Fact-based journalism that sparks the Canadian conversation

Articles Business Environment Health Politics Arts & Culture Society

Special Series Hope You’re Well For the Love of the Game Living Rooms In Other Worlds: A Space Exploration Terra Cognita More special series >

For the Love of the Game

In Other Worlds: A Space Exploration

More special series >

Events The Walrus Talks The Walrus Video Room The Walrus Leadership Roundtables The Walrus Leadership Forums Article Club

The Walrus Video Room

The Walrus Leadership Roundtables

The Walrus Leadership Forums

Subscribe Renew your subscription Change your address Magazine Issues Newsletters Podcasts

Renew your subscription

The Walrus Lab Hire The Walrus Lab Amazon First Novel Award

Amazon First Novel Award

Waking from Anaesthesia

The kind of hand that shakes / the body awake with a cymbal / crash

Time burns in me like a fever. There are no voices, then the voices I hear are thunder, the music of the lifeline disappearing up my left arm

reappearing now as a kind hand, the kind of hand that shakes the body awake with a cymbal crash. I take in the world again: pastel flowers, the lake

of fluids flushing the pain from my head, the wrap and stain of bloody scrubs used to compress the surgeon’s cut. Foolproof, or at least proof

of injury: dressing bunched into a universe of gauze. I can feel the salinated bulge of the IV; the distorted edge of the sun’s call and........

© The Walrus