Don't Shoot Me, I'm Just The Meter Reader! - Jonathan Logan (read me a book .txt) 📗

hospital, and a doctor swaggered into the x-ray room to see what was going on.
“Give him a shot of valium and Demerol, dammit!” he barked.
“But he only has a kidney stone, doctor,” the nurse asserted.
“I don’t care if he has a paper cut,” the doctor exclaimed, “He’s bothering the other patients—and me!”
Previously, I told you about how I didn’t like and trust social workers, and I felt the same way about the cops and, for the record, I have to add nurses to that list. I mean, a crazed gang member gunned me down on the mean streets of Los Angeles and almost certainly paralyzed me for life, and this idiotic nurse told the doctor I had a kidney stone. I already had an intravenous line attached to my arm, so once the nurse injected the Valium and Demerol into me, it didn’t take long for the drugs to reach my brain. Almost immediately, I felt like I was stretched out on a massive marshmallow, and I was so relaxed that if a man dressed in a gorilla costume and brandishing a chainsaw had sprinted toward me screaming that he was going to cut my nuts off, I would’ve chuckled. Although the drugs had distorted my perception of objects tremendously, and it sounded as if people were talking at a snail's pace and in echoing voices, I was conscious enough to make out the dialogue between two doctors.
“That isn’t a kidney stone; it’s a water spot on the film.”
“Yes, I see. Well, anyone could make a mistake like that. I guess we’d better send him off for an MRI then.”
I wasn’t too crazy about doctors, either.
On the stroll to the dimly lit and cold MRI room, to guarantee I wouldn’t do anymore screaming, the doctor gave me another dose of Valium and Demerol. The medication zonked me to the point that I scarcely remember somebody placing me on a slab and then thrusting me like a sausage into a gigantic donut-shaped sheath. I swore that I wouldn’t add a great deal of sex to this story, but for lack of a better analogy, I could only compare the event to a woman inserting a vibrator into her—you know—private area. Yes, I was drugged, and in a stupor, but I maintain that I heard the voice of God inside that uncomfortably confined tunnel.
“Jonathan. Mr. Logan. Can you hear me?” a velvety, angelic female voice whispered.
“Humph.” I garbled.
“I’ll take that to mean yes.” The saintly voice continued, “I’m going to need you to lay motionless for forty-five minutes. Do you understand?”
“Uh thump sup.”
“I’ll take that to mean you understand.” After a short break, she added, “You’ll hear some loud sounds; don’t let them startle you.”
Did she say loud sounds? The racket, the pulsating noise, was comparable to a construction worker using a jackhammer a few inches away from my head. Then I passed out.
I know, I know, you’re asking yourself how it’s possible for me to pass out with that deafening racket. The drugs were potent, I was cozy, and I just went to sleep. Besides, what is sleep anyway? It’s just the mind’s way of preparing us for death, and with a bullet in my back, I was undoubtedly close to being dead.
After I awoke, I observed a dumpy-looking, bearded Greek doctor sitting at my bedside. I knew he was Greek because the name Nicholas Pythagoras was on his nametag, and I knew he was a doctor because he had the letters MD after his name. He stuck out a closed fist, twisted it palm up, relaxed his fingers, and displayed a fat threaded bolt-looking contraption.
“This is the Ray titanium cage,” Dr. Pythagoras declared in this raspy voice, smiling enthusiastically enough to reveal coffee-stained teeth, “stronger than steel; lighter than a Q-tip.”
“A Q-tip?” I groaned, bewildered and in pain. “Who are you? What the hell are you talking about?” I took the titanium cage from his hand; he reeked of rubbing alcohol. “This is what you removed from my back? What was I shot with—a bazooka?”
“Shot? Bazooka?” Doctor Pythagoras scratched his beard and a cluster of white flakes waltzed across the shaft of light flickering through the window. “I guess those drugs work rather well.”
“Am I dead?” I wondered. “Is this heaven?”
“No, you're still alive, but there’s a chance you’ll die. I mean, I have to cut open your abdomen, take out you intestines, remove the shattered disks—L5 and S1—and replace them with two of these cages. Then I put the intestines back in, and stitch you up. They call it anterior lumbar interbody fusion; the whole operation takes ten to twelve hours, it’s risky and it’s painful. Afterwards, you could suffer from Failed Back Surgery Syndrome, and, of course, there is the potential for Retrograde Ejaculation.”
"Ejaculation? Are we talking sperm here?" I cried.
"Oh, yes. They'll squirt in instead of out, into your bladder." Dr. Pythagoras demonstrated by running his hand from my private area to my stomach. "But don't worry, you can still enjoy sex."
