Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
She used love and hate extensively. “I love pizza.” “I hate peas.” “I love Ricky Gervais.” “I hate heavy metal.”
He couldn’t remember her saying that she liked something. It always seemed like either love or hate. They seemed like narrow borders on a broad wasteland.
Seeing a stream of ants on the picnic table, Brett began crushing them with his thumb, smiling as he did.
The guy he didn’t know — there were a lot of them at this company picnic — came by and stopped, looking down, sunglasses mirroring the scene in shiny black. “What’re you doing?”
Brett thought it was obvious so he nuzzled a cold beer for a contemplative minute. “Killing ants. They’re invading the picnic. I’m saving the picnic.” He chortled. He was like a superhero.
“Don’t you know that every small creature you kill breeds a new cancer cell in you?”
Squelching his alarm, Brett snorted. “Bullshit. You made that up.” He was ready to stand up and punch the guy. How’d he know about his cancer? He’d just been told last Thursday. He hadn’t told anyone else yet.
“No, I recognized it and spoke it for you. Sorry about your cancer but you brought it on yourself.” He walked off.
Brett said, “Wait. That’s not fair. No one ever told me.”
The other turned to Brett but kept walking backward. “The ants didn’t think it was fair, either.” Pivoting, he strode away, leaving Brett to stare at the ants and wonder.
Awoke at two in the morning with some issues with urinating, went to the hospital at seven, was referred to another hospital at nine, and was discharged and home with catheter in my bladder by one fifteen.
When I awoke at two, I was thirsty. Had a drink and a pee. The pee was problematic because it was a tiny trickle. Drank more water shortly after that, and entered a prolong state of tiny trickles and increasing pain. The pain was in my lower back, flank, and groin, and shut down my ability to sit or stand in comfort. I headed to the hospital with my wife shortly before seven.
Once there, I went into emergency care. I stripped naked, put on a backless hospital, and introduced to a bed. A bladder scan showed my bladder holding eight hundred plus CCs. A full bladder is about one hundred CCs.
My blood pressure was two-thirty over something. A pain med was injected into my right ass cheek by my hip, and an anti-nausea med was given. Attempts were made to enter my bladder with a catheter. First, a size sixteen was employed. It was painful having a catheter pushed up my urethra through my penis. Everyone kept telling me, “Breathe through it.” My wife said, “Pretend you’re giving birth.”
The med team met a wall which appeared to be an enraged prostate gland. The sixteen wouldn’t go into the bladder, but I pissed out a bunch during the attempt. A new bladder scan showed I was down to six hundred CCs. Between that reduction and the pain meds, I was comfortable, and my BP was down to 180/130.
With a numbing agent first injected into my urethra, another attempt using a smaller catheter was made, and failed, and resulted in some bleeding from my penis. The fourteen size catheter lacked the strength and rigidity necessary to reach the bladder. Consulting me, they decided to try another sixteen. This time, a doctor would try. After having the same results, a call was made to a urologist at a sister facility and a transfer referral to the other hospital’s emergency room was issued. I then puked several times. More anti-nausea meds were given via an IV. I was discharged forty-five minutes later.
It was a ginger walk back to the car.
I’d been warned to keep my eyes closed during the thirteen mile drive to avoid nausea. I ended up retching five times once I was in the next emergency room. My stomach didn’t have material to puke.
One again, I was led to a room, took everything off, and put on a backless gown. A new bladder scan showed I was down to five hundred eighty-three CCs of urine in my bladder, but I wasn’t having any pain, thanks to the meds. BP was lower. A new attempt to reach my bladder was attempted. This time we went up to a twenty. Yowza, that hurt. It failed, but more urine was drained out. Hurrah. A urologist arrived with a plan to put a camera up my urethra to see what was going on and determine why they couldn’t reach my bladder.
I was given Fentanyl. The plan was a long, messy, and painful effort, but attempt number five worked in the end. A guide wire was introduced. The guide wire managed to reach the bladder. With it and the camera in place, a catheter was inserted. At last, my bladder was emptied. After that, a nurse gave me my new tube and bag with instructions on how to use it. I was given a cloth to clean up and then dressed. As before, my bed and garments were soaked.
That was my morning and early afternoon. Back home, I tested my movement limits while my wife made me a small meal of scrambled eggs with toast. We joked about how little my poor pecker had looked during these procedures, and how many strangers had handled it that day. I drank twelve ounces of water, ate, and then explored my new catheter and bag arrangement. Some fluid was in my bag, but more was in my tube. Gravity wasn’t letting it empty into the bag. Removing the bag and tube and examining it, I realized it the bag was reversed, which pinched off the receiving end. I fixed that, and now have a steady flow going into the bag.
Through it all, my med team were professionals and polite. They communicated with me about everything, constantly apologized for my pain, and checked on me. Most supporting and powerful, though, was my wife. She made a huge difference by being there with me throughout the day, talking to me, holding my hand when possible, or rubbing my feet.
All this curtailed any writing and walking efforts today. That’s the downside. The upside is that I’m not in any pain, although there’s a small pain where the catheter is in my bladder and bending over and walking have their difficulties. I should have this out in ten days, and then will proceed with addressing the prostate issue.
They — you know who they are — are always talking about how closely we’re connected. Here’s close for you. You cough from your chest, spewing out air, phlegm, and sputum, and at the same time, you fart, and a little urine squirts out of your urethra.
That’s connected.
I sat down on the toilet to do my morning thing. Instantly one of the three household cats graced me with his attention. One always does. Should I get in there and close the door before one arrives, a pitiful protest begins outside the door.
