Pain killer, p.1
Pain Killer, page 1
Pain Killer
Short Story
M.E. Purfield
Published by trash books, 2023.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
PAIN KILLER
First edition. December 8, 2023.
Copyright © 2023 M.E. Purfield.
Written by M.E. Purfield.
Also by M.E. Purfield
Auts
Auts: Books About Everyone
Auts: The Satellite
Auts: The Ableism of Salvation
Auts: What Sorrow Flies Off Roofs
Auts: The King of Dodgeball Goes with the Flow
Auts: When the Lights Go Out
Auts Series
Auts
Blunt Force Kharma
Bound Kharma
Kharma's Pursuit
Kharma's Glitch
Kharma's Gatto
Blunt Force Kharma
Cities That Eat Islands
Cities That Eat Islands (Book 1)
Cities That Eat Islands (Book 2)
Cities That Eat Islands (Book 3)
Fish Hunt
Cities That Hide Bodies
Complete Cities That Eat Islands
Miki Radicci
In a Blackened Sky Where Dreams Collide
Blood Like Cherry Ice
Surly Girly
Bawling Sugar Soul
A Girl Close to Death
Heart on the Devil's Sleeve
Sinking Stones in the Sky
The Ghost and the Stream
Expressway Thru the Skull
Hacker's Moon
Miki Radicci Shorts
The Ultimate Miki Radicci Series Omnibus Vol 1
Miranda Crowe
Bagged
Munki Moo Moo
Munki Moo Moo
Radicci Sisters Mystery
Psychic Sisters
My Dead Body
Saints
Squeezed
Broken Psychic Hearts
The Emptiness Above
The Sludge Below
Doe
Auties
The Killer
The Deceiver
Favors
Bumper
Rats In The Cage
Short Story
Defective Brain Club
Line
The Van Outside
Doorway Down
Just
Short of a Long Holiday
Lifetime Hallmark Scheme
Malignant Little Bastards
Pain Killer
Sibling Rivalry
Tenebrous Chronicles
Party Girl Crashes the Rapture
Angel Spits
Six Feet
Tweens with Pop Guns
Lightning From The Fire
The Subject
Tenebrous Two
Standalone
Breaking Fellini
Delicate Cutters
Jesus Freakz + Buddha Punx
Buddha Punx + Ghetto Girlz
Natural Born Killer
Peanut Shells: A Short Story
A Sandwich Can't Stop A Bullet
Bagged
Geek With The Numbers
His Alibi, Her Smile
Klepto Pyro Mojo
Limits of Stupidity
MiLK
Whaz My 'Ame
Orange Flecks (Short Story)
Through Tangled Nerves
The Creative
The Morrows
Joyrides for Shut-Ins
American Standard
The Pick-Up
(R)Evolution
Angst
How To Make Friends with Teenage Anarchists
Watch for more at M.E. Purfield’s site.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Also By M.E. Purfield
Dedication
Pain Killer
Bonus Story: | The Screw Up
Free Short Story
M.E. Purfield’s Patreon
Further Reading: The Pick-Up
About the Author
Deepest thanks to my Patreon supporters who make this story possible. Mary Monzon, Mike Mallory, Christy Lynn Margaret, Ann Purfield, and Allen Richards; you are the best!
Pain Killer
They rolled me into the room and set me up by the window side. I passed a guy older than me in the next bed. Tan skin, mustache. Latino. A woman sat with him. Around his age. White? Could be Latina. Heavy hips and breasts. Wearing sweatpants and a sweater. Hair gray and brown hair pulled back into a tail. They stopped talking in Spanish and glanced at me. The man appeared embarrassed. The woman scowled. I knew little Spanish and the state I was in I had no plan to translate what they were saying. I smiled at them the best I could through the pain killers. The couple turned back to each other and continued their conversation in hushed tones.
As soon as the orderly positioned my bed, the nurse introduced himself as Donald and got to work on connecting me to the machines and IVs. A young Asian kid probably just out of nursing school. He focused on his job so hard that he said little until he finished. Seemed like a big deal and too much work for someone suffering a huge kidney stone blocking the flow of their urine. Then again, the extreme pain scared the hell out of me and brought me to the ER. I thought maybe my appendix burst but the ER doctor explained that my appendix was on the other side and higher up.
So glad to be out of that ER. Not that they took poor care of me and were unkind. For the first few hours I waited for the doctor and scans, I was dying. The pain was so intense, I groaned constantly and swayed back and forth. I couldn’t lay down. Being horizontal increased the pain. Movement somehow eased it or at least distracted me from the twisting knife sensation.
When they figured out what was definitely wrong with me and stuck that butterfly needle attached to a pouch of pain medication into my arm, I finally found relief. The pain dissolved. I was able to lay down, cuddle the sheet, and think straight.
After Donald the nurse left, I called my wife at our apartment down the street. It was close to three AM when I woke her up. Our kids were still asleep. Luckily, I didn’t wake them as I dressed and walked to the hospital down the street. No way I was waiting for an ambulance.
