Hallucinations

It started out as just a regular bout of the flu: achy joints, runny nose, a slight temperature. Uncomfortable and inconvenient, yes, but certainly nothing to worry about.

I was in my mid-20’s: young enough to still consider myself to be immortal so I really didn’t think much of it, except to note that my hips really hurt. That’s typical for me: sickness finds the weak spot and settles in right there. At that time of my life, the weak spot was my hips.

It was a couple days later that I saw them: three big tabby cats standing at least seven feet tall and dressed like Rambo, each one with a machine gun in their hands, ammo belts across their chests, bowie knives hanging at their hips, and camouflage bandanas tied around their foreheads. They were waging a war in my library. I somehow knew there were more than just those three, but they were “hiding in the bushes” waiting to kill the enemy.

I was, understandably, a little bit concerned. Having 7-foot tall Rambo Cats fighting guerilla warfare in one’s library is not an everyday occurrence.

Thankfully they weren’t paying any attention to me, so I was able to hobble around them and make my way down the stairs, each step causing a considerable amount of pain in my hips. I made it to the phone finally and called Jack, my boyfriend at the time. I told him I needed to go to the hospital. When he asked me what was wrong, I told him about the Rambo Cats in my library. He agreed that I did, indeed, need to go to the hospital right away and assured me that he would be right over as soon as he could find someone to watch his kids.

Things start to get a little fuzzy from here on out. I think the fever was starting to soar, and consciousness was becoming a tenuous thing, at best.

The next thing I remember was being at the Emergency room. The nurse was standing across the room waiting for me to follow her into the exam room. My hips, by this time, were excruciatingly painful so walking was very difficult. I had Jack at my side to help, but even so it was not easy. I made it to the exam room, where the doctor had me lay down on the exam table. He lifted my shirt up so he could palpate my stomach area, but just paused and stared at me for a moment.

“…um… You, ah… You have a Band-Aid… on your bellybutton.” he said.

“Yes, I do.” I agreed.

“…um… Why?” he asked.

“Because it’s leaking. I didn’t want my clothes to get stained.” I replied.

“Okay….” He said, with his eyebrows raised in amazement. He very gently put my shirt back in place without disturbing anything.

Once again, things go fuzzy on me. The next thing I remember is standing in an elevator. The doors opened to reveal a long hallway stretching out in front of me, with windows on the left and a row of doors on the right. My friend Willow was beside me, and as we stepped out into the hallway she apologized for the fact that her apartment was all the way down at the very end. She assured me that she would help me to walk down there as my hips were still very painful.

I faded out once again, and came to later on to find myself in the shower. By that time I was apparently so weak I could not stand on my own, so Willow was in there with me. I don’t know how she managed it, but somehow she held me up while at the same time washing my hair for me. I remember thinking that it was pure heaven, to be clean again and to have warm water cascading down my body.

Consciousness faded one last time, and I came to this time to find myself lying on the couch in my mother’s house, out in Palmer. She was in the process of feeding me a few spoonfuls of watered-down oatmeal.

My fever must have finally broken by then, because I no longer lost hold of reality. Even though I spent most of my time sleeping and recovering, I remember each time I woke up. Mother would feed me a few more spoonfuls of my oatmeal each time, and I would go back to sleep a few minutes later.

Once I recovered from whatever it was that hit me so hard, I started trying to piece together what had happened. Jack told me that before he came over to pick me up, he had called Willow. He knew that she had been concerned about me missing so much work (unusual for me) and also knew that if it turned out that I would need some TLC he would not be able to do so.

Willow met us at the Emergency Room and took me home to her place from there. I spent a couple days at her place before she decided that I needed around-the-clock care, which she was unable to give as she had to go to work each day. She called Mother who sent my little brother Reed in to town to pick me up. I was out in Palmer for 3 days before my fever finally broke.

I don’t remember what the doctor had to say. I don’t know what the diagnosis was, or what – if any – medications he prescribed. I don’t even know who paid for the visit!

I do know that I totally believed, at the time, that my bellybutton was leaking. I realize now that that was probably another hallucination. Bellybuttons are not hooked up to anything, and therefore cannot actually “leak”.

I don’t know who took care of my cats for me while I was “gone” either. It was over two weeks, all told, so somebody must have been feeding them for me. The only food I remember eating myself was the oatmeal Mother spooned into me, a bite at a time, but that was only after the fever broke.

I also don’t know why Mother didn’t take me to the hospital once she realized how sick I actually was. I can only surmise that it was a hold-over from our shared past. Growing up, my first 15 years were spent in abject poverty, with barely enough money to keep food on the table. We certainly didn’t have enough money for the luxury of hospital stays, and so we learned to get by on home-remedies and prayers.

I eventually recovered fully from the sickness, and it never came back again. It is very strange to have “lost” that week; it’s just a big blank spot in my memory. Even though I know what happened to me, it’s like reading an article about somebody else – there’s no connection to me in it at all.