“Did the bullet cause this?” I demanded to know. “Why would somebody shoot me? I’m just the meter reader!”
“You weren’t shot, Jonathan. You blew out your back when you lifted that heavy plate,” he enlightened me; “I’ve called your wife, and told her I was going to operate.” Doctor Pythagoras’ stomach grumbled louder than I did. “But not until after lunch. There’s a gyro and some baklava waiting for me down in the cafeteria,”
All of a sudden, the curtain around my bed flew open, some older battle-axe-of-a-nurse came blustering in with an opinion as negative as my bank account just before payday, spouting some baloney about it being shift change, and she required to check my vital signs before she could clock out. Doctor Pythagoras scurried out of there, off to eat his lunch no doubt, leaving me alone with nurse nasty.
“What do I get for lunch?” I questioned.
“Surgical patients don’t eat,” she barked, “And don’t be asking for anymore pain medicine because you don’t need it!”
Do you recall how I said I didn’t like social workers, cops, and nurses? Well, I need to add doctors to that list, which, by the way, is a list that seems to be getting larger by the minute. I mean, I guess it’s kind of an over-generalization for me to say all social workers, cops, doctors, and nurses are terrible because I’ve met quite a few excellent ones, but, at that time, I wasn’t pleased with any of them.
Anyway, I let old battleaxe finish doing her vital signs and then I closed my eyes and daydreamed, waiting for my wife to arrive, and waiting for them to wheel me into the operating room. I’ve always been a dreamer; I’ve spent a lot of my life staring into space and visualizing what might’ve been if I had chosen a different path in life.
Instead of daydreaming, I wanted to be pumped full of more drugs and allowed to go to sleep, but the battleaxe nurse wouldn’t give me the drugs, and she wouldn’t turn off the goddamn light shining into my face. I lay there and listened to monitors bleeping and the occasional shriek and whimpering of the other patients, and breathed in that freaking stench of alcohol and disease.
I had a lot of time to mull over my life, and I smiled broadly when I thought about my children, especially when they were small and they would pick the green strawberries from my garden. I would fall down laughing and chase them around the yard; they were so adorable. I wish I could’ve made time stand still. Wouldn’t it be a marvelous way to spend eternity, hanging out with your kids, when they’re young and cute? But, alas, my mind drifted to other times and other places, to people who came into my life, affected me, and then became nothing more than wonderful or dreadful memories.
Some astonishing things occurred in my dreams— in reality, I’m not sure that they were dreams at all—I mean, technically, we’re all just passing through an event; an event that one day will be completely ended, gone forever. But, for now, everything seemed so vivid, so valid, and so vibrant.
I opened my eyes for a moment, and I saw a young man clad in blue scrubs; tattoos of nude women—in living color—covered his arms, his jet-black hair was spiked, and he had a gold ring pierced through his lower lip.
“Those are incredible tattoos,” I exclaimed. “I always wanted to get one, but I was afraid of the pain.”
“Where you’re going,” he guaranteed me, smiling, and adjusting the flow of the anesthesia, “you’ll feel no pain, and you won’t see anything; you’ll just sleep.”
But, he was mistaken: I was wide-awake. I didn’t go to sleep; I sat up on the table, gazed around at the doctors and nurses dressed in blue scrubs and wearing white masks over their noses and mouths, and I asked them what they were doing. They didn’t answer, so I slid down off the table, shuffled over to a comfortable recliner on the opposite side of the room, and proceeded to watch them slice through my lower abdomen as if it were a pork chop. It was extremely grisly watching my blood spurting out all over the place—I mean, goddamn, I could hardly stand the sight of too much blood oozing out of my steak—but it was extraordinarily unbearable with that freaking country-western music playing. Goddamn Garth Brooks. I hated that guy. I decided it was best if I high-tailed it out of that freezing-freaking-cold operating room and went for a stroll. I stood up, turned, and walked right through the wall. That’s the best part of astral projection: the ability to slide through walls as if they were made out of Swiss cheese and to travel swiftly from one place to another as if the whole universe was no bigger than the inside of a closet.


...work in progress...


Imprint

Publication Date: 07-31-2010

All Rights Reserved

Dedication:
For my daughter, Maddy.