She was worried about me, of course. She had never seen me in such agony. I was always the strong one with little medical problems. The worse I ever had in my life were respiratory infections and a broken foot. This time something attacked my organs. Fantasies blew up in my brain. Cancer? Heart attack? Ruptured organ? Alien? Endless possibilities of horror. I assured her I was fine for now and that I had a room. What was going to happen next, I couldn’t say until I saw the next doctor handling my case. Maybe a urologist. She promised to see me tomorrow morning.
“Should I bring the kids?” she asked.
We had a thirteen-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl. Did I want them here in the room to watch me suffer? To see their father hooked up to tubes and machines? I was sure I looked horrible.
“No,” I told her. “Not yet. Maybe later in the day after the doctor speaks to me.”
She agreed and we hung up.
I settled in the bed and looked around the room. The window hid in the indented the wall. No way to gaze out at the Hoboken and NYC skyline from this position. The whispering stopped on the other side of the curtain and footsteps left the room. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. My mind wandered and I realized something.
Why did the guy next to me have a visitor at 3 AM at night?
**
Sleeping turned out to be a chore. Donald woke me up soon after and checked my vitals and connections. I lay there like a dead man and floated between states of consciousness.
The room was still dark and only moonlight came through the window.
“Did I sleep through the day?” I asked him.
He smiled as he added his notes to the tablet.
“No,” he said. “Still the same night. Should be 6 AM soon and then I leave.”
I nodded and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, Donald was gone.
“Excuse me,” a gruff voice from the other side of the curtain said.
The drugs must have been playing with my brain. Was God talking to me?
“Sorry. Are you sleeping?” he asked.
The guy in the next bed. I glanced at the dividing curtain. His overhead light shined through the material. Some flicker. Maybe his television was on. I made out his silhouette sitting up on the side of the bed.
“Not really,” I said.
“Me neither. I’m Carlos.”
“Hey, Carlos. I’m Mike.”
“What’re you in for?”
I chuckled.
“I got a mambo jambo kidney stone,” I said.
“Oh, man,” he said. “I had stones a few times. Not fun. It must be huge if you can’t pass it and you’re here.”
“So they say. What about you? What they got you for?”
“I was hit by a car last night. Or was it the night before. Yeah, the night before. Anyway, I cracked my head on the street. Got a compact fracture in my skull and broke my arm.”
“Oh, my God. You sound pretty good.”
He laughed. It sounded like an old car engine buckling, a sure sign
“I got killer headache and pain in my arm and some bruises but yeah, I feel okay. Gonna be here a while, though.”
“Did you almost die?”
“I think so.”
“The cops arrest the guy that hit you?”
“No. Not yet. Spoke to the detective this morning. Don’t think I was much help to him. It was on Kennedy Boulevard. Was crossing the street with the light. I looked one way and the car hit me the other way. Bam! I don’t know. Maybe they were turning down the other street. Some people saw it happen but they couldn’t make out the plate or the driver.”
“Man, you are one lucky guy to be alive. Sucks about the driver getting away,” I said. “Your wife must have been freaking out.”
At least, I assumed the woman I saw was his wife.
“Yeah,” he said. “She won’t even come to see me. She can’t handle seeing me like this. She was sobbing and praying on the phone. She needed the drugs more than me.”
I was going to ask him who that woman was last night but then stopped. I didn’t want to upset him or myself.
“So did they turn on your TV?” he asked.
My eyes so heavy, I closed them and groaned in response to his question. Then I fell asleep.
**
The doctor showed up but she was not the urologist. A young woman with curly black hair named Doctor Ott who checked my vitals and asked me a lot of questions about my health not related to my stone. What diseases I had in the last ten years, any surgeries, mental illnesses. She assured me that the urologist was going to see me soon.
My wife came by later that morning after she got the kids off to school. All fragile smiles and kisses. She took off work for a few days to the displeasure of her bosses. Lucky her, she had two of them that agreed on nothing and tugged at both sides of my wife. She appreciated the few days off. As for me, I worked at home and was my own boss. The latest novel I was working on would be delayed but I could always catch up.
I shared my breakfast with her. Giving her the juice and muffin. I tried to eat some of the scrambled eggs but failed. Maybe because the IV filled my stomach. I sipped the coffee, hoping it would keep me up a while. My eyes were so damn heavy.
She scoffed the muffin down, getting crumbs on her shirt.
“Hungry, huh?” I asked.
“No time to eat,” she said, covering her chewing mouth.
I nodded. Getting the kids ready for school didn’t allow time for anything. Usually, I performed that duty and ate when they were gone.
“You want to grab something from downstairs?” Christ Hospital had a cafeteria but the food wasn’t so edible. DD was across the street and she could never pass up their bacon, egg, and cheese on a croissant. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll wait.”
She asked if I wanted anything.
