"I can't do anything about the outside, I only touch the insides."
Surgery - that strange, sterile place where I go that you cannot follow. They lay me down on a table and turn on the lights above me so that all I see is white.
I could never be a junkie, I have what my doctor called “rolling veins.” Rolling veins do exactly that -that makes them hard to find. It’s as if my veins are instinctively afraid of needles, even though I am not. I worry that they’ll stick the needle in and it won’t be right, and the anesthesia will just sit and bleed under my skin and I’ll be awake for my operation.
They stick the IV in my arm and then I’m out.
I wake up twice during the operation. Or maybe it’s more than that. I suddenly feel like I’m on the coroner’s table and they’re performing an autopsy on me - they all think I’m dead but
I’m still alive and they’re cutting me open, alive.
I sneeze, twice, to make sure they know that this is a living body they’re dealing with, here.
I can see them scraping my insides, feel the scrape-scrape-scrape of the scalpel. I feel no pain. There is a body on the table and it is mine but it is not mine. There is pain in the room but it is not mine.
They sew up my eyes, my skin, reconnect flesh to sinew.
Open, close, they tell me.
I’m in, I’m out.
Open, close.
Wake up, they say.
It’s time to wake up.
Wake up.
I could never be a junkie, I have what my doctor called “rolling veins.” Rolling veins do exactly that -that makes them hard to find. It’s as if my veins are instinctively afraid of needles, even though I am not. I worry that they’ll stick the needle in and it won’t be right, and the anesthesia will just sit and bleed under my skin and I’ll be awake for my operation.
They stick the IV in my arm and then I’m out.
I wake up twice during the operation. Or maybe it’s more than that. I suddenly feel like I’m on the coroner’s table and they’re performing an autopsy on me - they all think I’m dead but
I’m still alive and they’re cutting me open, alive.
I sneeze, twice, to make sure they know that this is a living body they’re dealing with, here.
I can see them scraping my insides, feel the scrape-scrape-scrape of the scalpel. I feel no pain. There is a body on the table and it is mine but it is not mine. There is pain in the room but it is not mine.
They sew up my eyes, my skin, reconnect flesh to sinew.
Open, close, they tell me.
I’m in, I’m out.
Open, close.
Wake up, they say.
It’s time to wake up.
Wake up.