EnEmE: Fall Of Man Read Free

deep breath.
     
    “After a traumatic experience, especially one involving repressed emotions of love and anger, the mind can start taking us to strange places,” she said.
     
    “No, shit,” I replied. “My mind is taking me to a place where the scene from Aliens is repeated nightly, but with more pain and gory detail.”
     
    “Your mind is taking you to a place to show you a truth. A truth about yourself in order to help you heal,” she said, exasperated. “Sometimes your conscious just isn’t ready to hear what it needs to hear directly, so your mind has to create hidden symbols and messages in your dreams for you to figure out on your own.”
     
    “So is my mind telling me to go get my appendix taken out?” I asked.
     
    “You can’t just voluntarily get your appendix taken out.” She replied. “That’s not what it means anyway. As for the nightmares, as difficult as it is, I don’t want to rush this. Wait a couple of days until your regular appointment, and if you haven’t worked past this on your own by then I’ll prescribe you something for sleep.”
     
    “Would you get your appendix taken out if you could?” I asked.
     
    “I had my appendix out when I was 12. I didn’t have a choice.” She replied, matter-of-factly.
     
    With that I got up and unlocked the door.
     
    “Thanks doc, you’re a life saver.” I said slightly sarcastically as I walked out the door.
     
    “Take care of yourself, Jace,” I heard her say as it closed.
     
    I smiled at Lacy and thanked her as I strolled by and toward the large glass archway, headed for the street.
     
    I stood on the sidewalk, looking side-to-side, trying to figure out what to do with my day as I lit a cigarette. Before I could even complete my first sweet, sweet inhale of nicotine, I clutched my side with sudden and intense pain.
     
    I screamed.
     
    The pain forced me to my knees and quickly escalated to a level that it caused me to pass out.
     
    Just as everything went black I saw Lacy, alerted by my screams, running over, looking concerned.
     
    I came to shortly after, in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. EMT’s on either side of me were checking my vitals, shouting to each other and asking me questions.
     
    “Have you ever had your appendix out, Mr. Bradley?” one asked, shouting way too loudly, as if he were talking to an old man who was hard of hearing.
     
    “No, I haven’t,” I answered in an equally, unnecessarily loud tone.
     
    The two EMT’s looked at each other, in silent recognition of the jab I’d just taken at their bedside manner. The shouter blushed; the other one looked at me and spoke.
     
    “Well, it looks like you’re going to have to now.” He said it in a matter-of-fact way, but with an indoor voice. “You’ve got all the signs of a rupture; you’ll need an emergency appendectomy.”
     
    “I’m going to give you something to help manage the pain until we get to the hospital,” said the shouter, a little less shouty this time.
     
    Before I could get a word in edgewise the shouter quickly jabbed a needle into my neck and everything went black again.
     
    I came to a short time later. I’d been prepped for surgery and I lay relatively immobile on a gurney just outside the emergency operating room. Surgical staff were scrubbing and donning their surgical masks, beginning to gather by the O.R. entrance, near my bed.
     
    It slowly, very slowly, began to dawn on me that my feeling of immobility wasn’t due to being tied to the bed, because I wasn’t, but it must have been from whatever drugs they had given me. Not only did it seem difficult to move, but there was no sign of any of the pain I had felt earlier, or almost any other feeling at all for that matter.
    A surgeon approached me with wide, smiling eyes. His face showed the wrinkles that come with the experience of life that only a man in his late 60’s would have and he spoke with an Australian accent.
     
    “Well, Officer Bradley,