed to this. I was bound by the unknowing blankness of it all, by the massive weight of the life that lay before me. I remember being fourteen. I remember how attracted I was to the teenage boy that had given us, or tried to give us, surfing lessons. I remember reading comics with my nine year old brother. I remember seeing how far out the ocean had receded, knowing that it couldn't mean anything good, but just wanting to keep my brother out of our father's hair long enough for him to sober up and be the parent we needed. I remember the fear when I saw the wall of water on the horizon. I remember throwing my brother up into a tree, and him scrambling to find footing in a lower branch. I remember clinging on to one myself, and how rough the bark felt. I remember the feeling of terror when the water shoved it's way underfoot, knowing that if we hadn't been in that tree, we would've drowned before the water smashed us into a building. I remember thinking we were safe, thinking if we only could hold on until the water receded back, we would be fine. It would be a mad story to tell Tory and Cessie when we got back. And I remember trying to move some time later, after the water had started it's swift recession back from the shore, because I had an itch on the heel of my hand. The branch snapped, my feet were dragged under, and my brother reached out for me screaming my name. You'd think that would be all, that the tossing and churning of one teenage body by an angry ocean would have done me in, but it didn't. I remembered that attractive boy from the day before telling us not to struggle against a riptide carrying us away, because we would lose our strength. I did what I could to keep my head above water, and I flailed at passing debris, trying to gain purchase on anything that might ease the burden of trying to stay up on my own. Large debris was everywhere. There was a post box I tried grabbing for, but it slammed into my left side so hard I felt a pain burst inside me. But I remember I wasn't ready to give up just yet. I grabbed on to an empty rubbish bin with my right arm, desperate for something solid to hold. I leaned over it, clutching the metal edge. I remember how much it hurt to breathe, but thinking I didn't care just yet, I was still breathing, I was above water, I had avoided drowning. And then, then I remember sleep dragging me down, telling myself I would be alright. Telling myself the waters would be scoured and survivors would be swept up. I was so tired.
Every doctor in Darwin that attended me heard most of that story. I left out the bits about the boy I fancied, but it wasn't like it had any real bearing on the rest of it. And what then, Andy? How did you get to be here? How did you wind up crawling naked out of the ocean onto Bathurst Island? What's the last thing you remember before washing up here? I'd been prepared for that line of questioning. It was that blank slate they wanted to fill, they wanted to draw up some picture of what my life the past twenty five years had been. They thought I would remember falling off a boat, or jumping off one, escaping from some nefarious captors that had taken me in. Not that they told me, but my very nosy, very interested nurse had filled me in on all the chatter about their mystery man. Laying in that scanner in London, I knew they would ask for the last thing I remembered. I knew what I was going to say. The thoughts were already forming into words on the tip of my tongue, waiting for the question to be fully formed so the story could escape, so we could move on to something more useful, anything other than more of the bollocks the Australians had tried.
But they asked me for the first thing I remembered after falling asleep holding that rubbish bin. The first thing. The first. It was a very subtle difference, and it's only now that I'm thinking of it that I realize how ridiculous it is that such a simple change could result in such a vastly different response. The doctor's Scottish drawl had barely quieted when every cell in my body, every neuron in my brain, exploded in excruciating anguish. My lungs contracted as all the air was forced out of me, my mouth flung open in a silent, gasping scream. My back had arched off the metal slab, and I stayed like this for several long moments, unmoving, unblinking, unbreathing, as the doctors and my solicitor rushed out from the observation room, pulling me out from the machine, fussing with the IV contrast, pushing in some syringe of medication to clear out my system, to calm me down. I don't remember any of this, of course. I woke up in a hospital bed with a feeling of terror, convinced it would be another twenty five years with no memory, sure my mind and body had stripped away everything yet again. It hadn't, obviously. It had merely been a few hours. When I asked what happened they wouldn't say, at first. They wanted to show me, but only after they were sure I'd recovered. I thought how lucky they were to have cameras pointed at me, then. The room had four, one in each corner, plus, of course, the one inside the machine, centimetres from my face. Clara had been on the verge of taking the whole hospital to court, I could tell from the rage in her eyes. The doctors bickered about there having been nothing wrong with the machine. They kept saying it over and over, saying the investigation will show nothing was wrong with the machine, or the contrast. It was NOT our wrongdoing. I didn't understand, but how could I? How could I know what had them worried for their jobs, their careers, their livelihoods. It's funny to think of how much I've grown accustomed to having blank spots in my memory. I felt comfortable, at least, this time. There were people who'd been there, after all. People who watched it. Cameras had watched it. They waited another hour and set a laptop on the wheeled table that's only used to holding trays of bad food. I watched myself, disassociating from the person on the screen. They wanted to stop after the first time, but I made them replay it. Over and over. It was on mute, because they weren't entirely sure the words wouldn't trigger it again. After the fourth time, they told me what their tests had found, the ones they had conducted while they waited for me to wake up. While they prayed would wake up. The results, they said, came back odd, they came back with only the closest comparison being a patient who had come in a few months prior after trying to fix his roof in the middle of a storm. He'd been startled, fell backwards into a pool, and lightning struck the water. As they explained in very clinical detail what had happened to my body, what had happened to this other man's body, I stared at my frozen image on the screen. I'd paused it in the moments before the women had rushed in to tend to me, as I was arched in this unnatural position. In the corner of the screen had been the image of my face, caught up close, from the cameras within the machine. Now, it was a brilliant white. An identical square was below it, where the image of the scanner's readings had been. The machine saw nothing but a shock of white.
