The Little Death, pt2

Hi, it's the next Tane. You were parked for over an hour in the waiting room your ACL reconstruction while others came and went. Ray, your room mate, wheeled in and joined you before you left despite you leaving your room 30min before him. You hope his shoulder op goes OK.

Finally they wheel you to the theatre, there are the lights you've seen on Scrubs, but it's all first-person and feels like a dream. There's a thin bench which they go to lift you onto but you tell them you can do it yourself and hop across. We're jammy bastards both of us. When they gave you the general anaesthetic the initial needle stung giving you the local on your forearm. Next you watched, detached, as Nazir gave you a full syringe full of that white goopy shit. For half a second everything in your visual field had concentric ripples, then

I'm awake, confused, why didn't they do the surgery. My left leg feels odd and I try to cross my legs, and am told "no don't do that sit still". A face above me asks "do you feel any pain" "Actually yes my knee kinda aches." "Tramadol 100ml!" Someone is injecting something into my canula ~things go blurry~

apparently I'm still here, I'm quite comfortable in my hospital bed, my leg is tied up in bandages and splinted, everything seems quite alright. If I feel awake enough I can tether my iPad to my phone and mooch on the internet. Every 4 hours the nurses bring me more drugs and I sleep for a while, when I wake up I'm back for a bit and I can play with my toys and connect to the world. Hi how are you going we're here to take your blood pressure? Ok okay that's fine, here's my right arm, no I don't really feel any pain, yes gimme the drugs because why skip now and then make more work for yourselves in an hour when my nerve block wears off. Oxycodone you say? Okay I live in a civilized country so this is free, gimme the good stuff. I's goood~~~

The next day I wake, meet with the hospital physio who makes sure I don't fail at crutches... heh done this before but he was nice so I showed off my leet crutch skills, up and down the stairs, like I did at Fairway shopping center getting that envelope. He was surprised, either my physio is better than most or I'm just better at following instructions. By the time my backup lift is organised the nurses are pointedly asking when I'm leaving, but I've had the lunch that I ordered. Cheesy ravioli. Process win!

The nurse wheels me, matter of fact, towards the exit. I said I could walk but she insisted and hey, how many times in my life am I gonna get wheeled? So I'm a passenger in a one-man dodgem car through the hospital and then we wait for Mara to arrive and take me home.