Fear and Loathing on an Operating Table

By Ryan Moser — FROM THE INSIDE

The police car sits idle on the shoulder of I-95 with its headlights beaming through the mist of an evanescent dusk, reflecting off the wet macadam as I explain my predicament. After a few minutes, the state trooper shows mercy and drives me to the Jacksonville Memorial Hospital so I don’t have to hitchhike with a “medical emergency,” and I grab my abdomen the entire 15-minute ride, faking my symptoms like a professional actor.

“Yeah, I’m vomiting. And my stomach hurts…like a burning, sharp pain,” I tell the intake nurse as she checks my vital signs. “No ma’am. I’ve never had stomach pains like this before.” I clutch my right side as if I’m holding my intestines in after a knife fight, not sure if my ruse is working. When she lightly touches my obliques with her finger, I decide to go for the Academy Award. “Ooww! That hurts really bad.”

“Oh dear, I apologize,” the woman says. “You sit right here, sugar, and I’m gonna get a doctor to have a look at you.”

I’m nauseous and sweating profusely, and the hot/cold chills are almost unbearable, but I don’t need a doctor to tell me what’s wrong — I haven’t had a Roxy or a Vicodin since yesterday morning. I know from experience that when I go eight hours without painkillers I get cranky and anxious. After 12 hours: flu-like…