“No,” I said pointing to my IV bags. “I got my lunch set up.”
She kissed me on the lips and promised to be right back.
“That your wife?” Carlos asked.
“Yeah.”
“She pretty. You’re a lucky man. My wife won’t come see me.”
“Thanks. That’s too bad, about your wife. Sorry to hear that.”
I seemed to recall him mentioning his wife earlier. The last twelve hours were a blur. Information ran together like watercolor paint on paper.
“I’m hoping she come see me today,” he said. “Doc says I’m doing pretty good.”
“That’s great,” I rasp, fighting with my heavy eyes.
“Yeah,” he said. “It will be good if I can go home.”
Did he mean good if the doctor released him or that he had a home to return to after he was released? Instead of clarifying with him, I closed my eyes a moment, hoping to take the dry burn out of them.
When I opened them back up, my wife and Doctor Ott were on either side of my bed. Hamburger, fries, corn, and an apple juice cup on the tray. What happened to breakfast?
The doctor asked how I was doing and I broke the good news to her. I had no pain. But the sleepiness dragged me down.
“Sleep is good for your body right now,” she said.
Ott told us that I was scheduled for surgery in the evening.
“I slept through the urologist?” I asked. “He was here?”
“No,” she said. “He still hasn’t come in yet. But he will be here tonight to insert a stent.”
Images of me laying on an operating table where a guy and his crew stuck something up my penis made me a bit nervous.
“Will I feel that?” I ask. “Will there be any pain?”
“They will give you a local.”
Great. So I would be awake to hear them snicker at my penis and maybe take pictures of it for their comedic FaceBook page. Click Like, Love, or Laugh at the latest penis we had in surgery today!
My wife frowned. I guess surgery sounded bad to her, too. But technically it was a procedure. They wouldn’t cut me open. Ott mentioned something about magnets or tubes. I reached out for my wife’s hand and she took mine.
“I’m going to be okay,” I told her and smiled.
She smiled back but I could tell she wasn’t totally convinced.
**
They brought me out of post-op and back to my room. My head swam with drugs. If Dr. Shulman, a kind old man with a clean dome, changed his plan on giving me a local, he failed to mention it as he filled out his paperwork on my legs in the pre-op stable.
My wife waited for me in the room and took my hand when the orderlies left. She was also in the post-op when I woke up. The smile on her ever-cute face was like a prize at the end of my suffering.
“How do you feel?” she asked again in the room.
“Okay, I guess.” My stomach swirled and my vision flashed black and white. “Actually, I’m starting to feel nauseous.”
“I can get something for that,” Donald, who was rehooking me up to my machines and tubes, said. “Be right back.”
Wanting to keep my bile down, I sat up on the edge of the bed. My wife rubbed my back and reassured me that everything will be okay. I took deep breaths. Ott said that nausea was a common side effect to anesthesia. I didn’t believe it could happen to me. I never felt anything wrong after my foot operation or when the dentist gave me a filling.
As the world tipped side to side, I breathed deeper and faster. Moisture broke out on my face. I was determined not to puke, to hold my record in fighting anesthesia.
I puked on the floor. No, I retched. The most horrible sounds escaped from my mouth.
My wife stumbled back and said, “Oh, no!”
“Get me a cup?” I said between gasps.
I positioned my head out so I wouldn’t puke on my gown, just on the floor. I never enjoyed big messes.
She rushed to the table for something. Carlos pulled our dividing curtain to the side and held out a small plastic basin. I grabbed it and posed it under my mouth. But it was too late. I had nothing left to fill it.
I stared up at the ceiling and caught my breath.
“Thanks,” I said to him.
He smiled and waved me off.
“No big deal,” he said. “Wish I was faster.”
I managed a smile, and he returned to his bed.
Donald came back to my mess and called someone to clean it up. He then added a medication to help my nausea to my IV, and I settled down on the bed. Nothing should be left inside my stomach. Or, I hoped.
Donald placed my pee bottle at my side and reminded me to use it. I’ve been peeing in it for the last 24-hours. They screened it for stones. If anything passed they never told me.
A familiar woman from the cleaning staff appeared with her cart. Heavy in the breasts and hips with long brown and gray hair pulled in a tail. Pale skin but with Latina features. I apologized for the mess. Maybe she didn’t speak English well or she didn’t care but she got right to work, ignoring me. She was a pro. The floor was clean and ready to eat on in a minute.
The feeling that I had seen her before disappeared. Wasn’t she the woman talking to Carlos when I checked in? The one I thought was his wife? Maybe they were friends and since she worked in the hospital she visited him that night.
As she left, I thanked her again. She didn’t respond. Not even when Carlos said something in Spanish to her. I guess she was a professional.
Finally alone with my wife, she held my hand and asked me again how I was feeling. I told her much better and asked about the kids. I hadn’t seen them since before the procedure. They didn’t seem at all worried about me hooked up in the bed. Or maybe they were hiding it to protect my feelings.
