As the world turns (operation #2)

I'm not even old enough to buy a beer yet and here I am lying on a cold metal table with my breasts exposed for all to see. My arms strapped down and all I want to do is cover up my chest. I'm shivering, so cold that I can hardly feel my fingers. I'm nervous, staring at the metal tray that holds the instruments that will cut through my veins. All of the doctors, draped in a boring green. Maybe it was blue. Strangers in vinyl gloves and face masks. A radio is blaring. "We're going to sedate you just a little at first because we need you to stay awake until we find the spot in your heart that we need to burn."

I feel the drugs slithering throughout my body, my legs heavy and dead on the hard metal table. My back was uncomfortable but it isn't now. More drugs. My body, strapped down, slowly stops shaking from nervousness. I am wide awake but at least my muscles are sleeping. I am staring at a black and white screen. "We're going to go into your heart through a vein...you're going to feel this."

Suddenly I feel pressure and the screen I was staring at now has a picture that I cannot make out. It's the inside of my heart.

I lie there trapped inside my own body listening to doctors talk and music in the background. My heart slows down, I feel like I am going to die. They speed it up... I feel like I am going to die. Hours go by. "Stop! Please! I can't stand this!" I cried. I haven't moved an inch and I am dizzy from the roller coaster they are putting my heart through. "Why is she still talking?"

"I don't know. We gave her the max, she should be out by now."

"Well give her more."

"Alright....goodnight!" the doctor smirked at me as I slowly faded away from the noise and the cold and screen of my heart, and the feeling of my heart being controlled by someone else. The smell of iodine and sterile equipment.

I woke up the next morning screaming. Two nurses, one on each side. Three maybe. One was holding a bed pan filled with vomit. I'm screaming again. My head feels like the worst hangover anyone could ever imagine. The vein in my leg, sore from hours of being open and stuffed with tubing to reach my heart.

To stop the bleeding the two nurses had to take turns pushing their weight to make enough pressure on my vein. I'm screaming at them, my head, my veins, the pain. I'm vomiting, I'm seeing stars. I'm naked in a nightgown on whatever floor, next to a bald old woman who is dying from cancer. Suddenly all I can think about is that I am interrupting her daytime television show.