The first thing I noticed as I came to was the dull whir of machines. I lay on my side quietly, trying to listen before anyone noticed I was awake.
“There is a nuclear power plant,” I heard the doctor say. “It’s not fully constructed yet, but it is getting there.”
A nuclear power plant?
“It has long been known that bioterrain is perfect for high-end avante-garde construction,” he continued, “but this is the first I’m coming across a nuclear power plant.”
“So those are…” began someone else, a woman. I could not recall seeing a woman while I was still conscious.
“Russian spies,” the doctor said, as if confirming a diagnosis.
Was I still unconscious? I opened my eyes a tiny peek. Everything was just as it had been before my eyes closed. The heart monitor beeped slowly, evenly. The torture room was a sterile white. The screen was off.
“What do we tell this one?” the woman was asking.
I could feel the doctor hesitate.
She continued. “We cannot tell her the truth. You know the protocol.”
I shut my eyes again. I had to listen a little more. It made no sense. What were they even talking about? Was I listening to some top secret information that they casually decided to discuss in the testing room?
“The usual story…” the doctor was still hesitating. “The usual story is intestinal ulcers. That’s what the spy cameras look like.”
What? Spy cameras?! In the same breath as intestinal ulcers? The ulcers were a lie. The heart monitor beeped faster as my pulse surged. I tried to breathe slowly before they noticed. I’d read that breathing out slowly would do the trick so I dragged out my exhalations. It was not working! My pulse surged further.
“She’s waking up!” Well thanks, my heart, you little snitch. I pretended to be unconscious as best as I could despite that traitor.
“She is out cold,” the doctor said. Phew.
“Are you seriously taking that chance?”
My world shut down again.
The next time I came to, I was in the recovery room with about a dozen other people on similar beds. Heart monitors beeped slowly. Nurses milled around. I wanted to go back to sleep, I was so tired. Colonoscopies are long, painful processes. The only good thing that comes out of it is the feeling of slipping into unconsciousness just before the procedure starts. The process is interesting. One moment you’re awake, and the next you’re slipping, and the next you’re awake again in a recovery bed… Wait. I was awake in between. The Russian spies.
Was I imagining it? I must have been. So strange. I thought the doctor said there was a nuclear power plant in my intestines. Ridiculous, of course. Even if there was a nuclear power plant, would there have been Russian spies repeatedly for two decades? Where did they go and how did they appear and disappear? It was evidently not real.
Evidently.
But it felt so real.
It could not be.
Evidently.
Only, the soothsayer…
(six hours earlier)
After two decades, I’d reached a resigned acceptance of colonoscopies. I could not avoid them, but that did not mean I did not dislike them. I hated them. So badly.
I walked down the road from the bus stop to the hospital. The square with all its highrise buildings around was quite windy. My coat barely kept me warm.
“Excuse me.” Someone tapped on my shoulder. I whirled around. There was a wizened old man with sunburned skin staring at me through clear, light blue eyes. His high eyebrows gave him a permanent look of confusion. My face must have mirrored his in that instant.
“I have been following you since Pimlico,” he said.
I froze. A stalker?
“I am a soothsayer!” he hastened to add. “The Universe led me to you!”
As if that would convince me of his sanity. I shook my head at him vaguely and moved to rush away. I was almost at the hospital doors.
“I see a great fire rising from a nuclear power plant,” I heard him say behind me. “The shadows of Russian spies are dancing in the light of the flames in a cosmic spy game. Your fate is entwined with secrets you only now will begin to discover. This day marks the turning point in your life.”
I paused and looked at him, and immediately berated myself for engaging with this nonsense. I shook my head again and turned away.
“If you don’t trust me, trust the duck that’s waiting for you just inside the door.”
Duck? I looked at him thoughtfully for a moment before going around the building to enter through a different entrance. Why take a chance?
(back to the present)
Maybe the soothsayer caused the dream. I sat up slowly, not trusting my morbidly imaginative mind to be able to keep me upright. The nurses saw me sit up and one of them came to me.
“The doctor will see you as soon as he’s done with his cases,” she said, efficiently removing the cannula from my hand. “He asked you to wait outside his regular office.”
I could not sit still. I could not shake off the memory of that conversation in the colonoscopy room. It seemed so real. How could it not be real? But how could it be real? How could it not? Was I losing it?
Oh, there the doctor was! I followed him into his office. He sat and pulled out my file, and looked over his glasses. “We found ulcers in your colon in the colonoscopy,” he said seriously. “It is ideal to treat it at this stage.”
I had to know. I just had to know. And I knew how to.
“So what about the Russian spies?”
The doctor blanched. I was right. I knew it! Should not have mistrusted my brain after all its years of lovely service.
I had to poke him a little more to be sure. “What I’m unsure about, is how they have been reappearing over two decades. And how is the nuclear power plant still under construction after all this time?”
“Excuse me,” he blurted out, and ran out of the room. What a noob. He should have learnt better before he went poking around in people’s intestines for Russian spies. I, on the other hand, was taking this pretty calmly. It did not strike me to question his sanity when I had questioned mine so easily -- the disservice I was doing to my poor little brain!
I quietly followed him out. He went down the corridor to the Radiology department, and knocked thrice on the X-ray door. A woman stepped out immediately. I slipped around a corner where I could still hear clearly enough.
“She knows! She heard us!” I loved hearing the terror in his voice. How dare he lie to me.
“Are you sure?” the woman asked calmly. I would break her too.
“She asked me outright about Russian spies. And nuclear power plants. And something about how she has had ulcers, I mean the spies, for two decades now.”
“That happens often.” She sounded like she was pacing. “But we need to get a full history before we plan our course of action. We need to wipe out the spies and encourage the construction. What about her previous doctor? Can we ask him for a history of her intestinal war?”
“He’s gone a little senile in his old age.”
I could have laughed. What a perfect way to describe the incompetence.
“Oh well,” the woman said. “But the power plant is the start of a revolution. Imagine the possibilities! I have never seen this before, it is usually cathedrals and the like.”
What possibilities? What could they even do with something inside my intestines? But I could not help but feel proud that my intestines were doing something revolutionary. Not that I wouldn’t rather have regular food tubes that only transported goo out to be pooped.
The doctor was talking. “I know you don’t care about your patients, but I do. I need to treat her keeping in mind her best interests. So far this has been about understanding these subintestinal constructions but now you’re talking about the possibilities?”
The lady laughed. “How are you going to explain to her that her inner architect has gone rogue and is installing nuclear power plants without her permission?”
Now I felt sorry for the doctor. The poor guy had this heart in the right place. I peeked around the corner.
She patted his arm. “You’ll figure it out. We all do.”
I had to figure it out too. What a chaotic walk in the park. First there was the duck, then the doctor, and finally the Russian spies. I knew this was going to be a complicated day when I woke up.
Once I was sure she’d left, I turned around the corner, and patted the doctor’s arm too. It felt like he needed it. I was sure I would figure it out before he did.
This story was written to a prompt: What a chaotic walk in the park. First there was the duck, then the doctor, and finally the Russian spies. I knew this was going to be a complicated day when I woke up.