Black and Blue

6 - I Waste Two Hours of My Life On This Idiot

November turned campus and my life into a barren wasteland. There were no visits. No offers for internships. I'd expected this year to be a little more eventful than last, true to the usual pattern, but was met by anticlimactic disappointment with each passing day. I felt tiny parts of myself flake off into the air and land like ash at my feet, my head and arms crumbling into dust, my body only one gust of wind away from completely disappearing. I didn't even have the luxury of peaceful boredom. Sure, nothing new was happening, but I knew that if something did, there was a 50/50 chance it would blow up in my face and send me careening over the edge. I didn't need excitement, I just needed something better than this. And I didn't need a masked intruder in my house to make things worse.

Everybody's willingness to get along and make new friends had been fully drained since the end of middle school—that, I knew. But it didn't stop my sleep-deprived brain from telling me everyone in my classes was already starting to form their own little friend groups. Cliques, if I could go so far as to say that. After all, throughout most of my day I'd unwittingly surrounded myself with the outgoing, extroverted kind rather than people who would just let me be alone in peace. And they didn't seem too interested in, I don't know, including me to some capacity either. I was in a horrible gray area of loneliness. At least, that's what my mind kept telling me on bad days.

I remembered the date better than I usually do: December 15th. Dr. Nakamura would not stop talking about anesthesia for a good hour, and that was what kept bouncing around in my head as I walked home. My face probably had lines pressed into it on either side from the seam of my jacket sleeve. I really needed a nap during that class. Somehow, I still managed to catch most of what she'd said:

"It's standard procedure to ask a patient what kind of medication they may be on, even more so if they have multiple prescriptions. Certain combinations of pharmaceutical drugs can make the normal dose of anesthesia dangerous, or even lethal." Nakamura pointed her signature meter stick at the first bullet point up on the board, eyes darting skeptically around the hall. "...Andy. Is there a problem?"

"No, ma'am."

Right. Andy sat in my row. I flinched at the sudden noise next to me and buried my face further into the crook of my elbow, gaze still following the procedure sheet she'd handed out. The professor continued after a split second's hesitation.

"...so they tend to lower the dose. If this is the case, 'anesthesia awareness' is more likely to occur. Patients who wake up during an operation usually feel little to no pain, but the event can be disturbing or even traumatic for them regardless. It is crucial for you all to know..."

After that, her voice sank underwater, and all I heard was a middle-aged woman babbling on 20 feet away from me, like a schoolteacher's brassy "wah" in Charlie Brown. Not the best example, on my part, of a university student hard at work. But what was I going to do.

I feel so tired all the time now. What happened?

In about a week I'd be heading to my parents' place for winter break. My day had been shitty, to say the least. I'd gotten back from a chock-full day of work, social navigations, and explaining myself to every single person who asked why professors fumble over my name so much. Not to say all of them do, but when it happens, my classmates notice. I was getting sick of it. I rammed open the front door with my shoulder after the first few failed attempts, thinking maybe it had gotten stuck. But that usually only happens in the summertime.

I caught a glance at the inside of the doorway. It looked like it'd been burnt by the door itself, the edges clean, the rest of its casing untouched. For whatever reason, my house didn't even feel like my house anymore...