Christmas in July, unwrap a summer ebook blog blitz, welcomes RobRoy McCandless
Pain.
Pain that deserves a capital letter when it’s in the middle of a
sentence like it’s the proper name of metaphorical being.
Like Death.
Like Lust.
This was Pain who had not come for a pleasant visit of chatting
over beers and boneless chicken wings dipped into discolored ranch sauce.
He had shown up to do his job, clocked in on time, sat down at his desk, and
went to work on my gut.
I’ve been in pain before. I’ve had two knee surgeries, an
appendectomy and a bowel resection. Each experience was more painful than
the previous, each requiring an increasing amount of time and medication to
recover.
Looking back, it’s as if Pain had set out a series of milestones,
goals in preparation for today.
“I need you to drive me to the hospital,” I gasped out into my
cell phone as my wife listened.
“It’s that bad?”
I was in too much pain to respond. The abdominal cramping
had started the night before, and none of the usual suspects had done any good
in relieving it. I’d managed to get to work, but the cramping had
increased, and I’d asked my boss if I could go home. Two hours later I
had tried to take some Milk of Magnesia, my last line of defense in these
circumstances.
Instead of relieving me, the cramping had suddenly shot up, and
I’d found myself bent over the toilet, vomiting.
I hadn’t stopped vomiting.
I vomited the Milk of Magnesia. Then I vomited the water I
had drunk. Finally, I had started dry heaving, a bit of bile flecked with
blood.
That’s when I knew it was serious.
“I can’t leave right now,” my wife responded. “Can you wait
30 minutes.”
My head, filled with a light sheen of red Pain, started doing the
math. Thirty minutes of waiting, doubled over, and gasping for air.
Five minutes of struggling to get out of the house and into the car.
Fifteen minutes to reach the hospital if there was only light traffic, or
thirty minutes if the traffic was heavy and we had to slog through or find a
surface street. Five minutes to find a parking place. Five minutes
to walk into the hospital.
That meant, at best, one more hour with Pain.
“I’ll drive myself,” I replied.
I don’t remember what was said after that. Pain has gripped
my intestinal tract and refused to let go. Even now, my stomach is giving
me little echoes of Pain, like the afterimage of an incredibly bright light
burned into the cornea of my eye. It gives me pause, makes me conduct a
full body check to see if this time it will be like last time, and I need to start
reaching for the car keys.
The moment passes, unlike the Pain of that day.
I didn’t hang up on my wife. She said something about trying
to get to me as soon as possible, and I grunted out responses while I struggled
to move around the house.
I put on loose fitting clothing: sweat pants and a t-shirt.
Then I thought better of the t-shirt and threw a Disney-themed hockey jersey
over it. Hospitals are always cold, and I’m always cold, which means I
freeze. I couldn’t bend over to put on socks or shoes, so I suffered with
the knowledge that my feet would be ice as I slipped on my flip-flops.
I found my keys. I found my wallet. I made sure I had
my insurance card.
I doubled over with Pain, my left arm wrapped around my middle as
if I had been cut open and only my fingers could keep my loose, slippery,
bloody intestines inside me. My right hand gripped with painful fingers
the back of a kitchen chair, as if I could offset one Pain for the other by
squeezing hard enough.
I could not.
You should not drive drunk. You should not drive
tired. You should not answer a cell phone or text while driving.
You should not drive with Pain.
He won’t take the wheel from you, steer you gently to the side of
the road and apply the brake. He doesn’t pat you on the back, or place a
warm washcloth against your forehead. In the car, he sits with you,
closer and more intimate than any lover, and he does his work. No
position, no shifting, no mindset can free you from his grasp. He holds
you and holds you and holds you. You can’t push Pain aside, once he’s
paid you a visit. He just continues, doggedly, like a cubicle-lackey
pounding away at his keyboard, watching the workday clock that never moves past
9:13.
I drive in the far right lane, the “slow lane” because I don’t
trust myself. I know I’m a distracted driver. I know I present a
potential danger to myself and everyone around me. I also know
Pain. As Jim Morrison sung, I keep my eyes on the road. I keep my
hand upon the wheel. I focus on breathing. I scream in sudden,
twisted bouts of abdominal cramping. In my head, fists twist my
intestines, my guts, and tie them into the Gordian Knot.
Pain is intractable and untenable.
I make my exit and am at once relieved and struggling. I’m
in a bad way, and I know it. I can barely sit up, and I still have lights
and other cars to navigate through.
I offer a prayer that there will be a close parking stall.
Pain must have intercepted that particular request. He
rejects it out of hand.
The furthest stall from the entrance is the only one open.
I’ve already spent several minutes in fruitless search. My body is
covered in a light sheen of Pain-induced sweat. I assume my skin is
ashen, my eyes red-rimmed and haunted. I assume this, but I have no time
to look at my reflection.
I start the long, Pain-filled shuffle from my car to the ER
entrance.
