Chapter III. The Hell Is Going On

I woke up because of the terrible pain in my stomach. There was nothing smarter I could do – I began to groan, frightening my roommates. I was still lying and had those tubes inside of me, so I almost couldn’t move.

One of the guys woke up. And on his face I saw the struggle which was inside of him. He tried to choose – to kill me with a pillow or to call for the doctor. But he turned out to be merciful and went with the second choice. I put him in my friends-list for it.

The nurse came and made an injection. I slept for a half an hour and then woke up again. The pain became stronger. The nurse came again and said that I didn’t let her sleep well. I thought: ‘Your problems’ but said: ‘One more injection, please’. But she said that drugs have a property to end and that I must endure a bit. Just 4-5 hours. I thought that they might have sold the drugs or used it for themselves. That’s why they didn’t have enough for patients. And I promised to myself to tell about that strange hospital in police when I recover. It didnt make it any easier for me. Then one of the guys suggested sharing his dose of painkiller medicine with me. It was not as strong as I had taken before, but, of course, I agreed. The nurse who already hated me made an injection in my buttock. I stopped feeling my leg but the pain was still there. And nobody came to me again that night. I was lying on my back with my legs bent above my stomach (because it hurt a little less that way) and the blanket clenched between my teeth. I will never forget that night. At 5 o’clock in the morning I got my dose and just fell into darkness again. And I didn’t know what was prepared for me on Wednesday.

The doctor who performed the surgery came in the morning. He asked how I was and I lied that I was O.K, but really I felt awful. He began to examine me, pushing on my stomach with his fingers. Maybe he was expected blood to pour out of my new scars. Then he dictated a long list of medicines and procedures for me to the nurse. I asked him when those tubes would be removed from me but the considered my question as off-topic and didn’t answer anything. Also I heard a strange word ‘A probe’. ‘What the heck?’ one more simple though blinked in my mind. Some minutes later I said the same. The nurse came back to the room, carrying an orange rubber pipe one meter long. She told that this thing needed to go into my stomach. How awful! And moreover, it had to go in through my nose. I politely asked the nurse to find another thing to entertain herself and she went away. Soon she returned with the doctor. He persuaded me and the nurse began her mockery. But that tube didn’t want to go inside me! I was crying and all the pillow was wet with my tears and saliva. Despite that the nurse kept on trying and some minutes later I had something like a nozzle of an airplane instead of a nose. The doctor was standing and looking at it and then said a brilliant phrase: ‘Hey, we have a narrower tube’. I was about to cut through the tube with my nostril.

The nurse brought the other tube, it was really narrower. With one movement she put it in the rest of my nose. I felt how end of the tube reach my throat. I swallowed. The guys in my room were sitting silently. They were also impressed by that. In their eyes there was a mixture of horror and compassion. And I remembered my cat. If she had seen me at that moment, she would have become insane because of shock and become a mentally ill cat.

I vomited two times, but finally the tube was put into my stomach. Than the nurse took a syringe, looked like a confectioner’s one, joined it to the end of the tube (which was outside of me) and began to move a piston so fast that it was if she weren’t a woman but a gas pump. I thought she wanted to pull my stomach out of me. But suddenly I saw green liquid in the tube and the nurse stopped working. She put the tube into a bottle near my bed. The last thing she did was a piece of adhesive tape on the tube and attached it to my face. I started to relax. But it wasn’t time to relax.

Then two nurses who were making bandages came to me together with the doctor. They removed all the bandages from me and I saw my scars for the first time. The first one was right in the middle of my stomach, about 16 centimeters long with 15 cuts each centimeter. The second one was in my right side, about 3 centimeters and there was one of the tubes and a napkin under the tube. And the last one was below the second, it was little, and there was the other tube.

Again I asked the doctor about the tubes, and my question seemed annoy him. So he didn’t answer me, but just cut both tubes leaving only two cm for each of them. Then he cut the thread of the tube in my smallest scar and, without a word, pulled the tube out with one movement. It was 20 cm long. A sight to remember. I didn’t even feel any pain. ‘The first one’, I thought and expected that the second tube would be pulled out. But doctor Copperfield thought that there were enough focuses for that day. He went away. And the author after having an injection fell asleep.