Boo wound himself back and forth against my legs while purring, meowing, and tossing glances at me. I said, “Will I never be allowed to do my business at home without one of you helping me? It’s irritating sometimes, you know. How would you like it if I petted you while you were in the litter box doing your business?”
I swear that his purr when up twenty decibels.
“What are your goals today?”
It was the female without an accent asking. Accents and the apparent sexes their voices displayed were the only way of identifying the daily taskmasters. Identifying was a weak expression, as they remained nameless and without form.
He scratched and swallowed. He needed to get up and drink water but also pee. Was that ironic? No, coincident.
Goals. “I want to get up and pee.” That would get him no points but they didn’t remonstrate him. Still, sharp past responses made him moderate his approach.
“Write, of course,” he said.
“You always do that,” she said.
Did he imagine that she sighed? “Still counts,” he said.
Silence answered. They weren’t pleased.
He said, “Wash, vacuum, and gas the cars.”
A male overseer said, “Good,” with boredom as thick as flies on shit.
“Yard work.”
“Hmmm.”
“Finish reading a book.”
“Oh.” The female. “What book?”
“Donna Leon, The Waters of Eternal Youth”.
“Very good.” Happiness seemed to shower him. “That’s a good goal. Good luck.”
He was released. Opening his eyes, he sat up. Of all that he’d said, what would most count was reading the book. That was his number one priority. He was hungry and needed enough points to get a decent meal. He sensed that if he failed to read the book, they’d punish him.
Draining his bladder in the water closet, he snorted and chortled. His mind was a strange overseer.
embalmed with denigration
drowning in clichés
paralyzed with expectations
frustrated by delays
harpooned with envy
mesmerized by guilt
sucked into disappointment
sunken in the silt
riding all the waves
hoping in belief
searching for the way
getting stuck on a beach
Ready for a rant of self-pity and exasperation? It’s all about me. Yeah, you’ve been warned.
So, sick. Nothing threatening like a terminal disease, just a trifecta of irritations, a head cold, the flu, and then a kidney stone. With each, I thought, this will pass, and then I prayed that the last one, the kidney stone, passed fast (which it seems to have done).
Three weeks mostly killed except for a few days when I caved to the obligation to defy my body, throwing ripples of confusion and discontinuity into my carefully constructed writing existence. I could little practice the rituals of writing, of walking to clear my mind, establishing a mental framework for walling myself into a solitary zone where I coexist with word storms, of ordering coffee and sitting down to tap, tap, tap, forwards and backwards, creating and correcting, of staring out windows and trying to understand WTF the muses are trying to tell me.
Illness didn’t slow my inner writer and army of muses. Death might slow them down, but not minor illnesses. They came in waves, expecting to be released or entertained. That doing nothing routine was unacceptable, a position strengthened because my illness habits called for me to read, sleep, dream, awaken, and read, punctuated by episodes of eating, drinking tea, and the sickness processes that my body demanded in which it hurled things out. Nothing like reading to calm the writer, right? Wrong.
Perhaps, worse of all, was the limited coffee. My taste buds warred with the coffee’s flavor. Variations failed. Spiced herbal teas were substituted, but they’re not coffee, ya know?
All of that seems cleared away today. Did my walk. Got my coffee. It still doesn’t taste right, but I’ll work through it. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
Failing and rising, you select a place in the curl and fall on your ass, get back up and try again
hunting balance, trying to keep the ride going or find another one
but the winds die and fall, and the seas grow tranquil
leaving you becalmed and lost
you can wait for the next wave or you can paddle out to meet them
pushing yourself to find a wave to ride
failing and rising, paddling and jumping up, striving to get your balance and keep riding
crashing and going under, afraid that you’ll never come up again
getting up and trying again
riding in search of a beginning
and end
There I am, in a bathroom with George Clooney. We’re dressed in matching outfits: tight white shorts that end in mid-thigh, black knee-high socks, and blue Oxford shirts open at the collar.
I’m watching us from one side. That perspective never changes. The bathroom doesn’t have a fourth wall because we’re on a movie set. Clooney is filming and waiting to go out, and I’m sitting on the commode with the seat down, reading a book. He’s doing a series of scenes that requires him to go out, react to something or throw off a one-liner, and then return. We speak between scenes but I have no idea what was said.
The dream was about that quick, too. With a flick of the dream selector, I was now on another set. On this one, a woman in a sparkling silver suit escorted me to a man in a tuxedo at a control panel. Behind us was a huge wall of large monitors.
I was in a spotlight. The impression that I had was that I was on a television game show, which confused me. I asked about it, and the man and woman clarified, “No, this is your dream selection headquarters.”
Between the two of them working as a team, I was told, “What kind of dream would you like tonight? Prophecy, zombies, monsters, disasters, school, alien interaction, offbeat humor, adventure or thriller episodes, something mysterious or new-age? Name it, we have everything.”
My confusion remained too deep for a quick response. I needed to validate what I thought was happening. “I’m in a dream but in this dream, you’re giving me the option of choosing what to dream?”
The man and woman laughed. The woman said. “You act like you’ve never been here before.”
“Have I?”
“You come here every night,” she said.
The man said, “Yes, usually several times.”
“Why I don’t remember that?”
The man said, “It’s your dream. You decide what to forget.”
I was left then thinking about my recent streak of dreams. They’d been of the episodic adventure type. Sometimes I’m not even apparently in them but watch as others act and react. Then I asked, “If I can choose what to dream, why have I made the dream decisions that I did?”
Looking amused, the man and woman shrugged. “What can I say?” the man said. “They’re your dreams. You decide where you go.”
Dream end.
