Shut Down
Everything is dark. Everything. No sights. No sounds. I can’t even hear or feel my breathing. It is completely and utterly dark. Then I drift back into a fog of high-pitched beeps and moans. Machines pulsing and people murmuring. Words I can’t make out. Who are they? Where am I? Then I plunged back into darkness.
It’s Sunday night, and I’m wasted. Completely and utterly wasted. All a hundred and ten pounds of me hangs over the edge of my friend’s couch, willing myself to vomit. The pain is unbearable. I have nothing in my stomach to bring up. It is pretty much the same scenario I have been living through for the past few months—don’t eat and drink to oblivion—but until this moment, I had been bound and determined to pretend nothing was wrong despite my colour, distended belly, and pain. I was invincible. Nothing could happen to me. I was untouchable.
The fog of beeps and pips returns. The hushed voices. I open my eyes, and my family is standing around me and I’m lying in a bed with raised metal bars. Everyone looks worried. My ma is crying. I close my eyes.
I crawl off the couch and call a taxi. Will myself upright and head outside. “Take me to the hospital,” I slur as I slump in the backseat, and curl up like a caterpillar. I clutch at my gut. The driver drops me at the hospital outpatient door. I hand a handful of crumpled bills over. Once inside, they tell me I can’t get treatment because of the address on my medical card. I am pushed back outside.
More sounds: the pip of shoes on a linoleum floor, a rhythmic beep and hum. I open my eyes. Why is everyone here? Why is there a priest? I close my eyes.
I get in another cab. I keep trying to throw up. Nothing. I am fading—waving in and out of consciousness. The driver takes me to my hometown hospital. He gets out and helps me to the door. He leaves me propped up in a chair just inside the emergency entrance. After that, everything goes blank.