Danny

Chapter 6

I wake up in an unfamiliar bed. Both my legs are moving and are pain free. The blankets are different. They are beautifully decorated with daisies and sunflowers. The room is familiar, yet strangely odd to me. It is bigger than the hospital room with a bookshelf on the wall near my right and a wardrobe covering most of the wall on my left. There are posters of young men and women around the bookshelf. A mirror on the wall adjacent to the wardrobe looks back at me. Next the mirror is a simple wooden door with a picture of me, Chelsea and others I don't quite recognize.

Eager to discover this new world I push aside the bright blankets and climb tentatively step out of bed. My feet fall onto a soft rug decorated with wavy lines of yellow, orange and pink. I look down at the design and shake my head at the awful rug. Who could buy such a terribly designed mat?

I start to take a few steps toward the door, but something seems wrong. The door seems to move further away the closer I feel I am getting to it. I stop moving and look back. To my horror, there is nothing. The room behind me has disappeared. The bed and posters and bookshelf are all gone. All I can see is the round mirror on the wall and that door.

My heart starts racing. It feels like a weight is thrown into my chest. I cannot get any air in. My eyes start to water. My mind is now racing through all possibilities of what is happening. What if the thing that made the rest of the room disappear did the same thing to me? I feel tears forming in my eyes. The vulnerability of the situation consumes me while I stand hyperventilating. Panic is all I know at this point. I have no idea what to do next. Every step forward pulls the door away, but there is nothing to go back to behind me.

"Miss, miss. Wake up," a small voice says in my ear pulling me out of that unreal world to the real world. She is repeating herself and her voice is echoing in my head. I slowly feel myself becoming more aware of my surroundings. A sense of relief washes over me as I wake up in the hospital bed with a concerned nurse looking down at me. All the pain from my broken leg reminds me of the reality of this world. I realise I had been dreaming and with that thought the dream slowly faded away from memory. As the memory slowly fades away I become more aware of my current surroundings. The person calling me was Sister Brown. Her grey eyes are looking down at me with sympathy.

"I am sorry to disturb you dear. You looked like you were having a rather terrible dream besides. There is a porter to come fetch you for theater. Lucky you that there was no other emergencies," she tells smiling politely.

I find my voice and ask, "What is the time?" I feel groggy from sleep and possibly from the pain injection I had earlier.

She smiles and says, "It is a quarter to three in the morning."

I thank her and ask her where the porter is. She brings a gentle looking middle-aged man into the room. He is not quite as tall as Sister Brown, but his bald head almost makes it. He uses his broad shoulders to maneuver the stretcher next to my bed. Nurse Gumede then enters the room. The three of them painfully help me to move from bed to stretcher.

Once the whole ordeal is done I can my stomach lurching now because of the pain radiating freshly through my mangled leg. I tell the nurses of my queasy feeling and nurse Gumede runs to bring a bowl for me. She tucks it under my chin just before bile is ejected through my mouth. I am about to thank her when my stomach lurches one last time. Nurse Gumede comes close to me and reassures me that everything will be fine. Her hands that previously gave me my injection now gently rub my exposed shoulder for comfort. My stomach settles and finally manage a furtive thank you.

The porter starts moving the stretcher out the room, out the ward towards the operating theater. It is an uncomfortable ride as the mattress on the stretcher is paper thin and the wheels are not smooth. There is rhythmic bump as the wheels roll reluctantly forward. The pain I experience with each little bump pushes up my anxiety levels. The realization of where I am going starts to hit home. I may have already been under the knife previously, but I was either in a daze or knocked out to acknowledge what was happening at the time.

This hospital is a multistorey building with four lifts to wards and departments. It seems however only one of the lifts is operational as we wait patiently outside the lift. I don't hear any indication that there is any movement of any lift so I prop myself up on my elbows to get a better look. There are digital numbers above the doors of each lift which I assume represent the floor each lift is on. One lift has no number. Another is remaining on the ground floor and another seems to be stuck on floor ten. One lift was on the ninth floor before it started descending towards us. I watch intently as the numbers decrease from 8 to 7 to 6 and so on in a slow steady pace.

