Anyhow, I was sorta lying around in the hospital, wondering which of my ribs would flatten itself on my next breath, even though I was already hooked up to a ‘heart-lung assistance unit’. What a fancy way to say the thing breathed for me, and kept my heart going. Still it had kept me alive when the doctors were forced to double-wrap my chest in chicken wire and staple my skin to the stuff. Geez, talk about opportunistic infections, hygiene problems, etc. Hell, even considering the alternative, this was still the pits.

Hell, the previous week, when my jaw had decided to give up and stop working, (courteously enough, while I was having a drink of some sort) I finally cracked up, and just cried for about two hours. Right after that, my ribs collapsed. Still, death would’ve been a mercy instead of being an almost boneless lump on a bed somewhere.

The person’s gentle ‘Ahem’ scared the crap out of me, and I actually managed to move my fingers without flexing them into new and painful positions six ways to Sunday. That was the first thing that surprised me. The second thing was that the guy who was looking at me was a dead ringer for Tommy Lee Jones. Yeah, I was young, dumb, and easily misled. You can stop laughing now.

He started talking about an experimental procedure that could be used on people to try and save their lives, but he needed my assent in order to get the surgery done. Hell, I didn’t know it, but I was signing my soul off to Satan’s baby brother when I nodded, but I didn’t care anymore.

After about a week, the doctors replaced my normal IV drip with some sort of silver substance that seemed to move like it was molasses or water, depending on whether the line was shaken or not. Every time I shifted the line, the stuff seemed to clump together for a few seconds, then continued on their journey.

Three days after my IV had been changed, I woke up to find myself in pain, fighting off multiple infections from the staple wounds in my chest, and wondering why I could move my jaw without hearing a dull squishing noise. Both my arms were immobilized in heavy casts, probably to make sure nothing got to poke around in the new bones there. Hell, all I knew at the time was that I was sore, badly in need of visiting the can, and virtually immobilized because of my arms and a fairly crazy-looking (and new) IV stuck in my right hand.

After about ten minutes of me madly flicking the damn call button, a nurse showed up and helped me get comfortable, and I was quite surprised to find that even though my legs were still virtually useless, the rest of my body seemed to be in working order. Even that surprised me, but I think, by that time, I had been resigned to siting around in a bed until the bills became too much and they pulled the life-support off.

I had actually seen that happen once. My grandmother on my dad’s side had cancer, and the bills just became too much. She wasted away in less than a month after they finally pulled the support. Anyhow, before I run off on a tangent, I may as well continue my story.

After a month of laying about (bored out of my skull, by the way), I went under the knife again. The second time I woke up, my legs were covered in casts as well, and I was stuck onto another IV, this time dripping an antibiotic solution into my system. Ths surgeries had ended on that day, but I had no clue that the misery was only beginning. After scans showed that my arms and chest were healed, they removed the upper body cast and got me to try and move around.

Five minutes later, I was in so much pain that I wanted to either kill someone else or just myself. I hadn’t been able to use many of my muscles for the last four months, so I had lost a good sixth of my weight due to muscular atrophy, not to mention barely being able to eat anything. I had never been in as much pain, except maybe when I was six years old and... never mind about that. Anyhow, the brightest point of the day was when the surgeon who had saved my life walked in, carrying a few things that really made me happy.

Doctor Sorbie, the nicest guy in the entire hospital (hell, then entire world), had gone out of his way to break hospital regulations and brought me a two-inch thick steak, cooked just so it was tender and juicy, and complete with a side order of salad and an immense bottle of pop. I managed to clean out the steak in just under half an hour, but I couldn’t eat anything else for a couple of hours. Well, that’s what happens when you’ve been surviving on protein emulsions through an IV for the last two months. Still, I eventually managed to eat everything that had been given to me, even though I had a major laugh when I was forced to suck the salad through a straw because my hands were still almost useless.

He did seem a bit pensive when I talked to him, and always looked as if he had signed a deal that would send me off to be one of Satan’s extra appendages after I recovered. He was right in a way, and I paid the price of my stupidity and self-preservation.

Over the next two months, I slowly became addicted to morphine, as the pain was almost unbearable more often than not. Slowly, I regained enough muscle mass to be able to walk without limping or collapsing after five minutes, and my hands and arms quickly restored themselves to their original strength. For almost six months I underwent physiotherapy, psychotherapy, and rehab to kick the addiction to Morphine. When I was finally discharged, I was exhausted, physically and mentally, and barely able to walk up the two flights of stairs to my dorm room at the university.

My friends threw me a small party to welcome me back, and I somehow managed to keep from passing out as they chattered mindlessly about boys and hair. After about an hour, I quietly reminded them that I might still be contagious, and the room cleared out pretty quickly. Then, I finally managed a decent night’s sleep in almost a year. Then, and only then did I realize the truth. To save my life, I had thrown everything I had known away, and was not much more than a slave to the people who saved my life. That was what really sucked, but I had no idea on what they were going to do to me after I graduated.