All their surgeries were performed while I was wide awake.
“Please,” I begged them. I strained to lift my head, as if it would somehow be better if I could see what they were doing, if I knew exactly what tools they were using to slice me open. “Please. Don’t do this. You just did this a few weeks ago. I need time to heal. Please. Let’s postpone this.”
But they didn’t talk to me. They never even acknowledged me. They’d talk amongst themselves in low whispers that I couldn’t understand.
“Okay, if we have to do this, can you just give me a warning?” I asked. “Just let me know before you cut me. Give me a second to prepare myself. Okay?”
When nobody said anything, I laid my head back, staring up at the light above me. It was so bright, it nearly blinded me.
Then, without warning, I felt the blade, cold metal slicing through my flesh. I gritted my teeth and squeezed my eyes shut. This wasn’t even the worst of it. Cutting through my skin was the least painful part of what they did.
It was when they were inside, playing with my organs, taking biopsies, squeezing things, investigating, that it was impossibly brutal. Sometimes I’d pass out from the pain, but not often enough.
I winced as excruciating pain began in my abdomen. I couldn’t see what they were doing, but my skin was stretching as they pried open the incision they’d just made. In a few moments, they’d be cutting into some organ I probably needed to use to stay alive.
“Oh hell,” I said through gritted teeth, and the pain got worse. I balled up my fists and pulled at the straps as much as I could. Blinding agony ran through me, and I didn’t even know what I was saying, but I knew I was screaming.
A blaring siren rang out through the room, and for a moment, I just thought it was a side effect from the pain. But when I opened my eyes, gasping for breath in attempt to fight the pain, I saw that the room had been bathed in flashing red lights.
“What’s happening?” I yelled.
I strained to lift my head, but all I could see were the doctors hovering over me, their hands bloodied from cutting me open. They exchanged looks and mumbled to each other, but they didn’t appear to know what was going on any more than I did.
“Hey, what’s going on?” I asked them again, louder this time. “Did the zombies get in?”
The surgeon who had cut me open pulled his bloodied gloves off, and tossed them on me. I felt them, cold and latex, on my bare skin. Then he turned and walked away. He’d discarded his trash on top of me, and he and the rest of the doctors were leaving.
“Hey!” I shouted after them. “You can’t just leave me here! Unhook my straps! Hey!”
But they didn’t come back, not that I’d really expected them to. There was an emergency, and they didn’t have time to waste on me. I was nothing more than a science experiment to them.
If zombies had broken in – as I strongly suspected – I would be a buffet for them. I was tied down, unable to move, and my stomach had already been cut open, giving them easier access to their favorite foods. If they got in here, they would literally tear me apart.
As much as I wanted to die, or at least I preferred death to all these surgeries, I did not want to get ripped to shreds. I wanted a nice quiet fall-asleep-and-never-wake-up kind of death. And if I couldn’t get that, then I had to get out of here.
I pulled at the straps, but they didn’t budge. After surgeries, I always had welts on my skin from fighting against them. The leather was ridiculously strong.
But since I had no other options, I kept straining at them. I tried to arch my back, even though it killed my abdomen, and I rocked the table.
All my struggling didn’t succeed in getting myself my free, but it did tip the table over. When it crashed to the concrete floor, my stomach screamed in pain. The metal holding my strap in place was crushed between the table and floor. It wasn’t broken, not yet, but if I could keep rocking the table on it, I might be able to get one hand free.
In order to do that, I had to smash my left hand painfully against the floor, but it was the only way I knew to get out. So I rocked backward, almost tipping the table forward on me, but it steadied itself on its side.
Finally, the metal hook bent far enough that I could slide the wrist strap out. The leather was still around my wrist, like a bracelet, but I didn’t care as long as my hand was free.
With my free hand, I reached up to undo the strap on my right wrist. That sounded simpler than it actually was. I had to twist my freshly sliced-open abdomen and stretch and strain. I cried out as I undid my other hand.