In the middle of the night I light the candles again to write. Distract myself from writhing.
the yellow fingertips of my corpse hand are still numb and as the anesthesia fades from the shoulder downwards, dissolving its hold on biceps and then forearm and elbow.
Every inch that wakes feels flayed.
like getting a tattoo
my mind boxed it into something that felt manageable, known, that repeats to itself “this is finite.” remember? the pain lances, dances. Four. Seven, like the firetracing of tattoo needles lighting a nerve close to the skin on fire. it was always manageable because it would soon be over.
i squirm under the covers as the night rolls on, and pay attention.
waiting for pain to ebb is doable.
The abominable had been waiting for it to start.
that was yesterday, a night with no water. Early morning I brush my teeth, get dropped off at the hand clinic and shuffle through protocol from one clapboard box station to another, penetrate the rings of seven different waiting rooms with every time a little less armor - take it all, take my sheaves of intake forms my name and cards and numbers, take my thrice repeated signed injunctions to kill me should I persist in a mindless shell. kill me. kill me. kill me dead yes absolutely. i give away my clothes to slip on paper scrubs. surprisingly soft.
I always feel like I’m dressing for the morgue in those. Pulling on the ritual uniform.
It gives me a strange kind of comfort. Always.
When the jaws of the ineffable close on me, my last refuge is ceremonial form.
one inch underneath my quiet exterior is a thrashing spitting screeching wildcat that has been in full blown panic, every hair on end since I wrote into my red notebook Operation Tuesday 9:00 a.m. The cat has been hissing NONONO you cannot take me to the knife Don’t make me This cannot be a good idea- the nurse in the underground clinic takes my pressure and thinks me calm though this terror holds my heart in its fist, I keep breathing and sitting here and not running away or smashing chairs into windows - we’re underground, there’s no windows - I stay, breathe, and relax my muscles. Jaw shoulders anus obediently loosen. For a handful of seconds.
Breathe.
can I find peace even here. even now, as I wait to be cut open, fully awake, for this gaping wound I cannot even think about to be sliced even deeper, dug into and carved out.
Around me the clinic feels like a garage, patients wheeled around just like the great pieces of equipment, nurses say Hello do you have any allergies in fifty different accents, they tinker and joke and chatter, competently prep us and herd us on, one step closer to a moment where there will be no more pain or fear or needing to be stripped bare and put on paper clothes and be poked and injected and sliced into. Do you have any allergies? Perfect sweetie let’s get you right in. I drift like a ghost through this busy and efficient family whose normality makes a nest of the mortuary slab.
Keeping the thrashing wildcat close to my chest.
Stay here.
It will be over soon.
and then color.
They parked me in the waiting queue of gurneys lined up along the corridor. Everything here is painted palest of pale blues, scrubs machines corridors and ceilings all shaded in arctic and metallic. My mind is trying to shut down but then my eyes suddenly lands on something like the thud of a drowning hand on a floating plank.
The thud is a splash of intense, warm blue. Tuareg scarf blue. Egyptian beetle blue.
A shade I cannot name but can I drink from.
The dazzling pigment fills me with courage. Like a battery. Like a loved one’s face.
Who knew color could do this?
I have no idea with that strange magic is happening and I drink and drink until I’m wheeled under the anesthesiologist, who peers down at me behind wide spectacles and asks with a voice dry as scuttling insects
“Do you have any allergies?”
he injects the fluid into my arm and it’s like the flowering of LSD, but in the mind, in the muscles - a cracked egg yolk of heat slithers down my veins and slowly uncoils down my biceps, until
stone. my whole arm slowly turns to stone.
His drooping, kind eyes survey a machine screen, flicker to mine and assure me “This will not hurt”. Impossible.
But it’s true. I don’t feel a thing when we reach the operating room and the cat screeches on, louder and louder as the last preparations click into gear, they pick my arm like a puppet part and bang it unto a metal ledge, paint it business-like in Betadine and
Can’t feel a thing.
It’s a miracle.
It’s a complete fucking nightmare.
at last a paper curtain goes up between my eyes and their sharp sharp tools and they inflate a garot “That will keep you arm from bleeding” -
and the waiting is over.
They start. I start humming. They can hear me, of course. I don’t care. I hum.
It’s like sleeping in snow - after the drugs and lying down for so long, my body feels muffled under a thin layer of white stillness.
I continue to hold the thrashing cat to my chest.
Over my hum I hear the sliding doors, the trainers of nurses constantly coming in and out, the gurgle of generic radio music playing from a phone.
Can I flex the hand that’s stone? At all?
It’s a really bad idea.
I try it anyway, send the slightest twitch to the fingers -
Nothing. Not a single signal passes the faded blue curtain, except for sound - the surgeons comment each others’ sutures and debate the correct size of a metal plaque for the wrist operation of another patient.
Hum.
Can I still be here. sound rumbles in my chest like a tiny not-victory - but a smuggled good thing, a purr. a sliver of comfort like finding the moon in a bowl of water.
I hum, breathe, and before I know it it’s done.
over.
My limbs liquify with relief as they fold my arm into a sling, the hand wrapped in a neat and impressive bandage. Wheeled back out.
Back in the outer ring, before I’m allowed to rise a nurse takes my pressure and frowns “ it was low and now it’s… even lower”
she herds me to the changing room and points to a call button on the wall, “I can help you dress if you need me”. I thank her and close the door - of course I won’t need help - gingerly pull off the scrubs and
give a startled shriek.
the stone arm was tucked away in the sling, folded.
i could kind of, almost feel the bend in the limb.
but I look back - and it feels bent but it’s dropped, hanging straight down.
I reach down to pick it up and drop it like a dead mouse. It’s hot. Alarmingly hot. touching something that’s attached to me - but that I can’t feel from the inside - is revolting, like suddenly realizing you’re touching a corpse.
I ring the help button.
The nurse eases the corpse arm into my sleeve, nods and leaves.
I still accidentally kick it twice when pulling my trousers back on, hissing terrified FUCKs as I watch it pitifully swing from the impact.
I join the last waiting room where we all lie sprawled like floppy sunflowers sipping apple juice and compote. Each of us nurses a loose smiles and a pristine, robust bandage that loudly proclaims we are Done. Thank the gods.
I spend the afternoon lying on the garden ground. Inhaling the smell of baked earth and grass and daffodils, watching gendarmes teem on the flagstones and flicking them off my legs.
The anesthesia slowly breaks its hold on my arm along the same path it flowed in - first my shoulder, then the biceps and elbow. I’m careful but I still bump the corpse hand and yelp at its heat.
The evening is only open sky and woozing relief.
The night throbs with iridescent pain, and I roll and breathe through it.
Can I still be here?
Like all things - it will soon be over.