Chapter 16

I never fully understood what happened to me or what they did to me in that room. The clock on the wall said a certain time; there was some friendly banter with the doctor who took photographs of my face for the "Before" in "Before and After." There was some more friendly banter with the anesthesiologist who ironically broke his nose years ago and never bothered to fix it. And there was yet more friendly banter with the nurse as they wheeled the stretcher down busy hallways to the operating room:

"Have you had anything to eat? Juice, crackers?"

"Are you offering me any? 'Cause I'd sure like some - haven't had anything to eat since last night."

Then there was the awkward shift from the stretcher onto the operating table, trying not to flash my ass to the operating crew as I struggled in one of those silly hospital gowns. The hairnet I wore was too big for my head. Then I saw another clock say a certain time and the anesthesiologist's hand came down on my face with a transparent mask that shot oxygen into my nose, winds that scattered the dry leaves down the hallways in my body.

Then Dr. Who appeared again, telling me that he was going to spray medicine down my nose to help with any bleeding. Suddenly, rivers of acid were rushing down the hallways in my body, searing away all the dry leaves.

"Holy shit!"

There was ringing laughter in the operating room at my response, perhaps from the doctors moving about, but the ringing seemed to come from the equipment. Everything was glaring bright: the machines, the lamps, the walls. Everything was antiseptic. Everything detached.

Somebody was injecting something in a tube connected to me. It would make me sleep, he said. There was a digital timer on the wall next to the clock but I didn't know what it was measuring. Then I looked up and the nurse appeared to be a walking avocado in her green smock with scores of avocados printed all over her or were they lemons it was hard to tell what the timer was timing perhaps another world where someone feared for me like a person paid to cry at a funeral because I never noticed the fear or the absence of fear but only that suddenly life mattered less and less and meaning was sliding helplessly off the bright walls and then

nothing.


I opened my eyes and it was another room, one of those curtained bays, overlooking a central station with doctors and nurses moving like traffic. A clock on the wall was whispering that an hour and a half of my life had been detached, beyond reach. Dr. Who appeared and told me that my nose was now straight and that I would see him again in nine days to remove the nose splint. Thank you, doctor. Then came the juice and crackers.