Going Under

You go, out. Like someone shut you off at the mains. One minute you're rattling down the hall on a gurney and the next minute there's a huge light in your face, a sun from somewhere else that's shining on you like they were going to extract information. You can feel the poke in your hand and the bruising push when they get the needle into a vein. And they tape the needle to you. You worry that they haven't given you enough juice, that you'll stay like this, feeling like a warm marshmallow, instead of going under. That you'll have to scream when they start to cut. So you try to tense up against the blade that you know is up there somewhere, but your stomach muscles have gone on leave.

And you do go, out. Like some big New York City power failure, all systems down. And you know it not because you feel a slide or a drop but because you're back again, all of a sudden, and if you're back, well, then you must have gone right off that cliff of consciousness.

When you get back, it's not like waking up, where wisps of what you were dreaming stay for a minute and then drift away. It's like somebody took a chunk out of your whole world. "Back then" is completely adjacent to "right now." And the pain. It isn't like then, in your hand, even though you're still hooked up to that jellyfish bag on a pole. Now it's your gut you can feel, heavy and stiff and old, tight in its bandages. And your throat sticks to itself, and your tongue has expanded while you were away so that now it fills your whole mouth.

So all you can do is bray for a nurse. Because you do and you don't want the doctor to tell you what they found while they were inside that missing piece of your time, cutting out whatever they finally found that doesn't belong. And you sure as hell wish somebody would come say something. Now that the power's back on, you really want to know.