39. Pain

When I eventually became more aware of my surroundings, I asked the orderlies to move my bed farther away from the hospital room’s window.  I told them if a plane crashed into the building  I’d be engulfed in a fiery explosion, just like two weeks before.  They looked doubtful.  They moved my bed.

Mornings were a little easier  since the doctors doubled my pain meds.  A short time before the crew arrived to change the bandages covering my burns,  a tall freckled nurse breezed  through the door,  carefully  pulled back the  bed sheet … any jarring movement sent me into a storm of  pain … and plunged two hypodermics of  Demerol into me.  How lovely was this angel of mercy, I thought,   as I waited for her each day after breakfast.  How sweet the juice she pumped into my body.  How wonderful did the world become as the ambrosia worked its magic in my brain, sweeping up the pain and dread and ushering it out onto the sidewalk like a guest who had stayed too long.  Twenty minutes after that sweet girl with my morning potion left and the burn unit team arrived for our daily ritual of  excruciating pain  and bandage  changing, I was tree-top high, laughing and all but singing.  Addiction nipped close at my heels, but I couldn’t have cared less. 

It wasn’t long before they took away my Demerol.
“Gotta do it,” said the doctor. “You’ll still have the pills.”
True, the pain was much less by then, but I missed my sacramental mid- morning high. 

At night a strong concoction of chemicals sent me blissfully off to sleep, shooting me instantly into an abyss of nothingness.  But in the morning at dawn, as I lay and watched the light creep through the window, I shuddered as I saw the figure of death stalking me.  I knew death.  I had recently met him.  I still remembered his cold arms wrapped around  me, clutching me to his lifeless heart as I tried to run away and escape the dismal waltz.  Still in my twenties, with little warning,   I made the awful discovery I was mortal.  A local newspaper told of the few on our airplane who miraculously eluded death.  But only for a time, I knew.   Death was real, and he promised me that someday, somewhere, he’d be waiting.  He scared me silly.