When In Hell, Keep Breathing

I was stirred.

Eyes straggling to peel from the lids, moist tears around ducts.

I smell nothing.

Then my sole visible spectrum of light to see the
world.

Crimson red.

It was as if I was Cyclops, sight bathed in perpetual redness, hiding behind the synthetic ruby quartz crystal eyeglasses.

Then I began to felt it.

Impregnated me through my oral orifice.

The monster of the breathing tube burrowed all the way into my throat.

Felt it wiggling around, like a larvae incubating warmly.

I choked.

I tried to bit it, my tongue worming it.

Bad move. It went deeper.

My choking point had reached it's maxim and now I could vomit.

I gagged and gagged.

Screamless voices. Like I'm in outer space. The deaf horror of insanity.

Some blotches of blackness. Swimming in the maroon tides.

They were figures walking around!

I felt my hand raising feebly. As if it had never been mine. That bastard apparatus.

I waved lightly.

A wraith noticed and floated closer.

I made a clawing gesture, signaling that I'm awake and needed the ETT tube to be pulled out.

NOW!

'15 minutes more.'

My eyes grew wide in fearsome incredulity.

'Your stats are not ready.'

I huffed and puffed. The breathing tube wrapped tighter inside my mouth.

I blinked tears.

15 minutes were a lifetime.

I trembled and trembled with impatience and pain.

After another while, I saw another shadow went by.

I raised my hand and gestured the clawing sign. As if gasping for air.

'No. Another 15 minutes more.'

'You are not breathing right.'

'Breathe.'

Breathe?

What?

Shit.

What the...?

Okay.

Think.

Conjure.

Breathing is easy.

How?

Conjure.

_______________________________________________________________________

6 hours ago, before the operation.

I was tubeless then, dressed in OT grown and flat on a trolley.

Then as I was pushed along the corridors and corners. The ceiling lights went passed me like sceneries from a car. It flashes and glowed behind the walls.

I was floating between spaces.

Then the launching pad.

It was a smaller room for the anesthetists to prepare their patients, hooking lines and multi-checking of the correct patient to cut.

The operation room was like a space shuttle. Sterile, white and had those giant dishes orbiting at heights. They were the surgical lights, pan wide eyes of bulbs staring at me. It was so cold when my skin touched the metal of the cutting table.

'I going to put a few needles down your wrist, it's gonna sting a little.'

I felt the first long needle sticking in. Blight of hot flashes.

Then another one. Burned just as well.

'Okay. I'm going to put one more in your neck. Turn your head away from me.'

Ain't you gonna do that after you knocked me out?

'Is it going to hurt?' I asked as I felt her hands on my white neck.

'Did those two hurt a while ago?'

Fuck yea.

'A little.' I answered.

'Then just a little.'

AND SHE DROVE THAT MUTHERFUCKING NEEDLE DOWN MY NECK AS IF SLAYING A VAMPIRE!

She placed an orb of a mask on my mouth.

'Breathe in deeply.'

No.

Not this type of breathing is going to help me to get through my ETT tube.

I'm in the wrong memoryscape.

______________________________________________________________________

I flipped a imaginary book in my head, searching away fanatically.

The ETT tube gorged against the canvas of my throat.

Think.

Someone said something.

Think fast.

_________________________________________________________________________

17 hours ago, before the operation.

There was a petite lady in white approaching my bedside.

Nowadays hospitals are pretty much run by ladies.

'I'm the physiotherapist here. I'm going teach you to breathe.'

That's it!

____________________________________________________________________________

Take a huge bloatful of whiff through the nose, fill your lung capacity and slowly balloon out from the lips.

Again.

And again.

The chest raised until the air was full. And fell steadily.

Ignore the tube in my mouth.

Ignore the pain.

Ignore the world.

Just keep breathing.

Just concentrate on this task.

Fifteen minutes would be over soon.

Trust yourself.

Trust yourself.

Trust yourself.

Another several lifetimes went passed agonisingly.

'Mister Ang?'

What?

The lights went on. I saw two nurses in blue growns. I saw a glass panel in front of me. Stations of care-givers busking around.

'Mister Ang, we are going to pull out the tube now.'

About time.

'Okay, before we pulled out the tube, we would need to suction down your mouth.'

One nurse held me while the other one fished out a smaller wriggling tube. Pregnant with suctioning air, the tube rattled and wiggling like a fish out of water.

She hoisted the suction tube down my ETT tube.

I hurled away, pushing them.

My chest as if being shocked, vibrated violently against the suction action and I tried to kicked them.

It was as if my chest just exploded.

It was a small tube but it was very hurtful.

'Okay, Mister Ang. We are doing it one more time.'

I glared at them, shaking my head.

The suction tube hoisted into my ETT tube. I felt it wriggling down my throat.

FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!

My chest arched again, arms restrained. It was another explosion in me. I could felt every bones splintering, flesh torn and muscle burnt.

I'm nothing.

I wished I was dead.

It was too much to bear.

'Mister Ang. One more time.'

The playful suction tube brought down again into my mouth. I bit back. At everything I could. My teeth found their way, closing into the ETT tube, the suction tube, anything. Just to stop it again.

I muffed a voiceless scream.

I kicked and fought, bit and spat.

'Okay. Okay. We are done now. We are truly done now.'

They pulled out the entire snake of ETT tube, propped me up and wiped the spite which I had all over my chin.

'How are you, Mister Ang?'

I nodded my head. Destroyed but still okay.

'Would you like anything to drink?'

'Red Bull.' I managed with a very sore throat. I felt sterile and numb everywhere. I needed something sweet to feel alive.

'Nope, we don't have that. You want Milo?'

'Iced.' I snorted.

They brought a glass of Iced Milo with a bendable straw. I slurped on it.

Then a growing sensation of nausea hit me, I felt my gut raising.

'I think I'm going to puke.' I warned them with a green face.

They brought a kidney dish to my chin, I forced and forced air out of my quivering lips and nothing came out.

But the nausea built up like a fortress.

I forced again until my chest hurt.

'Mister Ang. You have eaten nothing, remember? You have nothing in your stomach. You won't vomit anything out.'

I looked at this China nurse, realising her version of truth.

'You just have to breathe in and out. In and out.'

I tried.

Slowly and steadily.

In and out.

In and out.

From the nose and ousted from the mouth.

Chest full and lungs emptied.

Just breathe.