They wheeled me with urgency a few floors down to a nicer looking ICU than I had been in post-operation. This time, my parents couldn’t even bring me to the elevator, which overwhelmed me with another unfamiliar sense of panic.

 

I was wide eyed as they rolled me into my own private ICU room, but not really so private because all of the walls were glass and I could see all of the other patients in the whole ICU, not many, but I could see them all.

 

They hooked me up to all of the machines, which meant new needles, new tubes, and that’s when I first realized I had a catheter in. How did I not notice I didn’t have to pee for the last day? Oh well, uncomfortable but convenient.

 

A male nurse soon handed me the remote to the TV directly above me, and I flipped through until I saw something I recognized--Animal Planet. He then took the remote away from me and put it just as far away as the food lady put my food away from me in my room. Did these people not read my chart and see what kind of injury I had? Clearly not.

 

I was left alone to really just mope for a little while, when a very tiny blonde nurse came in. The first thing I noticed was that her hair was all clipped up in this cute little updo, but it was obviously curled. Who would curl their hair if they were just going to clip it up for her job? Who was she trying to impress? Probably not me, I assume I looked like I had just risen from the dead.

 

“Nikol? Nikol. I am Ana. You here because you panic,” she said.

 

Oh great, I thought. They think I’m crazy now. Was I crazy?

 

I slept for awhile before a NEW food lady came in. She dropped off my “special” meal is what she called it. Apparently someone told them I was lactose intolerant (which I was, mildly), so I had a red band labeled “ALERGIA X” on my wrist as a new accessory. But she did the same thing the other lady did, she put my “special” food about three feet away from me.

 

I still had no appetite and wanted nothing to do with that nasty food anyways, so I focused on my Animal Planet. Someone had muted the TV, so really I was just sitting there trying to read the Macedonian subtitles to understand what was going on with all of the prairie dogs.

 

I had no sense of time while I was there, so a few naps and a few hours must’ve passed before I woke up to both of my parents and a new guy in the room with me. I was so happy to see them that I instantly started crying. I felt like I had been kidnapped for that time, with no one there to comfort me or to help me in a manner that was up to par in my mind.

 

“Please take me back, I don’t like it here, I don’t like it here,” I said, “please bring me and this water pad with me back, please, please.” I had been upgraded to a nice squishy water pad on my bed when I was readmitted into the Intensive Coo-Coo Unit (as I now named it), but that was the only good thing that was happening to me there. My parents looked at me uneasy and explained to me that the new doctor in the room was a psychiatrist, someone the hospital was forcing me to see because they mistook my pain for me being mentally unstable. I’m absolutely positive that I was going out of my mind at that point, but was there really a means for a doctor? My pain was being mistaken for panic, and I was mad. I answered all of his questions in the way that he wanted me to, so he prescribed me some Valium for “muscle relaxation.” What he really meant was he was making me take this so I could stop “panicking” and could get out of there.

 

I did as he said; I ate the bread, and I drank some juice, all forced down my throat by my mom who begged me to because they weren’t going to let me out of the ICU. I hadn’t eaten in over 48 hours at this point. I took their damn pills, I let them pump some fluids in my IV, and I went back to sleep. My parents said goodnight to me even though I was pretty sure it was only like 4pm, but I said my goodbyes as they whispered, “Do whatever they say or you’re going to be stuck here forever.” It was like I really was kidnapped, I had to do whatever these pain in my ass nurses and doctors said to be released. But what frustrated me was that it was purely for them to check off all of the things on their list for them to send me away, I had to be by far their most challenging patient.

 

The next nurse to come in had some dirty dark mustache. He was nice, but he had one of those mustaches that you look at and scrunch your nose because it looks like something could be living in there. The rest of his face was as smooth as a baby’s bottom, so he was weird to me. For the first time, I was feeling like I was hungry, so I pointed my finger (attached to a needle and some pulse thing, similar to ET) at the food. He fed me more bread, but I was pissed because he kept dipping the bread in some orange-like (not orange for sure, but who knows) juice and shoving it in my mouth. It was disgusting. So from there on out he was known as the bread dip nurse and I didn’t want him to feed me ever again.

 

At one point, I woke up from what had apparently been another nap to a pitch black ICU and no nurses in sight. But don’t worry, I was still watching the same repeated episode on Animal Planet about prairie dogs. It must’ve been because I had already slept all day that I stayed up all night watching this over and over. At the time, I could’ve given you a pretty solid play by play of these prairie dogs’ life, they were much more joyful than I was.

 

Around 5am (I finally discovered the digital clock reflecting off of someone else’s glass wall), all of the nurses came rushing in turning all of the lights on, they began taking all of the vitals and asking me how I felt. Well, it was the first night I hadn’t screamed all night, so I was feeling okay. I was feeling okay enough for them to let me leave.

 

Then appeared the magical psychiatrist again. He came in without my parents this time, so I couldn’t even hide behind the answers they just gave for me. He asked me all sorts of stuff about how I was feeling and what I was thinking, if I was feel anxious or uneasy. No shit, of course I am. I’m in a weird place where they’re telling me all these things in a language I barely know and you’re over here accusing me of being crazy, in your exact words. But I really told him I was feeling great and how much happier I was now. That must’ve been the golden ticket because about an hour later I was kissing my glass shoebox and Ana goodbye, waving as I was rolled out.

 

“No more panic, Nikol, I don’t want to see you again, ok?” Ana said. I’m sure the language barrier let her believe that wasn’t rude but truthfully, I never wanted to see her again either.