The TV static of the void, which I’d recently come to occupy, began to dissolve, and I found myself once again within my own body, which I discovered was presently staring at the fluorescent ceiling lights of the friendly neighborhood tobacco shop. How the hell did I get here? I couldn’t for the life of me recall.
A halo of familiar faces began forming around the periphery of my vision. For a moment, I thought I was having some sort of bizarre religious experience, until a hazy memory began to form, wherein each of the faces in the halo had been there in the shop, just prior to my momentary trip to purgatory. The faces, which I finally understood were those of people standing over me, all looked rather concerned, so I felt it prudent to put them at ease. I sat bolt upright and declared with all the confidence I could muster, “I’m okay.”
A short ambulance ride later, I arrived at the emergency room of a nearby hospital. It seemed not everyone back at the shop concurred with the self-assessment I had made about my health. Perhaps, I thought, I simply hadn’t mustered sufficient confidence; a long-running character flaw of mine. Or maybe, just maybe, the pool of blood I’d left on the floor had sown the seeds of dissent among the halo people.
Once I’d gotten all settled in at the ER, they let me know that I would be needing some stitches, but first, they wanted to scan for possible brain damage. I figured I’d save the hardworking ER staff a few unnecessary man-hours of labor, so I spoke up. “Not likely, doc. I’ve got the thickest skull you’ve ever seen. You could open a coconut on this bad boy and not even break my concentration.” Content with having done my good deed for the day, I pulled my phone out of my pocket, opened Instagram, scrolled for a moment, got bored, closed Instagram, and immediately opened Instagram again to post the selfie I had taken in the ambulance.
The doc considered my words for a moment, then called for an orderly. When the orderly poked her head into the room, the doc told her, “I’d like to put a rush on his CT scan,” then glanced at me with a look that expertly walked the expressive razor’s edge between disapproval and pity.
“Sure, let’s hold off on the stitches!” I thought to myself, “After all, how serious could a gaping head wound possibly be?”
I was beginning to piece together the events leading up to my impromptu Humpty Dumpty impression. Kendall, the club’s bartender, had asked me to walk with her around the corner to the tobacco shop, so she could buy a new vape. Just before we entered the shop, I had mentioned to the bartender that I’d found myself battling one of the deadliest of male maladies: the dreaded tummy ache. We entered, and while Kendall waited in line, I began feeling existence fading out from under me. The tummy ache felt like a medically relevant detail, so I mentioned it to the doc.
The doc heard me out and told me that since I was getting scanned anyway, they’d go ahead and add on an abdominal scan. Before wheeling me over to imaging, the doctor had a few questions. “Have you used any substances today?” He must have noticed me attempting to take a mental inventory, and jumped in to simplify things for me: “I’m really only concerned with stuff like if you’ve done, like, a lot of cocaine today.”
“A lot of cocaine? In this economy? We should get your head scanned while we’re at it!” I retorted. The doc endeavored valiantly to appear sympathetic to what I’d just said, but let’s be honest, he’s a doctor. He probably can afford a lot of cocaine, even in this economy.
After a half hour inside the giant industrial hula-hoop that is the CT scan machine, they wheeled me back to my room in the ER. The doctor returned shortly to hit me with the scan results. “Well, it looks like there’s no sign of concussion or brain damage.”
“Told ya!” I said, with just enough smug satisfaction in my voice.
“You sure did!” replied the doc. “And you were right; you have an impressively thick skull. How the hell did you know that?”
“I loved dinosaurs when I was a kid. Pachycephalosaurus was my favorite. I used to pretend to be one every day at recess by running headfirst into a brick wall. Made one of the teachers on playground duty really nervous, so after the school called my mom and dad, I got to go see a whole bunch of different doctors.”
“Well,” said the doc, “that explains a lot. Now for the other thing. It seems your little tummy ache was caused by a kidney stone.”
Shit. That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I was no stranger to kidney stones. Last summer, a stone the size of Alderaan served as the catalyst for my first doctor visit in a decade. They had to go in with a Death Star, by which I mean a camera and a laser, and blast the damn thing out of me. It was as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, only to be abruptly silenced. Damn, I wish I could have stayed awake for that procedure, so I could watch the camera feed. I fucking love Star Wars.
The doctor had told me that the size of the stone made it unlikely that it would pass on its own. I might have ignored the whole situation entirely, except that he said it was merely unlikely, not impossible. My mind conjured the worst possible outcome. What if, I wondered, I passed the stone while receiving a blowjob, and the poor lady who showed me such kindness wound up with a Kurt Cobain-style lobotomy? No good deed goes unpunished, after all. That would make me the Courtney Love of the scenario, and I decided Courtney Love was the wrong role model; this time, at least. It made me shudder to think of the incredibly specific brand of PTSD I’d wind up with if that happened. In the statistically likely event of a subsequent kidney stone, I imagined myself getting arrested, jacking off in a clock tower somewhere, with a rifle scope on my dick, while singing Nirvana songs between sobs, “Come as you are!” I opted for the laser.
This time, though, the laser ended up unnecessary. The doc suggested that if I didn’t pass the stone within a few days, I should make an appointment to get the Death Star procedure. I got the impression he had never seen Star Wars; they blew up the Death Star after it blew up Alderaan. It took a lot longer than a few days, but eventually the stone made its way down to my bladder, where it took up residence for nearly a week. The whole time it was there, I could feel the damn thing scratching at my prostate like Richard Gere’s gerbil. Then one fateful day, while peeing in the shower, the stone shot out of me at something approaching Earth’s escape velocity, straight through the wall of my shower and into the next apartment. “Relieving myself” took on a whole new meaning that day. The good news is, the neighbor in the apartment next to mine is expected to make a full recovery. The bad news is, I’m definitely not getting my security deposit back.
They say you have to suffer for your art, and Nate Hazen has been out there grinding. He is a bouncer, stand-up comedian, writer, and manufacturer of top-quality kidney stones.
