December 4, 2007

It was late at night --perhaps even early in the morning, I had lost track of all time and place -- and I lay on the gurney trying not to twitch, not to breathe, not to move in case the new movement jolted my leg and caused a fresh wave of pain. The pale yellow walls were painted with decorative murals depicting cheerful little bunnies and deer and other woodland creatures as they flitted through the forest. Overhead a truck exploded as the muted tv replayed yet another episode in a never-ending Mythbusters marathon. In front of me, past the remains of my twisted feet, were racks of medical supplies, stationed next to the doorway leading to the emergency room's main medical station. Brushing lightly against my right arm and my I.V. drip of blessed, blessed morphine, was a closed curtain made of white netting and faded, generic pastel-swooshed 1980s-inspired fabric.

From behind the curtain, a faceless voice moaned.

J and I, waiting for the next in the night's procession medical folk, looked at each other. Another moan, this one more of a groan/whimper.

"Dammit! Dammit, this fucking hurts," a deep male voiced from inside the void. "Anybody? I gotta have me some pain meds."

J and I looked at each other again. Were we supposed to do something? Another groan issued. "Goddammit. GodDAMmit!"

Nurses and doctors hustled and bustled in and out of the room, grabbing supplies from the racks. No one looked in the Moaner's direction.

The Moaner moaned.

In fact, it began to sound like a symphony of the damned in there, behind the circa-1985 institutional drapery. Moans and groans, shouts and yells, our friend the Moaner was in rare form. He was a virtuoso, a regular Mahler of the moan, a Bartok of the bellow. He started slow, working the lower octave range, but soon begane to punctuate his overture with louder outcries and pleas for drugs, liberally peppering the score with profanities and invectives. Jesus was referenced regularly, as were some of His lesser relations. Most adjectives were NOT complimentary.

I looked at J again. What the hell was going on in there? Was my roommate dying? Had he lost a body part? A finger? A limb? MY GOD, was my roommate HEADLESS? Was he a HEADLESS, LIMBLESS SHELL? In my pain-exhausted and narcotic-infused mind, worst-case scenarios began to form.

A doctor wandered through and I, already stressed from the hours I had spent broken, stopped him. "My friend," I said, gesturing to the curtain, "appears to need some help." And for a blessed moment, the moaning ... stopped.

The doctor nodded and stuck his head out the door. Soon a little school of medical types appeared, waddling in behind the doc, as a line of baby ducks, snapping on fresh latex gloves with precision. One by one they all disappeared behind the mysterious Curtain of Doom, until, like the Moaner, the only signs of their presence were the music of their voices and the barely-containing bulging of the drape.

The drape twitched.

"Onto your side," ordered an officious voice.

Rustling. Someone's back, covered in curtain, pressed into my I.V. I shifted over.

"Hmmm. I need the (murmur murmur murmur)," said Officious Voice.

A nurse fluttered out from the Curtain of Doom, blood dotted across his gown. He grabbed something from the supplies and bustled back.

Silence. Then ...

"AH! Ohggodohgodohgodohjesuschristohlordhelpmejesus." A new fact: the Moaner was very religious, indeed. Christian, even. Except,

"FUCKING HELL."

Ok, well. Maybe not.

More rustling, more movement. And then, the nurse uttered the phrase that I will remember for the rest of my life, the words that gave us at last a dreadful, terrible glimpse into what lived behind the Curtain, and what kind of horror could be visited there:

"Doctor, do you want the 3" to tape back the buttock?"

Oh the abomination. The sheer terror of it all. The Moaner wasn't without a finger, a limb or even a head. No, it was worse, a million time worse. It wasn't that he lacked something he was naturally supposed to have, it was that he had something he SHOULDN'T. And I share with you, dear reader, one of the saddest reasons ever to have to go to the emergency room: my roommate, the Moaner, had out-of-control hemorrhoids.

I looked at J as the Moaner revved up, the nurses bustled and the tape ... taped. And for a moment, despite the stress, despite the needles stuck in me and the whoomphing pain pulsing up my legs, despite the fact that another human was suffering just inches away from where I lay, I let the drugs do their work as I gave in to the ridiculousness of it all and laughed until I could laugh no more.