Through The Barracks Window

“I can’t do this! Please let me up! Please!” She screamed with horror. She feared the procedures that her body was about to undergo. “Please Stop!” Brilliant flashes of light blinded her as she tried helplessly to fixate on the turmoil that filled the room. Endless touches of unknown hands, positioned her to sit onto the hardness of a cold steel table. As if she were part of a sick sadistic form of bondage, her arms were bound with a sheet. Slowly she was helped to lean back onto the sheet and table to become her own restraint. Her breathing-labored as the utterances and commotion intensified as the silhouettes in the glow of the lights grew closer. “Are we ready to begin?” a distinguished voice, questioned. “You should feel extremely privileged Petty Officer…this surgical unit is the one we use for the President of the Unites States.” Maybe another day and place, this would have made her happy, but this comment did not comfort her at all. “Please! Put me to sleep! Give me something!” Though muffled by a cloth surgical mask, she somehow understood the deep voice that answered her cries. “Relax ma’am, I am going to give you a local, just a little something to take the edge off. As far as we know, this medication won’t hurt the baby. I’m sorry that we can’t put you under, it’s too dangerous.” Finally someone was listening, they knew she was frightened with what was about to take place. Following an increased coolness into her left arm, she could feel the tenseness, throughout her body, slowly subsiding. Whatever the drug was, it worked quickly. Images became rather blurry, but she never revealed its effect. She knew she needed more. “It isn’t working! Please stop!” knowing perfectly well that it was working, just not enough to put her to sleep and relieve her fears and concerns. Again, another short burst of coolness danced into her wanting veins. Still never revealing its effect, she pleaded for more. “We must begin the procedure,” ordered the surgeon. She lay there unable to avoid the prick of the needle as it entered the tissue framed by her right collar bone. As the needle was pushed deeper, warm bursts followed by sharp stings radiated across her shoulders and up into her neck. The constant pain was nothing she had ever felt before, until the event that shortly followed the procedure. “Nurse, how is the monitor on the Petty Officer’s baby looking? Any distress or change in the heart rhythm?” “All is reading normal at this time Sir.” As the deep voice spoke into her left ear to keep her attention, a startling, intense, and overwhelming pain ripped through her body. She shrieked in intense horror, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME! STOP…STOP…STOP!”