Clean and dry in a thick bath robe, I sat as the doctor worked on the back of my neck. He said there was necrotic tissue that had to be removed, and that I would feel “some discomfort.” As he scrubbed the back of my neck vigorously with a sponge and a cloth I felt a whole lot of discomfort in the form of intense pain. It felt good too though, like something that gets better when you didn’t even know it was bothering you.
The doctor worked in reconstructive jell and finished with a dressing, then taking a binder from his desk he pulled up a chair. He read, looked me over, and made some notes. “I am recording our conversation. There are cookies and juice on the table. Help yourself.” He watched closely as I poured a cup of apple juice. I was hungry and the cookies looked homemade, so I took a big handful. They were coconut macaroons with pineapple and some unusual spice, and were very good.
The doctor told me to describe in detail everything since our attack as part of operation Searchlight. He looked me in the eyes and listened carefully until I finished, then asked questions. Some made sense: my age; mother’s maiden name; simple logic problems. Others seemed kind of odd. He had me put together a child’s jigsaw puzzle, and build a house with Legos. He quizzed me about duck hunting. He played short bits of music, and I had to say if they were happy or sad. Finally he asked me questions about a series of pictures: the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, other ‘Old Masters’ everyone has seen but can’t name, together with dogs playing poker, Elvis on black velvet, a poster of Marilyn Monroe, some comics and cartoons.
Finally he asked me if I was confident about reality. “Why do you believe you really are where you appear to be? After your experience wouldn’t doubt be more rational?”
“Well Sir, things never did quite hang together in there. Out here it’s just obvious, for lots of reasons. The people, sounds and smells, all the details. These cookies.”
“Would you like some more?”
“Yes, thank you, sir, these are great. I don’t know what spice this is.”
“Cardamom, I’m told.” He wrote in his notebook then added, “My sister makes them.”
“Sir? Where are the rest of us, from my unit? Where was I exactly?”
“Hmm. That’s limited both by what we know, and what you need to know.” I ate and drank while he looked out the window. I wondered if we were done, when he continued.
“You remember the attack, and your withdrawal to a defensive position, and the gas alarm. That much is true, you really were exposed to a powerful psychotropic. After that, you and some other members of your unit were…ingested by a large, quasi-reptilian cybernetic organism.”
“Ingested? Eaten?”
“Yes. Like a snake eats a mouse. Is that emotionally distressing?”
“Uhm, please go on.”
“Is this emotionally distressing for you, Private?”
“Uh, yes sir.” He made another notation.
“This biomechanical construct was large and armored. To bring it down without killing everyone inside, we broke its legs to fix it in place, immobilized it’s head and tail, and then began extracting the survivors.”
“Armored, reptilian, head, tail, legs… So you mean I was eaten by a dragon?”
“I meant just what I said, Private.”
“Yes, Sir.”
About half my unit had survived, but many were in bad shape: comatose, sedated, “confined under continuing observation.” I wondered what would have happened if I had failed the quiz. Some, including Corporal Ramsey, had been killed outright. Others had been dead when extracted from the thing we weren’t calling a dragon.
The cookies, though really good, were a little too brown on the bottom. That as much as anything convinced me I was in the real world. The doctor wasn’t a warm and friendly guy, but he did a good job on me. I would spend the night in the hospital, then if everything checked out I could rejoin my unit tomorrow afternoon. He said there would be some scaring on the back of my neck, and that all of us would need continued observation and testing “both physical and psychological.” He was right about that.
—
Tom Harrison, 2008
