Sliding

That fucking tube

That fucking tube.

I’ve travelled in tubes before, been strapped in place like a pork joint oiled and penetrated and herbed to perfection waiting for the oven to reach roasting point. I’ve been slid, jerked, yanked (that one time when the mechanism failed) and punctured. I’ve been a recipe for disaster.

I’ve done my time. Served my turn, more than many, less than others. Got nothing to show for it except a folder full of paperwork, opinions, analyses, reports and slides of images that don’t fit in the damn filing cabinet. Someone thinking straight might consider that issue a metaphor for my medical life, but I’m not thinking straight. Not even close.

It’s all about the slides. And the off-kilter vibrations and pulsations. The jerks. The jerk lurking inside my head, playing hide and seek.

So far, he’s winning. It’s a he. I know it.

‘I wouldn’t hang my hat on it’

‘It’s an atypical occurrence’

And the real gem:

‘This isn’t Occam’s Razor, is it, Ms Avraham?’

He capitalised it in his mouth, sharpened it, rolling it over on his tongue, making a three-course meal out of it, complete with a full-bodied red, without missing a beat. But then, that was his MO (or surely it’s mo since it’s Latin, right?). I was his curio, his prized petri dish specimen framed on the wall of his panelled consulting room. Quarters reeking of superiority. And ‘think yourself lucky you’re here in my presence’. It rolled off him in waves. Like the dandruff scattered over his shoulders.

Fuck him. What did he know from bedside manner?

Speaking of…

I’m on the slab. Head caged, only this time the cage is snug on my shoulders too. Not lovingly placed but shoved. Indicating hurry. Enunciating emergency without a word being said. I don’t say anything. If a little shoulder cramp is the worst I get out of this, I’m golden.

Platinum.

The mustard yellow ball, connected by a tube to some kind of emergency button out of sight somewhere is pressed into my hand. It feels slimy. The panic bulb, I name it, not so fondly. Disinfected after the last hapless inhabitant of the tube squeezed it over and over and over.

I knew. Waiting in the room aptly named Waiting Room, according to the sign on the door. I guess they’re not paid to be comedic here.

I could hear the stop-start grunt of the rotating magnet. The mumble of reassurances from the two gowned women watching the tongue-pink slab slide into the doughnut. Pity there was no frosting to sweeten the deal.

In the darkened observation room, their ghoulish faces are lit by the monitors they scrutinise like small children waiting for the next firework to go off inside someone’s head. I wonder if they’re tempted to oooooh and aaaaah. I wonder if they’ve ever forgotten to turn off their microphones before setting the scanner off on its merry, spinning vortex. I wonder if someone has heard an ‘oh shit, look at the size of that bastard’.

Shit happens, right?

They made me wear headphones. Piped ersatz music into my ears. Covers of pop and rock sounds from the eighties and nineties. I’d have maybe enjoyed myself in a sick kind of way if they’d shelled out for the indie music I still love because nostalgia is powerful and better than hash for that soft, sweet, mellow high, but they fucked me over with asinine covers crooned by backing singers who probably hated their life choices even more than I did, lying on that sliding slab.

Maybe they torture you in this gentle way so you don’t even come close to nodding your head in time to the groin-aching rhythm or singing along sotto voce (more Latin).

Maybe these hospitals divert all their money to fund state-of-the-art medical equipment, like this noisy doughnut, dedicated to finding the evasive little bastard (or big bastard) taking up residence in your head. But what if they can’t do anything about it? Do you get the real deal music to sing along to in the consulting room, to ease you along your way to the morgue?

I’m still sliding.

I close my eyes, bored of the duplicated nothingness above my head. Never thought I could see double of nothing. Never thought I could see half of the world no matter which eye I closed. Never thought there could be more traffic at the Bank interchange than could fit on the narrow roads, nose to tail. Never thought I could use men striding out in City suits, briefcases in hand and rucksacks on their backs as human shields. Never thought I’d be so scared of buses and taxis and lorries and cars and fucking cyclists.

Never thought I’d trust a stranger so implicitly. Never thought how little I would be trusted to tell the truth that I can’t see what I’m doing, that I can’t read a 45-page document right now, even though I’ve never chucked a sickie in my goddamn stupid life.

The rails stop creaking. I’ve come to a stop. Like the Northern Line on an average London Monday.

Rubber-soled shoes on linoleum. The slimy mustard yellow ball is prised from my fingers, this time covered in sweat. My salt and my fear. The cage is removed from my head and shoulders. A tut of annoyance at the red mark on my neck. Someone’s going to get an earful later. Cautionary voices tell me to sit for a minute before I stand.

‘You’re free to go, Ms Avraham.’

Yeah, but where? I slide along the wall, feeling my way through visual gymnastics and semi-blindness.

Where do I go now?

‘Trust the process’ is a mantra. It isn’t my mantra, but someone else might benefit.

That fucking tube. It knows my secret.

And it won’t share it with me.

Not yet.

---

This is in response to George Kalintzis’ story, Throat Full of War Stories. He invited us to:

Write about a moment when your outside and inside were telling different stories. Take us deep into that disconnect - how it feels to bench press your bodyweight while your organs are writing resignation letters. Show us what it's like to wear health like armor while something inside you is conducting guerrilla warfare against your own body. Make us feel the weight of those casual compliments that cut. No sugar-coating. No poetry. Just the raw truth of looking like a warrior while fighting a war nobody else can see.

Here’s his story. Read it. And then write.

Throat Full Of War Stories