Life in Paintings

Chapter 11 - The Agnew Clinic

Chapter 11 – The Agnew Clinic

 

 

When I wake up in this painting, I’m groggy. I sort of assume that it’s residual dizziness from the previous painting, but when I blink my eyes open I realize how wrong I am.

            I’m lying on some kind of table with doctors surrounding me and dozens and dozens of men are sitting around us, studying what’s being done to me.

            I’m a guinea pig. And I’m also naked from the waist up.

I automatically try to struggle against my predicament with the very little strength I can find in me, to fight the dizziness and drug induced paralysis and hide my chest.

“Miss, Miss, please stop fretting,” one of the man wearing a white coat tells me. A nurse and another one of the doctors hold my limbs down on the table to stop me from moving. “We are here performing a partial mastectomy. Everything is alright. You will be alright if you calm down and let us do our work.”

“What?” I try to free myself from the holding hands but it’s difficult. Still, I’m not going to just lie there and think of England while they cut off my boob! “Oh no, hell no! No one is cutting off my boob!”

“Miss, please remain calm,” a voice from behind me says, “Kirby, you might want to hurry up with that anaesthetic.”

I keep trying to break free and I keep whimpering but they all ignore me. And the students sitting around seem to find this quite interesting. I want to shout and punch people. “I don’t know what’s wrong, she shouldn’t have woken up. Sorry Doctor Agnew,” one of the doctors says.

“Please hurry up.”

            Please don’t.

It’s not only the fact that I’m being operated on that bothers me. They’re all treating this as if it was a show. I’m lying there, half naked and all these men are staring at me, looking at me getting my breast cut off.

I feel violated.

It feels wrong, really, really wrong. I don’t like this. I want to cover myself. I want to run away from here. But I can’t move my arms because the doctors and nurse are holding them down and I can’t run away because I’m still groggy from the drugs.

And suddenly I feel it; not the drug working it’s way up my veins but the scalpel cutting into my skin.

I shout.

The men around are getting excited, entertained by this turn of event.

Tears slide down my cheeks. I’m crying. The cutting is painful, but it’s not the pain that’s bothering me, it’s everything else.

I want this to stop. STOP! NOW!

I can’t take this, I can’t take being displayed this way like some kind of vulgar mannequin. I can’t stand being shown like this to strangers with no considerations for how violated I feel. I just want them to cover me, to hide me.

But finally I feel it, the drugs working their way up in my veins.

Will they continue to operate on me when I fall asleep again? Will this nightmare stop?

My eyes flutter close and my mind shuts down.