Tin Man:001

Bruised and Unplugged

The drive home seemed especially long today.  Clouds sagged overhead, bruised with rain.  Wind screamed through the cracked window making it hard to hear my wife on the phone.  Not that I wanted to talk anymore anyway.

“What?  I can’t hear you.  I’ll call you back.”  I slammed the phone shut and threw it into the passenger seat.  It bounced off into the crevice of seat and door.  ”Great.  Just great.”

Scenarios of her calling back to keep arguing with me, only to find my voicemail, and this whole thing escalating to a whole other level.  I gritted my teeth.  Choking my steering wheel with one hand, I made a quick reach for the phone.  Horns.  Squealing Tires.  Crunch.  Break.  Smash.  Shatter.  Creak.

***

Eyes open.

A lamp hangs above me.  The bulb flickers.  Flash:  corrugated tubes and broken computers.  Flash:  monitoring machines tipped over.  Flash:  stacks of boxes.  Flash:  pipes running along the ceiling.  Flash:  tunnel shaped room.

Where am I?

I sit up and tap the flickering light bulb, but it won’t stop.  A pronged needle dangles from my left forearm, but there’s no IV bag.  The tubes seem heavy, like cabling, and I slide the needle from my arm.  But the hole in my arm is too big, and isn’t bleeding.  I look into the two holes left in my arm, inside each hole are two metal contacts.  Like an outlet.

Continued:  Headaches