13
I lay awake in my hospital bed after surgery, the priority right now that I have to prove that I can pee. The anesthetic can put the bladder to sleep apparently, and if it doesn’t rouse that means the insertion of a catheter. They fitted me with one during the initial surgery some eleven days earlier. I woke to find the catheter inserted you know where, and an external fixator fitted to my leg – that’s like scaffolding screwed directly into the bones to hold them in place while they wait for the swelling to go down so they can then perform the actual surgery. I wore the catheter for…
10
I dream that I’m running. I don’t know where, but I am running. The freedom’s the first thing I feel. Then the motion. There’s no jarring as my feet hit the ground, no jostling of my body as it accommodates every stride, no burning in my throat and lungs as I gulp in air. My body’s light but strong, an engine that has neither known effort nor duress. I am one with every motion. My heart may be pumping euphoria into every cell. I could be made just for this. Nothing else matters. The world whizzes by, streams of empty landscape that could exist just for me, just for me…