3: My Left Arm
The pain is still a garishly colored wild animal, glaring at me from across the room, teeth bared, ready to pounce. “The doctor said I could have a morphine pump for the pain,” I say with a whine in my voice I immediately hate. How pain can twist everything in your life. “I’m afraid we have only one on this service and your roommate has it,” the nurse says with a hint of apology.
My roommate?
I turn my head to the right and there is a youngish guy in the other bed. He looks like a bum. His long, greasy, black hair tumbles over his pillow. He is thin, sallow, unshaven, mean-looking, with small, dark eyes that dart about the room apparently defending against something. His thin body is outlined in the sheet that covers him. He has small scars on his face and neck.
“He’s here for drug detox again,” says the nurse, still apologetic. ’And he has MY morphine pump??’ I want to scream but somehow hold my tongue. My roommate was every nasty stereotype of the loser druggie who demands what he wants while giving back nothing other than hatred. Just as I am falling off to sleep a wheelchair arrives and I am taken down to Radiology. This is just as my last Percocets are wearing off, I realize with a jolt of panic. I am parked just outside Radiology and abandoned. The pain comes back, horrible and tearing. I start to cry with it.
For the next two days I am trapped in the same room with my raging druggie roommate, a miserable excuse for a human being who screams 24 hours a day at the staff. “I want more morphine, you f****** assholes!” “I’m leaving now unless you give me what I want!” “You f****** bitch! Get over here!” “I’m leaving! I’m calling Social Services! You can’t treat me like this!” “I need MORE drugs!” *brief episode of sobbing and self-pity* then “You’re treatment SUCKS!” “You bastards! They give me better than this at the free clinic!” (like he’s paying for this hospital stay) “I’m calling my councilman!” All this delivered non-stop in a sob-punctuated shriek while storming around the room with the morphine pump on a little trolley, following him around like a small dog on a leash running to keep up with its master. MY morphine pump. So the next two days pass horribly, a blur of my own pain and the torture this drugged-out POS is inflicting. I had never before thought much about drug addicts beyond a vague disapproval. By the end of the second day (and night) I want this one to die. Life’s like that. Get a big dose up close and you’ll be astonished how quickly your opinions change...
From "What I Saw After the Crash"
Good heavens!!!
I have a few drug allergies. One of which is codeine. Recently found out can’t have N 2O.
After your story I would not worry at all if my next drug allergy turned out to be morphine.