A question occurred to me while I slept . . . And I awake to find myself out of bed . . . floating up to the ceiling.
I look down . . . surprised to see my body still lying in a hospital bed. I heard about this . . . a near death experience . . . No need to panic . .
. . Although looking down again I see my dormant self . . . has also escaped from the ever-increasing dosages of drugs the nurses administer . . . and is now leaving the room . . . dressed in a doctor’s coat.
I am slowly pulled along following myself . . . Holding together the compromising folds of my hospital gown. As I float along the ceiling low enough to hear myself . . . softly repeat a private little mantra . . . “Nothing is a more powerful placebo than the word . . . As the organisms of diseases are naked to the human eye anyway"
Waking up after being in a nine month coma . . . must have tricked the brain . . . As I seem to think I am a doctor. I take a scalpel out of my pocket . . .
and we stumble through double doors into an operating theatre. Here a matronly nurse washes our hands . . . and I nauseously get to witness myself perform a caesarean . . .
While I get a peck on the check by the patients floating other half, she whispers . . . " I have seen you around . . . You used to sit in the waiting room with a notepad . . . When did you become a doctor?"
I explain to her that I am still a writer but now . . . I am beginning to fear that part of me has become fiction. Below I hear myself announce to the team of surgeons . . . “I'll be back shortly . . . I really have to phone my wife now” I leave the operating theatre . . . and start ranting endlessly into a pay phone in the corridor. Undisturbed by the fact that my words seem to be falling silent . . . against the clicking of the dial tone.
I am interrupted when an elderly lady taps me on the shoulder. She is convinced that someone is playing Vera Lynn records loudly somewhere in the building . . . and the sound is exiting through the radiator pipes that end in her room. "I have a very tight schedule but I'll see what I can do" . . .
. . I hear myself say.
We then proceed to the basement . . . a mute underworld of biotechnology laboratories. Air-conditioning hums softly . . . and rows of padded cells acoustically absorb the shrieking of brainless birds.
Tanks full of frogs waiting to be observed under fabricated foliage . . . while curiously studying their own reflections infinitely repeated in the glass.
I start stacking the tanks carefully on a trolley . . . and ride them out into the hospital garden. "Don’t you all know frogs need moonlight to conceive?" I shout to no one in particular . . .
Ladies of the night shift begin gathering around . . . All greeting me with a rehearsed regularity. "Should you be doing this so soon after your accident?" . . .
one of them asks while the rest fondly peer into the tanks. I hear my name being called out . . . and I turn around to see an elderly lady in a lab coat approach.
I remember her from a long time ago . . . "What a surprise that you have come back to visit us", she says . . .
"Most of them never do and I don’t blame them. Our program was a cruel experiment . . .
Hopeful but naïve parents gave their children away . . . To this so-called factory for budding geniuses. A nursery with plain grey walls . . . and only a few toys to play with. To keep the signal to noise ratio low. And to protect the growing prodigies from an overload of unnecessary information . . . especially nature, they were never let out of the basement. Until the hospital became their parent and they ignored their own."
I want to hear more but am briskly pulled away . . . by my pilot who is sweating profusely in his hurry through the building.
When we enter the room we woke up in earlier . . . there is a woman lying in a bed on the other side of the curtain I hadn't noticed before.
She speaks to me softly, her eyes resting on a spot exactly between my two selves . . . . . as if there lies the truth.
She is awkwardly holding a pair of surgical scissors to her chest . . . and I hover closer hoping that she can cut the silver cord . . . that will separate me from my confused self. But suddenly she closes her eyes and opens her mouth . . .
stirred by a sharp pain.
After what seems like ages of me helplessly watching her suffer . . . she reaches under the blankets and holds up a little baby boy. It’s wrinkled little head resembling my own. I have to do something . . . I slide down, adjusting back into the man . . . I have had the short privilege not to be . . . and feel my brain fill again with nonsense again.
She hands me the scissors . . . I close my eyes avoiding the sight of blood. Feeling my hands mechanically carry out the procedure . . . I hear myself say routinely; "Here you are madam . . . A nice tidy knot for the belly button of your little man"
