The Late Bloomer by Ken Baker
Author:Ken Baker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-09-09T10:00:03+00:00
AWAKENING
When I wake again, the first thing I hear is the hissing. It sounds like a tire being inflated and deflated every five seconds. Or maybe it’s a ventilator forcing oxygen into my lifeless lungs because I’m paralyzed. For all I know, my neurosurgeon may have severed one of the dozens of delicate veins and arteries crisscrossing the base of my brain, perhaps causing a stroke or bleeding or damaging the part of my brain that controls speech and language. And maybe the part that regulates my breathing.
I don’t know. Whatever happened—seeing that I am, presumably, alive—the operation must be over. But I am groggy, too exhausted from five hours of anesthetized surgery to wonder whether Dr. Shahinian, my brain mechanic, actually got the tumor out, to even open my eyes a twitching slit, to talk, to move my arms, which someone—a nurse?—has aligned beside me corpselike on the sterile-white hospital blanket. An IV and a few other tubes pierce my right wrist and forearm. All I can think is, Where the hell am I? I can’t moan, can’t even move a single muscle. Then everything goes black.
In a blink, or what seems like a second but just as easily could have been several unconscious hours, I separate my crusty eyelids and see the blurry images of two people standing silently at my bedside; they’re solemn and rigid, much like myself as I stood beside my grandmother’s casket. At least I’m not dead. An oxygen mask is cupped over my mouth like a barnacle, enlivening me with oxygen. My nostrils are stuffed with cotton; I can only suck the mask’s dry air through my mouth, being careful not to choke on the fluid—mucus, blood?—that’s oozing down the back of my throat.
A minute later, the bedside images sharpen into a more defined haze: blond hair, a young woman; dark hair, a short man. I squint into focus, and I recognize them: my girlfriend and my friend Sean, who is wiping tears from his eyes and gently stroking the back of my limp right hand, careful not to touch the IV needle stuck into one of my veins. I curl my fingers around his forefinger, and I hold on.
But what’s that noise? That hissing that won’t stop? It sounds like it’s coming from around my legs. I slide my hand under the blanket and can feel something wrapped around my thighs. It’s hollow, the texture of those plastic floaties my mom made me wear around my three-year-old arms while swimming. Inflatable pants? What the . . . ? No one told me about these. I wiggle my toes and bend my knees a smidgen. Okay, good; I can move. At least it’s not a breathing machine, at least I’m not paralyzed.
All I can do now is stare at the ceiling and wait for the discomfort to subside. God, I hope that I not only will survive but that, once I recover from this postoperative trauma, I also will be able to live
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