1.
So that’s me, the guy in the gurney being slammed through a myriad of swinging doors. Outside its October, and unusually warm and clear. Inside it’s the Omaha Methodist hospital Emergency room. I stare blearily above me as the fluorescents race past. The guy above my head is the one who sat with me in the ambulance who kept a check on my vitals and kept asking me my name and address and who the president of the United States was. My friend, Mindy is at a fast walk beside me on the right with a worried look on her face. She’s pretty in a tomboyish way, a great writer, and an even better guitar player. She’s dressed up tonight in her best 80’s rocker bitch attire because she was on a date this evening with her future ex-husband. To my left is the attending nurse. Peroxide blonde, worn out in her mid-fifties, her lined face, pear-shape, keeping pace with the gurney; she was conversing with the guy above my head and the other paramedic whom I couldn’t see at my feet.
“Finnley!” was all I could really concentrate on. It was Mindy holding my hand which seemed like such a foreign part of my own universe. “Finnley, please be okay!”
I was numb, and wish I could have felt something like guilt. Because she was my friend. She was the one that found me. Her and her boyfriend Jason, who was somewhere back there in the lobby or somewhere talking to the Douglas County sheriff’s department about this whacked out psycho bastard that his girlfriend knows. I’m sure the vocabulary coming out of that mullet-headed specimen of man was something like:
“Fuck yeah, dude….”
“I was like, whoa…”
“I don’t know, man…”
“Farm out, cop dude, that’s all can say, man, farm fuckin out…”
Ah, but that’s a world away now. I was heading to my final destination. Operating room number 7. Funny, because 7 is my favorite number. Funny how the universe is, isn’t it? I was greeted by two others in white scrubs, female and much younger than the attending nurse.
The room was white and before my eyes could adjust to its sterility, they had moved my carcass from the gurney to the operation table. The overhead lamp beamed into my bloodshot eyes and I could feel its heat. Perhaps, I was just having a day mare at the beach?
The back of the table hummed and the next thing I knew I was sitting up. I couldn’t see Mindy anymore. A tray table slid in front of me with a baby blue bowl on it, and two giant toothpaste tubes. Were they going to brush my teeth? How nice, and they even strapped a bib on me. If this was a dream, and I was really lying on a beach near the Pacific Ocean, then I was in some weird dental office. Maybe I really should see a shrink?
“Mr. Newkirk,” the attending nurse asked. “Can you hear me?”
I nodded. Everyone sounded like they were in a barrel.
“Mr. Newkirk, we’re going to need to pump your stomach.”
I shook my head.
“We’re going to need to get all those sleeping pills out of your system.”
One of the younger nurses came into view with a long tube about ¾ of an inch in diameter.
“This is going to be uncomfortable and you’ll want to vomit when the tube hits the back of your throat.” She droned on, “That’s your body’s natural reaction, but we’re going to need to get every pill we can.”
“No.” I managed to squeak out.
“Now, just relax, Mr. Newkirk.” She approached me with the tube.
“No!” I growled through grit teeth, “Why can’t you fuckers just let me die?”
“Mr. Newkirk,” she put some sort of gel around the tip of the tube. “Just relax and it will be over quicker than you think.”
“Fuck that!” I grabbed her hand.
“Let me go!” she said sternly.
“Get that fuckin thing out of my face!” my lips tightened and I turned my face away from her.
“I think we’re going to need to strap him.” She mentioned to the paramedics.
If this was a movie, they would be paramedic #1 and paramedic #2. They would be played by some upstart actors whom would either become the next Brad Pitt or vanish into celluloid obscurity. Either way, the bastards slid a padded strap across my upper arms and torso and strapped it tight.
The nurse attempted again and I grabbed the lower part of her smock and bunched it up in my fist.
My hands were then put into padded cuffs in front of me and then strapped down to the sides of the table.
“Now you need to cooperate, Mr. Newkirk!” she yelled.
I still wouldn’t comply.
She looked up at one of the other nurses, “Can you have Larry come in here?”
Larry? I shouted in my head, Who’s this mysterious Larry that gets a ‘named’ part in my movie?? Who the fuck was this guy?
Larry was this brick house that was probably red headed but was shaved bald. He walked behind me and then put a padded strap around my head and tightened it down on my forehead. Then he came around to the right side of me and squeezed my cheeks together so my lips would pooch out.
The tube went in, and just as it hit the back of my throat, I bit down on it.
“Let it go!” the attending nurse shouted.
I growled my indifference to her through clenched teeth.
She pulled on the tube and I would release it until it eventually tore in my mouth and I was hoping the inertia would send her reeling into a metal table or something. But she had those flat pancake feet in those white doc martens and she only jerked back slightly.
She snipped the end of the tube that was ragged with teeth marks and reapplied the lubricating gel on the new tip.
“Get his mouth open!” she ordered Larry.
Larry, though he got a part in this movie with a name he didn’t get a speaking part. That was my only revenge I could get at him. He crushed my cheeks again until I had to open my mouth, and as I did the tube slid in.
So this is what it’s like for a woman who gives a man head? Oh my, God!!
The tube made its way into my throat. Larry was holding my jaw open by my chin. I swear to god that nurse enjoyed every inch that she put in me.
Then the vomit came. It was clear at first; I could smell the mix of scotch and bile as I watched it careen down the tube like a water slide. There were the pills I had taken, one by one like roller coaster cars.
The bottle of pills I took was over-the-counter. Easy to swallow caplets. They spilled into the little blue tray and I thought at this rate they would need a new tray. I was right. A new tray took the old one’s place.
I could feel that damn tube inside of me. It was a dirty feeling of violation. Soon, everything looked blurry through the tears multiplying in my eyes.
When I was able to blink them clear, the attending nurse had one of those toothpaste tubes. She was filling a giant syringe with some kind of black paste. No tube of Crest I had ever seen before.
When the vomit stopped, and I was just dry heaving, she inserted the syringe full of obsidian paste into the open end of the stomach tube. She pressed on the plunger and I watch this black snake crawl up into my mouth and down my throat. Another gag, and then a warm sensation as I passed out into the black.