A security guard on a bicycle sees me, and I think he’s going to
ask if I’m ok, if I need help I can’t even wish for him to do something;
anything. I’m clutching at my middle, trying to keep my innards from
exploding. I’m trying to press Pain back inside my stomach. Trying
to keep from screaming as the next bout of twisting, iron-strapped Pain bounds
around me and holds on tight.
The guard turns on his bike and cycles away. I struggle
through some shrubs where a path wasn’t intended, but has been created by the
passage of thousands of feet each day. People like me who were seeking
the straightest, most direct line.
The doors to the ER are automatic. They swing open as if
pulled by over-eager children, desperate to please. They are noisy and I
stagger through.
My hand reaches into my pocket and I pull out my wallet, then I
grab onto the counter for support. I try to pull my insurance card out,
but the nurse stops me.
“Can you walk inside?” she asks me. She knows Pain.
“Don’t bother with that, just come in.”
Even before I start nodding my head in response, a buzzer sounds
and move toward it like a metaphor to a life-preserver.
“Can you sit down?” the nurse asks.
“Yes,” I croak.
The nurse is incredibly efficient. She is incredibly kind.
She is incredibly sympathetic and empathetic. She asks questions, pounds
her keyboard with the speed and diligence of a professional. She was not
trained to be a typist or a computer user. She was trained to help
people. But to do that, she has also trained to do this, and she does it.
“We don’t have wheelchairs,” she tells me. I have no idea
where the conversation has gone, or if there has even been one. Any
responses I gave her were automatic. Pain has me fully in his grip and
he’s not letting go this time. He’s not giving up. This isn’t some
trick of mental prowess. Pain has me completely in his grasp, and this is
no longer cramping; this is a single cramp.
“I . . . can . . . walk,” I tell her, but she grabs one of my
arms, removing it from my middle where I had been holding myself together, and
I nearly collapse against her. I can’t even tell you her hair color or
her build. I can’t tell you if she was tall or short or fat or
thin. I only had eyes filled by Pain.
She calls to other ER personnel and I’m surrounded. They ask
me questions and I know all the answers. They ask if I can take off my
shirt. They hand me a gown and ask me to put it on. They ask me to
take off my flip-flops. They ask me to lay down.
I relate my medical history, the interesting colorful bits that I
know relate directly to Pain. My wife appears and an IV goes into my arm.
“I’m giving you something for the nausea,” a male voice says.
I don’t care.
I’m crying.
My wife has my hand, and I’m struggling to stay still, but Pain
has filled me completely. I don’t even feel the nausea medication.
It might as well be saline or spit for all the good it does. I try to
breathe and to contain myself, but my entire world is now Pain, Pain, Pain.
This, then, is zealotry. This is fanaticism. This is
obsession.
This is the complete and utter focus on one and only one element
of life to the complete exclusion of everything else.
Pain.
He doesn’t grin at me in victory. That’s not his way.
He’s “just doing his job” and there is no glee in it as he sits on my stomach,
slowly twisting the crank that has bound me up, and won’t stop.
“It won’t let go,” I scream out, and I pound my feet against the
ER bed. “It won’t let go.”
Tears stream down my pinched face, and I slam my clenched fist
against too-thin padding. My wife has my other hand, and she tells me I’m
hurting her. I let go. She strokes my head. I tell her over
and over and over that I’m sorry for this. She responds over and over and
over that it’s not my fault.
I keep crying and pounding and apologizing.
My attending nurse asks my wife to move, because she’s on the side
with the IV. I won’t note any of this until later, because in a moment,
after some words that I can’t hear, the first of many, many, many injections of
pain medication are administered.
There is no flood of sudden comfort. No quick release from
Pain’s grasp.
I simply pass out.
Over the next two weeks of my four-week stay in the hospital, Pain
will be a constant companion. Then, this major project complete, his work
done, the clock now reading 4:55, he will start to gather his things. He
doesn’t ever leave. No, not my Pain. He stays with me, and like a
big brother he will reach out and squeeze every now and then to remind me that
we travel this road of life together.
Siddhartha Buddha said, “Life is pain.”
I don’t hate Pain, or loathe him for a job well done. I do
fear him. The memory of Pain is like Jason from the Friday the
13th series: a constant, elemental presence who causes fear with even
the hint of appearance.
But I live.
I live with Pain.
Author Bio:
RobRoy McCandless has been a writer both professionally and personally for
nearly two decades. He was born under a wandering star that led him to
a degree in Communication and English with a focus on creative writing. He is
the author of the many unpublished words (anthropomorphic is a good one) and continues
to research and write historical and genre fiction.
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You're on today. May you have many,many views nibbles and bites. DAB
ReplyDeleteThank you very much Dorothy. I appreciate the support you and the other authors have given me.
ReplyDeleteBest of luck with your writing career!
ReplyDeleteThank you very much Carmen!
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