Summer Heat [part two]

Most of my life, I have lived understanding that when one wakes up from a dream, one opens one's eyes, and slowly comes back to reality. Then one day, I had some surgery, where I had to go under general anesthesia.

Time ceased to mean anything to me that day.

That horrid feeling when I am counting backwards, as asked to do, that I had been lided to. Then suddenly the world is upside down. I know in that split second that my very life hangs in the balance.

"Rob hold still!" I hear but I am not fooled.  The bastards were trying to kill me.

I reach out blindly, and grab the nearest weapon, a sword stuck into the ground next to me.  Covered in blood.  Blood dripping down my arm and down my chin, I can even taste it.  A monster of a man with four arms tries to hold me down while another stabs me repeatedly.  I know I won't go without taking several of these bastards with me.  I pull the sword up and begin thrusting into any flesh I can reach.  Slice and stab, I hear a crash and a scream.  Blood quirts out and flows freely again, from a hole in my arm.

"Rob, please!  Calm down!  Do you hear me Rob?"  One of the monsters tries to imitate my own wife's voice.  Nice try. I think to myself, and stab in the general direction of the faker.

I blank out again, I am doomed.

The real conspiracy then happens with the "story" of reality I was asked to swallow.  Then I begin to realise I am in the hospital bed, it is storming outside, and my face is bandaged.

"What the fuck?"  I ask politely.

"What do you mean?" Melissa, sitting in a chair nearby answers.

"What happened?  Are we dead?"  Apparently the general anesthesia is wearing off but none too fast.

"You tried to kill everyone again."

Crap. I knew in the next breath what had happened.  I came in to the hospital for a simple operation, and I guess the reality I had feared, was the reality I woke up to.

"Did I hurt anyone?"

"Only an orderly.  You stabbed him with the IV pole."

"Is he ok?"

"Seven stiches, but we did warn them."

"Yes my dear we did."  I shook my head, and Melissa didn't know what else to say, when a nurse came in tentatively.

"Mr. Krabbe, do you need anything?"  She said, holding back a few feet.

"No.  Do I know you."

"Oh, no, not really.  You tried to kill me a few hours ago, but other than that, no."

"I'm sorry.  I warned the anesthesiologist, I react to the meds.  I asked them to tie me down before they brought me out of it."

The nurse wasn;t sure what to say, but then offered, "We had a meeting of the surgical team, where we were instructed that if you come to the hospital again, we are to do that, yes."

I nodded, and so did Melissa, with great understanding.  I had broken a dental nurses arm the first time it had happened.  "Drug induced fight or flight defense panic," they called it.  This time I found out no one was really hurt but it could have been a disaster, had my own mother not come in and talking to me in her critical mommy voice, me a man of 46 years old, talked me into believing I was not being murdered by a gang of thugs, and it was ok to calm down, and let go of the doctor, who I had been holding by the throat.

Then SLAM, flash, thunder and a rumble, and I am back in my office, and I hear the rain pouring down; its seven years later, and this coffee is the best I have tasted in a long while.

A sixteen hour day staring at my computers, needs to be over now, and I get up and walk slowly into the house.  I need to sleep. Insomnia had been my companion again for the past few weeks.  Tomorrow will be an important day.  I don't have any clue at the time, as I close the door behind me and go into my living room, but the next day would be a day I would never forget.

For now I need rest.