The Button

I once had a little black button and I liked it. Liked it very much.

When consciousness rekindled in the ICU, my first impressions were of sound. Women speaking. Soft tones. Hint of giggling. I could hear two women, but not see them. Their words slowly became clearer. A conversation of the ridiculous machinations of male behavior. Bar behavior. The stories sounded recent.

My awareness grew to see the brightness of a dull light around me. Then came strange sensations from my scalp. Hard pulls and stinging dabs. The two nurses were upright and positioned behind me removing shards of glass and debris still embedded in my head. I gave no thought to where I was, why I was, who I was. Merely listened to female observations about the obviously opposite sex.

More sounds became apparent. I unraveled the frequencies of three different beeping noises, a mechanical sound, a muted humming. The room became alive with wires and monitors. Then one feeling came all at once. Overwhelming. Overshadowing.

Pain.

Pain that didn’t feel within my body. It seemed to be my body. My whole body was pain.

I lost the voices.

A nurse then moved to face me. Talking. Wide eyes. Green as spring grass. Mouthing words I could no longer hear. The second nurse joined, continuing attempts at conversation. I started to make out their questions.

Hard questions. My name. The month. The year. My name again. I couldn’t answer any of them. Didn’t have the answers. Didn’t know the answers. Didn’t care. I just felt pain and wanted out.

That’s the sensation I remember the most. For those many hours in the place where the care is aptly defined as intense. I didn’t know it at the time, but by the end of the first week, I was already an addict. The little drip. Repeating. Drip. Drip. Dripping into my bloodstream. I wasn’t even experiencing the waves of pain in the raw. My hell an alleviated condition.

Thanks to the button.

An automated wonder of morphine. Programmed atop my personal percolator of pleasure. Robotized for the indiscriminate obliteration of the senses. I just needed the trained folks to change the bag. Check the settings. Sadly, I didn’t appreciate them for a moment. Didn't know about the button. Kept wanting the sea of scrubs to get in touch with my torture and do something for me.

And then came the special day when they rolled me down the hall. Rode me up the elevator. Then rolled me down the hallowed hall of white bread and jello and sharing rooms with bodies no longer needing life saving consideration. My team of dozens was reduced to two: a nurse and an aide. Three if I counted the doctor, but I don't count the doctor, since the hims and hers kept changing and I didn’t get to know any of them.

I had a jar to piss in. A can to shit in. A doll house sized TV to fulfill every entertainment fantasy. Yet, the pleasures all paled when the nurse showed me the wonder of all wonders.

My own button.

At first, I didn’t understand.

Until she wove a tantalizing tale of the macabre land I used to roam. What happened on the highway. The tractor trailer. The rain. I learned about the end of shock and the start of pain. What my body was and what it had become. And I learned about managing pain. It turned out they were actually trying to help me downstairs. I felt a twinge of regret for not being more aware. But now, things had changed. Now, I knew.

And I had my own button. No automation. No waiting. Instant and in my control.

Hard black plastic. Big round knob that fit my thumb. A full inch throw. Like an old gumball crank. A casino slot. I could push it anytime I wanted.

I pushed it a lot.

Regardless of the button’s importance, no thought had been given to the basic element of accessibility. The button simply rested on my pillow. No hook. No clamp. No special place. A turn of the head, shift of my weight, and the button and long wire would plummet into the unreachable abyss around me. Between all the busted ribs and the holes in my lungs and the tubes and the wires there was no getting it back without help from staff. And the staff was busy.

Familiarity bred fear. First that sound. The swish of plastic on crunchy sheets. The jangle and clank against the metallic bedframe. The pain would turn a minute into a month.

Doctors always moved the button. The type of specialist made no difference. Nor the age or gender. The surgeon, the lung guy, the kidney gal, the neuro dude, the shrink, they all moved my button. It was like they showed up just to turn the light on and put the drip out of reach. They usually hung it or slung it in perfect sight and three inches too far. I bet if I had measured each time, it would have been three inches. They never put it back. And never turned the light off. Never.

So, life was simple. I had the button, or I didn’t. Trying to get my button became my first physical therapy. And those hard hours without it became my first chance to break the addiction.

I tried it cold turkey once. When I knew I was close to going home. It didn’t work. My insides became a firestorm. And there was the feeling of a crushing weight. Some nights I openly cried. Fuck the care givers and their fucking pain scales. I kept pushing the button.

But the last week in step-down I got better at feeling the pain. As I pushed the button less, my body, my mind, learned how to hurt less. I concentrated on distinguishing the different areas of hurt. The process sluggish and protracted. Every hour was its own challenge.

There was an early morning when the kidney doc pushed aside my fruit cup tray. Wriggled the button’s cord off the bed’s edge and flung it high over the IV stand.

I never reached for it again.

I would later think about the button. In therapy. For the depression that crept after the trauma. There were so many buttons. Comfortable in the hand. The pressure of the thumb. The satisfying movement of the lever. The quick cooling of the raging firestorm burning within. Being able to get through a night without pain. I still keep the metaphor in my pocket. Roll it though my fingers. Every day.

My roommate changed for those last days. Recovering from trauma or surgery. I never saw his face. Always behind the curtain. The visits of an unpretentious wife and a jogging suit elder would be the norm for the rest of the week.

And I would hear the distinct slip and clank of his button tumbling into the abyss. His groaning would begin. The pulling and grabbing of the sheets. His torso writhing. The crunch of the mattress resisting. He didn’t seem able to speak. Just cried out in undefinable moans.

On the second night his wife walked into an episode and filled the room with panic. She gasped and tried speaking to him. Then started shouting. Then shouted for staff. Then ran. Kicked the curtain spread between. Knocked the plastic cups to spin wild. She flashed in a whirled frenzy out the door. The cups started rolling on the floor.

Roomy kept howling that familiar cry.

1. Title photo design by Author, from a Sami Salim photo, Unsplash.

© Copyright William Hazel, 2024