#daniel iwtv

Chapter 11–Camisado (Daniel)

.

.

.

_________the narrator_________

.

.

.

_________the teaser_________

Once upon a time, I was just Dr. Molloy Sr.’s rough and ready toddler that’d come around once in a while because I was too much for any nanny to take care of. And mom was in and out of treatments and chemo so even when I did behave myself, it was so that I could stay longer with my mother or, even, stay the night with her. The irony of growing up in and around this hospital only to become a “usual” in the ER when sophomore year hit and dad and I were making funeral arrangements.

Passing by the patient intake, I saw different iterations of myself lingering around like ghosts waiting to check out. Held my breath while passing by the room I had once coded in. There was a sunny looking senior citizen in there now. Five years ago, that had been the place my heart stopped and almost refused to restart. I had been smiling that afternoon, I think, if I remember correctly.

Vision dialing in and out as if it were tapped into the electric grid of the ICU, I looked up at the fluorescent tube lights in their frosted fixtures. Felt my jaw go tight at the humming I was either clearly hearing or remembering as yet another ghost of me passed through my body as twenty-two year old Daniel was rushed out of the intensive care unit and back into the surgical suite.

This was no accident. This was a therapeutic chain of events.

The lyrics stirred in me the way they, humorously, did that night not so long ago. I hadn’t even been entirely sure of what I had taken to cause the overdose. Couldn’t remember to this day what it looked like or how I got it but, from the reaction, it had to have been an opioid. Something pure that hadn’t been diluted or spliced—that one hit being all it took to have me crashing and seizing. Foaming at the mouth and all that jazz.

It was the pulmonary edema that had been the one to actually kill me for a few minutes.

.

.

.

.

To catch up before the tale twists further, use the link below and see just how deep the mystery goes in the latest update of Nighttime Coming.