Wicked Prompts

DR. DUELE'S MORPHINE

 "What will be your superhero name?" Asked Lily. Robert was sitting across from her on the couch, nursing a pain in his lower abdomen. "I mean the way you took care of those thugs and saved that family yesterday, you're definitely some kind of superhero now."

"It's not something I wanted," said Robert, through a strained voice and grimacing cheeks.

"That's what all superheroes say," said Lily. "How about Dr. Duele? Duele means pain in Spanish. Kind of mysterious and slightly sinister. Like the Shadow."

She straightened her white physical therapy jacket and smiled as if to project her own brilliance.

"Lily, I'm only doing this to manage the pain. I'm not a caped crusader. I don't even have a cape."

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It started three months earlier when Robert awoke one morning with a pain in his chest. Actually it was palpitations with an accompanying pain to be precise. He got up and drank a glass of water. Then he went for a walk. He took deep breaths and held them. After five deep breaths the palpitations went away but the pain persisted. He thought he might be having a heart attack, but he was only thirty-five so didn't take that prospect very seriously.

He'd felt a pain like this before. Not exactly but kind of. The pain felt a little like gas. This pain was deeper though. It pierced into the middle of his chest but its roots clung to the inside of his ribcage. It twisted and surged there. That feeling was more like a dull aching. The throb of a headache. Not like the stabbing he felt in his chest. The root started in his stomach.

He tried everything he normally tried when he had gas pains. He ate an apple. Went for another walk. Took some more deep breaths. Finally he ate an antacid. Nothing helped. He decided to ignore it and go to work.

Robert worked in an office. One of those jobs he had trouble describing even though he'd been doing it for almost ten years. Every time someone asked him they became bored and then distracted half-way through his explanation and so he stopped. The job involved spreadsheets, power-points, lots of memos, and financial transactions. It paid quite well considering how little he had to work and that he had no formal education, certifications or advanced degrees past college. Maybe because nobody knew the job existed and so there was little competition. After an hour at work the pain twisted and stabbed. Twisted and stabbed. It was getting worse. He couldn't work so he called the doctor. Used his health insurance for the first time in three years. Went to urgent care. They examined him. Took his blood pressure. Checked his ears. Listened to his heart. Asked him to breath deeply. Gave him an aspirin. Told him nothing was wrong.

He went home and spent the rest of the day ignoring the pain and the ache originating at its root. Eventually the day ended and he went to sleep. He awoke in the morning and the pain was worse.

He took the same walk again and started on the deep breaths but they didn't help. He tried a glass of wine even though it was seven in the morning. That dulled it some but it only helped for an hour. Then he turned the lights down in his room. Closed the curtains. Laid pillows on the floor. Turned on some soft music and tried to meditate. First in a lotus posture and then laying down.

He practiced what he'd learned at a Vipassana retreat a few months before. It had been ten days without talking and eight hours a day of meditating. Isolated inside his own mind, he'd taken a hard look at himself for the first time. Now meditating in his bedroom weeks later, it occurred to him that he'd experienced this pain before, toward the end of the retreat. Thinking it was constipation he'd spent an hour on the toilet, remembering the guru's accented words, "You are bound to be successful...you are bound to be successful," as he pushed and strained, hoping to excrete the pulsing suffering he was sure lurked within his lower intestines. Eventually the pain had gone away, but now the meditation made the pain worse.