31/10/07
3:10 PM
The Truro Centre
There was something at the back of his throat. He gagged. The thing pulled at his throat from the inside and was gone.
"Zaffar? Zaffar, can you hear me?" A shadow to his right. He opened his eyes slightly. He saw a face and recoiled, shouting. He knew that face. That face had ordered them to break his hands, his feet, then squeeze and twist the broken bones. It had told the man with the knife- "Hey, hey, hey, it's alright." Hands grabbed his upper arms, holding him down. He felt sick with dread. "You're safe, it's OK, you're out surgery, it's normal to be a bit disorientated for a moment." The voice didn't match the face. Something was beeping nearby. He started to make sense of the voice. He wasn't in enemy hands, he wasn't under torture, it was over. He was in a hospital bed in Truro. His feet hurt, his groin hurt, his right hand hurt. But it all felt… distracted, distant. He could ignore it in a way he wasn't always able to. His face felt like it was full of cotton wool, puffed and unresponsive. He swallowed. Something tasted unpleasant. "Zaffar?" He blinked. It was bright. The figure to his right came in to focus. A man, Doctor Seymore, the anaesthetist. Not the torturer. So he was in recovery after surgery, again. "Are you with me now?" He nodded once. "That's good. You're alright. Not the best recovery in the world, but you're through it now. How are you feeling?"
"Stoned." Everything felt disconnected, he knew he should have been in more pain than he was, so he must be drugged out of his head. His voice was slurred, his mouth wasn't moving properly. His heart was starting to settle down again.
"Well that suggests I'm doing my job fairly well. Pain score?"
"Three?" Nothing actually hurt that much, just everything felt… odd. And where was his left hand? Crap, they hadn't taken it, had they? He twisted to look, he could feel his elbow bend when he told it to, but – no, his hand was there, all of it. There were lines of stitches all over it, but it was definitely there, he could see it. He just couldn't feel it.
"It's only a RUMM block Zaffar."
"What?"
"I numbed your forearm. If you make the whole area senseless before the surgeons start doing the painful thing, the pain never gets as bad as it otherwise would. The ketamine I'm using on you during the surgeries will also be helping with that. Your arm will start waking up in a couple of hours."
"What time is it?"
"Half past three. They've sorted your left hand and done most of what they need to in your mouth. It's only your feet left now, they'll do those tomorrow, then that's all the surgeries done. The pain should definitely improve from there." Zaf nodded. His neck itched. He raised his right hand to scratch at it, the one he could feel, the one they'd operated on yesterday, and remembered why. They'd put a feeding tube in yesterday. He'd not been able to face eating because of his mouth and how sick he felt, or feed himself anyway because he couldn't use his hands. So they'd put a tube in his neck and they were syringing stuff down it at regular intervals.
It was humiliating. It was humiliating in an entirely different way to being stripped naked and left in a bare cell with a pile of straw in the corner. He couldn't even get up and get himself to the toilet. He peed sitting like a little boy because his feet were too painful to stand on. He was completely physically dependant. And they were so matter-of-fact about it, it was obviously completely normal for them. For him it wasn't. Two weeks ago, he'd been a functional, independent adult, he'd been able to run a mile in six minutes, he'd gone to work, he'd looked after himself.
"About earlier." He said. The doctor looked up at him. "I'm sorry."
"It's alright. You're far from the first to wake up not knowing where you are; one man very nearly punched me in the face. It's at least as much my fault for not preventing you feeling that as it is yours for jumping."
RUMM block: A series of injections of local anaesthetic in to the arm, which, if done correctly, will render everything below the elbow numb.