The lift eventually stops on our floor and the doors open with a painful shriek. The porter pushes the stretcher into the lift and silently stands one side while we wait for the doors to close. To my horror the doors close half way and open again. This repeats one more time before the door finally closes shut. The lift gives a lurch and then continues to descend. It halts to a stop and the doors scream open. I figure we must be on the ground floor. We stay in the lift and wait while the lift starts half closing the doors and opening again. The process repeats and then it finally closes and we start moving upwards with a frightful jerk.

As the lift comes to a rough halt I clench my teeth in anticipation of the screech that accompanies the opening of the lift doors. They open painfully and the porter moves us out of that horrific lift. While the stretcher moves away from the lift I can't help wondering how other people tolerate traveling in that lift. Thoughts of sick people going up and down in that lift makes me sad. It seems almost unimaginable to have to deal with illness and that terrible sound. The impatience one might experience when eager to lay down in bed when you are ill and watch the lift door not quite closing but almost there three times before it finally closes all the way to allow the movement of the elevator.

Going through sliding glass doors feels like I am going through some sort of trans dimensional portal. The surroundings on the other side are in stark contrast to the surroundings before. I had not been too aware of the faded paint on the walls until I see the freshly painted walls of the operating theater complex. The aircon is on full blast sending shivers through my body despite the blankets. The light fixtures all seem brand new and shine brightly down from the ceiling. I blink a few times despite myself adjusting to the brightness of the theater compared to the dimly lit corridors and elevator.

We turn a sharp corner and then stop against a wall waiting for one of the nurses to come and have a look at me. While the stretcher was moving I had to lay down again because my elbows were getting tired, but now my curiosity is getting the better of me and I attempt to sit up to take in my new surroundings. I look around and see a curved section of wall where I see the head of someone move. I assume there must be a desk there for doctors and nurses to write their notes. That is a very clever thing to have as it seems in my short time awake I see nurses writing a lot . Just next to the curved wall is a shelf with papers stacked up neatly in little piles. Looking around I see plenty of empty stretchers and other equipment on the walls. Just beside me on the other side is a glass cabinet that appears to be locked with all different types of medicines inside.

I look back at the wall where I suspect there is desk behind there and see movement. The top of a head I saw earlier has come in full view. I see the face of a mature woman with very gaunt features. Her light brown skin appears stretched thinly over sharp cheekbones and pointed nose. Her eyebrows jut sharply out over dark round eyes. Her hair is pulled back tightly into a small ponytail. Her thin lips curve into a small smile.

"Good morning, my name is Sister Bezuidenhout. Welcome to theater. I am going to check everything is alright before you are taken inside to be put onto the table," this nurse tells me as she appears from behind the wall. Her sharp features are accompanied by a very slight frame covered by loosely fitting dark green hospital attire. She approaches my stretcher with a clipboard in her bony hands. I see she is ticking things off on some sort of checklist.

"What is your name?" she asks looking up from the clipboard.

"Danny," I reply. She starts writing something on her clipboard. She looks up again asking me if I ate anything and I simply shake my head. She grunts slightly and writes on her clipboard.

"Do you understand the procedure you are going to have?" she asks looking up at me expectantly.

I nod and tell her, "The doctor said they are going to do x-rays and put nails inside to hold my bones straight in one position so that my leg can heal."

"Good," she says and makes one more final note before placing her clipboard down by the wall and desk. She glances over at me and walks away.

I lay there quietly looking around. An unknown amount of time passes by while the nurse is gone. I don't know what to do with myself so I simply lay down flat and look at the ceiling. I take note that after three ceiling tiles there is a vent for the air conditioner. I count 8 in that room. That explains this place is so cold.

