PINS, NEEDLES, PHANTOMS,
and
PAIN

The nurse pulls the faded privacy curtain around my bed

to keep me partially hidden

from my roommate’s curious eyes. Why bother?

The curtain isn’t soundproof.

My surgeon, Dr. Murali, lists my injuries in a tired voice,

his limp hair matching the glint of his silver-rimmed spectacles.

Below-knee crush injury, concussion, two cracked ribs,

cuts on thighs and shoulders.

“Nothing more.”

Sounds more than enough to me.

My once-golden-brown skin

mottled with more blue-black bruises than a rotting mango.

My once-strong body

bandaged in so many places

I feel like a corpse someone started to mummify

and abandoned halfway.

“Will I have scars?”

“None a sari won’t hide.”

My sigh of relief is cut short

by a stab of pain from my cracked ribs.

Dr. Murali says, “You may have phantom pain.

You might feel the part of the leg you lost

is still there.

Many patients say it feels

like when a part of your body falls asleep

and later the numb part wakes up with a prickling sensation.

Like pins and needles.

Except it hurts worse.”

Pain from the ghost of a leg that’s gone,

adding to the excruciating ache

in my existing limbs?

Just what I need.

He continues, “Most patients get over it soon.

A year or two at most.”

Maybe when you’ve got

hair as gray and glasses as thick as he does

two years feels like a short time.

When my roommate and I are alone, she says,

“Sometimes they cure ghost pain

by cutting more off.”

Butcher what’s left of my leg?

No, thanks.