hospital-gurneys

In the recovery room they removed the catheter and unhooked me from the IV in my spine leaving only the one with saline solution and who knows what else dripping into the back of my hand. It took about ten minutes for the anesthesia to wear off and the shakes to begin. By then Dr. Painfree had skipped town.

I must have been in something like the ninety-ninth percentile of drug reaction-prone patients because those shakes made a West Virginia Appalachian meeting of Holy Roller Snake Handlers look like a bunch of zombies at a wake. I mean I was jumping all over that recovery bed. I shook from the neck down to the heels and back up again. Great uncontrollable wracking shimmying shakes that thumped the bed and pushed the pillows off, disarranged the sheets and actually moved my bed right up against Gladys Gruthpert’s. Gladys had been operated on for gallstones. She was seventy-eight and not too thrilled to have me visit in such a boisterous way right after surgery when her hair and face were such a fright.

I jiggled and shook until our beds were locked together at one corner and then my legs, which I still could not control, flapped over onto her bed while the rest of me stayed in mine. The shaking began to part our beds at the pillow end and pull me sideways until my body made a bridge between the two beds and poor Gladys looked like she had seen the devil himself. I’m sure she thought she was delusional because she began crossing herself every few seconds and praying to Jesus to deliver her from the evil doers.

“Hey, what’s going on over there?” A nurse showed up. “You shouldn’t be over there with Gladys.”

“Do you actually think I chose this configuration?” I asked her.

She called for backup and two orderlies and another nurse showed up. The recovery room SWAT team. They moved my shuddering body back to my bed and strapped me down, which did not stop the shaking but did confine me to my own area. By now my teeth were chattering.

“I’ve never seen one this bad, have you?” The first nurse asked of the other one who put a finger to her mouth, obviously trying to spare the hospital a malpractice suit. They should have checked their collision insurance. I think the beds got dented in the crash.

An hour and a half later when the shakes finally gave out, I was wheeled to what would be my private room for the next week. There was my proud family lined up to congratulate me and glory in the momentous miracle of twin birth.