Tory had asked how I was, because he'd been called, of course. While they weren't sure whether or not I would survive. But I haven't really spoken to anyone about this, because I've been sitting with it all this time, this reaction to thinking of the first thing I remember after falling asleep holding onto that rubbish bin. My body's immediate reaction to that question was that of a lightning strike. Excruciating pain from a place of calm, the stopping of bodily functions before they restarted. And ever since I came back from that hospital visit, I keep hearing, there's something about you, Andy, as they stare at me, trying to stare into my soul, trying to figure out what the fuck they mean with these meaningless words. It's lip service, surely. I treated it as such, I rolled my eyes and joked about a bright halo, or a glow. But they're never in a joking mood, they're always perplexed by the turn of phrase that came out of their mouths. They're normal, down to earth people like Tory and Tess and Andi, who don't fuss about with flowery language. Clara, my solicitor, said it. The waitress from that Indian place we went the other day. Several strangers who were caught staring. Even Peter, my social worker, mentioned it. As did the woman from his office, who I remembered, though she didn't remember me. That's another thing I haven't said. That's another thing I'm not ready to say. But this, this I can. About this I have come to my own firm belief. Each of these people said it was an energy that seemed to emanate from me. Something that hadn't been there before that visit. Something my body had forgotten. Something my mind had willed itself to forget.
I think, instead of being Lazarus, I'm Frankenstein's monster. An accumulation of dead flesh shocked back to life from an impossibly strong electrical force. The doctors in Darwin, before they knew I was listening, had wondered how the broken ribs hadn't punctured my spleen. They thought I'd been incredibly lucky, coz of course, an untended ruptured spleen's a death sentence. I don't remember anything more that would make this definitively true, but I remember that explosion of pain in the MRI. That brilliant white nothingness. And it feels familiar. When I was fourteen, what turned out to be a tsunami dragged me away, flung a heavy metal object at me, breaking my ribs and puncturing my spleen. I held on to a rubbish bin as I drifted off. Off to sleep, off this mortal coil, as I bled to death. I don't know how it's possible that after twenty five years there was enough of me to bring back, or how it was able to age me to the man I appear to be now. It's absolutely mad to think about. It makes me feel like I need to be locked up in a rubber room with a straight jacket. But I wanted it said. I wanted it out of my mind and into the world and maybe the thought will float away and at least from that notion I will have some peace.
Every doctor in Darwin that attended me heard most of that story. I left out the bits about the boy I fancied, but it wasn't like it had any real bearing on the rest of it. And what then, Andy? How did you get to be here? How did you wind up crawling naked out of the ocean onto Bathurst Island? What's the last thing you remember before washing up here? I'd been prepared for that line of questioning. It was that blank slate they wanted to fill, they wanted to draw up some picture of what my life the past twenty five years had been. They thought I would remember falling off a boat, or jumping off one, escaping from some nefarious captors that had taken me in. Not that they told me, but my very nosy, very interested nurse had filled me in on all the chatter about their mystery man. Laying in that scanner in London, I knew they would ask for the last thing I remembered. I knew what I was going to say. The thoughts were already forming into words on the tip of my tongue, waiting for the question to be fully formed so the story could escape, so we could move on to something more useful, anything other than more of the bollocks the Australians had tried.
