Writing a story under the influence of pain killers. Now that is crazy.
For those who think my writing makes Walden’s Pond seem like cliff notes, turn away now. If my prolixity infuriates you, cyber porn is only a mouse click away.
For those brave enough to read a tale from a an author hallucinating on pain meds, then then I say read on intrepid soul, read on!
BROKEN ANKLE
My senses are dull but my mind a vast cauldren of thought. Like an atom crusher, releasing the sub atomic energy of the universe, I am seeing things in my mind’s eye that others can’t see. I am exploring concepts in the library of my cerebellum, once thought unthinkable.
I lift my hand and stare at it. Interesting, I muse to myself. Five individual digits, with an opposable thumb that seperates us from our cousin the apes.
As I ponder my role on the evolutionary chart, I suddenly see a vapor trail swish through the dark. It looks like a neon colored deck of cards shuffling at light speed, one card after the next. I watch the mirage wondering where it began and where it might be going. Suddenlyhe vapor trail vanishes, replaced by my own hand.
I giggle aloud like a moron huffing co2. Now I see why Edgar Allen Poe heard hearts thumping under the carpet. He was throwing back morphine like a 3rd grader popping tick tacks.
Back in the day when my knees worked like God had intended, I played a lot of basketball. I loved the competition and the exercise. Sadly, one of the realities of hoop dreams are the unavoidable ankle injuries.
It was after one of these missteps that I now find myself lying on the couch, my leg elevated in a cast. I am heavilly medicated on prescription pain killers and I feel like I am floating above my own body like a cork bobbing on an angry sea.
I am on my back staring up at a million pyramid shaped speckles of the acoustic ceiling. My eyes dance a nervous jig, from one irregular stalactite to the next. The image above me seems to float in a 3-D collage of confusion. From my vantage point, the ceiling looks like Antarctica must look to the astronauts in the space shuttle flying over head.
“Why are there so many icy pyramids on the ceiling,” I mutter aloud while reaching my hand forward.
“Hey there’s that vapor trail again,” I say as my eye darts to the neon colored shuffle.
At that moment, a blast of pain explodes through my nervous system. Like a Japanese bullet train, metallic and sleek, it rams its way down the synaptic track of my skeletal system.
AAAAAHHH!, I growl as small bits of enamel splinter off my clenched teeth. I reach for the pain quashing LORTABS. I fumble with the child resistant cap clawing it uselessly like a mutant boy with bloody hooks for hands. I am like an epileptic junkie, as my extremities lurch unpredictably.
I manage to get the cap off. The LORTAB spills into my quivering hand. I cram the pill into my mouth letting my saliva tear apart granules of the compressed medicine. I build up an adequate amount of juices in my mouth and then with eyes shut and veins constricting, I force the dissolving narcotic into the opening of my esophagus. I feel the lump clinging to the soft mushy flesh of my throat as it moves towards the dispersal zone of my stomach.
“How’s the ankle A.C.,” the wife asks.
I grimace. “It’s throbbing, like my heart’s inside my leg.”
“It was a freak accident,” I say.
My visual grip on the ceiling starts shifting again, phasing in and out of focus. Another LORTAB induced altered state is kicking into gear.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spot my cat. Her fur is stiff and wet, as she sits there reeling in kitty convulsions. She extends her head forward then violently jerks it back like a feline Linda Blair in the Exorcist. The cat is coughing and gagging, like she’s trying to push a coarse piece of sand paper out of her mouth. Then, like a pimple exploding onto a mirror, the mucous covered hair ball shoots from her tiny face.
SPLAAATTT! The carpet soaks up her cat – purge like a piece of tissue paper on a damp bathroom counter.
“Far out,” I whisper.
I close my eyes and recall the moment that leads to all this pain.
I am in the local gym. I’m hooping like a stud muffin. I get the ball. I fake left, move right and elevate. I get off my shot, and watch as the ball perfectly rotates in slow motion from just inside the arc. The ball is beautifully round, simplistic in design and dynamic in its ability to create synergy among 9 strangers. The Spalding floats over the front of the rim and lightly wrinkles the twine. I smile and begin to come back down.
CRACK!
Everyone hears it. It’s like kindling being snapped at a boy scout jamboree. I go down in a puddle of crying goo. I had come down with all my 180 pounds on the side of my foot. CRACK! With my eyes shut tightly, concentric rings of electricity burst into the black velvet depths before me. I am on fire, sizzling like a strip of Oscar Meyer in scalding grease. I feel like sunburned skin being lowered into a pool of salty brine. My eyes open wide and tears glaze over my eyeballs like car wash water sudsing up your windshield.
From a prone position on the hardwood, I open my eyes. Above me is a semi circle of sweaty faced hoopsters.
“You o.k., man?”
“Did you hear that crack, bad news.”
Their comments are encouraging like telling a diver with the bends he only has a 100 feet of ocean still over his head.
“You gotta walk it off dude.”
“Raise your leg over your head.”
“It’s broke you idiot, we gotta get him to the hospital.”
I felt primal impulses to cry like a baby as I gingerly place a portion of my weight on the foot.
AAAAHHH!, I scream, as a host of ortho-specialists in shorts and high tops gather to support me.
They drive me to the emergency room at Pitt Memorial Hospital, where tobacco money built this shining bastion of healh care. I remember a smoky den of confusion in the waiting room, as miscreants of all sizes, shapes and colors puff on camel extra longs in the ambulance loading zone.
The rest of this tale is vague and skewed with images of blinding white light and nauseating sterility. There are exrays and people tweeking my foot this way and that. To make a long story short, The emergency room doctors tell me that I fracture my ankle in two places. Prepare they say, to be out for 8 weeks. 8 weeks on crutches and a cast to boot.
Bummer.
Hey what’s that electrified blur? Oh, just my hand passing before my eyes again.
Someone pass me another LORTAB!