I’m lying on a narrow steel table under a ghostly white light as big as a satellite dish. Four people in pale blue cotton gowns hover over me like medical angels with soft voices and cool, gentle hands—taking my blood pressure, covering me with a thick blanket, and swabbing my face with something that smells strong like medicine. Blue paper hats cover their hair and white masks hide their faces. All I can see are their eyes fixed on me.
I feel a hot pinch as someone slides a needle attached to a plastic tube into the inside of my outstretched arm. Almost instantaneously, everything grows heavier and I start to feel drowsy, sinking deeper and deeper into the quicksand of unconsciousness. Violins are playing in the background. At least I think I they are, but it’s hard to hear because everything’s getting floaty and fuzzy.
“How do you feel?” someone asks, as a hand gently squeezes my arm. I start to nod, because that’s as much as I can do.
All I know for sure in those last few seconds of consciousness is that I’m going to wake up a different me.
I’m always in the operating room in the dream, an icy white, impersonal, cavernous room in a big Manhattan hospital. Only each time I dream it, things around me are different. Sometimes the people and the voices change, or the look in their eyes. But it’s always me under the hard, white light—outstretched, powerless, surrounded by strangers.
I’m anxious, unsure of what to expect. How long will it last? How will things turn out? Will something go wrong? Will I be asleep? Will I feel anything? Will it hurt? Will I bleed? Will I die?
I’m always scared. Always.
But I’m never sorry I’m there.