Welcome to my writing world. Sit back with a hot drink and enjoy a few minutes somewhere other than where you are now.
⏱️ Read time: ~2 mins
🏷️ Genre: Contemporary Flash Fiction
💢 Content warning: None
This was originally written for the 8 Days of Ether challenge by Ether Books and it was available to read on their app. Sadly Ether is no more.
Surgery
I am tired and frightened. I can’t feel the pain any more, just the cold. The brightness of the surgical light hurts my eyes.
There are half a dozen people in the operating theatre, talking in a relaxed manner. My body on the table is just one of many they will see today. They make lots of eye contact with me, which I find reassuring.
Surgical caps cover their hair and come down over their foreheads. Masks cover their faces. Gowns cover their bodies. They are uniform in their appearance and their methodical slowness.
While they are going about their day’s work, I am still shaking from the adrenaline, terrified for my life. When the accident happened, the thing that shocked me the most was the noise. The sound of my car colliding with another was deafening. Metal striking metal, crumpling instantly under the impact.
“Louise?”
I move my eyes to the right and see a face looming over me.
“I need you to use this mask.”
The man holds up a clear plastic mask attached to a tube and places it over my mouth.
I start to panic. I can’t breathe… I am suffocating! I struggle feebly under his hand and he moves the mask away.
“What’s wrong?”
“What is that?” I ask. My throat is so dry, my voice sounds like someone else’s.
“It’s oxygen. We need you to take some deep breaths.”
I nod as best I can and he replaces the mask. I take in a great lungful of air. He nods his approval.
Another man leans over from the left. He tells me they are ready to go and he is going to administer the anaesthetic. He asks me to count up from one.
“I don’t want to die,” I whisper into the oxygen mask.
His eyes crinkle. I can tell he is smiling even though I can’t see his mouth.
“We won’t let that happen,” he says in a tender voice.
We stare at each other as I start the count.
“One…”
His eyes seem familiar, but the mask and cap make it difficult to recognise him.
“Two…”
A distant memory surfaces like a freediver coming up for air. It crashes into my rapidly fading consciousness:
Fifteen years ago. A tiny bar in a dusty town in Morocco. He stood next to me and ordered a whisky. I was drinking bottled beer. He was wearing a Tilley hat that gave him a cowboy-ish look. I remembered how he tilted his head up and looked sideways at me from under the brim. There was a mole at the tail end of his eyebrow.
I stare at the mole now, the mole that I haven’t seen in fifteen years.
A one-night stand.
I had a baby girl nine months later.
I do not make it to three.
