Under the Knife(106)

Awful didn’t begin to cover it. No adjective she knew of in the entire English language did. Awful was just a word. What she was experiencing was something else, entirely.

She wanted to cough.

And gag.

And puke.

And scream.

She wanted to do all of them at the same time.

Badly—more badly, it seemed, than she’d ever wanted to do anything, ever, in her entire life.

But she couldn’t cough, gag, puke, or scream. She tried, God how she tried, but she couldn’t do any of these things.

Why? Why couldn’t she?

Bafflement.

Fear.

Pain.

Why?

She opened her eyes.

No, she didn’t.

Because her eyes were already open.

When had that happened?

She didn’t remember opening her eyes.

She looked to the left.

No, she didn’t.

Because she couldn’t look to the left.

She couldn’t move her eyes.

She realized, then, that she was biting down on some kind of tube. It filled her mouth and poked out of her lips, so that she was sucking on it.

What is that?

It tasted like plastic.

One big plastic Popsicle.

She reached up, to pull the plastic Popsicle from her mouth. That’s when things got worse.

Much worse.

Because she couldn’t move her arm.

Really couldn’t move it. Not because she was tied down, like this morning when she’d woken up in the operating room. She couldn’t move it because her muscles weren’t responding.

She knew, then, that she was paralyzed.

She sucked in her breath.

Which—

(Oh my GOD!)

—proved impossible, because she couldn’t breathe, either.

She heard a familiar whoosh, the sound of a respirator, and, at the same time, felt her lungs expand with fresh, oxygen-rich air, as if she were inhaling deeply, but doing none of the work that normally came along with it.

Her lungs filled to capacity, the whooshing ceased; and then her lungs collapsed in on themselves, expelling the stale air through the tube in an agreeable barter of oxygen for carbon dioxide. There was a pause, then the respirator whooshed, and the cycle repeated itself.

Terror and panic were, like awful, only words. Abstract concepts. She felt as if she’d been buried alive, trapped, with tons of earth pressing down on her body.

Her torso was cold, very cold, from the top border of her pubic hair on up, and she suspected (just suspected, after all, since she couldn’t look or feel with her hands) that she was naked from the waist north. Not so the southern part of her—the bottom of her hips, and her legs, and her feet—which felt, by contrast, relatively warm. Downright comfortable, compared to the rest of her.

She heard voices. The first one she recognized immediately, and it filled her with revulsion and dread.

“Is she awake?”

That one was Finney.

“Can’t tell for sure. But I’ve disabled the isoflurane.”

The second voice was … the man who called himself Sebastian, she thought. A little harder to be sure because she’d heard him talk only once. “There’s no way to directly measure her level of consciousness with the paralytics on board.” Yes, that was him. She was certain of it now. “But her heart rate and blood pressure are way, way up, just suddenly spiked like crazy. So, yes—I think she’s awake. Let’s try a noxious stimulus.”

Something sharp (a hypodermic needle?) poked into her right side.

Ouch!

She couldn’t say the word out loud, but the heart monitor protested for her by quickening the pace of its beeps in response to her pain.

“Okay. See the monitor? Her heart rated jumped when I stuck her with the needle. So as best as I can tell, boss, she’s awake. Or at least as awake as she’s going to be.”

Oh my God oh my God oh my God

She was paralyzed and intubated.

And she was wide awake.

She was WIDE AWAKE.

WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO DO WITH ME NOW?

As if in answer, Finney pushed his face down into Rita’s, inches away from her nose. It was weird seeing him in the flesh. It seemed less intimate somehow than hearing him inside her head.

“Dr. Wu.” He looked much the same as she remembered. Perhaps a few more toes added to the crow’s-feet around his eyes, a blush of grey at the temples. “I’m assuming you can hear me right now.”

(oh God oh God oh God)

He was speaking toward her right ear. Her good ear.

“You understand, now, I think, the depth of my feelings on the matters that have transpired between us.”

He sounded calm, much calmer than the last time he’d spoken to her. And so formal. But then he was always formal, as if he were a college professor lecturing a large class. “So I see no need to draw things out. As you’ve probably realized, we’ve intubated and paralyzed you. Like one of your patients. I imagine you feel very helpless right now.” A pause. “Just like Jenny was helpless.”

(oh God oh God oh God)

Her heart rate, already elevated, went higher. The beeps on the monitor came fast and furious. The respirator blew air in, and her lungs pushed it out.

“Yes. I can see by the heart monitor that you can indeed hear me. So. Regarding these matters between us. I’ve been vexed, Dr. Wu, by the lack of a meaningful punishment for your actions. I’ve always believed that the punishment should fit the crime. I’ve spent a long time thinking about it. Jenny was helpless, like you are now. Jenny suffered from her surgery, then she died.”