Gallstones and Pethidine

 

Diabolical digital readouts, multilayered perspectives in the head. Tentacles of green black eyes listen to multicoloured line animals of electric colour dancing to honeycomb flavoured music in a sunburst of sound. The ice maker's crash. The agonising nights and soft patient lights. Doctor-needle, "Just a scratch. Over soon." Blunt pain is a tentacled slit eyed monster. Sweat. The snap of rubber, red drained blood. "Blood pressure normal, temperature spiked." Watching the drip  drip of the drip dripping. The antibiotics silent disappearance into the system as nights merge into days.

 

During daylight the unstable floor breathes, its aromatic colours calling intimately to my feet. Ripples of steel move in the stomach as a miniature hippopotamus trots by on the floor. Beguiled by Pethidine I hear magnificent waterfalls of clattering cutlery accompanying Elvis "It's one for the money two for the show." The internal logic astounds and as the breakfast trolley shivers past on jelly wheels hot slices of toast begin to ravenously devour me. The hallucination's intricate patterns delicately open and open, flowering to tantalise, enthralling the mind.  

 

Under the wind farms Letterkenny wakes; the bed peels from my back and as I surface the windowed sky becomes blue. The Serengeti floor is gone, the hippopotami house opposite is now a bed. Eugene leans on his stick. Elvis sings no more. I quench my thirst with a cup of tea: hot toast with dripping butter, marmalade thick cut, food, food. Doctor-freedom, "Home tomorrow." the words gather around me like a longed for hug. Through the window and four stories down a mother walks her skipping child to school.

 

-Billy Campbell. 2007-09-3