But they asked me for the first thing I remembered after falling asleep holding that rubbish bin. The first thing. The first. It was a very subtle difference, and it's only now that I'm thinking of it that I realize how ridiculous it is that such a simple change could result in such a vastly different response. The doctor's Scottish drawl had barely quieted when every cell in my body, every neuron in my brain, exploded in excruciating anguish. My lungs contracted as all the air was forced out of me, my mouth flung open in a silent, gasping scream. My back had arched off the metal slab, and I stayed like this for several long moments, unmoving, unblinking, unbreathing, as the doctors and my solicitor rushed out from the observation room, pulling me out from the machine, fussing with the IV contrast, pushing in some syringe of medication to clear out my system, to calm me down. I don't remember any of this, of course. I woke up in a hospital bed with a feeling of terror, convinced it would be another twenty five years with no memory, sure my mind and body had stripped away everything yet again. It hadn't, obviously. It had merely been a few hours. When I asked what happened they wouldn't say, at first. They wanted to show me, but only after they were sure I'd recovered. I thought how lucky they were to have cameras pointed at me, then. The room had four, one in each corner, plus, of course, the one inside the machine, centimetres from my face. Clara had been on the verge of taking the whole hospital to court, I could tell from the rage in her eyes. The doctors bickered about there having been nothing wrong with the machine. They kept saying it over and over, saying the investigation will show nothing was wrong with the machine, or the contrast. It was NOT our wrongdoing. I didn't understand, but how could I? How could I know what had them worried for their jobs, their careers, their livelihoods. It's funny to think of how much I've grown accustomed to having blank spots in my memory. I felt comfortable, at least, this time. There were people who'd been there, after all. People who watched it. Cameras had watched it. They waited another hour and set a laptop on the wheeled table that's only used to holding trays of bad food. I watched myself, disassociating from the person on the screen. They wanted to stop after the first time, but I made them replay it. Over and over. It was on mute, because they weren't entirely sure the words wouldn't trigger it again. After the fourth time, they told me what their tests had found, the ones they had conducted while they waited for me to wake up. While they prayed would wake up. The results, they said, came back odd, they came back with only the closest comparison being a patient who had come in a few months prior after trying to fix his roof in the middle of a storm. He'd been startled, fell backwards into a pool, and lightning struck the water. As they explained in very clinical detail what had happened to my body, what had happened to this other man's body, I stared at my frozen image on the screen. I'd paused it in the moments before the women had rushed in to tend to me, as I was arched in this unnatural position. In the corner of the screen had been the image of my face, caught up close, from the cameras within the machine. Now, it was a brilliant white. An identical square was below it, where the image of the scanner's readings had been. The machine saw nothing but a shock of white.
Tory had asked how I was, because he'd been called, of course. While they weren't sure whether or not I would survive. But I haven't really spoken to anyone about this, because I've been sitting with it all this time, this reaction to thinking of the first thing I remember after falling asleep holding onto that rubbish bin. My body's immediate reaction to that question was that of a lightning strike. Excruciating pain from a place of calm, the stopping of bodily functions before they restarted. And ever since I came back from that hospital visit, I keep hearing, there's something about you, Andy, as they stare at me, trying to stare into my soul, trying to figure out what the fuck they mean with these meaningless words. It's lip service, surely. I treated it as such, I rolled my eyes and joked about a bright halo, or a glow. But they're never in a joking mood, they're always perplexed by the turn of phrase that came out of their mouths. They're normal, down to earth people like Tory and Tess and Andi, who don't fuss about with flowery language. Clara, my solicitor, said it. The waitress from that Indian place we went the other day. Several strangers who were caught staring. Even Peter, my social worker, mentioned it. As did the woman from his office, who I remembered, though she didn't remember me. That's another thing I haven't said. That's another thing I'm not ready to say. But this, this I can. About this I have come to my own firm belief. Each of these people said it was an energy that seemed to emanate from me. Something that hadn't been there before that visit. Something my body had forgotten. Something my mind had willed itself to forget.
I think, instead of being Lazarus, I'm Frankenstein's monster. An accumulation of dead flesh shocked back to life from an impossibly strong electrical force. The doctors in Darwin, before they knew I was listening, had wondered how the broken ribs hadn't punctured my spleen. They thought I'd been incredibly lucky, coz of course, an untended ruptured spleen's a death sentence. I don't remember anything more that would make this definitively true, but I remember that explosion of pain in the MRI. That brilliant white nothingness. And it feels familiar. When I was fourteen, what turned out to be a tsunami dragged me away, flung a heavy metal object at me, breaking my ribs and puncturing my spleen. I held on to a rubbish bin as I drifted off. Off to sleep, off this mortal coil, as I bled to death. I don't know how it's possible that after twenty five years there was enough of me to bring back, or how it was able to age me to the man I appear to be now. It's absolutely mad to think about. It makes me feel like I need to be locked up in a rubber room with a straight jacket. But I wanted it said. I wanted it out of my mind and into the world and maybe the thought will float away and at least from that notion I will have some peace.