My Button

Tonight I relived my wildest and most painful fear. My mind torn between reality, the here and now, and my past; a drenched bed, silky white and red splotched sheets, a faded gray wire with one single blue button on the end of it hanging from a pump attached to a small metal pole, this machine limits my ability to press the button, once per eight minutes, with a quiet beep to let me know when it's ready. A clear plastic tube emerges from the bottom of the machine, running the length of the pole and onto the bed, from the tube to the needle, from the needle through a vein in my wrist, and in this vein is my blood. This pole supports my IV, mounted on four wheels. The wheels imply mobility, but I have none.

I lie silently on my back, watching the clock turn past 2 am. There is no sleep for me. To pass the time I have a cup of prune juice: the only alternative is an enema, I am not partial to either choice.

I have another tube, it runs to a machine as well. I cannot roll to my right or left because of it. This one has no needle, but still enters my body. Between my ribs, directly below my left arm, a half inch tube enters my chest. It runs in a few inches and then up, all the way to the top of my lung. Or at least where my lung should be. The collapsed lung leaves all my organs exposed to my chest wall, each openly available to be touched by the tube. The pain is excruciating, but after the first five days with this gardenhose attached to a vacuum I have adapted. Certain positions are more comfortable than others, and once I find a good one... I stay there.

The tube enters through an inch long slit in my skin that had very little bandaging on it, and the tube can move. Not much though, but it moves nonetheless, and this movement is where the problems begin. This movement is the soul purpose of the button which I all to often let leave my hand.

It starts with a cough, a laugh, anything where my breathing is short or sporadic. Worst of all is hiccups, they do no cease after one or two, I cannot stifle them like laughter. I drink from my plastic cup, prune juice is nasty, and I swallow air. I recline into the bed and am hit by the sudden realization of what I've just done. I reach for my button, hanging at my side, but I am too late. In the next quarter of a second the first hiccup reaches my mouth and I gasp for air, my lungs fill, the tube shifts, poking at my vital organs. My body rejects the tube and fights to purge me of its presence. Every muscle in my body tightens and releases at a pace beyond my comprehension and my entire body trembles. I lose control. My body surrenders to it's own primal fear, and it's primary means of ending the torture only fuels the pain, and the problem. Every movement is just another reason for me to convulse. It goes on indefinetly, there is no escape but through my button, and reaching it is beyond any strength and focus my mind could gather.

In the bed beside me lies my one hope. Hands that don't belong to my body, that vigorously writhes on the bed. One quietly reaches up grabs the end of the wire, pressing the button, releasing me. The pain slowly subsides, and my body calms. I collapse into my pillow; my mind is fogged, through the fog I don't feel the pain anymore. I struggle for conciousness, but it slips from my grasp. Then at last, sleep.

“In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge”

-Jon