Friday, October 03, 2014

Hospital

In terror, in the hospital.  My stomach hurt terribly, my mother's look of concern.  The stiff military doctor, the mean nurse who took blood from my skinny arm.  The stupid gown they handed to me, my mother helped me undress and put in on.  By now I was crying, bawling, sniffing and choking away tears running down my face.  Terror!  What happened to me?  Why do I hurt. No answers, only questions, where had I been?  What was I doing?  How did it happen?  I knew none of those, only that it hurt and I was here and I felt the risk and fear all at once.  operation?  Did I hear that too?  Why? What's wrong?  I hate this hospital, I hate these doctors and nurses.  My mother tries to comfort me, my father isn't there, he is at work at Ft. Clayton somewhere and I am here.  Tucked into a bed with crisp white sheets, so cool in the Panamanian heat and humidity.  They all leave us, my mother and I, alone in the white room with the white metal bed and the white, crisp sheets covering me.  "Mother, what are they going to do?", she replies "operate".  I scream "Nooooo!" and flail at the bed, the sheets.  Crying, wailing, screaming, the nurses return.  They have tape and gauze by the roll.  One holds down my legs while I punch her in the back and struggle to stop them.  They are rough hands that have done this before, my arms are next taped apart onto the rails of the bed, I am spread-eagled onto the white sheets, in terror, I cannot move out and away.  My mother strokes my head and pets my arm to console me.  The nurses leave once again.  Tears flow, I bawl like a baby but I'm not a baby.  I'm afraid and everything that has happened here has made me more fearful.  I'm in terror.  "Get me out of this!" I say to my mother as she strokes my forehead. "You have to control yourself first," she says in the soft tone she sometimes uses to convince me of something or the other.  "When are they going to operate?" I ask sobbing uneasily.  "In the morning," she replies.  "Let me go!" I scream, "let me go!", I don't want to be operated on!"  She eyes me and says nothing.  I cry on, it seemed like hours and fell asleep.  I awoke and the large clock on the wall said 2 am. "Mother", I said looking around the room. "Mother?"  No one answered, she was gone.  I cried myself to sleep once again held in place by the angry tape to the bed under the crisp white sheet.
 
 

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