In The Blood

Taco Tim

(Tim)

Waking up in a hospital is always nerve-wracking, no matter how many times you've done it—and I've done it several times in life, having had an overnight stay each time a bee or wasp got friendly with me. No matter how you look at it, you're coming from a calm , relaxed, and asleep state only to get jerked back to real life. And when you're in a hospital, clearly, you're having health problems of some sort, are discombobulated for a few minutes, probably in pain, and definitely don't feel good.

I awoke slowly and with a groan. For one thing, I have never been a fan of mornings; for another, I did not want to be awake, and my shoulder and back were killing me. I blinked in the light, wondering who in the hell had turned them on for me and why. Nothing anybody needs to see in the morning except for the backs of their eyelids anyway. I squinted out the window trying to think through the pain and recall what city we were in. Way the clouds looked, the Pacific Northwest with over three hundred rainy days a year. My eyes fell on chairs and medical equipment and memories began flooding in again. Hospital. I was in LA, just a couple of days after my life turned into a nightmare, ending up with Rob being shot and barely squeaking out of it alive; a day after I'd come to my breaking point and purposefully walked out into busy traffic hoping a vehicle would put an end to my misery. None had, of course, and I wound up with a psych that I'd desperately needed for a week. The ketamine treatment and overdosing on my meds. Stupid, Tim, stupid move. Don't do it again. Probably under lock and key here anyway to save me from myself.

I tried to gently rub an eye into focus but you can't exactly rub twenty-twenty vision out of nearsighted eyes. I ended up dropping my arm to my side with another groan. Ugh... shoulder... back... shoulder... back... I wasn't sure which hurt worse. They were both about more than I could handle. I tried to lay there completely still for a few minutes like a stiff log. A painful stiff log. Ugh, save me...

"Um... good morning?" a tiny voice came from the doorway.

Afraid to move my neck, I grunted at the ceiling, "Morning."

"Um... I-I'm Nicole," she stammered.

OK, who is Nicole? A nurse? A breakfast bringer? Coffee—and water—would be great. I was awfully thirsty. I moved my mouth up and down a few times to try to get glands to work right in there. "Tim."

She giggled at that. "I know... well, uh... I reckon I'll your, err... nurse today."

I squinted at the light fixture, wondering if I could get a nurse who was more certain of herself. Or himself. Guess Sam had already gone home. I liked him too, even if he did complain that I moved around a lot. Well, Sam, you got your wish. I was in too much pain to move. "You gonna come into the room or just stand there?"

"I, um, am in the room," Nicole said.

Really? I started to twist my head to the right. Oh God, my neck. My shoulders, my back, my neck. Sure enough, she was standing there just within the doorway, looking at me like she'd never seen a patient before. "How long you been in nursing?"

"Five years," she answered.

Well, she ought to know what she was doing then. "I need pain medicine. And water. And glasses." Wait, I didn't have them. "I mean, my contacts. And coffee. And breakfast. In that order." With a glance back at the window, I added, "And no more rain. Anything but this constant dreariness."

"I, um... can do, well... most of that." Nicole still sounded unsure of that. "I can't... do anything about the rain."

Yeah, that was a tall order. "Wishful thinking. How 'bout the rest of it, though?"