Nightmare

Today I awoke mid-nightmare.

Fourteen hours later, it is still with me. Crystal. Tangible.

The rough hospital sheets chafed my shoulder and I bent-double in bed. 

I was burying myself, pressing against coarse muslin pushing into plastic mattress. Tangled IV hoses wrapped around my arms, sheets entwined my legs, and chest catheter tubes pressed against my ribs, bruising me.

Urine. Vomit. Blood aroma. 

Door opened, screaming bright light. Starched bowling-ball nurse waddled in, torture-tray in hand. Nurse’s cap perched askew—like her eyes.

I hate those eyes. Toothy smile; dead eyes.

I stare into and beyond her eyes, into the light behind her. Shooting pain. I throw my tangled hands into my face, heels pressing my eyes. Pushing the pain.

No!

I open my eyes to scream…

And he’s standing there.

Quiet smile. Calm, bespectacled eyes. Hands casually thrust into white coat pockets. My oncologist from New York. 

“Why?” I howl. “What is happening to me?”

He tuts.

“You know,” he says, knowingly.

“What!” I demand. It’s not a question.

“I told you this might happen, and if it did, I warned you…”

He glanced at the nurse, calmly. Almost with grace. He nodded.

She turned to her tray. She turned to me, greenish-blue fluid in her syringe. An enormous syringe.

BWAP-BWAP-BWAP-BWAP

The alarm shattered my dream.

Thank gods.

- - -

Yesterday I awoke and the world was…weird.

I could smell everything. Strongly.

I was so sensitive; I could smell the fan on my laptop. My wool socks. Otherpeoplesmells assaulted me. Olfactory tinnitus. Someone had cranked the volume—for my nose.

And when you smell everything, you taste everything.

Incipient nausea. All day.

Someone said that it sounded like I was pregnant. Hormone changes. Something...

That would explain my pot belly...

And I couldn’t feel my feet.

Everything in front of the ankle was puffy, post-Novocain insensibility. So, when I walked, I fought nausea as I stumbled hither and thither.

Pregnant, bewildered, I stumbled through the day.

And then I got sick.

So, I went to bed.

(You already know how I woke up.)

- - -

A year ago I was so debased I couldn’t roll over in my hospital bed. I willed myself through it.

Today I was in a weight room. Building. Slowly.

So, I guess I’m living the dream, right?

Right?

- - -

What will be will be what will be.

I’ve got this.