Invisible man - Ralph Ellison [93]
"Take this," he said. "It's good for you." I swallowed. Suddenly my skin itched, all over. I had on new overalls, strange white ones. The taste ran bitter through my mouth. My fingers trembled.
A thin voice with a mirror on the end of it said, "How is he?"
"I don't think it's anything serious. Merely stunned."
"Should he be sent home now?"
"No, just to be certain we'll keep him here a few days. Want to keep him under observation. Then he may leave."
Now I was lying on a cot, the bright eye still burning into mine, although the man was gone. It was quiet and I was numb. I closed my eyes only to be awakened.
"What is your name?" a voice said.
"My head . . ." I said.
"Yes, but your name. Address?"
"My head -- that burning eye . . ." I said.
"Eye?"
"Inside," I said.
"Shoot him up for an X-ray," another voice said.
"My head . . ."
"Careful!"
Somewhere a machine began to hum and I distrusted the man and woman above me.
They were holding me firm and it was fiery and above it all I kept hearing the opening motif of Beethoven's Fifth -- three short and one long buzz, repeated again and again in varying volume, and I was struggling and breaking through, rising up, to find myself lying on my back with two pink-faced men laughing down.
"Be quiet now," one of them said firmly. "You'll be all right." I raised my eyes, seeing two indefinite young women in white, looking down at me. A third, a desert of heat waves away, sat at a panel arrayed with coils and dials. Where was I? From far below me a barber-chair thumping began and I felt myself rise on the tip of the sound from the floor. A face was now level with mine, looking closely and saying something without meaning. A whirring began that snapped and cracked with static, and suddenly I seemed to be crushed between the floor and ceiling. Two forces tore savagely at my stomach and back. A flash of cold-edged heat enclosed me. I was pounded between crushing electrical pressures; pumped between live electrodes like an accordion between a player's hands. My lungs were compressed like a bellows and each time my breath returned I yelled, punctuating the rhythmical action of the nodes.
"Hush, goddamit," one of the faces ordered. "We're trying to get you started again. Now shut up!"
The voice throbbed with icy authority and I quieted and tried to contain the pain. I discovered now that my head was encircled by a piece of cold metal like the iron cap worn by the occupant of an electric chair. I tried unsuccessfully to struggle, to cry out. But the people were so remote, the pain so immediate. A faced moved in and out of the circle of lights, peering for a moment, then disappeared. A freckled, red-haired woman with gold nose-glasses appeared; then a man with a circular mirror attached to his forehead -- a doctor. Yes, he was a doctor and the women were nurses; it was coming clear. I was in a hospital. They would care for me. It was all geared toward the easing of pain. I felt thankful.
I tried to remember how I'd gotten here, but nothing came. My mind was blank, as though I had just begun to live. When the next face appeared I saw the eyes behind the thick glasses blinking as though noticing me for the first time.
"You're all right, boy. You're okay. You just be patient," said the voice, hollow with profound detachment.
I seemed to go away; the lights receded like a tail-light racing down a dark country road. I couldn't follow. A sharp pain stabbed my shoulder. I twisted about on my back, fighting something I couldn't see. Then after a while my vision cleared.
Now a man sitting with his back to me, manipulating dials on a panel. I wanted to call him, but the Fifth Symphony rhythm racked me, and he seemed too serene and too far away. Bright metal bars were between us and when I strained my neck around I discovered that I was not lying on an operating table but in a kind of glass and nickel box, the lid of which was propped open. Why was I here?
"Doctor! Doctor!" I