My thoughts start to wander away from the topic. I think about the cold and try to think about the last time I was extremely cold. I start to get frustrated with myself in my failure to surface a single memory. This blank slate is getting old now. With no memory, there is no experience to fall back on. What is like to be cold? What is it like to be shivering miserably because I am soaked to the bone because I was unprepared for thunderstorm? Maybe I could have been cold because I was visiting a friend in a very cold place.

In desperate need of some sort of memory I try to think of ways to provoke my memories like Patrick had done. I move uncomfortably to create a painful sensation in my broken leg to stimulate something with little or no luck. I bang my fist on the cot side with annoyance because I am unable to rack this stupid brain of mine. My thoughts become blank like my memory. Then like a flash something comes to mind.

I realise it was not the pain that brought back the memory of Patrick but the similarity of the situation. Patrick has hurt me before, I was not certain how but there was a familiar feeling when he attacked me. When he aggressively grabbed my leg I knew it was not the first time. With this in mind I try to stimulate another memory by throwing the sheet off myself. It slides down onto the floor and I am thrown into complete cold.

With my whole body exposed to the cold I begin shivering. The only thing shielding me from any cold is the hospital gown. The material of the gown seems to be rather thin. The air from the air conditioner seems to flow right through the fabric. It feels like the cold is boring into my bones. I regret the decision when the shivering and cold brings an unimaginable pain to my broken leg.

I feel rather miserable for myself. A wave of familiarity washes over me. I am not sure if this is a memory or imagination. The familiarity of the sensation makes me feel like crying. It feels as though I had been alone, cold and miserable. Somehow I was in a situation with nothing. Maybe I had made a few bad choices that led to me being on the street or something like that. My mind makes the connection of this sensation to be possibility of someone feeling like that who lives on the street.

While I am lost in thought in trying to make these connections the nurse who had her clipboard comes back to me. She throws my blanket back on me with a grunt and a shake of her head. She is clearly displeased that I had given her an extra task to do before wheeling me down the corridor further into the theater complex. She struggles to get my stretcher around the first corner, but she is then relieved of her duty when the anesthetist appears out of the small room between the operating room and corridor. He smiled politely to the nurse who only nodded back at him. That smile I had seen when she first approached is now completely gone. Before she turns around to walk away I notice the sour look on her face and wonder what could be bothering her.

Dr Singh uses his immense size to maneuver the stretcher with ease first into the small room that simply has a large sink and bin and then into the operating room. Two young men are deep in conversation as we enter the room. Both are fair with light brown hair. One is slightly taller than the other, but share a moderate build with slightly wide shoulders. Their attention immediately turns to us when Dr Singh clears his throat.

The two young men move away from a metal table they were chatting over and come towards us. There is one at the head and one at the foot end grabbing corners of my sheet. Dr Singh counts to three and the three of them transfer me to the operating table. The intense pain I feel shoots through my broken leg up the side of my body and for some reason rattles my head. It is so unbearable that without thought I let a scream of sheer agony.

The two young men let go of the corners of my sheet and push the empty stretcher out. A few moments later I manage my breathing carefully and let rationality roll over me. With my senses back in place I quickly mumble apologies to all the people in the room. Dr Singh replies to my apology with a chuckle.

Dr Singh calls the slightly taller young man close to him. They hang my drip up and check that it is working efficiently. The young man draws up the drugs while Dr Singh pushes them into my drip. The other young man seems to have disappeared at this time. A plastic mask with cool air blowing is placed on my face. Dr Singh looks over at me and instructs me to start counting back from ten.

As I am instructed I say the numbers out loud starting at ten then nine then eight and so on. At first I feel nothing different. I still feel the agonizing pain from my broken leg. But I feel a fuzzy feeling wash slowly over me as I count down to five. My mind is starting to slowly float into a strange nothingness. I feel my eye starts to go heavy. Finding it difficult to concentrate I struggle to find the word I am looking for after five. While I am thinking of what that number could be I let go and allow my body to fall under the spell of the anesthesia. My eyelid slowly falls closed as I am swayed into a sleep unfamiliar yet familiar to me.