Nightmares don’t want to give up on me.

I was hospitalized, not in a typical hospital though. It was a research institute where eccentric doctors test lethal drugs and experiment with fanciful regimens. I was almost trapped in the hospital once admitted. They wanted to treat my chronic problem, and were talking me into an experimental method that involved using microbes from dead mice to fight viral infections. They claimed that it was a replacement regimen for interferon but I was convinced that it was definitely a voodoo when I saw an IV bag with undead mice swimming up and down inside. A nurse came in and did her procedure: fluently she took out a butterfly infusion set and penetrated my skin before I had time to process what had just happened. Once everything was connected she left me alone in the quiet alabaster white room. The fluid came flowing through the winding tube slowly and steadily into my vein. I was panicking on the surface but already crumbling inside. I wasn’t sure what exactly was entering my system. I didn’t know if I had ever consented to this, if not suicidal, “treatment”.

For some reason my mom showed up in the room. She stood by me at the bed. She comforted me and tried to calm me down. I felt blue because it was most likely the case that she didn’t even know what was waiting for me either, but the doctors told her whatever I was taking in is safe. Later the doctors came, and prescribed more bags of rodent animals to me – a bag for every day in the future weeks.

I was lost, confused, puzzled, disappointed, not sure and not even able to be sure about what was going on. I wasn’t sicker and neither was I feeling any better. The far stretch of my imagination reached thoughts about genetic mutations, pigmented skin lesions, and the likelihood of me turning into a rat man. I looked at the needle on my arm, and slid my focus along the butterfly wire back to the bag, then the hanger from where the mice were hung, and then the white wall behind. The wall seemed so bright and soft, as if it were a snow blanket brought by the first snow to an open field. So I stared at the wall, searching for some comfort, and my vision went blurry. When everything became clear again, I saw a beautiful sunny Monday.