Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 19:50:36 -0500 From: Phanny Subject: [WRITERS] SUB: CONTEST: Lifeless Lifeless As I lay on the narrow bed, I can only think of coffins. So tight and cramped, I don’t think that I would ever be able to stay in one for very long. It is much too close and I’d have no room to breathe. It is laughable, really, how much I am afraid of the pain. They put some cream on my hands and bind it with a plastic cover to numb me from the pain. Why am I afraid of a pinprick when within moments they will cut into my abdomen? I turn my head to the side and look at the nurse standing there. She’s pretty, prettier than I am, and wearing loose green clothing. If she was standing just inside a forest, I bet I couldn’t see her. Her hair is blonde, her smile tremulous, but her eyes are bored. Just another day at the office, just another patient going in for surgery. That’s when I feel the tears well up in my eyes again and I squeeze my Mother’s hand. She smells like herself, like I’ve always smelt her when I was a baby in her arms, but it is covered by the sanitation of the place. She has tears there too and I know if I speak to her I will cry and tell her about coffins. That can’t be good for either of us. The nurse makes me sit up in bed and I can see the cold sterility of the place. Linoleum floors meticulously cleaned, but seemingly dirty stretch under the beds that lay in rows against the wall. Isn’t that how they lined up the dead after a battle? How many soon to be dead people have sat in this room, looked at these walls and these floors and that was the last horrible thing they saw? I take a small Dixie cup from the nurse, but I don’t want to drink what’s inside. It is acidic smelling and yellowish in color. Still, she’s the nurse and I’m the patient, so I drain the cup and nearly gag. It tasted like stomach acid laced with pickle juice. I lay back, trying to get the taste out of my mouth, and another figure approaches the bed. He’s dressed in green, too, but a large mushroom of green paper covers his hair. His smile is warm, but his eyes are bored, too. It is like he’s ready to hand me my Big Mac and change and greet the next customer. He carefully strips the protective covering off of my hands and gently smacks them. I can just feel a tingling where his fingers grazed my skin. He lowers my arm, practically kneeling beside me, and I don’t even see the needle touch. I want to cry, not because he hurt, but because I didn’t feel anything and before I die it would be nice to know I am living. They give me medicine through the IV and I can feel the world start to slide away. I don’t want to close my eyes. I want to stay awake and tell my Mom that I will miss her and just spend the time with her, but my eyes are heavy. I am asleep before I can realize what is happening. I regain consciousness just in time to see my Mom leave and the green people cluster around my bed. They wheel me away, and I want to jump down and get away, but the lights passing overhead mesmerize me. I look up at the man pushing me, can see the lean extension of his neck and black hair peeping out over the collar of his green shirt. The lights pass above me like flashes from my life. The bed moves with a smooth, hovering urgency. In the operating room, the lights surprise me. Huge metal bowls with giant light bulbs in the center stand like guards around the table they move me to. The table I am laying on is cold, but they give me warmed blankets that I burrow into like a puppy. I can smell the emptiness of the room, a sensation and a place like no other in the world. The atmosphere is so non-existent of character, that I feel like I just stepped foot on the moon. Everything seems metallic, stale, lifeless. My green men put their masks on and I feel alone in an alien room. They still talk to me, but it is muffled and far away. There are others in the room, covering me, poking me, spreading my legs and generally ignoring me. My green friend puts a large black mask over my face. It is like I am breathing into a piece of tire. The smell of bubble gum surrounds me and I feel like I’m opening baseball cards with my brother, sitting at the dining room table at home. I feel the tears come on again, calm blowing away like leaves off of a dead tree. I will not sleep. Sleep means death. Sleep brings coffins. I could not wake up from this and never know. This could be my last breath, my last thought, my last glimpse of the world around me that God had the grace to show me. I will not sleep. I will not go through with this. The nurse tells me to breathe deeply. I comply because my thoughts are far away now. There is just bubble gum and my brother. He tells me to count back from one hundred. 100, 99, 98, 9 . . .